Democracy in Crisis

This volume explores the political implications of violence and alterity (radical difference) for the practice of democracy, and reformulates the possibility of community that democracy is said to entail. Most significantly, contributors intervene in traditional democratic theory by boldly contesting the widely-held assumption that increased inclusion, tolerance and cultural recognition are democracy's sufficient conditions. Rather than simply inquiring how best to expand the 'demos', they investigate how claims to self-determination, identity and sovereignty are a problem for democracy and how, paradoxically, alterity may be its greatest strength. Drawing largely on the Left, continental tradition, contributions include an appeal to the tension between fear and love in the face of anti-Semitism in Poland, injunctions to rethink the identity-difference binary and the ideal of 'mutual recognition' that dominate liberal-democratic thought, critiques of the canonical 'we' that constitutes the democratic community, and a call for an ethics and a politics of 'dissensus' in democratic struggles against racist and sexist oppression. The authors mobilise some of the most powerful critical insights emerging across the social sciences and humanities - from anthropology, sociology, critical legal studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis and critical race theory and post-colonial studies - to reconsider the meaning and the possibility of 'democracy' in the face of its contemporary crisis. The book will be of direct interest to students and scholars interested in cutting-edge, critical reflection on the empirical phenomenon of increased violence in the West provoked by radical difference, and on theories of radical political change.

ISBN 0719079233   Pages 256 ISBN13 9780719079238 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 522 Publisher Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Imprint Manchester University Press   Series title Perspectives on Democratic Practice Format Hardback   Height (mm) 216 Publication date 30 Nov 2009   Width (mm) 138 DEWEY 321.8   Spine width (mm) 33 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Tertiary education, Undergraduate, Postgraduate

		Introduction		1
Pt. 1		Alterity as a crisis for democracy		27
1		'Don't blame me!' Seriality and the responsibility of voters by Robert Bernasconi		29
2		Sovereignty, property and the lifeworld: democracy's colonization of alterity by Mielle Chandler		48
3		Narratives of groups that kill other groups by Jacqueline Stevens		67
4		Technologies of violence and vulnerability by Kelly Oliver		90
5		The brackets of recognition: recognition, espionage, camouflage by Elizabeth Povinelli		110
6		Humanitarianism and the representation of alterity: the aporias and prospects of cosmopolitan visuality by Fuyuki Kurusawa		133
Pt. 2		Alterity as a provocation to democracy		155
7		Alterity as democracy-to-come by Stella Gaon		157
8		The ends of democracy: who, we? by Catherine Kellogg		179
9		From fear to democracy: towards a politics of com-passion by Dorota Glowacka		199
10		Meditations on turning towards violently dead by Sharon Rosenberg		220
11		Democracy, accountability and disruption by Rita Kaur Dhamoon		241
12		Dissensus, ethics and the politics of democracy by Ewa Plonowska Ziarek		262
		Index		286

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