Long Sunday

appropriate background music

If current predictions hold, Republicans will need appropriate background music this coming Tuesday to help them emote in a way consonate with their new status. I would like to suggest the well-loved Albinoni Adagio in G Minor, for Organ and Strings. Turn on the TV, leave off the volume, and watch election returns with that in the background.

But what about other voters who are not Republicans? And even some Republicans who have decided the Bush Presidency has written checks its competence can't cash? Don't they need background music?

David Held: "Reframing Global Governance"

The other night I attended a lecture given by David Held, who is apparently a rather large figure in something called the "new political economy" or "international political economy."  I'm not a political scientist and I'm a pretty bad sociologist - for a lack of time and interest, I pay little attention to the more "politicy" or "practically" oriented scholarship in either discipline.  This was, quite frankly, my introduction into what passes for liberal or left scholarship in the academy from an empirical perspective or approach.

I must say, I was rather dismayed.  Admittedly, I was not expecting much from the lecture.  A quick perusal of his publications indicated that his interests largely did not overlap with mine.  He's written on "cosmopolitan democracy," "cosmopolitan law," "governance," "globalization" and "social democracy."  These interests seem comparatively recent as his early work was on critical theory, having written books on "Horkheimer to Habermas" and an introductory text on critical theory in the early eighties.  He also seemed to participate in the late seventies/early eighties renewal of interest in state theory.  Thus, his earlier interests resemble more closely my own, even if, with him being a Habermasian of sorts, I expected significant theoretical differences.

At any rate, the following is a brief summary of his lecture, the text of which is available here.   He opens, "The paradox of our modern times can be stated simply:  the collective issues we must grapple with are of growing extensity and intensity and, yet, the means for addressing these are weak and incomplete."  The rest of the lecture is an attempt, as one might expect, to grapple with, if not resolve, this paradox.  Consequently, he first lays out the "collective issues" before moving on to "the means for addressing these."  Clearly, this is a man pushing a particular political programme.  (I'd point out at this point that my relunctance to accept his position does not require that I advance a better one - no blackmail of the status quo, as it were, will be accepted.)

In need of heroic readers (more than heroes)

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

Some readers may have already seen Benjamin Kunkel's essay in the Sunday Book Review (bugmenot), in which he writes, among other things:

What Thoreau has to overcome during his time in the woods is not a lapse in mental health.  His great problem is to escape the mental health of his neighbors, their collection-plate opinions, their studious repetition of gossip.  Thoreau isn't against self-esteem (he admires a friend who has learned to "treat himself with ever increasing respect"); but his main task is to lose his esteem for society in which "trade curses everything it handles" and the singular natural resource of time is wasted in barren productivity.  Maybe he had vices out there in the woods, but that's not his concern, or ours.  The overwhelming impression is of his philosophical ardor, which he tries to fuse with his practical ardor.  There's not a note in the book of self-pity, or nostalgia.  And why did he quit his cabin in the end?  "It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live."   This accent of futurity is missing among contemporary memoirists.  They sigh over their past woes; sigh with relief now that they're better; or sigh the long sighs of nostalgia. 
(emphasis added)

Indeed, and not just among contemporary memoirists, but also American Presidents.

Anyway, I would like to concur with Marco Roth (another editor of n+1), that in the current marketplace of literature's ongoing infantilization, the legacy of the "heroic reader" may be one thing we can not afford to let alone. 

The paradox of the heroic reader is that she must actively distance herself from the sick world.  She must submerge herself, one might say, in the very limitless task, in the important and arresting and non-trivial stakes of reading, with all the terror–indeed, potential madness–this implies, but significantly in order to then re-enter society with both sincerity and sympathy, and with an attention–dare we call it philosophical–to living (zoe!) as opposed to mere endurance of the "safe" thrills of organized spectacle or pre-packaged experience.

Democracy without rest

Democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Its various qualifications – as liberal, social, procedural, radical, deliberative and so on – suggest versions of a ‘proper’ connection (representation or ‘fit’) between the demo- (the people) and -cracy (the state), but they in no way distance themselves from, or void, the sense of democracy as the sovereignty of the people.

Questions Concerning Democracy

(1) Can democracy be thought independently of its adjectives?  That is, is there such a thing as "democracy as such"?  What is the significance of democracy in locutions such as "radical democracy," "liberal democracy," "parliamentary democracy," "representative democracy" and so on?  Can democracy only exist insofar as it is connected to these other things - representation, parliament, liberalism, radicalism?

(2) If democracy can be thought, how can it be thought?  That is, is democracy but a secularized political theology?  Is there a horizon of politics - any politics at all - beyond the theological?

(3) If democracy can be thought, can it be acted or is it always "coming" yet never arriving?  (An asymptotic politics, if you will.)  That is, is democracy merely a demand or an imaginary - perhaps the radical imaginary?

(4) Is democracy tied to, on the one hand, representation and, on the other hand, modernity or are there other forms that democracy can take - anti-modern, post-modern, or even pre-modern?

(5) If democracy is the horizon for all present politics, is there a politics that is anti-democratic or beyond democracy? Can a "progressive" politics be non- or anti-democratic?  How can a progressive politics articulate its demands in a non-language and in a non-thought?  (That is, a politics that can neither be spoken or thought because it is beyond the horizon of all politics.)

(6) Who, or what, is supposed to be democratic?

(7) In terms of "really existing" democracies, why do they tend to come about anti-democratically and tend to die democratically?

The Politics of Standing Still

[This is a guest post by John, from SlowLearner.]

Speaking at a seminar in Padova on “Democracy and War” in January 2005, Giorgio Agamben reflected on the nature of movement as a word and a concept, noting that the word “movement,” in its explicit political context, lacks a concrete definition, and, as such, “risks compromising our choices and strategies.” With the operative organizing concept undefined from the beginning, Agamben seems to ask, how can any political action that arises from its conceptualization be possible? This ambiguity raises a number of questions in itself: How does one differentiate between so-called ‘democratic’ movements—labor, political, social? How does a movement begin or end? And, perhaps most importantly—where are they going?

Democracy in Practice: Intelligent Design v. Evolution

I'm currently reading Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. The book is a terrific read and a complete horror show. In a chapter on so-called intelligent design, Goldberg discusses a document called "The Wedge Strategy," a five year plan for attacking evolution and pushing so-called intelligent design. She writes:

The plan, then, is to undermine the Enlightenment conception of the physical world as a prelude to undermining the Enlightenment's social legacies. What the authors of "The Wedge Strategy" want to discredit isn't just Charles Darwin--it's the very idea that truth can be ascertained without reference to the divine. Religious law makes much more sense when religion is seens as the foundation of reality.

Fleeting Demos (How I learned to love democracy)

A funny thing happened on my way to a contribution.  I found I had nothing to say.  I thought I had something to say, but it turns out - this shouldn't come as a surprise - that nope, not a thing of value.   I read what had already been posted and was struck by how different were the conceptualizations of democracy being put forward.  So, in a very short post, I tried to hint at the notion that perhaps democracy is precisely the form of government or subject of government that corresponds best to contesting its content.  But I also offered an afterthought, that perhaps democracy is the form of government that best maintains the hyphen seen in the ethico-political.  Adam insightfully suggested that these were indeed the same definition, something that I think is true, more or less.

It's worth exploring this definitional co-identity further, but before I do so, I want to offer some context.  And so, contrary to my normal giddy theoreticism, I want to try some personal backstory.

Lustrum

[This is a guest post by Brett Neilson, from Life During Wartime.]

In ancient Rome the completion of the census every five years was marked by a ceremony known as the lustrum. Three animals (a bull, a sheep and a pig) were led around a group of assembled citizens by people with luck-bringing names such as Felix or Dives. After this, the animals were sacrificed to Mars. Overseen by one of the two censors, magistrates responsible not only for the census but also for the upkeep of public morality, the occasion marked a renewal of public affairs and the ritual purification of the state.

It is tempting to understand the modern census as a similar exercise of state purification. The rendering of flesh and blood as statistical construct, the casting of individuals as undifferentiated atoms distributed through abstract space and time, the reduction of complex lived relations to cycles, curves and pyramids: all suggest the cleansing of social and cultural messiness in the name of regularity and probability. But it would be a mistake to claim that quantitative knowledge, any more than its qualitative counterpart, necessarily serves as an instrument of domination. Whether one enumerates or whether one qualifies is surely not the issue, particularly when it comes to assessing the links between demography and democracy. At stake is rather how these processes combine to circumscribe the demos, at a time when this bordering is becoming ever more militarised and violent.

Twilight of the Idols

[This is a guest post from Carlos Rojas, from The Naked Gaze]

In 2001-2002, Great Britain, the birthplace of modern democracy, gave the world another institution grounded on the popular vote: the television show “Pop Idol,” which allowed audience members to vote on their favorite amateur singer. Although “Pop Idol” was suspended after its second season, it nevertheless spawned wildly successful imitations throughout the globe, including the US (2002), Australia (2003), Canada (2003), and China (2005), among many others.

Where ever they go, “Pop Idol” spin-offs inevitably inspire comparisons with the democratic process—a phenomenon frequently referred to as “Idol Democracy.” For instance, the press quickly noted that more votes were in “American Idol’s” season finale this past March than have been cast for any single candidate in any US presidential election (Ronald Reagan came closest, in 1984, with 54.4 million). Similarly, when 400 million viewers watched (and 8 million text message votes were cast in) the August 27th finale of the second season of China’s spin-off, “Super Girl” (超级女声), both Chinese and foreign pundits were quick to ask whether this might herald the beginning of a true democratic reform. (For instance, the Economist reported that “A front-page headline last week in the state-run [English-language] Beijing Today put the question with astonishing frankness: “Is Super Girl a Force for Democracy?” [see also here and here). Finally, one of the most intriguing examples of a marriage of “Idol” voting and democracy can perhaps be found in the 2004 British ITV show “Vote for Me,” which used a “Pop Idol” approach to select 10 potential parliamentary candidates.

Although the implications of this sort of Idol-inspired “dial-in democracy” are not without interest, I will focus here instead on the way in which the “Pop Idol” shows underscore two other, somewhat more troubling, facets of modern democracies.