Metapolitics (sometimes written meta-politics) describes political attempts to speak in a
metalinguistic sense about
politics
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
; that is, to have a political dialogue about politics itself. Activists who use the phrase often view metapolitics as a form of "inquiry" in which the discourse of politics, and the political itself, is reimagined and reappropriated. The term was coined by
Marxists and is almost always used in the context of ideological discourse among the
far-left and
far-right, unlike the wider academic field of
political philosophy
Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different ...
. Those citing the term often do so in an attempt to take a "self-conscious" role in describing their preferred form of political inquiry.
Contemporary thought
The term "metapolitics" originated from
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...
French academics, being first popularized by
Alain Badiou and
Jacques Rancière. Discussing Badiou's ''Metapolitics'', Bruno Bosteels asserts that:
Contemporary politics
References
Sources
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Further reading
*Carlo Gambescia, ''Metapolitica. L’altro sguardo sul potere'', Edizioni Il Foglio Letterario 2009, .
*Carlo Gambescia, ''Trattato di metapolitica,'' Edizioni Il Foglio, 2023, 2 voll.: - vol. I. ''Storia, concetti e metodo'', ; - vol. II. ''Laboratorio storico'',
*Felix Schilk (2025). ''The Metapolitics of Crises: How the New Right Weaponises Narratives to Mainstream Far-Right Ideology''. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society.
External links
*A. J. Gregor. Metascience and Politics
Dictionary definition*
Peter Viereck,
Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler', 2003. .
Peter Viereck, Metapolitics RevisitedCommentary on Alain Badiou's book ''Metapolitics''Leo Zaibert, ''Toward Meta-politics''
* Igor Efimov.
Metapolitics: our choice and history
' (in Russian). Leningrad, 1991. 224 pages.
Political terminology
Linguistics
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