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Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics puts forward a timely analysis of contemporary feminism. Critically engaging with both narratives of feminist decline and re-emergence, it draws on poststructuralist political theory to assess current forms of activism in the UK and present a provocative account of recent developments in feminist politics

Has feminist politics lost its radicalism and vitality? Or is it undergoing a resurgence? Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics tackles these questions through a blend of empirical research and theoretical reflection, shedding new light on a range of debates concerning questions of political space and time, and feminism's relationship to the state and to popular culture. Dean draws on Arendtian and poststructuralist political theories to propose a novel understanding of the concept of 'radicalism' within feminist politics. Three in-depth case studies of contemporary British feminist groups are presented: The Fawcett Society, Women's Aid and The F-word website. Dean's incisive critique of both narratives of loss and narratives of resurgence in British and transnational feminisms offers a fresh, timely and provocative challenge to dominant understandings of feminist politics.

The aim of this article is to map the contested intersections of influencer culture and left/progressive politics within the current conjuncture. Furthermore, drawing on a combination of Gramscian and Foucaultian insights, the article considers the implications of these intersections for how we theorise the relationship between neoliberalism and left politics. In so doing, my argument is threefold. First, I suggest that social media influencers and influencer activists have turned to various forms of left politics as a means of establishing a distinctive personal brand, and heightening their social media clout. Second, I suggest that these developments have been met with something of a backlash among some left commentators, wary of the superficiality – and privileging of self-promotion over solidarity – that influencer activism entails, in keeping with a broader disaffection with what some consider to be the excessively individualistic flavour of contemporary forms of online 'identity politics'. Third, I note that left critics of influencer activism often posit a distinction between 'proper' – that is, materialist, solidaristic – left politics, on one hand, and superficial, individualistic influencer activism, on the other. But, drawing on a conception of neoliberalism inspired by Foucault's 1979 lectures, I suggest that, in a neoliberal digital capitalist context, this distinction becomes hard to sustain. This argument has two further implications. First, it becomes very difficult to extricate oneself from the imperatives of neoliberal digital culture, even if one is politically opposed to neoliberalism; and, second, the figure of the social media influencer, far from being exceptional or anomalous, is merely a more overt or extreme manifestation of logics that are already endemic in contemporary cultural and political life.

This article analyses the cultural traction and media visibility yielded by left-wing ideas and people during Jeremy Corbyn's tenure as British Labour Party leader (2015–2019), while also offering some more general reflections on the relationship between left politics and popular culture. I begin by noting that the cultural and media aspects of Corbynism have largely been neglected in the scholarly literature. I then go on to caution against the temptation of subsuming the cultural aspects of Corbyn-era left politics under the label of 'left-wing populism'. Instead, I defend a conception of 'popular leftism' as distinct from 'left-wing populism', via an engagement with Stuart Hall's classic essay 'Notes on Deconstructing the Popular', as well as Sarah Banet-Wesier's recent work on popular feminism. The second half of the article maps key features of 'popular leftism' as a distinct cultural/political formation that has emerged 'in and against' neoliberalism. In particular, it focuses on media visibility, affective tenor, and tactical and intellectual dynamics. While popular leftism's entanglement with neoliberalism has proved problematic for its transformative capacity, I nonetheless conclude that its emergence is testament to the importance of popular cultural production and consumption in shaping recent iterations of left politics in Britain.

This article identifies an unease, or even squeamishness, in the way in which political science addresses social media and digital politics, and argues that we urgently need to avoid such squeamishness if we are to adequately grasp the texture and character of contemporary digitally mediated politics. The first section highlights some of the methodological assumptions that underpin this squeamishness. Section 'Visual Culture and the "Memeification" of Politics', drawing on a recent research project on the changing shape of the British left, highlights a number of key trends in digital politics which deserve more attention from political scientists. In particular, I stress the ways in which politics is enacted in and through visual media such as gifs, memes and other forms of shareable visual content. Section 'Re-Orienting the Study of Digital Politics' then mines recent literature in media and communication studies to highlight a range of conceptual and methodological approaches that might be better able to capture the contours of these emergent forms of digitally mediated politics. In the section 'The Pleasures and Passions of Socially Mediated Politics: Towards a Research Agenda', I articulate a possible research agenda. Overall, I encourage political scientists to see the production and exchange of digital visual media not as some frivolous activity on the margins of politics, but as increasingly central to the everyday practices of politically engaged citizens.

This article aims, first, to argue that fandom matters to politics and, second, to offer a theorisation of what I call politicised fandom. The article proceeds through three stages. Part 1 offers a brief mapping of the existing scholarship within the interdisciplinary sub-field of fan studies and alights on a definition of fandom offered by Cornel Sandvoss, before mapping some different understandings of the fandom–politics relation. Here, I argue for an emphasis on the agency and capacity of fan communities to intervene politically. Part 2 then provides an initial theorisation of politicised fandom, highlighting four key elements: productivity and consumption, community, affect and contestation. Part 3 offers some snapshots of how this politicised fandom is manifest empirically via the analysis of three similar yet different instances of politicised fandom in UK left politics: Russell Brand, Milifandom and Corbyn-mania.

This article offers a critical analysis of how narratives of a generalised withdrawal from radical politics and activism circulate within contemporary political theory. In so doing, I use the term 'narrations of apoliticality' to highlight how such narratives have a fictive and performative dimension: they have, I argue, congealed into a widely held common sense (often buttressed by affects of pessimism, gloom and despair) and become curiously resistant to sustained empirical or theoretical scrutiny. Against this backdrop, the article has four specific aims. First, it maps the general contours of narrations of apoliticality; second, it highlights why narrations of apoliticality are potentially problematic; third -- drawing on Lacanian notions of fantasy and Sara Ahmed's account of affect -- it explores how the affectivity of such claims renders them sticky and intransigent; and finally, it offers some thoughts on how we might decentre narrations of apoliticality in our analyses of political activism. Adapted from the source document.

This article offers a critical analysis of how narratives of a generalised withdrawal from radical politics and activism circulate within contemporary political theory. In so doing, I use the term 'narrations of apoliticality' to highlight how such narratives have a fictive and performative dimension: they have, I argue, congealed into a widely held common sense (often buttressed by affects of pessimism, gloom and despair) and become curiously resistant to sustained empirical or theoretical scrutiny. Against this backdrop, the article has four specific aims. First, it maps the general contours of narrations of apoliticality; second, it highlights why narrations of apoliticality are potentially problematic; third – drawing on Lacanian notions of fantasy and Sara Ahmed's account of affect – it explores how the affectivity of such claims renders them sticky and intransigent; and finally, it offers some thoughts on how we might decentre narrations of apoliticality in our analyses of political activism.