Introduzione

[Autom. eng. transl.] In 1967, Isaiah Berlin observed that the debate on populism risked falling victim to the “Cinderella complex.” The scholars who attempted to clarify what "populism" really was seemed destined to search endlessly for a paradigmatic case, a Cinderella capable of perfectly fitting the slipper of a theoretical definition. And more than half a century later, that shoe appears even more elusive today. This volume does not have the ambition of overcoming the "Cinderella complex", but aims more simply to bring to light some of the reasons that make it complicated - although not impossible - to use the term "populism". The various contributions offer materials precisely for a genealogy of "populism": that is, they try to show how the genesis of the concept - or, better, its "re-invention" - is inextricably connected to the role played by the social sciences and to the construction of a a sort of "pathological" otherness compared to the norm of liberal democracy. To truly understand the populist Zeitgeist, it is probably necessary to overcome the misunderstandings inherited from the tormented genesis of a paranoid concept.