ABSTRACT Contemporary populist political rhetoric often makes use of a concept of a ‘forgotten people’ or a ‘silent majority’, who are constructed as a subset of population and often utilized as an electoral base by populist leaders, particularly in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The concept emerged in the Twentieth Century and has undergone substantial re-configuration alongside other cultural emerges of the past fifty years. Among them is the re-configuration of the ‘forgotten people’ from being positioned to perceive themselves as a stoic, hard-working, domestic and normative middle-class to a group figured through a racial or ethnic ‘authenticity’ yet called upon to perceive themselves as vulnerable, precarious and at risk to both intellectual elites and marginalized groups including particularly migrants. Using cultural studies approaches, this paper examines some of those shifts in Australian and United States political discourse, how the concept of vulnerability is imputed for political ends, and the value of a more nuanced investigation of the affectively felt attachment to populist discourse among supporters as a form of identity practice. The paper aims to provide a more nuanced framework for scholarly understanding of, and intervention in, contemporary western populism.

中文翻译：

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脆弱性和“被遗忘的人”的话语：民粹主义、人口和文化变迁

摘要当代民粹主义政治修辞经常使用“被遗忘的人民”或“沉默的大多数”的概念，他们被构建为人口的一个子集，并经常被民粹主义领导人用作选举基地，特别是在澳大利亚、英国和美利坚合众国。这个概念出现在 20 世纪，并随着过去 50 年的其他文化出现而经历了实质性的重新配置。其中之一是“被遗忘的人”的重新配置，从将自己定位为坚忍、勤奋、家庭和规范的中产阶级，转变为通过种族或民族“真实性”来描绘但被要求感知的群体。他们对知识精英和边缘化群体，尤其是移民来说，是脆弱的、不稳定的和面临风险的。本文使用文化研究方法，考察了澳大利亚和美国政治话语中的一些转变，脆弱性的概念如何被归咎于政治目的，以及对支持者之间对民粹主义话语的情感依恋进行更细致入微的调查的价值身份实践的一种形式。该论文旨在为学术界对当代西方民粹主义的理解和干预提供一个更加细致入微的框架。