RightFutures · ‘Right’ Futures: the Liminal Political Timespace of the ‘Real Right’ in Chile and Italy

‘Right’ Futures: the Liminal Political Timespace of the ‘Real Right’ in Chile and Italy

The project proposed an innovative future-oriented analytical perspective on youth participation in right-wing and far-right parties and groups in Italy and Chile. It thus investigated how and why young people who identify with the self-defined ‘Real Right’ in Italy and Chile engage with multiple futural orientations through political performances, events, activities, and materialities. The research was developed at the intersection of three areas of inquiry – the future, youth, and the (far)right – and three specific objectives: security and defence, the nation, the past. The first objective sought to consider the collective practices and feelings of security and defence initiatives, investigating how these initiatives shape young people’s political experiences and what futures of democracy are imagined or contested through them. The second asked how contested pasts are re-elaborated from the future within Italian and Chilean democracies. While the third objective explored how the futures of democracy and the nation are collectively imagined, acted upon, and contested by young people who sympathise for or participate in right-wing and far-right groups and parties, examining how visions of the nation are re-elaborated through imaginaries of the future nation and of democracy. The project aimed to produce novel understandings of young people’s political experience in the (far)right, through their future-oriented visions, practices, emotions, and materialities. Moreover, through a comparative approach, the project aimed to examine the global relevance of inquiring into the far-right from a futural temporal perspective, to move beyond solely Euro/US-centric perspectives. The project was developed within a broader context marked by the sharp global rise of far-right politics and the increasing participation of far-right groups and parties in democratic institutions. With its innovative future-oriented analytical perspective, the project brings to the fore the analysis of political temporalities in contexts where the (dictatorial) past remains contested and continues to shape contemporary political discourses. Moreover, since youth is often associated with the future, the project aimed to shed light on the way young people themselves engage with the future through and/or in contrast with their political activism. An ethnographic approach, still not widely used in research on the far-right due to the ethical and methodological complexities it presents, was central to this inquiry as it enabled the in-depth exploration of young people’s political experiences.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз