Brown, Wendy: The word democracy means only that “the people” rule themselves,
that the whole rather than a part or an Other is politically sovereign.
However, as Brown points out, this definition does not necessarily entail
“representation, constitutions, deliberation, participation, free markets,
rights, universality or even equality.”
While ancient democracy was concerned with rule by and for the common, the principle of modern democracy is freedom. According to Brown, modern democracy only makes pretenses at equality in its most basic forms, such as representation.[i] But absolute freedom and equality are not compatible. Historically, democracy’s assumption of freedom over equality has permitted hierarchies, exclusions, and subordinating violences—keeping or necessitating an unfreedom at it’s heart. Modern democracy is supported by the notion—following Kant, Rousseau, and Mill—that the human subject’s most essential trait is that it is always and already a free agent. This makes democracy’s legitimacy literally uncontestable, since any contestation can be seen only as an iteration of the very freedom democracy itself allows (52). Once this modern subject is replaced by a postmodern or poststructural subject, who is the result of a his or her relations with matrix of “social powers and discourses,” democracy as freedom becomes the pursuit of knowledge about and control of the multiple forces that construct us as subjects. That is, in order to be truly “free,” one must understand and have control of all the forces that participate in his or her construction. Since having such access to all the powers that construct us is impossible, democracy becomes a political goal or aim, but can never be completely achieved. In a revised definition, democracy is the goal of sharing and bettering the powers that constitute us, but by giving up our illusions that we will be free from them (53). - Rebekah Sinclair
References:
While ancient democracy was concerned with rule by and for the common, the principle of modern democracy is freedom. According to Brown, modern democracy only makes pretenses at equality in its most basic forms, such as representation.[i] But absolute freedom and equality are not compatible. Historically, democracy’s assumption of freedom over equality has permitted hierarchies, exclusions, and subordinating violences—keeping or necessitating an unfreedom at it’s heart. Modern democracy is supported by the notion—following Kant, Rousseau, and Mill—that the human subject’s most essential trait is that it is always and already a free agent. This makes democracy’s legitimacy literally uncontestable, since any contestation can be seen only as an iteration of the very freedom democracy itself allows (52). Once this modern subject is replaced by a postmodern or poststructural subject, who is the result of a his or her relations with matrix of “social powers and discourses,” democracy as freedom becomes the pursuit of knowledge about and control of the multiple forces that construct us as subjects. That is, in order to be truly “free,” one must understand and have control of all the forces that participate in his or her construction. Since having such access to all the powers that construct us is impossible, democracy becomes a political goal or aim, but can never be completely achieved. In a revised definition, democracy is the goal of sharing and bettering the powers that constitute us, but by giving up our illusions that we will be free from them (53). - Rebekah Sinclair
References:
- “We Are All Democrats Now,” in Democracy in What State. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
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