The title of this article is a combination of antithetical concepts, which makes it a challenge. Critique requires time, reflection, deep thinking, which is something odd these days. Decoloniality takes history, philosophy and epistemology. Emotion flows from deep feeling. Populism implies audible roaring. Hence, they do not seem to inhabit the same layer of feeling or the same level of cognition. It seems, however, that we have been stumbling into the roaring twenties again, all of which negates critique, decoloniality and emotion … as deep feelings, instead exacerbating the foam of feelings.

The tradition of modern thought made us acquainted to the idea of critique as the search for arguments, both explicit and implicit, to contextualise and relate them to specific needs and interests which might have triggered them (Giddents). The purpose would then be to find the underlying and darker areas of thought, those beyond superficial and visible layers, that is, one would be expected to carry out an archaeological investigation of power, feeling and being.

According to the Enlightenment vision of ideas, the concept of critique depended very much on a Eurocentric notion of rationality, one that presumed to be universal (Immanuel Kant). The notion of criticality, thus based on a criterium of universal reason, was therefore perceived as a superior and elitist capacity, one according to the hegemonic understanding of the idea of universality. This idea of a presumably universal rationality, hegemonically constructed, would be able to justify the movement of epistemological modernity, as well as political and economic colonization (Quijano).

A ‘universal reason’ may certainly imply common elements of criticality transversal to the human mind. Yet, one cannot infer that critique, being foundational to an epistemological structure of European origin, mirrors a type of superior rationality, of absolute judgement, or even one that it is homogeneous in itself (Mignolo & Walsh). For example, the discussion about Critical Theory by the Frankfurt School, itself with different approaches (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, etc.), which coincides in introducing a rationality framed in the social context and which moves away from the ‘individual’ and the ‘universal’, still has some features of hegemony (Hoy and McCarthy). On the one hand, Habermas appeals to communication towards consensus, in his early work, by claiming for the construction of European solidarity amongst nation-states. On the other hand, it is precisely against consensus and the historical grand narratives that other European authors voice their thoughts (Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault).

This type of rationality, perceived as universal, with Eurocentric roots, is based on the dichotomy between reason and emotion. A kind of reasoning, as if created in a lab, despite its philosophical grounding, which would become foundational to scientific thinking. However, this notion of critique managed to gradually free itself, or perhaps it had never been completely tied up, by a pragmatist philosophy, more sociological and anthropological, a critical pedagogy for instance, or undoubtedly by literary critique. The dichotomy between reason and emotion ends up defining one by opposition to the other, that is, where one is, the other cannot be (Kincheloe & Steinberg).

To start with, the decoloniality of critique questions and deconstructs such dichotomy between reason and emotion. It is from such a ‘place’, where the ‘abyssal line’ between reason and emotion is deleted, that the idea of ‘sulear’ – navigating through the South - is made concrete in the Critical Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and other followers such as José Eustáquio Romão, and in the Epistemologies of the South by Boaventura de Sousa Santos.

Critical interculturality responds to a broad range of possible relationships between reason and emotion by delivering a wide scope of possibilities and allowing very different approaches. On the one hand, for example, the one based on a democratic culture of dialogue rooted in Anglo-Saxon and Northern European hermeneutics such as, for example, the notion of ‘critical cultural awareness’ introduced by Mike Byram. On the other hand, on the notion of decolonial ‘critical interculturality’ promoted by the work of Catherine Walsh, together with other South-American well-known scholars.

Scholarly work on populism has brought to the fore the emotional drive of these political movements by often introducing psychological lenses to political sciences, sociology, etc. Given that the so-called populist parties and political leaders (e.g., Brothers of Italy and Forza Italia, Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, National Front in France, Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil and recently elected Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands) are institutionally based in nation-states whose framework is originated in the Enlightenment ideals, it seems relevant to bring in the paradoxical implications of including, at least in relation, these leading concepts, apparently contradictory or even colliding. To what extent does such a leading concept, emotion, make the political framework inconsistent? To what extent can emotion here simply translate verbal aggressiveness, or even a call for violence, social disorder, in this framework?

Given the transnational and pluricultural, even intercontinental, spread and dominance of populist political movements, it would be relevant to analyse how scholarship on populism refers to emotion, critique and decoloniality, in relationality, if it ever does, and on which bases. Several scientific fields have been questioning the lack of attention and even avoidance of the emotional elements in scientific studies, such as linguistics. Aneta Pavlenko (2005), for example, carried out an important study on Emotions and Multilingualism where, for example, she calls our attention to “differences in French emotion terms in France, Canada, Canada and Algeria” (p. 4). The concepts behind the words expressing emotions are culturally and interculturally loaded. Is it worth analysing such a perspective in what regards contemporary populist movements comparative studies? According to Pavlenko (2005), “if emotionality is reflected on changes in discursive style, then what counts as emotionality will differ across individuals and groups of speakers, because their discursive styles are different” (p. 48). This approach would demand an analysis of much deeper levels of emotionality than those which are evident at the surface of behaviours, claims and attitudes and which are those who generally count as emotions. It is also common understanding that making emotions visible is the only translation possible to feeling emotions while that is not equally assumed about reasoning. Expressing one’s thoughts is not necessarily perceived as good reasoning. How does this apply to contemporary analyses of populism and emotions?
Kaar (2010) deals with the role emotions play at the workplace “in the development of trust and assessment of other peoples’ trustworthiness” (p. 100). The author assumes that “while emotions are cultural-general in their underlying dimensions, they become manifest in different behaviours. This is because every culture disposes of emotion display rules, prescribing which emotions are shown in which situations and how” (p. 98). The populist movements have been complaining about the functioning of democratic institutions, about the principles by which they have been abiding, about misuse of funds and even corruption by those involved in political governance. No matter what they complain about, emotion analysis in populism has focused itself on the behaviours in which these ideas are expressed. This is, nonetheless, about communication types, which is always cultural and intercultural.In my understanding, populist movements display emotions which need to be excessively audible and visible to be politically effective, while critique reflects upon emotions, unveils them, searches for their roots, assuming that these may be deep. If addressed separately, both ‘the rational’ and ‘the emotional’ miss both the construction of modernity and the deconstruction of decoloniality. Once decoloniality is reciprocal, it transforms the relation between reason and emotion and it multiplies the possibilities of defining one and the other. Both critique and decoloniality, by bringing reasoning and emotions together, can become utterly pedagogical. Both John Dewey and Paulo Freire were able to introduce two different perspectives of democratic education, grounded in different historical and cultural visions of a democratic society, within which different practices of reasoning and feeling can co-exist in political education pedagogies (Guilherme).

This being said, the time urges for the clarification of the social and political ‘givens’ of contemporaneity and is therefore ripe with questions. How can populism respond to decoloniality?  Is it possible or desirable? Can they even be put face-to-face in the same context? Which roles do emotion and/with reasoning play in the process? Which concepts of ‘people’ may respond to a notion of decoloniality or to today’s definitions of populism, if we abandon the concept of ‘people’ which emerged from the French Revolution and has been the pillar of the democratic nation-state?