Article: Engaging Muslim Communities

Zeyno Baran's article "Engaging Muslim Communities" – an excerpt from a 2009 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs – was published in "Defining Ideas" (no. 1/March 2010), a quarterly journal of the Stanford-based conservative public policy think tank Hoover Institution.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/5380

Excerpts: "I have written extensively about the difference between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (the political ideology) and how we need to expose the extremists' cynical exploitation of the religion as a means of convincing the moderate majority of their fellow Muslims that the current conflict is religious in nature – and that the only solution is for Muslims to come together as part of a single nation (umma) following its own legal system (sharia) in pursuit of a new and antidemocratic world order. Why is Islamism a threat to democracy? Because, according to its interpretations, sharia regulates every aspect of an individual's life; moreover, because it is considered God's law, no compromises are possible. The holistic nature of Islamist ideology makes it fundamentally incompatible with the self-criticism and exercise of free will necessary for human beings to form truly liberal and democratic societies. [...]

"The Islamist movement is much stronger today than it was in 2001. And it will continue to get stronger over the next decade until we realize we are faced with a long-term social transformation project designed to make Muslims an angry and fearful people who can then be easily controlled. [...] Throughout the world, liberal democracy is once again being challenged as a political system and, more fundamentally, as an ideology and as a set of beliefs. Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in an ideological struggle – and the United States is losing ground. [...] Faced with authoritarian threats in both religious and secular forms, the United States should not be questioning whether to promote democracy but how to promote it. [...] If not, the United States and its allies will continue to grow weaker as their opponents strengthen.

"In general, the United States looks for short-term successes when a generational commitment is needed (as originally stated by the Bush administration). But because the United States had to demonstrate success quickly, it went for the 'low-hanging fruit' – at points even sounding as doctrinaire about democracy promotion as those who oppose democracy. [...] Since September 11, anti-American movements, groups, and leaders – from Russia to Venezuela – have come together in a shared hostility to the Western liberal system. [...] I believe having President Obama in office will grant the United States only short-term relief. Islamists are working on new narratives and searching for new grievances; their need to undermine the United States and its democratic vision is incredibly strong. [...] Clearly, the United States cannot do this cheaply, especially given how much everyone else is spending on antidemocratic agendas."

Turkish-born Zeyno Baran is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC.

Book: In Defense of Lost Causes

Slavoj Žižek, "In Defense of Lost Causes" (Verso, 2008):

www.versobooks.com/books/431-in-defense-of-lost-causes

Publisher's description: "In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Zizek looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the 'right steps in the wrong direction.' On the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the bolsheviks, Zizek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and horror, there was a valuable core of idealism lost beneath the bloodshed. A redemptive vision has been obscured by the soft, decentralized politics of the liberal-democratic consensus. Faced with the coming ecological crisis, Zizekk [sic] argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to past ideals is needed despite the risks. In the words of Samuel Beckett: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'"

Review: "Zizek [...] addresses the limits of liberal democratic approaches to politics and the possibility of benefit in totalitarian approaches to statehood. [...] Scholars of political theory and modern philosophy will find much here to consider and argue for or against." ("Library Journal")

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Matthew Sharpe's article "'Then We Will Fight Them in the Shadows!': Seven Parataxic Views, On Žižek's Style", which appeared recently in the online publication "International Journal of Žižek Studies" (4 [2], 2010), draws on this book.

The full text of the article can be downloaded free of charge here:

www.zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/261

Excerpts: "Žižek's commitment to the egalitarian-revolutionary Idea places him on a continuum with the radical democratic political tradition with which his earlier work is usually associated. Democracy, rule of and by the people, implies some minimal commitment to egalitarianism, however conceived. Yet, following Badiou, and associating democracy with contemporary liberal-democracy, Žižek at several points indicates that faith in democracy today is the Enemy to be overcome: 'What, today, prevents the radical questioning of capitalism itself is precisely the belief in the democratic form of the struggle against capitalism.' (Žižek 2008, p. 183) [...] Žižek is unconditionally, or rather profoundly, attracted to [...] the utopian moment of radical negativity, in which the old regime is overthrown and suddenly we confront an indefinite, open future, shorn of any 'big Other' defining what is possible and impossible, permitted and prohibited ('Nothing should be accepted as inviolable in this new re-foundation, neither the need for economic "modernisation" nor the most sacred liberal and democratic fetishes' (Žižek 2008, p. 276)"

Matthew Sharpe and Geoff M. Boucher are the authors of a book on "Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction" (Edinburgh University Press, March 2010) that also seeks to highlight "Žižek's shift from his earlier, radical-democratic politics, to his later [that is, current], revolutionary, authoritarian vanguardism":

www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748638048

Publisher's description: "In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed how we think about society. They then go on to track Zizek's own intellectual development during the last twenty years, as he has grappled with theoretical problems and the political climate of the War on Terror. This book is a major addition to the literature on Zizek and a crucial critical introduction to his thought." (bold removed)

This book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=OHDgjpvREnMC&printsec=frontcover

Matthew Sharpe is a Lecturer in the School of International and Political Studies and Geoff M. Boucher is a Lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, both at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.

Article: The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

Adrian Pabst, "The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy" ("Telos", 152, fall 2010: pp. 44-67):

http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2010/152/44

Excerpt: "Is the neo-liberal era since the mid-1970s synonymous with a corporate capture of the state and the passage to 'post-democracy'? And if so, might the failure of neo-liberalism since the onset of the international economic crisis in 2007 and the state-sponsored bailout of global finance presage a return to the primacy of democratic politics over 'free-market' economics commonly associated with the post-World War II period? At the time of this writing, it is premature to analyze the aftermath of the Great Recession (2007-09), which could yet mutate into a twenty-first-century Great Depression. However, the current ..."

Unfortunately, the journal neither provides an abstract nor a more extensive excerpt. I could not access the full text of the article (which was published as part of a themed issue on "Religion and the Critique of Modernity").

Adrian Pabst is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Kent.

Book: The Liberal Model and Africa: Elites Against Democracy

Kenneth Good, "The Liberal Model and Africa: Elites Against Democracy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001):

www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=261248

Publisher's description: "This book critically examines the realities of liberal democracy; its elitism and non-accountability; and its inequalities and injustices. Participatory systems and movements, whether in Athens, seventeenth and nineteenth century England, or South Africa 1970-1990, are more effective in satisfying the democratic aspirations of the people and in curtailing ambitious elites, than what is passed off now as 'democracy'. By interrogating contemporary democratic regimes, in the United States, and in Botswana and South Africa, the severe limitations and constraints inherent in liberal democracy are highlighted. The need for a clear evaluation of what constituted democracy emerges as a powerful message of Kenneth Good's argument."

Endorsements: "[A] searching, powerful and innovative critique of liberal democracy, notably as it has arrived in Southern Africa." (Roger Southall, Rhodes University)

"This is indeed a useful and timely contribution to the democracy debate in Africa." (Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Botswana)

Review: "[Kenneth Good] illustrates in this important book, no country [...] has embraced participatory democracy with its egalitarian face, preferring instead the elitism of the liberal model." ("The Sunday Independent")

Australian-born Kenneth Good was Professor of Political Studies at the University of Botswana. He was declared an "undesirable person" and deported from Botswana in 2005.

Pamphlet: Democracy in Crisis: How the Islamic Political System ensures Good Governance

On the day of the general elections in the United Kingdom (6 May 2010), the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the pan-Islamist revolutionary party active in many Muslim as well as western countries, released a pamphlet titled "Democracy in Crisis: How the Islamic Political System ensures Good Governance".

The full text of the pamphlet can be read free of charge here:

www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/images/PDFs/Democracy_in_crisis_may2010.pdf

Excerpts: "Democracy [...] is the established order in a chaotic and unstable world, where every critic of democracy is viewed with heretical suspicion. [...] For every civilization, for every country for every tribe, for every time – goes the mantra – democracy is the claimed answer to all our ills. [...] In addition to elections, Western democracies also champion a separation of state and religion, liberal values towards personal conduct, as well as capitalism, with its policy of unbridled free markets. Western societies promote individualism, hedonism and utilitarianism, with faith and morality kept strictly to the private arena. There is very little evidence that the people of Kabul (never mind Kandahar), Baghdad or Cairo support or accept that Islam should be marginalised in society and kept solely to the confines of the mosque, nor would most accept that a person has freedom to view pornography or commit adultery. Nor would most agree with laws permitting alcohol, gambling establishments or free market capitalism with all its adverse impacts; yet these are all norms in Western democracies. [...]

"Yet the problem of secular democracies originates not from bad implementation but shaky theoretical foundations. The view that laws become superior to other laws based on the number of people voting for them is as absurd as it is dangerous. We certainly don't decide scientific progress based on the number of people who support a position, if we did then Galileo, Copernicus and the hundreds of scientists who spoke truth to power and who struggled against public opinion must have been wrong. We decide trials based on the quality of evidence not on the numerical superiority of witnesses on any particular side. If people, as they did in the 1930's, vote for a populist leader who would later kill millions of Jews and start a world war, does this validate their choice just because they constituted a majority at a point in time. No it doesn't. [...] It is the active promotion of secular democracy abroad while simultaneously abandoning it at home that is the brazen hypocrisy. In rolling back democracy at home, the West has lost its moral leadership to preach to countries abroad, seriously undermining the pro democracy activists abroad it claims to support. [...]

"Theocracies at their heart believe that there is a group or leaders who are infallible and who have an exclusive right to interpret the word of God, where no one is allowed to challenge their interpretation and anyone doing so is condemned. Muslims believe Prophets are selected by God but that subsequent political leaders are not. Their legitimacy must emanate from the authority of the people. The Islamic political system is not theocratic in nature with anyone allowed to challenge any ruling by either scholars or the head of state. [...] The Islamic system would take the money out of modern politics. The electoral circus every four or five years [...] in the West positively encourages the growth of money in politics forcing politicians to either raise grotesque amounts of money for re-election or maximise their own wealth before they get booted out. The Islamic system, though not immune from the temptations on offer, seeks to actively detach both finance and the interests of corporations from politics [...].

"No one – including the head of state, their family, or any religious scholar – is above the law. And unlike the West where justice is skewed to those that are more powerful and wealthier, Islamic courts have historically – and will do so in the future – exercised justice for the weak, minorities and the less well off. [...] We do not believe in arbitrary arrest or torture or rendition or internment. Every person has the right to a presumption of innocence, a right to privacy and a right to a fair trial. Secular democracies do not have a monopoly over respecting the rights of its [sic] citizens. [...] There are also clear constitutionally enshrined Islamic prohibitions on torture and abusive behaviour amongst other things – applied to the police, armed forces and security services as well as the general population – as a protection from such forceful rule [....]

"The failure to acknowledge the Khilafah State as an alternative, despite its resonance with hundreds of millions of Muslims is not surprising. Western political leaders are more at ease comparing their way of life with the low benchmark of brutal dictators of the Middle East (despite propping up these same leaders for years) than in actually arguing the substantive issues of which political system would be better for the Muslim world. [...] In practice there is a huge gap between the reality of democratic countries and the rhetoric. [...] Debt is rising as democratic states continue to pander to their populations for short-term electoral considerations. The financial crisis of 2008 driven by the unholy trinity of democracy, capitalism and liberalism brought the world to the brink of disaster. We should learn the lessons before its [sic] too late. [...] What we need today is fresh thinking, not another model of secular democracy or some diluted set of reforms. It is a system so bankrupt that the world needs radical new alternatives, intertwined with new values and a new ethos of politics serving the public not a wealthy elite. This is the essence of the Islamic alternative."

The pamphlet includes case studies on the United States, United Kingdom, India, and Afghanistan, as well as a Q & A section on the Islamic Caliphate (Khilafah) system as an alternative to democracy.

Book: Where Have All The Fascists Gone?

Tamir Bar-On, "Where Have All The Fascists Gone?" (Ashgate, 2007), with a foreword by Roger Griffin (Professor in Modern History, Oxford Brookes University):

www.ashgatepublishing.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=8080&edition_id=10650

Publisher's description: "The Intellectual European New Right (ENR), also known as the nouvelle droite, is a cultural school of thought with origins in the revolutionary Right and neo-fascist milieux. Born in France in 1968, it situated itself in a Gramscian mould exclusively on the cultural terrain of political contestation in order to challenge the apparent ideological hegemony of dominant liberal and leftist elites. It also sought to escape the ghetto status of a revolutionary Right milieu wedded to violent extra-parliamentary politics and battered by the legacies of Fascism and Nazism. This study traces the cultural, philosophical, political and historical trajectories of the French nouvelle droite in particular and the ENR in general. It examines the ENR worldview as an ambiguous synthesis of the ideals of the revolutionary Right and New Left. ENR themes related to the loss of cultural identity and immigration have appealed to anti-immigrant political parties throughout Europe. In a post 9/11 climate, as well as an age of rising economic globalization and cultural homogenization, its anti-capitalist ideas embedded within the framework of cultural preservation might make further political inroads into the Europe of the future."

Reviews: "Post-war right-wing extremist movements come in a bewildering variety of shapes and forms, but this book provides a well-written and masterly guide (the first one in the English language) to the evolution of one particularly influential variety known as the European New Right. It deserves to be read by all who care about the future of Europe." (Cyprian Blamires, editor of "World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia")

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=OcaHOPaa0iMC&printsec=frontcover

Also of interest may be a recent article by Bar-On, "Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivalry" ("Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions", 10 [3-4], December 2009: pp. 241-64):

www.informaworld.com/smpp/1868151755-12274951/content~db=all~content=a918688855

From the abstract: "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the French nouvelle droite under its doyen Alain de Benoist claimed that it had made a political 'conversion' from the revolutionary Right (or conservative revolutionary) milieu to 'democracy' and that it had created a 'post-fascist' political synthesis. The paper under consideration will argue that the nouvelle droite's political 'conversion' process was only exoteric in nature by mimicking the ideas of the New Left and that its esoteric orientation was of 'true believers' who never left a political pantheon of conservative revolutionary ideas with roots largely in the 1920s and 1930s. Using the model of the nouvelle droite, as well as the ideas of René Girard and Emilio Gentile [...], I trace a model of political conversion for the twentieth century and new millennium, with particular emphasis on conversionary prerequisites and processes, as well as the mimetic symbiosis and rivalry between Right and Left."

Excerpts: "It is no accident that the nouvelle droite leader in France, Alain de Benoist, argues [...] that his fundamental quarrel is with egalitarianism, which he argues in a Nietzschean vein produced the mass 'slave' ideologies of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its secular derivatives, namely, liberalism, social democracy, socialism, communism and Marxism. [...] Furthermore, in ideologically diverse journals, de Benoist never tires of pointing out that the shifting sands of the political landscape might dictate if he converts towards the Right or Left. This calculation will presumably be based on whether extreme radicals of the Right or Left can better assist in the destruction of liberal democracy. [...] [H]is conversion to 'democracy' is circumscribed, as it must be direct democracy in the ancient Athenian or Icelandic mould. It [...] bypasses his vehement rejection of liberal and socialist variants of democracy."

Israeli-born Tamir Bar-On is Professor of Humanities and International Relations at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

Book: Democracy is a system of Kufr: It is forbidden to adopt, implement or call for it

Abdul Qadeem Zalloom is the author of a 50-page book(let) titled "Democracy is a system of Kufr: It is forbidden to adopt, implement or call for it", the second edition of which was published in 1995 by London-based Al-Khilafah Publications. Presumably, this is the English translation of a text originally written in Arabic. The book (or maybe the translation?) was completed on 27 May 1990.

Palestinian-born Yusuf Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zal(l)oom (also spelled Abd al-Qadim Zallum or Abdul Kaddim Zalloum), apparently a cleric and one-time professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, became global leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamist revolutionary party present in many Muslim countries as well as Western Europe, in 1977. He died in hiding, probably in Amman, Jordan, or in Saudi Arabia, in 2003.

The full text is currently available free of charge here:

www.scribd.com/doc/3666156/006-Democracy-is-a-System-of-Kufr

Should the link not work anymore, please contact me for a copy of the PDF file.

Some excerpts: "The democracy which the Kaafir [infidel] West promotes in the Muslim countries is a system of Kufr [disbelief]. [...] It completely contradicts the rules of Islam whether in the comprehensive or partial issues, in the source from which it came, in the 'Aqeedah [beliefs] from which it emanated, in the basis on which it is established and in the thoughts and systems it has brought. [...] Democracy emanated from the creed of separating religion from life, which is the creed on which the capitalist ideology is established. It is the creed of the vague compromise solution, [...] based on lies and deception. We shall clarify its corruption and rottenness and what it has brought to the world in terms of misfortune and affliction, and the extent of the corruption of societies in which democracy is implemented. [...]

"The big capitalists are the ones who bring to power or into the representative assemblies those who will realise their interests. They are the ones who pay for the costs of the elections for the post of head of state and the membership of parliament. [...] The laws passed in these parliaments, and the decisions issued by these states, take into consideration the interests of those capitalists more than the interests of the people or their majority. [...] One of the severest afflictions brought to humanity is the idea of general freedoms initiated by the democratic system. [...] How ridiculous and disgusting it is that the colonialist democratic countries like America, Britain and France boast and brag of democratic values and human rights, and at the same time they trample all over all the humanitarian and ethical values. [...] As for the idea of personal freedom, it has turned societies [...] to a level of filthy promiscuity that even animals cannot reach. [...]

"In Islam the issue is quite different: Legislative matters do not depend on the opinion of the majority or the minority. Rather, they depend on the Shari'ah texts because the legislator is only Allah [...]. A Muslim is bound in all his actions by the Shari'ah rules and he is not free in any action. There is no freedom in Islam [...]. From all that we have discussed previously, it is extremely clear that the Western culture (Hadharah), values and Western viewpoint about life, Western democracy and the general freedoms, all completely contradict with Islam and its rules. They are Kufr thoughts, Kufr culture, systems of Kufr and laws of Kufr. [...] That is why it is forbidden for the Muslim to adopt it, call for it or establish parties on its basis, or to take its viewpoint about life, to apply it, to take it as the basis or source for the Constitution and laws or to make it a basis for education or objective. [...] It is obligatory on the Muslims to completely discard democracy. It is filth. It is the rule of Taghut [idolatry/Satan]."

Some questions remain regarding the correct dating of this text or possible later additions or alterations (most likely made by someone other than the original author). One passage reads: "[I]t has moved to legislating the permissibility of deviant sexual practices. Some democratic countries have even permitted marriage between sexually deviant people, where they have allowed a man to marry a man, and a woman to marry a woman." Quite obviously, legislation recognizing same-sex partnerships (let alone marriage) had not been introduced anywhere by either 1990 or 1995.

Book: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

Jodi Dean, "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics" (Duke University Press, July 2009):

www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4505-3

From the publisher's description: "Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean [...] argues that the left's ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined [...]. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean's critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to [...] confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy".

Under the title "W(h)ither the State", she yesterday wrote on her blog: "In a discussion of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies today some students pressed a point of weakness in my discussion: namely, the critique of democracy in all or nothing terms. Rather than considering the multiplicity of forms of local action and community engagement, I reject the democratic 'system,' its liberal-democratic justifications, and its materialization in communicative capitalism. The state is rotten and thus the only solution is revolution."

Reviews: "Her diagnosis of 'communicative capitalism' discloses how our 'really existing democracies' curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap, pseudo-Marxist denunciations but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell on illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: 'Hey, didn't you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?'" (Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, London)

"Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been in terms of both policy and collective fantasies regarding the relation of markets to freedom." (Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago)

Dean is also the author of a number of articles apparently opposed to democracy. Among those I haven't been able to access (and that were published in journals that many university libraries may not be subscribed to) is "The Democratic Deadlock" ("Theory & Event", 10 [4], 2007: pp. not given):

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.4dean.html

Excerpt: "A commonplace of media punditry in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns the deep divide in American politics. Whether in terms of political parties, red states and blue states, support or opposition to US militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the ongoing culture war between the religious right and the secular left, the United States is depicted as a nation split in its fundamental ethico-political self-understanding. This depiction is misleading. It occludes the way these seeming opponents continue to appeal to democracy. Thus, the administration of George W. Bush presents itself as actively engaged in bringing democracy to the Middle East, as encouraging countries throughout the world to strengthen their democratic institutions. The Left, although seemingly opposed to the Bush administration, also appeals to democracy as that which it wishes to restore, redeem, or reach. Why does the Left continue to appeal to democracy? Is democracy, as Slavoj Žižek asks, the ultimate horizon of political thought? For Žižek, to accept this horizon is to accept an impoverished political field, a diminishment of aspirations to something better. We accept the limitation of democracy, convinced that this is as good as it gets. Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. They exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor. Crucial determinants of our lives and conditions remain outside the frame of political deliberation and response."

I also had no access to her article "Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy", published as a chapter in the contributed volume "Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice", eds. Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007).

Presumably the book covers most of the arguments she made in her earlier articles.

Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Article: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy

Nancy Fraser's article "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy" was published in the contributed volume "Habermas and the Public Sphere", ed. Craig Calhoun (MIT Press, 1992: pp. 109-42).

The article can be found (and partly read) at this link:

http://books.google.com/books?id=5F8qjMkoxZ0C&pg=PT109&dq

Some excerpts: "Today in the United States we hear a great deal of ballyhoo about 'the triumph of liberal democracy' and even 'the end of history.' Yet there is still quite a lot to object to in our own actually existing democracy, and the project of a critical theory of the limits of democracy in late-capitalist societies remains as relevant as ever. In fact, this project seems to me to have acquired a new urgency at a time when 'liberal democracy' is being touted as the ne plus ultra of social systems [...].

"[Jürgen] Habermas's idea of the public sphere is indispensable to critical social theory and democratic political practice. I assume that no attempt to understand the limits of actually existing late-capitalist democracy can succeed without in some way or another making use of it. I assume that the same goes for urgently needed constructive efforts to project alternative models of democracy. [...] According to Habermas, the idea of a public sphere is that of a body of 'private persons' assembled to discuss matters of 'public concern' or 'common interest.' [...] The result of such discussion would be public opinion in the strong sense of a consensus about the common good. [...]

"[W]ith the emergence of welfare-state mass democracy, society and the state became mutually intertwined; publicity in the sense of critical scrutiny of the state gave way to public relations, mass-mediated staged displays and the manufacture and manipulation of public opinion. [...] I do not mean to suggest that subaltern counterpublics are always necessarily virtuous. Some of them, alas, are explicitly antidemocratic and antiegalitarian, and even those with democratic and egalitarian intentions are not always above practicing their own modes of informal exclusion and marginalization. Still, insofar as these counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within dominant publics, they help expand discursive space. In principle, assumptions that were previously exempt from contestation will now have to be publicly argued out. [...]

"[M]y argument enjoins four corresponding tasks on the critical theory of actually existing democracy. First, this theory should render visible the ways in which social inequality taints deliberation within publics in late-capitalist societies. Second, it should show how inequality affects relations among publics in late-capitalist societies, how publics are differentially empowered or segmented, and how some are involuntarily enclaved and subordinated to others. Next, a critical theory should expose ways in which the labeling of some issues and interests as 'private' limits the range of problems, and of approaches to problems, that can be widely contested in contemporary societies. Finally, the theory should show how the overly weak character of some public spheres in late-capitalist societies denudes 'public opinion' of practical force.

"In all these ways the theory should expose the limits of the specific form of democracy we enjoy in late capitalist societies. Perhaps it can thereby help inspire us to try to push back those limits, while also cautioning people in other parts of the world against heeding the call to install them."

It appears that an earlier version of this article had been published previously in the journal "Social Text" (25/26, 1990: pp. 56-80), although I couldn't find an acknowledgement in the book. The text of the journal article (which differs somewhat from the version in the book) is available free of charge here:

www.apass.be/dpt/APT/3564-rethinking_the_public_sphere.pdf

Nancy Fraser is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the New School for Social Research.

Book: Nietzsche Contra Democracy

A book showcasing Friedrich Nietzsche's anti-democratic thought: "Nietzsche Contra Democracy" by Fredrick Appel (Cornell University Press, 1999).

Publisher's description: "Apolitical, amoral, an aesthete whose writings point toward some form of liberation: this is the figure who emerges from most recent scholarship on Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nietzsche whom Fredrick Appel portrays is of an altogether different character, one whose philosophical position is inseparable from a deep commitment to a hierarchical politics. Nietzsche contra Democracy gives us a thinker who, disdainful of the 'petty politics' of his time, attempts to lay the normative foundations for a modern political alternative to democracy. Appel shows how Nietzsche's writings evoke the prospect of a culturally revitalized Europe in which the herdlike majority and its values are put in their proper place: under the control of a new, self-aware, and thoroughly modern aristocratic caste whose sole concern is its own flourishing.

"In chapters devoted to Nietzsche's little discussed views on solitude, friendship, sociability, families, and breeding, this book brings Nietzsche into conversation with Aristotelian and Stoic strains of thought. More than a healthy jolt to Nietzsche scholarship, Nietzsche contra Democracy also challenges political theory to articulate and defend the moral consensus undergirding democracy."

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3083

Reviews: "From the opening words of this new book on Nietzsche's political philosophy, we know we are in the hands of a capable scholar: 'Friedrich Nietzsche's great concern is for the flourishing of those few whom he considers exemplary of the human species.' Appel's book demonstrates, from start to finish, the economy and lucidity found in this pithy statement. [...] He laces together textual evidence and strong arguments to make his case, to my mind incontrovertibly, that Nietzsche's opposition to liberal and egalitarian political ideas ... was unvarying." (Philip R. Munger, "The Boston Book Review")

"Fredrick Appel offers a thorough and devastating critique of what he calls the 'new orthodoxy' about Nietzsche which dominates contemporary scholarship. Appel [...] demonstrates how much scholars have to distort Nietzsche's writings to turn him into an enemy of social hierarchy and domination". (Bernard Yack, University of Wisconsin, Madison)

"[A] brilliant piece of scholarship, both clearly written and well argued, or if you prefer, both lucid and logical." (David A. Gugin, "Perspectives on Political Science")

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=My2-0mPc9cAC&printsec=frontcover

Fredrick Appel is Senior Editor at Princeton University Press. He appears not to have published since – neither books nor articles.