Abstract
In recent years radical democracy has become a prominent perspective in contemporary political theory. However, radical democracy involves numerous theoretical arguments and interpretations of democracy as can be witnessed in the work of some theorists who have been influential on radical democratic politics such as William Connolly, Judith Butler and Wendy Brown. Although all of these theorists agree that there are serious problems in the dominant liberal conceptions of democracy, some of them seem reluctant to criticise the workings of democracy in favour of analysis of the limitations of liberalism. While radical democrats need to recognise these limitations, the article contends that the main elements of modern democracy such as popular sovereignty, voting, representation and the rule of law also need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. Otherwise the work of theorists such as Connolly, Butler and Brown tends to produce a melancholic lament for democracy lost which draws attention away from the idea of the ‘constitutive failure’ of democracy that animates some of the radical democratic canon of contemporary European theorists. In short, the article contends that radical democratic theorists need to recognise that democracy is not sacrosanct.
In recent years radical critiques of democracy have become increasingly commonplace in political theory, focusing on understandings of the contingent nature of the polity and principles articulated within it (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Smith, 1998; Trend, 2006; Tønder and Thomassen, 2006). Although few theorists identify themselves explicitly as radical democrats, radical democracy can be defined as an amorphous body of thought that involves approaches such as agonism, Foucauldian genealogy and Derridean deconstruction to found a politics focused on the exclusions and inequalities that characterise liberal democratic regimes.
While the primary target in this trend has been political liberalism and, in particular, deliberative formations of democracy, it also challenges the unsophisticated discourses of democracy that permeate popular political argument (Zizek, 2004). Most notable here are the arguments that have juxtaposed democracy with terrorism in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center (Badiou, 2005a, ch. 8; Honderich, 2006). These arguments rely upon a number of tropes and presuppositions about democracy that are largely unsustainable, such as a clear dichotomy between democratic regimes and those that use violence. The logic underpinning uncritical representations of democracy neglects the complexity of democratic forms and the kinds of contingency that radical democrats draw attention to. Nonetheless, it is a potent logic in contemporary liberal democracies and it contributes to the almost sacrosanct status of democracy in contemporary political theory (Mann, 2006).
While democracy may be defended in terms of ideas such as popular sovereignty, the rule of law, political participation or representation, the precise form that these concepts take in different democratic societies varies enormously. What this demonstrates is that democracy is not ‘a regime or political ethos capable of generating its own binding force and aim, capable of animating and gathering itself as a regime’ (Brown, 1998, p. 426). This article contends that this absence entails that democracy should be understood as a vessel that can contain a wide range of practices and institutions. As such, democracy and the concepts that underpin it require critical evaluation. Ironically, though, as we shall see, it is precisely this kind of analysis that many associated with radical democracy have shied away from. Perhaps then, the strength of contemporary liberal democracy has been not only in articulating a simple message and understanding of democracy, but also its capacity to quieten theorists who might be regarded as those most likely to engage in a radical democratic critique.
For post-structuralist theorists such as Ernesto Laclau, there is a void at the heart of democracy that enables it to operate as a ‘floating signifier’. On this understanding, ‘hegemony is understood as the process of fixing the meaning of a floating signifier … around a particular nodal point’ (Norval, 2004, p. 158; see also Laclau, 1996). This contingency in the meaning of democracy is significant because, in the ‘absence of a set of ideas that form, cohere, stabilize, and direct a social body’ (Brown, 1998, p. 426), neo-liberals and neo-conservatives in particular have established hegemony over the dominant interpretations of democracy. This begs the question that Wendy Brown hinted at in the late 1990s: is democracy worth retaining? If so, why and how can radical democrats reclaim it from the dominant hegemonic forces? the risk of contemporary democracy – if not the inherent paradox – is that at the same time as it opens up opportunities for a more radical politics, it closes down these possibilities through excessive proceduralism and policing of the political order (Mouffe, 2000). For Brown, a radical democratic politics means ‘culturing attachments that enable freedom, equality, and cultural inclusion’ (Brown, 1998, p. 427) but this is precisely the territory on which the hegemonic hold of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives has been forged (albeit inadequately and improbably, as Brown points out). This necessitates a political strategy that unsettles and disrupts these concepts at the heart of the neo-liberal/neo-conservative hegemony, a politics that recognises the unattainable nature of democratic ideals and, thus, the ‘constitutive failure’ at the heart of democracy's foundations and its continuation.
The Limitations of Liberal Democracy: Outlines of a Radical Democratic Critique
The hegemonic position of contemporary liberal democracy has meant that most recent debates in political theory have been focused on ways to improve existing systems by, for example, making them more deliberative or participatory (Dryzek, 2000; Mutz, 2006; Parkinson, 2006). While these debates have merit in their own terms, several theorists have alluded to the problematic nature of many of the assumptions within democratic theory that do not feature in the prevailing literature. Jean-Luc Nancy, for example, points to the way in which once the belief is established that democracy ‘is the only kind of political regime that is acceptable to an adult, emancipated population … then the very idea of democracy fades and becomes blurred and confusing’ (Nancy, 2006, p. 1). It is vital then that critical theorists of democracy explain and analyse the prevailing features of modern democracy that can generate problems such as those emanating from broad conceptions of sovereignty and the democratic subject through to the implications of the operation of key democratic concepts such as representation, participation, political equality and the rule of law.
The issue at stake is whether it is sufficient for radical democratic theorists to concentrate on the problems of liberal democracy or whether there is something inherent in democratic politics that should also be the subject of critical scrutiny. This is not just a matter of challenging contemporary democratic practice because many political theorists criticise the operation of liberal democracies for, among other things, narrow proceduralism, exclusionary practices and violent behaviour. For example, Iris Marion Young draws attention to the way in which institutional and procedural democratic models privilege certain types of behaviour and forms of communication over others (Young, 1990). Anne McNevin points to the exclusionary nature of the framing of asylum policies and the general political closure in many states today that facilitates restrictive interpretations of the democratic subject (McNevin, 2007). And Ted Honderich has pointed to the way in which democratic politics has historically been infused with elements of violence and notes the ways in which democracy and violence continue to intersect with each other in the post-9/11 global environment (Honderich, 2006).
There has also been a renewed tendency in recent literature to highlight the trend of emaciated democracy that characterises much of the world today. Taking the United States as a primary example, Sheldon Wolin (2008) argues that elite-driven politics is perverting democracy and generating new forms of totalitarianism. Not dissimilarly, Larry Bartels (2008) highlights the impact of social and economic inequality on the quality of democratic politics in America. For this article the key issue at stake in these examples is not so much that they outline problems of liberal democracy but that these criticisms could be directed at alternative forms of democracy too. The implication that this article explores is the possibility that it is democracy itself that requires critical analysis rather than its specifically liberal manifestation (problematic as that may be). The key argument emerging from that discussion revolves around the extent to which radical democratic politics needs to engage more specifically with limitations related to the key assumptions of democratic politics.
Among the wealth of literature on contemporary democracy, certain key themes are evident as the mainstay of democratic politics including political equality and popular sovereignty as well as the familiar mechanisms of democracy such as representation and elections (Rosanvallon, 2006). As already noted, however, the degree to which the sovereign body is genuinely popular is a matter of some contestation (Wolin, 2008) and thus the underpinning logic of equality is a distant prospect for most democratic polities in the world today. Instead, democratic politics is characterised by an increased closure and a ghostly aspect whereby popular participation is increasingly marginal to the exercise of power (Keenan, 2003). While political actors still require electoral support and the de facto authority of the representative machinery for democratic legitimacy, the notion of an open democratic politics is increasingly distant within the narrow institutional architecture that dominates debates about democracy today. For commentators like Jacques Rancière, what masquerades as political engagement in modern liberal democracy is actually symbolic of ‘hatred of democracy’ in so far as the parameters of acceptable political debate are structured in advance (Rancière, 2006) and there is little capacity for criticism of the underpinning political structures.
Following the argument of theorists like Rancière (1999), we should conceive of democracy as an open-ended clash of alternative perspectives (many of which are incommensurable) and a system whereby the terms of democracy itself are contested. That is, the operation of democracy is not only constituted by conflict, it generates conflict. This differs from contemporary liberal democratic systems whereby argument and dissent are constrained within clear procedural mechanisms and a set of preconditions regulates acceptable views and modes of behaviour. A key example of this trend is evident in post-9/11 America where identification with the politics of Islam is widely regarded as an acceptable exclusionary criterion (Butler, 2004). Again this leads us towards the pivotal question: is it liberalism that generates the emaciation of contemporary democracy or something inherent in democratic politics? Or, to put it another way, to what extent should radical democrats relinquish a foundational belief in the normative good of democracy in mounting their critique of liberal democracy?
An important example of uncritical discourses of democracy is the way in which many political actors and democratic theorists juxtapose the concepts of democracy and violence, particularly in framing understandings of conflictual issues in contemporary global politics (Diamond, 2005). Typically, in this literature, democracy is uncritically defended as the most favourable system of government and usually in its contemporary liberal formulations to the extent that theorists have been astonishingly willing to countenance the sacrifice of central aspects of liberal democracy in order to shore up the prevailing order (Dershowitz, 2002; Ignatieff, 2004). Eventually the democracy/violence juxtaposition that grounds these discourses is superseded by the ‘rights’ of liberal democracies to use violence to protect democracy – the ends justifying the means. However, at the same time, more critical thinkers have pointed to the blurring of the lines between the law and violence, using, for example, the work of Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt to argue that there has never been the kind of clear-cut distinction between democracy and violence that such rhetoric relies upon (Benjamin, 1996; Schmitt, 1995; 2005). In this vein, legal and political commentators have pointed to the use of violence in the establishment of many of the states of the modern world (Bates, 2007; Foucault, 2004; Newman and Levine, 2006; Ross, 2004).
In response to these developments, some radical democratic theorists have tried to countenance alternatives that continue to embrace a normative dimension, as can be seen in the recourse to agonism that has characterised much recent democratic theory (Honig, 1993; McManus, 2008; Schaap, 2009). This trend has been particularly noticeable among North American authors seeking to make sense of the post-9/11 environment in the US. However, these agonistic conceptions – worthy as many of them are – do not necessarily provide us with an avenue out of the limitations of democracy in specific contexts. Agonistic models suggest the inevitability of conflict but also a mode of ameliorating it through our disposition towards those with whom we disagree, namely treating them as legitimate adversaries rather than fundamental opponents. A post-foundational approach, however, challenges the basis on which these decisions are taken and thus the capacity of simple models based on distinctions between friends and enemies to deal with the complexities of political life in contemporary democratic societies (Little, 2009; Marchart, 2007).
The shift towards agonism in much radical democratic theory therefore replicates some of the problems with liberal democracy that it seeks to subvert. Certainly, agonism contributes to a more useful understanding of democracy as contingent, unstable and contestatory but, at the same time, it does not place sufficient emphasis on the continuation of exclusions, disagreement and indeterminacy in an agonistic political order. In other words, there should be greater stress on the inevitability of democracy's failure to attain its high objectives. While agonistic politics is a shift towards a more open and potentially egalitarian iteration of democracy, it does not recognise explicitly enough that democratic politics contains the seeds of its own failure, that is, its inability to meet its ambitious goals. This is the ‘constitutive failure’ of democracy that is implicit in various post-foundational approaches to politics and which translates into a dynamic conception of democratic politics founded on the inevitable failings of normative models of democracy.
The Dangers of Democratic Melancholy
The main focus in radical democratic theory has been liberalism and the liberal aspect of liberal democracy in particular (see, for example, Brown, 2006a on tolerance; Brown, 2004 on human rights). To this extent, William Connolly argues that his theory challenges ‘the retreat in the academy toward a conservative brand of liberalism that welcomes most heartily a narrow band of perspectives on the cultural economy and the economic culture’ (Connolly, 1999, p. 48). As significant as this critique of liberalism is, it provides a partial account of the limitations of liberal democracy in so far as it fails to note any problems that may emanate from the democratic part of the liberal democratic equation. Thus, although some post-foundational thinkers have been prepared to articulate a critique of democracy (Agamben, 2005; Badiou, 2005b), this approach has been less forthcoming from the major theorists often associated with radical democracy. What is clear, then, is that radical democracy is founded on a belief in the normative superiority of democracy rather than a critical engagement with that foundational principle.
This lack of critique of democracy has been noticeable in the work of Brown, Butler and Connolly in North America. These theorists are often cited in radical democratic critiques of liberalism and their work has been highly influential, particularly in demonstrating the limits of liberalism when it comes to grappling with the multiplicity of demands emanating from the politics of identity and difference (Brown, 1995; Butler, 1998; Connolly, 1991; Little and Lloyd, 2009). It is notable then that these eminent critics of liberal democracy have focused intensively on the failings of liberalism and have said relatively little about the problems of democracy. The distinct possibility is that the hegemonic force of discourses of democracy closes spaces of criticism and ensures that potential critics have censored themselves. This problem emanates from an intellectual culture in liberal democracies (the United States in the case of the authors under analysis) that limits ‘what we can hear’ (Butler, 2002) and repels criticism of democracy by placing such commentary on the wrong side of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière, 2004; 2006).
The inability of radical commentators to express their arguments in terms of the problems of democracy contributes to the continued hegemony of liberal democracy. The violence attached to the rule of law, the exclusion of minority perspectives in forging popular sovereignty, the marginalisation of various cultural and socio-economic inequalities in the name of pursuing political equality and so forth are safeguarded from sufficient critical scrutiny. In the absence of this kind of critical, radical democratic analysis, liberal democracies perpetrate various activities that hardly bear scrutiny from a democratic perspective (Ross, 2004; Žižek, 2008). For example, while eulogising the democratic forms that have been established inWestern societies, the Coalition of the Willing was prepared to argue that the ends justify the means in preserving democracy from the non-democratic threat posed by the ubiquitous spectre of ‘terrorism’ through processes such as extraordinary rendition (Donohue, 2008; Mertus and Sajjad, 2008; Siddiqui, 2008). This enterprise has devalued and compromised the currency of democracy and impeded debate about the nature of sovereignty and the rule of law.
If the basis of democracy is contested and is being further damaged by the difficulty of challenging the hegemonic position of liberal democratic variants, an important question is whether we should be concerned with its preservation or its replacement. Perhaps as well as asking whether democracy is sacrosanct we should be asking whether it can be redeemed. The argument constructed here suggests that such redemption is indeed possible but that it can only be achieved by relinquishing the sanctity with which democracy has been treated in recent years and by building an argument for democracy that recognises its inherent limitations. On this basis the theory of democracy could be re-conceived in terms of its inability to meet the lofty objectives that inspire it and thus its ‘constitutive failure’. This notion of the ‘constitutive failure’ of democracy provides space to interrogate the components of democracy and to recognise the need for their renewal and improvement. It is predicated upon a notion of incompletion. Rather than thinking of democracy as something that has been ‘achieved’ (and can be exported), the notion of ‘constitutive failure’ implies greater modesty on the part of liberal democratic societies in terms of their self-understanding and the lessons that can be delivered to non-democratic societies. Moreover, it implies that democracy is an inevitably unfinished project and that the pursuit of democratisation is not an enterprise confined to non-democratic or newly democratised societies (Miller, 2002).
The absence of critical reflection on the nature of democracy and its components suggests that we have become embroiled in ‘democratic melancholy’. Brown notes how Walter Benjamin criticised those on the left attached to a particular ideal to the extent that they were incapable of grasping opportunities for political change. Thus, in Benjamin, melancholy is used as a term of ‘opprobrium for those more beholden to certain long-held sentiments and objects than to the possibilities of political transformation in the present’ (Brown, 1999, p. 21). It is precisely such a configuration that is at stake in contemporary radical democratic analyses. The question is whether to bemoan the bastardisation of democracy by contemporary neo-liberals and focus on restating the traditional objectives of democracy or to set about reconstructing the concept of democracy through subjecting it to rigorous critique.
The danger of ‘democratic melancholy’ lies in the creation of a fetishism of democracy that ultimately becomes a conservative force. On this trajectory democratic theorists rue the colonisation of the concept by neo-liberals to promote (primarily economic) ends and in so doing become trapped in a sense of a ‘lost movement … [and] a lost historical moment; not only a lost theoretical and empirical coherence but a lost way of life and a lost course of pursuits’ (Brown, 1999, p. 22). With these warnings of the dangers of melancholy in mind, it is worth evaluating the theoretical discussions of democracy that have emanated from those concerned with radical critique, noting in particular the way in which the arguments they construct have been constrained by the boundaries of political discourse since 9/11 (Butler, 2002; 2004). What emerges is an emaciated picture of democracy beset by the difficulties of constructing radical critiques in the contemporary political environment. This is a process in which democracy is sacralised and putatively radical democratic politics is constrained.
The remainder of the article focuses more directly on some of the ideas for political renewal that have recently emanated from theorists associated with the radical critique of liberal democracy. The first of these is the attempt to incorporate a notion of radical pluralisation in democratic politics associated primarily with William Connolly (1995). The second strategy for a radical politics, published in the much changed climate of post-9/11 America, is Judith Butler's proposal for a politics based upon shared understandings of vulnerability and mourning (Butler, 2004). The third approach under discussion will be the attempt of Wendy Brown (2005) to reclaim the notion of patriotism from the clutches of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. While sympathising with much of the critique of liberal democracy articulated by these commentators, the argument suggests that each of their approaches is insufficiently focused on the problematic and highly complex nature of the democracy that they want to defend and, thus, the opportunities for radical politics that are afforded by engaging critically with the democratic part of liberal democracy.
The Ethos of Radical Pluralism
William Connolly has established a reputation as one of the most acute critics of liberal democracy in contemporary political theory and one of the staunchest defenders of what he depicts as a radical pluralist approach (Connolly, 1991; 2004a; 2005b). In this way Connolly's main focus has been on how to make democracy more democratic. He describes his approach as one that is ‘egalitarian in outlook, pluralist in aspiration, and democratic in ambition’ (Connolly, 2005a, p. 870). The main political impetus, then, is primarily concerned with ways to make liberal democracy more pluralistic (Khan, 2008). In recent years he has increasingly engaged with the idea of complexity and its implications for democratic theory, in particular the relationship between pluralism and sovereignty (Connolly, 2005b, p. 145). Like many radical democratic commentators in the US, he relates these questions of sovereignty to the Constitution and tries to open spaces for alternative democratic articulations to the prevailing order based on the view that the ‘public authority of democratic constitutionalism cannot be established by fidelity to a written text alone’ (Connolly, 2005b, p. 131). Thus he argues for an ethos of pluralisation that can underpin a more agonistic democratic order (Connolly, 2004a).
Taking on board the multiplicity of identities emerging from the politics of difference, Connolly's theory seeks to expand opportunities for a greater diversity of groups and individuals to participate in democratic governance. In so doing, he signals awareness of difficulties surrounding notions such as popular sovereignty and the rule of law but sees the role of his theory as the opening out of democracy to embrace those problems. For Connolly, a more pluralistic democratic order would be one in which the inherent conflicts of democracy would be managed through a more agonistic form of engagement that recognised the import of incommensurable value pluralism. However, in his more recent work on ‘neuropolitics’ (Connolly, 2002; 2004b; 2006), Connolly's reflections on democracy are couched in terms of the changing pace of complex societies and their implications for the fugitive forms of democracy alluded to by Wolin (1996). Thus the establishment of an agonistic democratic order must face the difficulty of competing conceptions of what constitutes democratic politics such that we should move beyond bemoaning the eclipse of traditional models of democracy to embrace ‘the complex form of democracy possible in the late modern-time’ (Connolly, 2002, p. 152). Later in this chapter he criticises those who enthusiastically endorse the ‘generic form’ of democracy but fail ‘to rethink its appropriate form during a time when its spatiotemporal conditions of possibility have shifted significantly’ (Connolly, 2002, p. 154).
Connolly's pursuit of an improved democracy sees the hegemonic intersection between neo-liberal economics, neo-conservative politics and Christian fundamentalism as its primary opponent. This is what he refers to as the ‘evangelical-capitalist resonance machine’ which ‘generates the greatest threat to democracy’ (Connolly, 2005a, p. 870). Thus, unlike the pious democratic discourses that emanate from this particular configuration of economic, political and religious influences (Little, 2008), Connolly sees the dangers for democracy as the threat from within. On this view democracy is not so much endangered by a non-democratic Other but, instead, it is the bastardisation of democracy within liberal democratic practice that needs to be repelled. For Connolly, the outcome of these dominant discourses is a reduction of democracy to an anti-pluralist shell which actually serves other economic and religious ends. In the face of such a stranglehold on the parameters of politics, Connolly argues that a collective response is required due to the inability of a range of ‘diverse existential faiths’ (Connolly, 2005a, p. 881) to resolve modern problems on their own terms. An acceptance of this inadequacy would provide the territory on which connections could be built between different existential traditions.
This is notable because it takes us some way to understanding the inability of dominant existential viewpoints (both religious and secular) to provide answers to the difficulties and issues facing contemporary liberal democracies. Effectively this means that we need to expect less of our creeds and belief systems and to understand that they do not provide panaceas for the ills of the modern world. Indeed, we might argue that it is precisely this inability and the lack of evidence to the contrary that requires adherents of belief systems to have faith in them (Deneen, 2005). However, for Connolly, in the ‘evangelical-capitalist resonance machine’ democracy is understood as a shell that is currently occupied by anti-democratic outlooks and values. For Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo, in this formulation, ‘there is a built-in failure to consider structural and institutional aspects of power in contemporary capitalist liberal democracies. This failure ultimately sabotages the possibilities of democratic renewal, while allowing for centralized and crystallized forms of power to operate unnoticed and unhindered’ (Vázquez-Arroyo, 2004, p. 10).
Employing Patrick Deneen (2005), however, we can see how democracy needs to become an article of faith precisely because it cannot adequately respond to the increasingly complex nature of contemporary politics. For this reason, democracy tends to be articulated in rather simplistic terms based on faith when it emerges in contemporary political debate because it has as little bearing on making sense of the problems of complex societies as the existential perspectives Connolly criticises. Like these creeds, democracy is characterised by failure in terms of its inability to provide pathways to the resolution of nuanced political problems. On this view, the appropriate substance (radical pluralism) poured into the vessel of democracy is not the answer to contemporary dilemmas as Connolly's work implies; instead, democracy is more accurately conceived of as part of a complex interaction of factors which generates rather than resolves political problems. Given this generative dimension, democracy requires proselytism because there is precious little evidence that it can provide a sustainable basis on which to conduct radically pluralistic political debate in complex societies. Indeed, for many, the excessively procedural, institutional understanding of democracy in contemporary politics is an obstacle to such radical pluralism such that it is difficult to conceptualise it in alternative radical democratic terms (Rancière, 2006). Thus while Connolly provides a sustained and valuable critique of liberal democracy, it is one that would be strengthened considerably by an understanding of the inevitable limitations of democratic politics.
Vulnerability and Democratic Culture
Judith Butler's primary concern is not democratic theory although she has published considerable criticism of universalism and the liberal pursuit of consensus (Butler, 2000). In Precarious Life (Butler, 2004), however, she makes a foray into this territory through her diagnosis of the censorious nature of American liberal democracy and ‘what can be heard’, which has drawn her to reflect on democratic culture more generally. As we will see, this too leads to a failure to problematise democracy which resembles Connolly's position. Butler rightly points to the way in which the reaction to anti-war politics in the US since 2001 has been effectively to silence oppositional politics to the extent that dissent holds an unsure place in American democratic culture (Butler, 2002). In Butler's eyes, this leads to the construction of a chain of equivalence whereby even those who support democracy and want to reinvigorate American political culture are viewed with suspicion. As with Connolly, it is the hijacking of democracy by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives that is rebutted rather than anything inherent in democratic politics.
Butler is alive to the way in which contemporary American political culture polices what is sayable within democratic politics. The attacks on the World Trade Center marked a point at which identification with Islam (whether articulated politically or not) and criticism of liberal democracy became unsayable. Thus, recent American democracy is characterised by the construction of ‘uninhabitable identifications’ that mark out groups of people as unrecognisable within the established procedures and forms of engagement that characterise democratic politics. Butler's argument suggests that liberal democracies require ‘recognition of other people … They must be understood to be like ourselves in some ways and, importantly, different in others, but nevertheless recognized and acknowledged as people – subjects who grieve and can be grieved for’ (Newman and Levine, 2006, p. 43, emphases in original). Saul Newman and Michael Levine point out, however, Butler's inability to predict or explain how this laudable objective might be achieved, suggesting that the implication is a fundamental shift in the way in which politics is conducted which would somehow circumvent the centrality of democratic conflict. If that is the case though, then the democratic institutions, practices and the thinking that underpins them also need to be evaluated afresh. After all, the dire situation that has emerged in contemporary political culture has developed in the context of democracy according to Butler (albeit emaciated forms of democracy impeded by its fusion with liberalism in Western political systems).
Butler contends that the renewal of American democratic culture can emanate from an increased awareness of the impact of violence and in particular an understanding of the ways in which people (including our opponents or enemies) grieve and mourn. This awareness of mourning reflects the vulnerability that Butler believes people share and vulnerability is the key to her strategy of reducing violence and enhancing democracy. It is the recognition of the subjectivity of the Other facilitated by awareness of their vulnerability that enables the invigoration of democratic politics. By identifying the subjectivity of others, we are able to include them within the parameters of the political order, potentially opening the way for more agonistic engagement presumably. While this recognition of subjectivity is a valuable addition to the way in which we conceive violence and victimhood in contemporary politics, Butler's articulation of these issues is notably bereft of concern with collective politics. She fails to deal with the point that, although mourning and vulnerability are not purely about a named ‘Other’ or a specific identity, they do focus on an individual subject as the recipient of one's consideration. In Butler's argument, it is through recognition of the subjectivity of the individual Other that we understand that it would be harmful to engage in violence against them. This perspective reflects an individualist methodology that fails to comprehend the collective nature of political violence as well as democratic politics. Indeed, it ignores the perpetration of violence by democracies or democratic actors that are well aware of the consequences of their actions as well as the motivations (both individual and collective) that may give rise to violent action.
There is also a second problem with Butler's understanding of the relationship between violence and subjectivity. By couching vulnerability and mourning in individualist terms (through the focus on the individual victim), Butler loses sight of the political nature of violence and the motivations behind it. Thus, violence is not a symbol of failed democratic politics; instead, it emanates from a continuum of forms of political action of which violence is one (Foucault, 2004). That is to say, the processes of democratic politics and violence are not necessarily separable – indeed it is often the case that democratic politics generates conflict and violence and that violent movements have democracy as a primary objective (Bourke, 2003; Turner, 2006). From this perspective, Butler's attempts to configure a vision of a healthier democracy, where awareness of vulnerability precludes violent action, misunderstands the relationship between democracy and violence. Political violence is often predicated upon perceptions of the failings of democracy to meet democratic objectives. Thus it is precisely the inability of democracy to reconcile all of the competing claims that are made within or about it that may be part of the generative process resulting in political violence. In this scenario, individuals may act violently on the basis of considered political objectives rather than a particular pathology.
A third problem in Butler's argument is her suggestion that awareness of the vulnerability of potential victims may be sufficient to reduce incidences of violence. However, it is quite possible to act violently knowing the vulnerability of our victims, recognising the pain and suffering our violence might create and even sympathising with our victims in the suffering we cause. Quite simply, this is possible where individuals or collectives believe that their political objectives supersede the harm that we feel has to be perpetrated to achieve them. This problem in Butler's argument results from her failure to link violence and politics and the political gains that can be accrued through violent action. It presumes that recognition of human vulnerability is a sufficiently strong motivation to prevent political violence and ignores the fact that violent acts can be constructed as justifiable means where the ends are deemed to be all-important. Thus while Butler's discussion of the issues surrounding the limits that democracies often place upon the types of acceptable position and argument is highly valuable, the idea that vulnerability and the awareness of subjectivity are sufficient to counteract this trend is misguided. The inability to reflect on the collective nature of political violence in Butler's theory reduces the political import of her thesis. The irony here is that Butler's notion of ‘uninhabitable identifications’ is such a valuable way of understanding the policing of contemporary democratic politics. But perhaps the moniker ‘radical critic of democracy’ also represents an ‘uninhabitable identification’ and it is one that neither Butler nor Connolly want to occupy.
Rescuing Democracy?
The kinds of questions that need to be asked of democracy appear more regularly in the work of Wendy Brown than is the case with Connolly or Butler (Brown, 1998; 2005; 2006b). Like Connolly (2005a), however, she contends that recent years have witnessed the hijacking of democracy by the unholy marriage of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism (Brown, 2006b, p. 691). In assessing the remnants of this process she asks the pivotal question of what is worth retaining in a post-liberal democratic order. Brown contends that the administration of George W. Bush brought about a hollowing out of the democratic political culture such that we need to ask whether to refill the void at the heart of this hollowing process or to move beyond the devalued currency of democracy. Brown is adept at explaining the roles of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism in the devaluation of democracy and concerns herself with the increased gap between liberal democracy and notions of popular power (Brown, 2006b, p. 710; Wolin, 2008).
It is clear that Brown makes a number of telling comments on the contemporary state of American democracy and its political culture (Brown, 2005). She recognises the emergence of a politics of fear founded on the ‘spectre of terrorism’ that has unsettled and disrupted the conduct of democratic politics in the US since 9/11. However, this spectre of terrorism is constructed as an external threat that has the capacity to disrupt and destroy everyday life. On this view, the decline of the democratic culture emanates from the threat of terrorism and the Machiavellian manipulation of fear by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. Brown wants to open up the space between democracy as it appears on the world stage in the war on terrorism and democracy as it could be if only it was organised in less hierarchical terms than is currently the case in liberal democracies.
To this end she links her perspective with Žižek's ideas in The Sublime Object of Ideology where he differentiates between imaginary and symbolic forms of identification.
[Where] imaginary identification is identification with the objects in an image, symbolic identification involves identification with the gaze that produces the image, and thus is not only socially located elsewhere from the depicted objects, but may be animated and organized by very different desires and social forces (Brown, 2005, p. 32, emphasis in original).
This differentiation is significant because it enables a difference to be constructed between patriotic forms of imaginary identification – for example with flags, anthems, a particular way of life, aspects of a political system and so forth – and more symbolic forms of identification that involve sympathy with the specific views in which the Other is identified as problematic or a threat. Or, as Brown puts it, symbolic identification is with the power associated with a particular institution or view of the world.
This differentiation between symbolic and imaginary identifications is significant because it enables radicals to reclaim the symbols of the dominant order – symbols of democracy, or the ‘real’ United States, or anything else that might have been hijacked by the hegemonic conglomeration of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism to serve ulterior motives. It enables radicals to identify with these social and political entities and to argue that things would be better if only we were able to reclaim them from those that bastardise them. It lets the radical theorist imagine how things might be if only people could imagine what a proper liberal democracy or an emancipated America might look like. Brown puts this clearly when she argues for the possibility of forms of political loyalty comprising ‘a love of country oriented toward a thoughtful and empowered rather than passive citizenry, a love of democratic traditions and practices rather than nation-state power’ (Brown, 2005, p. 36). But what this construction neglects is that one can respect and defend democracy without ‘a love of country’ or that one can feel attached to a specific country without desiring democracy. There is no inherent connection between the kinds of patriotism that Brown invokes and practices of democracy that are, after all, usually thought of as forms of organising politics and governance rather than entities that might generate emotive responses.
This argument suggests that the understanding of democracy as sacrosanct is deeply ingrained in the political culture of Western liberal democracies and that this perception inflects the arguments of those critical theorists of liberal democracy who one might expect to be articulating more challenging perspectives. In the case of Brown, for example, why does she feel a need to envisage dissent and critique as a form of love for the democratic system rather than as a threat? the benefit of such an approach might be to preclude Western politicians from uncritically trying to export an amorphous concept of democracy as a clear-cut universal form of government that guards against ‘evil’. However, this raises a number of far more critical questions regarding the concept of democracy. Why is there perceived to be a need for patriotic identification? Why should we feel allegiance to a nation state or, indeed, a political system? Why must critique be grounded in love for a system or nation? One answer to these questions – perhaps too simple an answer in the case of Brown – is to suggest that even theorists associated with radical democracy feel the need to frame arguments in terms that are palatable to a post-9/11 America. Perhaps being a critic of democracy itself, rather than merely challenging its political leaders, is too substantial a cross to bear for many contemporary democratic theorists. It is possible then that being a critic of democracy is an ‘uninhabitable identification’ (Butler, 2004). What this entails however, as Michael Mann has intimated, is that democracy itself has become sacrosanct in some of the major theorisations of radical democracy (Mann, 2006).
Conclusion
The ‘Constitutive Failure’ of Democracy
The failure to critique democracy in anglophone radical democratic politics reflects both the hegemony of neo-liberalism fused with neo-conservatism as well as the prevalence of the view that democracy is beyond criticism. Democracy has become sacrosanct to the extent that even purportedly radical analysts – at least some of those most influential in North America – have not been prepared to challenge its basic precepts and their implications for contemporary politics. Rather than rescuing democracy from the bastardisation of neo-liberalism by questioning its foundations, they have retreated into a melancholic lament for democracy lost. Brown, perhaps the most alive to these developments, identifies the dangers of such an approach in her critique of Habermasian versions of democracy, arguing:
Anxiety about critique, reduction of it to dismissal or mere negativity, is ubiquitous in contemporary political and legal theoretical culture today; it is as if we fear losing any object that we scrutinize too closely or whose ambivalent or corrugated character we expose to the light (Brown, 2000, p. 471).
It is just such an anxiety about the critique of democracy that permeates contemporary radical democratic theory; it helps to explain why theorists such as Connolly focus more on ideas such as pluralisation as opposed to those like Laclau who concentrate on ‘the construction of a limited and ultimately impossible people or collective will’ (Howarth, 2008, p. 186, emphasis added).
At the same time as the primary American theorists associated with radical democracy have been articulating the invigoration of democracy, theorists associated with a variety of forms of post-foundational politics have been asking questions of democracy and its role in contemporary politics (Badiou, 2005b; Arditi, 2007; Žižek, 2007). Potentially this leads to a number of radical conclusions:
the Left has a choice today: either it accepts the predominant liberal democratic horizon (democracy, human rights and freedoms …), and engages in a hegemonic battle within it, or it risks the opposite gesture of refusing its very terms, of flatly rejecting today's liberal blackmail that courting any prospect of radical change paves the way for totalitarianism (Žižek, 2000, p. 326, emphases in original).
For Slavoj Žižek, this ‘choice’ is a limited one for radicals. Indeed, the hegemonic struggle within liberal democracy is depicted as a utopian pathway towards a ‘capitalism with a human face’. Perhaps, though, we need to recognise that the choices that radical democratic theorists face are more complex than Žižek's formation suggests and that the hegemonic pursuit of a radicalised democracy is valid. If that is the case, however – if Žižek's formation is to be rebuffed – then there needs to be much greater critical engagement with the concept of democracy and its various components. It is precisely the reluctance of many theorists discussed in this article that leaves the terrain open for commentators like Žižek to present the options for radical theorists in such stark terms.
Put simply, if democratic theorists do want to retain a privileged position for democracy, then they need to grapple with what the term ‘democracy’ actually conveys in contemporary politics. Resistance to the hegemonic project of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives needs more than an articulation of a purer form of democracy than is currently in existence. For example, Connolly's ethos of pluralisation may well be beneficial but it is unlikely to succeed in the face of the deeply entrenched understanding of what democracy stands for today. For Alain Badiou, the dominant idea of democracy elicits an anti-political sensibility in its status as the signifier of a pursuit of consensus through which Western societies reinforce the view that ‘humanity aspires to democracy, and any subjectivity suspected of not being democratic is regarded as pathological’ (Badiou, 2005b, p. 78). Addressing this sensibility does not require radical democrats to relinquish democracy but it should encourage them to analyse democracy, recognise its flaws and the likely continuation of aspects of these problems in a more radical incarnation. Such a process requires a deconstruction of the terminology in the democratic lexicon – popular sovereignty, rule of law, political equality and so forth – as well as a genealogical investigation of the emergence of the institutions and structures that have been developed under the auspices of this lexicon (Hoy, 2004).
Theorists such as Brown, Butler and Connolly have made significant and persuasive contributions to the critique of liberalism in contemporary political theory, but, in an inhospitable environment, they have not subjected democracy to the same levels of critical scrutiny. Laclau comments that it is not the case that:
all the elements of an emerging configuration have to be entirely new, but rather that the articulating point, the partial object around which the hegemonic formation is reconstituted as a new totality, does not derive its central role from any logic already operating within the preceding situation (Laclau, 2005, p. 228).
What is important here is the fact that any alternative formation to liberal democracy will also be incapable of fully satisfying the pursuit of a consensual combination of the demands of liberty and equality. It is by critically analysing the theory and practice of democracy and evaluating its mechanisms and justifications that we can come to understand its limitations and the exclusions that are inherent in its operation. It is only through such a process that it is possible to comprehend the inevitable failure of democracy to meet the lofty objectives that are set for it in complex societies.
This approach identifies the ‘constitutive lack’ at the heart of democratic theory (Laclau, 2005, p. 244) which entails the importance of retaining the pursuit of democracy but with the concomitant recognition that democracy is not sacrosanct. This understanding of democracy would recognise its ‘constitutive failure’, that is, the impossibility of complex, pluralistic societies generating a consensual, democratic voice that is wholly inclusive. It is precisely this recognition that is precluded by the failure of Brown, Butler and Connolly to engage with democracy in a suitably critical fashion. Ultimately, this takes them down the blind alley of ‘democratic melancholy’ whereby they can only criticise the fusion of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism rather than establishing a dynamic understanding of democracy with the idea of ‘constitutive failure’ at its heart. This reinforces the view that democracy is sacrosanct and that ‘genuine’ democracy can be achieved if only it can be freed from its strangulation by neo-liberal and neo-conservative approaches.