{"title":"Accounting for Democracy: Excessive Subjects in a State of Consensus","authors":"L. E. Delgado","doi":"10.1215/01903659-9155761","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the face of the public debates and protests fueled by Spain's persistent economic, social, and institutional crisis (2008–present), the country's politicians and media have consistently identified these debates and protests—in a word, social unrest—with three phenomena: nationalism, populism, and feminism. In my essay, I begin by showing how Spanish public discourse tends to situate all three on a single continuum, identifying their intersections in negative terms as a potentially disruptive excess that must be controlled, if not eliminated, to avoid a crisis of democracy. The second part of my essay moves to a theoretically informed reflection on the nature and function of political elements categorized as “excessive” in consensus democracies. Drawing on C. Lefort, J. Rancière, C. Mouffe, W. Brown. B. Honig, and L. Grattan, among others, I delve into how these perceived forms of excess function as dissonant remainders that account for the paradoxes of popular sovereignty, signaling its limits as well as its conditions of possibility.","PeriodicalId":46332,"journal":{"name":"Boundary 2-An International Journal of Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Boundary 2-An International Journal of Literature and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-9155761","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
In the face of the public debates and protests fueled by Spain's persistent economic, social, and institutional crisis (2008–present), the country's politicians and media have consistently identified these debates and protests—in a word, social unrest—with three phenomena: nationalism, populism, and feminism. In my essay, I begin by showing how Spanish public discourse tends to situate all three on a single continuum, identifying their intersections in negative terms as a potentially disruptive excess that must be controlled, if not eliminated, to avoid a crisis of democracy. The second part of my essay moves to a theoretically informed reflection on the nature and function of political elements categorized as “excessive” in consensus democracies. Drawing on C. Lefort, J. Rancière, C. Mouffe, W. Brown. B. Honig, and L. Grattan, among others, I delve into how these perceived forms of excess function as dissonant remainders that account for the paradoxes of popular sovereignty, signaling its limits as well as its conditions of possibility.
面对西班牙持续的经济、社会和制度危机(2008年至今)引发的公众辩论和抗议,该国的政治家和媒体始终将这些辩论和抗议——简言之,社会动荡——与三种现象联系在一起:民族主义、民粹主义和女权主义。在我的文章中,我首先展示了西班牙的公共话语是如何倾向于将这三者置于一个单一的连续体上的,并以消极的方式将它们的交叉点确定为潜在的破坏性过剩,必须加以控制,如果不能消除,以避免民主危机。我的文章的第二部分从理论上对共识民主中被归类为“过度”的政治因素的性质和功能进行了反思。引自C. Lefort, J. ranci, C. Mouffe, W. Brown。B. Honig和L. Grattan等人,我深入研究了这些被感知的过剩形式如何作为不和谐的残余发挥作用,这些残余解释了人民主权的悖论,表明了它的局限性和可能性的条件。
期刊介绍:
Extending beyond the postmodern, boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture, approaches problems in these areas from a number of politically, historically, and theoretically informed perspectives. boundary 2 remains committed to understanding the present and approaching the study of national and international culture and politics through literature and the human sciences.