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

日益高涨的威权主义对民主价值观的威胁要求重新作出民主回应，以加强多元化和多样性。我的项目承担着这项任务，通过确定美学--被定义为一种独特的知识和感知的感官-经验模式--对民主政治的中心地位，论证美学可以在民主制度中激活多元化/多样化的能量。该项目分三个阶段探索审美体验的本质，它在构成或形成民主自我的过程中的作用，以及这种关系在制定对威权主义的民主回应方面的规范和关键意义。通过对激进民主理论的批判性分析，我认为，在民主抗议、公共艺术和社会运动中体现的“审美实践”(体现一种培养的审美敏感性的实践)，使人们能够与多样性和多元性相遇，这是民主自我形成/主体性的源泉--我称之为“变得民主”的过程。正是这些进程构成了对威权倾向威胁民主政治的民主回应。因此，该项目有助于民主研究的三个领域：1.民主政治：确定公共艺术、民主抗议和社会运动中体现的做法，使人们能够体验多元化，从而帮助民主政治更有效地应对威权同质化。民主理论：通过确定一个经验时刻作为民主多元化能量的来源，深化后基础民主理论中的主体性理论。民主与美学：通过展示如何激活民主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.