Session 6a: What is Democracy? I

1st Global Conference

Friday 30th April – Sunday 2nd May 2010
Prague, Czech Republic

Immanent or Spectral Democracy?
Dominik Hasler
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The paper will consider two separated discourses which are occupied with a critique of existing representative democracy in very different ways. Both of them have a common starting point in similar ontological setups but come to dissenting conclusions.

First, there is Antonio Negri, philosopher and political activist, who explicitly places his concept of an immanent democracy in the tradition of Spinoza and Deleuze. At the basis of this democratic theory lies a vitalistic and seemingly humanistic notion of the multitude as new political subject. A deficit of Negri’s theory might be epistemology which, in turn, is in the focus of Bruno Latour. The French sociologist, who is the second main figure for this paper, is known for his actor-network theory and outlines an attempt to introduce non-human “things” into political assemblies (assemblages). Latour calls this project “Dingpolitik”, an approach that shares with Negri’s its affinity to Spinoza and Deleuze. But, in contrast to the Italian philosopher, the outcome of Latour’s reflections is a democracy of “spectral” representation

The paper will show, on the one hand, that multitude and assembly, immanent democracy and spectral Dingpolitik have in common several important features: a non-successional conception of time, the principle of inclination, different “plateaux” of immanence. On the other hand, the argument attempts to trace the bifurcations that lead to the separation of the two political concepts discussed. The problem of labour marks one of the most important differences and can serve for testing how strong the divide between post-humanism and humanism really is in the present case.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

The Hatred of Democracy Revisited
Franc Rottiers
Centre for Intercultural Communication and Interaction, Ghent, Belgium

In his ‘Hatred of Democracy’ Jacques Rancière defines democracy as a way to have power over of two ‘excesses’. On the one hand there is the excess of public participation in democratic life. On the other hand there is the excess of individualistic consumerism. Rancière argues that both are currently identified as ‘not done’ and need to be ‘controlled’. By drawing upon Rancière’s ‘definition’ of democracy, this article will lay out the conditions under which ‘control’ has emerged as the democratic principle par excellence and explore how exactly this principle limits what it means to be a citizen. The question that will be put forward is how, within a globalized world where participation in democratic life is limited and individualistic consumerism is not attainable for all, this principle can be validated. It will be argued that, while from the perspective of ‘participation’ in democratic life, this principle might have value; from the perspective of ‘contributions to society’ it has not. Given the fact that these perspectives are both ‘there’, the challenge that will be taken up in this article is to explore how exactly these two perspectives can be made intelligible. The aim is not to come to a reconciliation of two distinct perspectives, i.e. to describe what they are and offer a ‘third’ possibility, but to explore the conditions of possibility of their materialization and/or dematerialization. In order to render these conditions comprehensible – and maybe even implementable in the democratic field – it will be argued that a ‘new’ metaphysical perspective is needed to lay them bare without them being absorbed into a ‘control’ discourse. The point of departure – and arrival – of this article is to make visible and communicable those contributions that emerge in the field of social interactions of have-not people such as undocumented migrants.