Gayatri Spivak on Democracy

7-2015

               Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, like a number of other feminists from the global south, approaches democracy as subject to critique as part of the legacy of imperialism. From this perspective, democracy is not a simple solution to the needs and desires for the subaltern and other poor of the global south, but serves as a type of dystopia for subalterns, tribals, and other outcastes under decolonized India, the War on Terror, and postcolonial socio-political relations.

Jean-François Lyotard

In contemporary politics, the word democracy most often connotes ideas like government, state, human rights, law, etc. It is often perceived as a system or meta-narrative designed to organize and order differences hierarchically according to the majority rule (aggregative democracy), or particular “(I)deas of reason,” such as freedom, patriotism, human rights, nationalism, justice, etc.