Paper short abstract

This paper examines democracy as a practice constituted through conflict, affect, spatial struggle, and gendered embodiment. I show how affective governance by the Austrian state and broader political atmospheres create unequal access to democracy’s material-semiotic resources.

Paper long abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Vienna, this paper examines democracy as a practice constituted through conflict, affect, spatial struggle, and gendered embodiment. It focuses on gatherings and campaign events of the far-right party FPÖ (Freedom Party Austria) and their youth organisation, as well as counter-protests against the FPÖ and the Identitarian Movement by Antifa groups. How do these groups experience antagonism and render it productive? How does the Austrian state shape antagonism through affective governance? I show how antagonistic communities and practices take shape through affective atmospheres, embodied and gendered practices, and physical claims to urban public space. Yet, antagonism is experienced and mobilised differently depending on one’s proximity to state power: while supporters of the FPÖ tend to experience antagonism as exhilarating and pleasurable, Antifa groups often perceive it as surveilled, and constrained. The FPÖ mobilises antagonism through confidence, joy, and coercion, whereas Antifa activists rely on secrecy, mutual care, and humour. Hence, I contribute to anthropological scholarship on antagonistic emotions beyond anger, contempt, and resentment (Leser and Spissinger 2020; Luger 2024; Katja et al. 2022; Crano 2022; Kisić-Merino 2025), and on the fraught relationship between democracy and the state (Adebanwi 2022; Greenberg 2014; Spencer 2007; Muehlebach 2012; Wedeen 2008). I analyse how political groups enact antagonism through the collective creation of affective atmospheres. Furthermore, I show how affective governance by the Austrian state and broader political atmospheres – structured by genealogies of policing and far-right normalisation – create unequal access to democracy’s material-semiotic resources.