Using the case study of Uganda, this paper introduces the concept of "poisonous politics", a political atmosphere marked by widely shared feelings of disorientation, danger and marginalization as well as a powerful autonomous energy that challenges its authoritarian engineers’ original intentions.
Contribution long abstract
This paper examines the volatile political landscape of contemporary Uganda through the lens of atmosphere, focusing on the experiential dynamics and affective dimensions of politics in authoritarian settings. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2022 among Ugandan university and secondary school students, it introduces the concept of "poisonous politics"—a toxic, ambivalent, and unpredictable political atmosphere characterized by collectively shared feelings of disorientation, danger, and marginalization among the population. The paper argues that while these feelings are, at least in part, deliberately cultivated by the state as part of a broader affective governance strategy, in their dynamic interplay, they also generate an autonomous and uncontrollable energy that runs counter to the original intentions of the architects of such atmospheres. Poisonous politics is thus of an inherently paradoxical nature: designed to strengthen and consolidate authoritarian rule, it simultaneously holds a considerable destabilizing and transformative potential. Best captured in the image of a cloud of toxic fumes that becomes uncontainable after its release, the concept conveys crucial dynamics of political life under authoritarian rule while also revealing the inherent fragility of such systems, where efforts to govern through uncertainty, fear and exclusion unintentionally open up avenues for possible change.