Page 413 [413]
SIMULACRUM OF PROGRESSIVE POLITICS
——o—
ANDREA PETÖ"
The paper discusses the future of progressive politics, especially social democracy
in Hungary. It argues, referring to the work by Tony Judt that the concept of “fear”
is useful mobilizational force together with historical analogies based on analyzing
the gendered history ofthe Hungarian progressive tradition.
Baudrillard’s category of simulacrum was inspired by the paragraph story by
Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science.” In this short story Borges speaks
about an empire which was so attached to the map of its own, when the empire
collapsed nothing remained but the map, the simulation of the land which once
was a powerful empire. After the collapse, the land was “inhabited by animals
and beggars”.? This paper is joining in the recent public debates about future
of progressive politics in Europe. Following the 2008 triple crises (financial,
migration and security) conferences and publications are trying to diagnose the
causes of this recent dramatic decline in popularity of social democratic parties,
previously the vanguards of progressive politics.
European social democracy is facing immense challenges after a long period
of when “Social Europe” seemed to be consensual road for the future for even for
conservative parties. Analysts are explaining the loss of popularity by different
factors. Some are linking the crises either to the transformation of the capital into
a new form of global free market capitalism or to the transformation of the state
especially the welfare state provisions or to the transformation of the concept
work itself. More paranoiac and elitist explanations are blaming the conservative
and especially the emerging illiberal parties “stealing the cloth” of the social
democrats by integrating their core values into their programs while at the same
time depriving it from its political transformative potential. These changes in the
' Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Professor at the Department of
Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria and a Research Affiliate
of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest
? A previous version of this paper was published as “Inhabited by Animals and Beggars”?,
Queries 2 (2010), 110-117.
3 http://www.palacios-huerta.com/docs/Borges.pdf.
e 4ll e