Public Humanities is a new international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life. The journal invites proposals for themed issues that pose urgent questions on contemporary public issues that require rigorous and relevant humanities knowledge.

The journal invites submissions for the upcoming Themed Issue The Elusive Rhetoric of the Far Right: A Transnational Perspective which will be Guest Edited by Adi Gordon and Gilles Verniers.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2025.

Description 

This issue focuses on the rhetoric of the Far-Right as key to a deeper understanding of its surprise resurgence and mainstreaming at home and abroad in the last decade and a half. One of the key political trends of our time is the way in which Far-Right actors have been able to enter, radicalize, and very often dominate traditional Conservative coalitions in the past twenty years. Much of this success is based on how the Far-Right uses rhetoric. The Far Right’s first rhetorical move is never to present itself as such, but rather to use alternative terms such as “Patriots,” “Traditionalists,” “Economic Nationalists,” which falsely put them on a traditional ideological spectrum. This was unwittingly aided by analysts, opponents, and the media who defined the Far Right in narrow terms: as fascistic, authoritarian, populist ethnonationalism. But a transnational perspective, looking into concrete examples–from India to Germany, and from the United States to Brazil, from Argentina to the Netherlands–will quickly expose some of these attributes as irrelevant to the respective example. The weakness of the definitions, in turn, makes it easier on Far Right actors to present themselves as normative, and enter conservative coalitions. 

This issue of Public Humanities examines how the disconnects between these rhetorical framings allow Far-Right actors to both capture a sense of the critique of what they often present as a “dying” civilization, while also granting them access to mainstream political movements. The elusiveness of what exactly counts as the “Far-Right,” in other words, allows putative insurgents to disown the radical implications of some of their aspirations, while also being able to harness anti-incumbent sentiment and larger cultural conceptions of social and economic decline to an admittedly heterodox vision. 

The Far Right has always been more complex than the predictable tales recited about it, and certainly more than its own self-portrayal. This issue brings together studies of seemingly unlikely Far Right rhetorical moves, and does so based on cases from very different periods and geographies. These cases range from the Far Right claim to xenophilia and pluralism (rather than xenophobia), through Far Right Diaspora Nationalism, all the way to Far Right advocacy of individual rights. By drawing attention to these moves, the contributors to this issue will present Far Right rhetoric as thriving on its often blatant, provocative contradictions. It will be analyzed as mimicking, indeed hijacking, the rhetoric of its opponents. This special issue will thus involve a transdisciplinary, multi-methodological discussion of the far-right in a transnational perspective, with a particular focus on the way that Far-Right actors engage in discursive strategy. It relies, in unique and novel ways, on the construction of rhetorical practices that are both local and global. In order to make sense of the appeal of Far Right claims we need to situate them in their various “publics,” to find the way they intersect with and complicate existing narratives of citizenship and belonging.  

The editors of the Themed Issue invite submission of relevant articles. All pertinent disciplines are equally welcome, so long as the article presents original research. The length should be 6,000-8,000 words. We are particularly interested in studies of the Far Right beyond Western Europe and the US.

Submission guidelines 

Submissions should be written in accessible language for a wide readership across and beyond the humanities. Articles will be peer reviewed for both content and style. Articles will appear digitally and open access in the journal. 

All submissions should be made through the Public Humanities online peer review system. Authors should consult the journal’s Author Instructions prior to submission. 

All authors will be required to declare any funding and/or competing interests upon submission. See the journal’s Publishing Ethics guidelines for more information.  

Contacts

Adi Gordon – agordon@amherst.edu 

Gilles Verniers – gverniers@amherst.edu

Questions regarding peer review can be sent to the Public Humanities inbox at publichumanities@cambridge.org.