Becoming-Democratic: Aesthetic Practices and Democratic Subjectivity in Radical Democratic Responses to Authoritarianism

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The threat to democratic values by a rising authoritarianism call fors renewed democratic responses thatreinforce plurality and diversity. My project undertakes this task by identifying the centrality of aesthetics- defined as a distinct sensual-experiential mode of knowledge and perception - to democratic politics,arguing that aesthetics can activate pluralising/diversifying energies in democracy.Progressing in three stages, the project explores the nature of aesthetic experience, its role in processesof constituting or forming a democratic self, and the normative and critical significance of thisrelationship in formulating democratic responses to authoritarianism. Critically analysing theories ofradical democracy, I argue that 'aesthetic practices' (practices embodying a cultivated aestheticsensibility) embodied in democratic protests, public art and social movements, enable encounters withmultiplicity and plurality that are the wellspring of democratic self-formation/subjectivity - what I callprocesses of 'becoming-democratic'. It is these processes that constitute a democratic response toauthoritarian tendencies threatening democratic politics.The project thus contributes to three areas of democracy studies:1. Democratic politics: identifying practices embodied in public art, democratic protests, and socialmovements that enable experiences of plurality, and thereby help democratic politics respond moreeffectively to authoritarian homogenisation.2. Democratic theory: deepening theorisations of subjectivity in post-foundational democratic theory byidentifying an experiential moment as the source of pluralising energies in democracy.3. Democracy and aesthetics: strengthening the relation of aesthetics to democracy by showing howactivating democratic possibilities necessitates an aesthetic theorising.