Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-15T17:29:21.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Conclusion: aversive democracy – exemplarity, imagination and passion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Aletta J. Norval
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Get access

Summary

The point is not to win an argument (that may come late in the day) but to manifest for the other another way.

In this concluding chapter, I draw together the threads of the argument that constitute the grammar of what I have called aversive democracy. On the one hand, this grammar includes the vocabularies we use and the practices we engage in. But it also relates to the way these delimit the ‘say-able’ and the ‘do-able’ – that which is intelligible to us at any point in time. And finally, it concerns the possibility of challenges to existing grammars by new democratic claims, which may transform – or indeed, affirm – this grammar. Throughout I have foregrounded the importance of both the terms of argumentation and its structure. However, I have also sought to go beyond these more traditional concerns so as to consider both the rhetoricality of our practices and their bodily visceral character. In addition to this refocusing of democratic grammar, I have also sought to unpack the role of subjectivity in a democratic grammar by focusing on the importance of identification with a grammar as well as the logic of its embedding and challenges to existing grammars. I have argued that identification is important in accounting for the constitution of the democratic subject, and it is here that the emergence of new claims, as well as the different forms of relation constituted amongst democratic subjects, has received attention. Rancière and Laclau provided the starting-point here.

Type
Chapter
Information
Aversive Democracy
Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition
, pp. 187 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×