Archive of On Populist Reason

The annual Verso prize for Cultural and Critical Studies is awarded to the top student graduating from Birkbeck’s MA Cultural and Critical Studies. This year, the prize goes to student Elle Aspell-Sheppard for her excellent project on “post-truth” and its effects on politics, using the specific example of Donald Trump’s electoral campaign. The external examiner described the essay as a “beautifully written piece of work, which brings Hannah Arendt’s thought successfully into the present moment…a thoughtful argument is advanced around the idea of post-truth as a contemporary keyword”. Speaking is an extract from the winning dissertation.

There is a famous line in Lenin saying that "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." That is a very profound phrase. Theory serves for two things: to join together struggles that are apparently unrelated, and also as a compass in periods of crisis. It is what tells you whether in this precise moment you should be smashing up banks or standing in elections.