Session 8a: Democracy Beyond the State
1st Global Conference
Friday 30th April – Sunday 2nd May 2010
Prague, Czech Republic
Democracy and the World Social Forum: Democratic Ideas in Transnational Social Movements
Gabriele De Angelis
IFL, Universidade Nova, Lisbon, Portugal
Meant as an open space in which all organisations sharing a relatively succinct list of principles are allowed to participate, the World Social Forum (WSF) and its organisers have produced in a long-standing meeting practice a political arena in which social movements from all over the world can gather in order to discuss “alternatives to neoliberal politics”. These include both alternatives to economic policies and a general questioning of democratic representation at the global level. Thus, at the WSF a “theory” of global political representation is elaborated that revolves around a conception of the peoples’ interests, and criticism of current international and supranational institutions is expressed. However, the WSF is also confronted with the task of granting adequate and fair representation and voice to the participating movements.
Its organisers have tackled this task in multiple ways. A Charter of Principles regulates the internal democracy and explains character, conception, and rules of the Forum as a space for discussion and exchange of experiences. Conceived as a mirror of “transnational civil society”, the WSF aims to embody the innovative political and representational practices of its (multifarious) constituencies. Moreover, such practices as well as the reality of the WSF are juxtaposed to the current practices of international and supranational institutions in order to produce an idea of political legitimacy different from what the so-called neoliberal ideal.
This paper aims to show what these political visions are, how they are theorised, and how the WSF’s symbolic and organisational space has been shaped in order to reproduce this ideal of democratic politics. To do so, the paper analyses the documents produced at the Forum and disseminated through its website and takes into due account the Forum’s organisational structure. By means of frame and content analysis the paper will show how global and local democracy are framed and contrasted to the practices of international and transnational institutions.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Revisiting the Public/Private Distinction: A Deleuzian Perspective
Mohammedbagher Forough
Department of Intellectual History and Historical Theory, University of Groningen, Netherlands
The paper will revisit the public/private distinction (with more focus on the public) by mapping out seven discursive arenas in which theories of public and private function and then, from a Deleuzian lens, investigate some of the interrelationships among these arenas and the ways in which the two concepts relate to other concepts such as the political, the social, the sovereign state, etc. on other planes. I will take as my point of departure Jeff Weintraub’s delineation of the four major discursive fields (Liberal-Economistic, Civic, Social History, and Feminist Perspectives) in which we can meaningfully talk about the distinction, and will add another three (Counterprivacy, Subaltern Counterpublics, and Transnational Public Spheres) to Weintraub’s list, and then launch an analysis of some of the interrelationships and resonances among the different senses of the concepts at stake from a Deleuzian perspective. To put matters in Deleuzian terms, the concept has a ‘history’ and a ‘becoming’, in the process of which it undergoes ‘mutations,’ which are the result of its addressing new life-problems. The objectives of the paper are: a) to demystify some of the ambiguities and misunderstandings surrounding the public/private distinction by investigating seven moments of mutation in the history of the concepts in question; b) to offer a Deleuzian reading of concepts in political philosophy; and c) to suggest in the end some Deleuzian analytical trajectories along which investigations into the nature and contours of ‘transnational public spheres’ could be launched. The overall argument of the paper is that by using a Deleuzian philosophical perspective and conceptual vocabulary, it is possible to move beyond the traditional ‘bipolar disorders’ of political philosophy (such as realism/idealism, individual/social, particular/general, etc.) and their respective limitations.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Grassroots Politics: Democratic Movements as Complex Systems
Scott Henkel
Department of English, Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA
Hierarchical organization is an element of most authoritarian political systems, but does a more horizontal organization therefore imply a greater fidelity to democratic principles? In Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, Marina Sitrin argues that it does: “Horizontalidad does not just imply a flat plane for organizing, or nonhierarchical relationships in which people no longer make decisions for others. It is a positive word that implies the use of direct democracy and the striving for consensus” (vi). A great deal of recent research under the umbrella of complex systems has been devoted to studying horizontal organization—nonlinear, nonhierarchical, self-organizing groups like swarms of bees, crowds of people, and computer networks. But the research on direct democracy has yet to be brought together with the research on complex systems in very substantive ways. Sitrin and other activists in the global justice movements suggest that their forms ought to look more like swarms than pyramids, but to what degree can the movements like those she describes be understood as complex systems? What could we learn about the possible forms and scope of democracy by considering these movements in the light of research on complex systems?
My paper examines both the complimentary and contradictory moments that arise when the study of democratic political movements and the study of complex systems are coupled, and argues for the reinterpretation of a critical term—grassroots politics—as a way to understand the overlap between these two fields. I lend substance to the term by building from the ways in which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari contrast the metaphor of trees, with their centralized trunks and singular roots, to the metaphor of the grass, with its horizontal, multiple, and networked structures (20).
The phrase “grassroots politics” has traditionally been used to describe the politics of people who are outside institutional structures of power. One of Malcolm X’s most famous speeches, for example, is his “Message to the Grassroots” (emphasis mine), where he speaks to and attempts to construct an agenda for “people at the grassroots level” (par. 31). Through an examination of Malcolm X’s speech, I demonstrate that this traditional use of the phrase places its emphasis on the type of people involved, rather than the type of politics being practiced. It is a mistake, I argue, to view the phrase in this rather limited ontological way; to reinterpret the term opens the possibility for a new political praxis to emerge. Grassroots politics is more aptly understood by reframing it and placing it at the intersection of the practice and theory of democratic movements and complex systems.
The paper takes an interdisciplinary approach: it is primarily grounded in the methods of literary criticism necessary to challenge the ways we have traditionally understood grassroots politics, but it draws heavily from Nietzsche and Deleuze, as well as from Manuel DeLanda.
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