Thomás Zicman de Barros, Radical Democracy, Populism and Desire: Inside the Yellow Vests Movement – Edinburgh University Press, July 2026

Explores the psychoanalytic dynamics linking democracy and populism in the Yellow Vests movement

• Bridges political theory and psychoanalysis in a striking interdisciplinary account of the Yellow Vests
• Drawing on unique psychosocial interviews with grassroots protesters, it reveals how personal stories erupted into collective mobilisation
• Makes psychoanalytic ideas—desire, fantasy, enjoyment, symptom—tangible through vivid empirical examples tested in the classroom
• Recasts populism as aesthetic transgression, bringing Lacanian theory into dialogue with radical democracy

The Yellow Vests movement (‘Les gilets jaunes’) occupied roundabouts across France in late 2018 and remains a puzzling phenomenon. Bringing together protestors across the political spectrum, the movement’s democratic character remains ambiguous. Was this populist uprising a radicalisation of democracy that gave voice to the excluded, or an undemocratic claim to speak for “the people” while entrenching hierarchies?

Radical Democracy, Populism and Desire articulates empirical analysis and theoretical reflection, using the Yellow Vests as a prism to rethink democratic theory. Drawing on psychosocial interviews with grassroots participants, it explores how identities were constructed, contested and steered within the movement. Thomás Zicman de Barros argues that the protests were driven by a desire for recognition and belonging, but that this desire could be mobilised in sharply different directions. By tracing these coexisting modes of identification, the book exposes the fraught and ambiguous ties between populism and democracy in contemporary politics.