Posthegemonic Comments
I was wondering when you'd get around to mentioning democracy. 
Heh. Yeah, and more of the same on its way...
fascinating post.
I gather you've already seen this, yes?
Specifically, this bit: "inclination to deny what democracy is through a series of pre-fixtures — radical democracy, direct democracy, deliberative democracy and so on — keeps the game going, as it were, simply by insisting, once again, that democracy is the only game, the only politics, there is and might ever be."
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Angela, thanks for this. Actually, I hadn't read it. Helpful and interesting.
I was thinking it might be useful as a similar take, but also as a counterpoint to your remark about a con - as in, I think not perhaps a con (by others) so much as (self-) denial (as the work that such prefixes do).
Surely "radical" democracy is what you subscribe to/theorise when you've abandoned marxism (possibly for justifiable reasons) but don't want to admit to being a liberal democrat, like all your former foes were all along?
Maybe so. But I think it's a bit more complicated than embarassment. I could go on - lengthy meanderings on democracy elsewhere
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Anyway, Jon, last we conversed about democracy, it was around Hardt's and Negri's 'absolute democracy'. I think toward the end of last year? You seemed, at the time, albeit with reservations, to be trying to understand it. Do I take it that you're now in the anti-democratic camp?
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Heh. Yeah, Angela, that discussion is here.
I think I still have more problems with "radical" than with "democracy," in some ways along the lines of what Anonymous is suggesting. My point then was that the term "democracy" might still be useful, and that the concept could perhaps still be re-conceptualized in productive ways. At least in theory. Why concede the concept to the enemy, after all?
Though I have to say that after ploughing through all this "radical" democratic nonsense, I do start to despair...
Bummer--Lars Toender is a friend. But, I agree with you on the troubles with so-called radical democracy. Some of the individual pieces, though, are likely very good (I heard them as papers but haven't read the chapters).
Ok, I see where you're heading, Jon.
I haven't read the book, but I'd hazard that radical democracy (in the specific post-Marxian sense as described above) has much to do with radicalising notions of equality. And I used to wonder whether it was possible to distinguish between economic and political equality, but I'm not convinced of that any more. The bind between these two that democracy is means that it was always, as you put it, the enemy's concept.
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Jodi, I liked a couple of the pieces, but not enough of them... Anyhow, the draft review is now linked from my latest post.
Angela, yes, I'm willing to continue this conversation on democracy, time and so forth permitting. Let's go for that mini-symposium.
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