Postliberalism: a genealogy

Excerpt: Liberalism is in crisis. Or so it seems. In the aftermath of Brexit and Trump’s election, a plethora of books and articles reporting the end of liberalism emerged from both ends of the political spectrum. While the majority of voices from the American left and mainstream right mourned this perceived decline, a new faction within the right saw it as an opening for envisioning a fresh political paradigm beyond the constraints of liberalism. Many of these right-wing thinkers and activists, with whom U.S. Vice-President J. D. Vance publicly identifies, call themselves postliberals. Yet the early uses of the term “postliberal” were strikingly different, denoting communitarian attempts to transcend liberal individualism rather than the illiberal rejection of liberal-democratic norms.