Pasko Kisic Merino defends his doctoral thesis, “Enjoying the Fall – The Normalisation of the Far-Right as an Algorithmically-Mediated Fantasy of Ontological (In)Security” at Karlstad University. Click here for a link to DIVA, with more information about the dissertation. Click here for a link to the event page at Linköping University.
Over the past decade, the far-right has become normalised globally. The tolerance of these ideologies challenges the weakened modern liberal order, signifying its limitations as modernity’s symbolic authority. This phenomenon involves an unprecedented ontology in which fantasies of “stolen” ethnocultural wholeness and supremacy propagate through social media governed by neoliberal imperatives of attention hoarding. Fantasies of self-continuity amidst crises – ontological security – are diffused via social media, whose algorithmic governance of our everyday shapes identities and experiences of the political. This problem points to the pressing need to explore the psycho-political and techno-mediatic dimensions of far-right normalisation. This thesis provides a novel perspective by mobilising Lacanian ontological security to investigate the role of these dimensions in normalising the far-right in four levels. It analyses the role of White supremacy and deglobalisation in shaping othering fantasies; traditional and social media’s roles in conveying far-right actors as legitimate interlocutors; the mainstream right-wing’s enjoyment of far-right fantasies; and the algorithmic governance of far-right normalisation as a fantasy reinforcing neoliberalism and eroding liberal democracy.
Jason Glynos, Professor at University of Essex.
