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

日益上升的威权主义对民主价值观的威胁要求我们重新做出民主回应，加强多元化和多样性。我的项目通过确定美学的中心地位来承担这一任务-定义为知识和感知的独特感官体验模式-民主政治，认为美学可以激活民主中的多元化/多样化能量。该项目分三个阶段进行，探索审美体验的本质，它在构建或形成民主自我的过程中的作用，以及这种关系在形成对威权主义的民主回应中的规范性和批判性意义。批判性地分析理论的民主，我认为，“审美实践”（实践体现了培养审美敏感性）体现在民主抗议，公共艺术和社会运动，使遭遇的多样性和多元化，是民主的自我形成/主体性的源泉-我称之为过程的“审美民主”。正是这些过程构成了对威胁民主政治的独裁倾向的民主回应。民主政治：识别体现在公共艺术、民主抗议和社会运动中的实践，这些实践使人们能够体验多元性，从而帮助民主政治更有效地应对专制同质化。民主理论：深化后基础民主理论中的主体性理论，将经验性时刻确定为民主中多元能量的来源.民主与美学：通过展示如何激活民主的可能性需要美学理论化来加强美学与民主的关系。

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.