Towards a transnational and social history of anti-liberalism. Insights from the trajectory of Ryszard Legutko

ABSTRACT The ideological roots of the democratic backslide in Central Europe have rarely been linked to the reconfigurations of the conservative right in Europe and in the United States. Here an attempt is made to fill this gap by retracing Ryszard Legutko’s social trajectory and political activities since the 1980s. A founder of one of Poland’s main conservative think tanks and a member of the European Parliament from the Law and Justice party, Legutko has played a key role in the intellectual structuring of Polish conservatives. He also has become one of the leading figures in an emerging anti-liberal Internationale. Drawing on the analytical framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, I study Legutko’s social properties in relation with the structure of the fields – intellectual and political, Polish and transnational – in which he has been involved since the 1980s. Examining the contexts of the production and reception of Legutko’s writings, I propose a nuanced geography of transnational intellectual exchanges, emphasizing that ideas can circulate from the ‘semi-periphery’ to the ‘core’, under certain conditions. The article thus provides new insights into the ways in which some fractions of the right have redefined their ideology along anti-liberal stances.