Fellow 2024-2025
Gary Hussey is a social theorist currently working on “post-foundational” analyses of the spatial aspects of violence. He holds a PhD from the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland in Galway and explores contemporary social, political and spatial theories. In his publications he focuses on the spatial aspects of violence in north of Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is particularly interested in the development of a “post-foundational” understanding of space to understand how the spatial dynamics of violence and contestation unfold and operate in divided societies in different international contexts. Methodologically, his research insists on the possibilities and complexity of archival work and qualitative approaches as critical social theory in epistemological, methodological and ethical terms. In his teaching on populism and authoritarianism, he looks at longer historical periods to examine how populism has threatened democracies at different historical moments, while conversely it has proved to be a democratising force in its more egalitarian manifestations.
Abstract
Spatialising Antagonism: The materialities of political (de)polarisation in contemporary Budapest, Hungary
This project is a study of the relationships between space and the political in contemporary Budapest. Over the course the last decade, as Hungarian politics and society has undergone an ‘illiberal’ turn, this transition has been reflected in city’s space. This political reconfiguration of space is evidenced at a variety of scales, from the intensely micro-quotidian level to more overtly ambitious architectural projects; From mandatory notices posted on bookshop doors alerting potential customers that, here, they will find texts of a ‘non-traditional’ nature (thus outside the bounds of ‘good society’), to the erection of statues that re-articulate a vision of Hungary’s history which legitimates the current regime.
All of which amounts to a complex constellation of material-discursive practices that re-shape the routines and spaces that constitute everyday life in Budapest. Yet, in so far as space is the product of power, these processes are highly contested because Budapest remains a largely liberal and cosmopolitan city. The project will examine how such processes are frustrated through other (spatial) practices, be these the creation of ‘free spaces’, re-claiming the streets through protest, or various communal projects. The study brings together two major currents within Political Discourse Theory, namely studies of populism and the development of a ‘post-foundational’ spatial analysis. In its focus on spatial practices, it contributes to populist studies, which largely tend to focus on political discourses (traditionally understood) and less so the material practices through which order becomes embedded and reproduced.
Education
PhD 2020 Political Science, Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway
BA 2015 Political Science, Sociology, and History, National University of Ireland, Galway
Current Appointment
Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow, University College Dublin.
Most recent publications
“Spatialising antagonism: A post-foundational analysis of the spatial dynamics of violence in nineteenth century Derry.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 40, Nr. 8 (2022): 1677-1692.
“Understanding insurgency: popular support for the PKK in Turkey”, Journal of Political Power, 16 Nr.3 (2023): 401-406.
“The spatialisation of the political imagination: A political discourse analysis of space, fantasy and inter-communal conflict in Derry city.” Critical Discourse Studies 20, Nr. 6 (2023): 602-617.
“Violence, space, and the political logics of territoriality: a case of peasant resistance in early-nineteenth century Ireland.” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 19, Nr. 3 (2018): 306-327.