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October 14, 2006
Few argue against democracy these days. Democracy has become the default position. We are unclear what it means and suspect that its radical potential is stifled, its content of the people rule emptied out in the sense that the historical tendency has not been an increase of popular control over government, but rather it is one of increasing governmental control over populations. The state of emergency associated withe war on terrorism is the latest example of this tendency.
In an article entitled Democracy, Authority, Narcissism: From Agamben to Stiegler' in Contretemps Daniel Ross says that:
'Democracy' finds itself today in a paradoxical condition. On the one hand, it remains the unsurpassable horizon of our time. This thought may generally be true if one takes 'democracy' as the system of representative parliamentarism, in its contrast with the declining fortunes of, say, Marxist political practice. It is absolutely true if by 'democracy' one means the thought that the sole ground of sovereignty is 'the people'....On the other hand, if 'democracy' remains the horizon beyond which it seems impossible to think, it is nevertheless and without doubt a concept in crisis. Where is a self-assured 'democracy', content and comfortable with itself, trusting in its own foundation and practice? Where does democracy exist as the assured expression of truths taken to be self-evident?
We don't have democracy per se --we live in a liberal democracy, but few talk about democracy.
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