
The Aesthetics of Populism.Political struggle and the aesthetic experience in Poland post 1989
How do populist movements use aesthetic means to get attention and lure supporters? Do the followers of the populist creed differ from the rest of society in the way they get dressed, cook, and entertain themselves? Does the aesthetic dimension of politics form as an important part of any political movement or is it just an accidental phenomenon without any significance? Can we view and interpret the political struggle as a struggle of two aesthetics? Does democracy need the arts to function properly? Professor Leszek Koczanowicz, form SWPS University's Institute of Humanities will look for answers to these questions.
NCN Project No.: 2019/35/B/HS2/01187
Project objectives
The aesthetic dimension of politics has usually been neglected or marginalized. However, the recent rise of populist movements places the question of the relationship between aesthetics and politics at the center of the cultural studies and political science discourses. Populism is usually connected with building strong identities, and it is hardly imaginable that the collective identities could be constructed without an extensive usage of aesthetics tools.
Main goals of the project include:
- To reconstruct the aesthetic strategies of populist movements in their various dimensions, from artificially staged public meetings, performances, and works of art to the aesthetics of everyday life. This will enable Professor Koczanowicz to reveal the specificity of populist political aesthetics and to gain insight into one of the driving forces of populist movements.
- To show the role of aesthetics in democratic society, that is to define to what extent democracy has to rely on a specific aesthetic activity, which facilitates the core of every democratic society, i.e. the dialogue and open communication between people and social groups.
- To show that the political struggle between populism and liberal democracy can be viewed as a struggle between two hostile aesthetics.
- Finally, to present a general theory of political aesthetics, which will systemize the ways of using aesthetic initiatives in politics and show their place in democracy.
I am very happy that I can carry out research that encompasses many of my interests, because I have always been interested in cultural contexts of politics, and aesthetics, after all, is part of culture. I have always thought that cultural aspects have been often neglected in standard descriptions of political life. I hope that I will be able to fill this gap at least partially.

Research Methodology
The project will be carried out in two phases.
- Phase one – theoretical, which will focused on formulating two theories – aesthetics of populism and aesthetics of liberal democracy. This phase, which concerns methodology of research in the field of humanities, will be of clear interdisciplinary character. Developing a theory as part of a planned research project involves the use of methods used in different disciplines such as hermeneutics, genealogy, philology, and historical studies. The results of this phase will become part of the body of knowledge in the discipline of cultural studies
- Phase two that will consist of standard qualitative research in the discipline of social sciences. The goal of this phase is to describe characteristic manifestations of aesthetic strategies employed by populist movements, aesthetic strategies of liberal democracy, and to develop a number of theories of individual objects that function in everyday life.