Radical democracy

Politics between abundance and lack

Edited by Lars Toender, Lasse Thomassen

Publication date:

30 April 2014

Length of book:

280 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719070457

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Available at last in paperback, Radical democracy brings together original contributions from established and emerging scholars. The contributors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the two dominant approaches to radical democracy: theories of abundance inspired by Gilles Deleuze and theories of lack inspired by Jacques Lacan. They examine the idea of radical democracy from a wide variety of perspectives: identity/difference, the public sphere, social movements, nature, popular culture, right wing populism and political economy. In addition, the volume relates the work of contemporary thinkers such as Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault to classical thinkers such as Spinoza, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche. William Connolly and Ernesto Laclau conclude the volume with two afterwords on the future of radical democracy. With its original contributions, Radical democracy is essential reading for advanced students and scholars who have an interest in the political and theoretical problems of radical democracy.

Introduction: rethinking radical democracy between abundance and lack – Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen
Part I: Radical democracy: abundance and/or lack?
1. The absence at the heart of presence: radical democracy and the ontology of lack – Oliver Marchart
2. Two routes from Hegel – Nathan Widder
3. Deleuze and democratic politics – Paul Patton
4. The wild patience of radical democracy: beyond Žižek’s lack – Romand Coles
5. Theorising hegemony: between deconstruction and psychoanalysis – Aletta J. Norval
6. In/exclusions: towards a radical democratic approach to exclusion – Lasse Thomassen
Part II: The politics of radical democracy
7. For an agonistic public sphere – Chantal Mouffe
8. In parliament with things – Jane Bennet
9. The radical democratic possibilities of popular culture – Jon Simons
10. Radical and plural democracy: in defence of right/left and public reason – Torben Bech Dyrberg
11. Negativity and radical democracy: radical democracy beyond reoccupation and conformism – Yannis Stavrakakis
12. Inessential commonality: immanence, transcendence, abundance – Lars Tønder
13. True democracy: Marx, political subjectivity and anarchic meta-politics – Simon Critchley
Part III: Afterwords
14. Immanence, abundance, democracy – William E. Connolly
15. The future of radical democracy – Ernesto Laclau
Index