What is The Charismologist?
A blog exploring our relationship to our most magnetic idea
What is charismologist?
This is a blog that explores our relationship with our most magnetic modern concept. Or, rather, our most magnetic word - that of ‘charisma/charismatic’
Charisma is one of the most charismatic of modern ideas. It is a word that many of use on a daily basis without thinking much about it.
Thanks to a strange twentieth century journey from obscure scholarship to popular usage it has become one of the most successful pieces of academic jargon ever coined.
I’m fascinated by what that journey means and how it shapes how we think.
Why ? I believe the tools we use to describe political psychology matter. As linguistics and psychologists are eager to point out, metaphors and abstract nouns are not just linguistic conventions but real elements of thought that control how we think. Tracing their rise and fall offers a window into shifting values.
Since Plato it has been a commonplace to note the outsized role that metaphors play in political thought. The most prominent -- the body politic, the ship of state, the machine of government – have been extensively analysed.
But I take the view that smaller abstract nouns and figurative tropes like charisma do just as much to shape our view of the world. These words present visions of the place of the individual within society or democracy. They shape how we think about the relationship of individuals to group and to how power works. And as I try to explore in my writing, they often limit how we think about all of this in negative ways.
This blog is a place where I think through some of these implications of charisma, link to and discuss some of the most interesting research on the topic, from a range of different perspectives.
Who is charismologist?
My name is Tom F. Wright and I am lead author of this blog.
I am a historian based at the University of Sussex in the UK, where I research the history of rhetoric and speechmaking, focusing on nineteenth century Britain and America. I have knocked out a couple of books on this stuff, and am currently leading a major collaborative research project about speech education in UK schools, called Speaking Citizens.
As a side hustle, however, I’m obsessed with the c-word ‘charisma’
I have written about it for The Atlantic, and have spoken about the idea on BBC Radio 4 as part of an expert panel for a special episode of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg in March 2022.
I am also writing a book entitled Charisma Before Charisma: A New History of Our Most Magnetic Idea (which you can read more about here), that tries to think about how we thought about authority before we had this word. In the last few years I have shared parts of this book at conferences and seminars across Europe, the US, the UK and China, and published a range of pieces about it.
This blog is a place for me to think through some of my ideas and share some of the most interesting findings as they come along. Hope you enjoy or get something out of it.
You can contact me on tom.wright@sussex.ac.uk or on Twitter as @Tom_F_Wright