Who Is the Democratic Agent?
Abstracts
Monday 25 February 2013
09:00 - 09:30: REGISTRATION
09:30 - 11:00: Session 1: Introduction to the workshop: Who is the Democratic Agent?
Introduction
Paul Reynolds (Edghe Hill University, UK)
Who Is the Democratic Agent?
Mark Devenney (University of Brighton, UK)
The agent of democracy is the people. The people, without qualification, exercise power. This initial definition of the democratic agent (a literal explication of what the original Greek term had come to mean) is radical in this lack of qualification: all humans are people; all people, even those without qualification, exercise power. There are no special privileges accorded any particular agent. Knowledge, wealth, birth, property, privilege – all of the markers used to distinguish those who have a right to govern from those who do not are mere excuses for the illegitimate exercise of power. Yet there is a problem.
How can an agent whose definition entails the breaking of all bonds, the violation of all dissimulation, the inclusion of all without borders – how can such an agent act as sovereign? How can such an agent have a defined existence. After all, this is an agent never at one with itself, an agent in excess of itself, a people that cannot know itself as a people, because then it would by definition have to exclude others deemed not to be of this people? In that case the demos would require definition, thus restriction, and thus a means of determining who qualifies, who not. This agent in excess of itself is not a people, is not a nation, a self-determining group, or any other agent which might be deemed proper to itself. The democratic agent challenges forms of propriety which seek to limit, by defining the bounds of the proper, the role, the place and the membership of a demos.
While this conclusion may seem to undermine the very possibility of democratic agency, it is in fact its condition of possibility. An agent which was already clearly demarcated, whose identity was already determined in advance of democratic intervention would not in fact be a democratic agent, but would merely fulfil a role already prepared for it. Democracy requires the excessive forms of agency which this paper delineates, drawing on Balibar’s account of property, and Ranciere’s
11:00 - 11:30: COFFEE BREAK
11:30 - 13:00: Session 2: Democratic Agents: Liberalism and Economy
Pragmatic Demands of Liberal Democracy: Individualism Reformed and Compromise Questioned
Daniel Tigard (Tulane University, USA)
Unyielding individualism cannot stand up to the threat posed by contemporary crises. From both conservative and liberal angles, social orders have been proposed. To what extent can democratic doctrines require participation and cooperation? With warnings of imminent public problems, John Dewey outlines pragmatic principles for public policy that demand innovative means of social organization. While admittedly radical to the atomistic individuality of early liberalism, Dewey’s requests honor individual liberty, calling for intelligence as an active social force. Still, what can democracies legitimately ask of citizens?
Whether or not the practice of liberal public policy-making by democratic regimes will suffice to meet the dual task of resolving public problems and, at the same, honoring the supposedly principal objective of promoting individual liberty is my overarching question. How, if at all, can liberal democratic demands be framed in such a way so as to meet these objectives without sacrificing its core values? Sterling Lamprecht posits that an obvious plurality of goods is to be found in nature. In granting a robust pluralism, democratic citizens must compromise when incompatible interests are held among individuals in association. However, is compromise itself merely one among the plurality of goods or perhaps a greater, overarching value?
Can principles of participatory governance, like active compromise and cooperation, resolve urgent public concerns without coercing uncompromising individuals? Only a considerably reformed liberalism can provide such a solution. Individuals must have liberty to pursue exclusively personal goals. Yet, when it comes to collective problems, citizens must participate and often compromise in adjusting to and governing together current social and economic patterns. I argue that the mere observational capabilities of ordinary individuals place normative demands on democratic citizens to engage in political scientific practice. In other words, reversing the traditional Kantian outlook, in the art of government, “can” implies “ought.”.
Are Democratic Agents to be Financially Literate?
Jos D. Leys (Ghent University, Belgium)
To put the question is to answer it in the affirmative.
Financial intuition prescribes and recent history corroborates that financial turmoil entails clear and present danger for democracy-as-is (e.g. Greece).
Recent history also illustrates that financial turmoil is caused by the toxic cocktail of financial illiteracy with citizens on the one hand and politicians on the other hand, with a corrupt financial industry in between. The fire started in zones with heavy democratic governmental interference: housing policy in the US and social policy in Europe, intermediated by shenanigans in both cases.
Arguably, the dire straits we finds ourselves in today could have been avoided when the citizenry would have been more financially lucid. For one thing, it would have elected another type of politician: the financially literate and responsible type. For another: it would not entrust its savings and the future of its children to the type of intermediaries “credit institutions” (“banks”) all too massively, as is currently the case.
It does not suffice that some of the citizens are financially literate. Of necessity and amply illustrated by current Belgian financial corruptions and frauds (Ethias, Dexia, Arco, Belfius, …), it is of the utmost importance that the majority of the citizens is financially lucid if disaster is to be avoided and risks to be minimized. The financial well being of a citizen depends upon the financial behavior of his co-citizens.
What financial lucidity prescribes for democracy is threefold: all citizens should be educated and trained in financial basics and financial intermediation; financial industry should be emancipated from the state, as we have historically emancipated religion from the state; financial intermediation of the type “bank” should be abolished.
To be financially lucid is not solely to understand about one’s financial well being as a private household and to act accordingly. In one and the same breath, the very capacity is also a public virtue as it contributes to the sustainability of democracy (however flawed)..
13:00 - 14:00: LUNCH BREAK
14:00 - 15:30: Session 3: The Democratic Agent in Contemporary Theory
Rancière’s Lesson
Ian Sinclair (University of Brighton, UK)
In this paper, I explore Rancière’s theorisation of democracy and its associated agent, the demos, or,‘part of no part’. Specifically, I turn to Rancière’s earliest work, On the Theory of Ideology and Althusser’s Lesson, in order to suggest that particular issues present in this theorisation can be detected in incipient form. From these critiques of Althusserian Marxism onwards, there recurs an insistence on the spontaneous and exceptional occurrence of politics, as opposed to its organisation. Within the context of May ‘68, this is evident in Rancière’s celebration of an eruptive moment that questioned theoretical orthodoxy. Whilst the implicit and explicit references to limitations in the Althusserian edifice may hold, the indiscriminate acclaim for mass participation rendered epistemological questions secondary, most evident in Rancière’s critique of Althusser’s distinction between science and ideology. Here, a concern with the validity of political claims and, in turn, substantive questions of sustained political practice are elided in favour of an open and equal terrain of ideological contest. I relate these issues to Rancière’s account of democracy, specifically that developed in On the Shores of Politics and Disagreement, in which equality underpins all political action as the basis by which an actor, the demos, identifies with the whole of community, and thus puts its (unequal) order into dispute. Whilst this alternative thinking of democracy can be taken seriously, at least as an antidote to themes that declare its exhaustion or conflation with liberal models of government, I argue that Rancière fails to develop a thorough notion of democratic agency. Instead, the demos appears as the locus of several theoretical determinations, which often fail to respond to substantive issues.
Democratic Agency in Times of Neurologisation. A Critical Reading of "Neuropolitics"
Jan De Vos (Ghent University, Belgium)
Globalization has challenged the concept of democracy and perhaps politics itself. The old tried and tested method, to fix it with a prefix, lead to conceptualisations such as radical democracy (Laclau & Mouffe), global and cyberdemocracy (in the vein of Hardt and Negri), and, which is the focus of this paper, neuropolitics (William Connoly). For Connolly one has to do away with "dogmatic Western imperialism"; for him the neurosciences are the via regia to a "neuro-cosmopolitanism".
As Connolly's endeavour connects to the contemporary temptation to "neuronize" almost anything - speaking of neuroethics, neuroestethetics, neuroeconomy - a closer reading of Connolly's neuropolitics might prove useful to both understand the ubiquitous neurological turn and the current debates on the democratic agent. As the critique has been that Connolly's appeals to neuroscience "are not much more than fancy decoration" (Slaby and Choudhury) the more important issue could be that "neuropolitics" has little to do with politics too and leads to a de-politicization.
This paper argues that Connolly's denouncement of the view from nowhere actually is haunted by a meta-perspective. His promotion of the techniques of the self, his stress on the subliminal field, his belief in neuro-(self)-education. unwittingly promote the ultimate Archimedean point of view and open up to a new kind of agency (working on its own brain or that of others) - whether this has potentials for a democratic agency is open for discussion.
15:30 - 16:00: COFFEE BREAK
16:00 - 17:30: Session 4: Interrogating the Democratic Agent
The Means and Ends of “Democracy”, Or: Why There Is No Such Thing as “a Democrat”
Mathijs van de Sande (University of Leuven, Belgium)
If any explicit demands could be ascribed to the global wave of “Indignados” – and “Occupy” movements we witnessed in 2011, their call for “real democracy” (“¡Real Democracia Ya!”) is probably the most prominent one. They criticised the institutional apparatuses usually referred to as “democratic”, depicting these as the representatives of a small financial upper class. By staging “General Assemblies” or “spokes councils”, and by applying consensus-oriented decision-making procedures, these movements aimed to “prefigure” such “real democratic” structures and practices, turning their occupied spaces into political laboratories and thus experimentally embodying the changes they wished to realise.
Both this (paradoxical) demand for “real democracy” and its prefigurative implementation in practice, may lead to a radically different understanding of what “democracy” actually means. On the one hand, it presents “democracy” as a goal on its own –something that is to be actualised in the “here and now”, rather than in a distant future. “Democracy” thus is no longer conceptualised as an instrumental means to an end that is external to it. On the other hand: if one accepts that if there is a principle essential or “real” to democracy, it would be its openness and undefinedness, “democracy” also could not be considered as an articulated end in itself. In its prefigurative application, “democracy” can be understood as neither a means nor an end, but rather as the moment in which these two are “mirrored”.
This view on “democracy” has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of what it is to be “a democrat”. For if “a democrat” does not strive to realise “democracy” as an end in itself, nor aims to “apply” democracy as a mere means, than how could the aspirations and motivations of “democrats” be conceptualised? Can one be “a democrat” at all.
Can Intellectuals be Democrats?
Paul Reynolds (Edge Hill University, UK)
This paper takes its starting point from the recent claims of Francois Laruelle that to speak of democracy as a philosopher is not to practice it. It explores and identifies that argument as a species of claim about the relationship between the intellectual and the particularity of intellectual work – in Laruelle’s case philosophy - and democracy as a form of practice agents do that necessarily contradicts with the intellectual context in which it is theorised. This form of claim, whilst distinct within the context of Laruelle’s concept of non-philosophy, echoes Marxist claims from Lenin through Gramsci to Negri, political writings from Hobbes through Zinn to Laclau and philosophical thinking from Nietzsche to Derrida about the problematic relationship between intellectuals and their political worlds.
This discussion focuses on both Laruelle’s claims and debates within Marxism to claim that the relationship between intellectuals and democracy is misconceived as a source of problem or refusal. Rather it should be seen as a dialectical tension that both enriches intellectual work on democracy and at the same time has insurmountable tensions between intellectual ideas and practice that constitute a central dynamic in the critical engagement with continuing remaking of democracy that is central to a democracy being owned by its agents rather than a form of system or process.
Tuesday 26 February 2013
09:30 - 11:00: Session 5: Democratic Agents: Beyond Western Discourse
Egyptian Politics and the Search for the “Democratic Agent”
Vivienne Matthies-Boon (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
The Egyptian (post)revolutionary context has unleashed many deeper underlying political philosophical questions about the desired model(s) of democracy. A particularly urgent question is the relation between formal and substantive democracy in the Egyptian political context. For those who seem to advance formal democratic procedures seem to lack visions and abstain from actions that are geared towards substantive and inclusive democracy. Thus, instead their formal procedures are geared merely towards obtaining and maintaining power – rather than an inclusive and substantive process of democratisation. Through a critical examination of the political actors on the Egyptian political stage – from the Muslim Brotherhood, to the National Salvation Front, the Judiciary, the Army and Security Services and the various protest movements, this paper will argue that it is difficult to see who the democratic actor is within the Egyptian context. For, those able and keen to play the formal democratic card are unable and unwilling to move towards a more inclusive substantive notion of democratisation, whilst those who advocate such a substantive notion lack the political skills and organisation to obtain enough political leverage to make their visions reality. So, within this context, who is the democratic actor, and what are the alternate visions for democracy?
The Democratic Agent in the Writings of Ibn Khaldoun, John Milton and Thomas Hobbes
Adnan Bouachour (Sousse, Tunisie)
This paper seeks to draw a parallel between the notion of democracy and the democratic agent which were put forward by the 14th-century historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun, the 17th century poet, John Milton and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In this regard, the paper proposes to bring to the fore different perceptions of the notion of democratic agent which were expounded by these thinkers. Considered by modern critics as the founder of sociology and sciences of history, Ibn Khladoun’s Muqqaddima was so far ahead of his time and his writings were taken as a lens through which to view not only his own time but the relations between Europe and the Muslim world in our own time. In the 17th century, John Milton re-asserted fundamental human rights that governments neglected to the detriment of people at home and abroad. In his essays like Areopagitica and treatises like The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, he developed his political vision of government. Milton's Areopagitica, despite its complexity, became the touchstone for a libertarian view on freedom of expression and greatly influenced the liberal tradition in the United Kingdom, the United States, and throughout the British Empire. In his Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes buttressed his political philosophy of “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons. He was criticized for his astonishing conclusion that we ought to submit to the authority of an absolute-undivided and unlimited-sovereign power. Hobbes admitted that men were in a state of nature in a war of all against all in which life was hardly worth living. The way out of this desperate state is to make a social contract and establish the state to keep peace and order. Because of his view of how nasty life is without the state, Hobbes subscribes to a very authoritarian version of the social contract. Thus, the objective of the paper aims at highlighting different approaches to the theme of democratic agent from the perspective of a historian, a poet and a philosopher.
11:00 - 11:30: COFFEE BREAK
11:30 - 13:00: Session 6: Philosophising the Democratic Agent
What Might Democracy Be?
Bob Brecher (University of Brighton, UK)
The proposal of democracy as a way – the best way – of organising political decision-making arises out of the conviction that, in principle and with the usual caveats, people are equal. For if they are, then it apparently follows that they all ought to have an equal say; that everyone’s voice count equally.
I want to raise two problems about this, two problems that arise even if the principle of equality is accepted. First, just how and why does it follow from people’s being equal that their voice count equally? Second, and even if the first question can be adequately answered, how might the conclusion actually be instantiated in a world so structured as to preclude the possibility of everyone’s voice counting equally?
The implications that arise from these related considerations, I shall suggest, require that we rethink democracy in terms more akin to those relating to living a good life than to those concerning the structures of political organisation and decision-making.
What Is it To Be a Democrat(ic Agent)?
Evert van der Zweerde (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands)
The question of the “democratic subject” or of “democratic agency” is of central importance for any attempt to “reinvent” democratic politics under new circumstances. “Democratic polities” answer this question institutionally: the people, the adult population with citizenship, the electorate, etc. To start from there, however, would be to wrongly identify with such “achievements” as a point of departure for the “spread” of democracy, denying the possibility that there might also be something wrong with those very achievements. The fact of the matter is that half of the world’s population is craving for what the other half is deeply disappointed about, viz. what I propose to call the “democratic 6-pack” [free, fair, frequent, general, secret, and contested elections]. Something is missing there. Moreover, “democracy” in many cases is part of the hegemonic structures that produce the kind of systemic violence, whether old or new, that, paradoxically, seems impossible to fight “democratically” since, given the presence of the 6-pack, “we have chosen it ourselves” (any regime is, always-also, an instrument in the hands of the ruling class, even if that’s not all there is to say about it). So, one way or another, we seem to stand in need of democratic agency.
I depart from the (hypo)thesis that nobody is a born democrat. I would also protest against the use of “democrat” as a noun, and prefer “democratic” as an adjective pointing to the presence of a specific quality (perhaps set or combination of qualities) in, in this case, agents. Hypothetically, democracy is a quality of something, not a thing itself – this perhaps also explains why “democracy” is notoriously hard to define or “grasp” and so easily substantialized or fetishicized. If it makes sense to say that “democracy” is not an entity, but a quality of entities, the implication is, first, that “democracies” are not countable things, and, second, that to call somebody “a democrat” is strictly speaking a category mistake. Nobody, I venture, is spontaneously or naturally inclined to share power with others, let alone on an equal basis (whatever the nature or extent of that power may be). Nobody will be inclined to think that everybody has an equally valid opinion, is equally able to make a sensible contribution to a given discussion, to participate equally sensibly in a decision procedure, to engage equally consistently in the execution of a decision once it is taken, etc. Some humans are born autocrats, others are inclined to let power to others, some are more dogmatic, others more critical or flexible, some are strict, others more tolerant, but none of that is sufficient basis for “being a democrat”, if only because there is the open question who decides about who is or is not “democrat(ic agent)” (enough)?To the extent to which “democracy” is a quality of the situation at hand, moreover, that very question would have to be answered “democratically” – this, I venture, is one major reason for the formal principle that everyone is “a democrat” (which dislocates the discussion to that about “real” vs. “fake” democrats).
This implies that “democracy” requires political reflexivity: one needs to have already an understanding of politics, of its violent alternative forms, of plurality, struggle, conflict, compromise, etc., to get to the point where one says that it is better to share power with others, than not to share it and run the risk of having no share at all, and that it is better to share it on an equal basis than to engage in repeated endless discussions about the division of power over a given dèmos (the more so since a prior decision needs to be taken about who decides about everybody’s precise “share” [pardon the mistaken suggestion that “power” is something that can be “divided” into “shares”!]). Given that there always are people who already “have” power (more precisely: occupy dominant positions in asymmetrical power relations), this political reflexivity seems to take shape in those who claim a share in political power. Note, also, that the very invention of “democracy” as a quality presupposes the presence of a plurality of agents with their interests, preferences, ideals, desires, etc. – one should not forget, I think, that “democracy”, like any type of “government” is an answer to a political question (or: an answer to a problem that has been defined as political) by those who are in the game, not outside of it. “Be(com)ing a democrat” arguably takes shape, then, in the process of shared claiming of (a share in) political power. It also suggests that a “democrat” is, in this particular sense, an “artifact”, i.e. a product of active shaping by oneself on oneself (surely this does not have to be done individually): a “democrat” –if we want to use that term at all- is somebody who actively (even if unwillingly or as “second best”) identifies with her/his role as a “democratic agent,” i.e. as someone who both accepts and advocates, perhaps even fosters, the quality of democracy as a major quality of her/his political situation. Even if we follow the neo-Tocquevillean argument of Claude Lefort and others that there has come into being a homo democraticus of sorts, still this social type is not, at least not automatically, a democrat politically. To put it somewhat paradoxically in Arendtian terms: being a democrat is a matter of a who turning itself actively into a what, i.e. it is a case of “work on oneself” (irrespective of whether this work is engaged in voluntarily, or involuntarily – e.g. in citizenship training programmes). One way or another, given the absence of a “natural” basis, being a democratic is, first and foremost, a matter of forcing/helping/facilitating/convincing each other to be “democratic”.
13:00 - 14:00: LUNCH BREAK
14:00 - 15:30: Session 7: Roundtable - Thinking the Democratic Agent
15:30 - 16:00: Closing Comments /Looking Forward