Demokratie im Präsens: Eine Theorie der politischen Gegenwart

by Isabell Lorey

Inmitten der Krisen und Bedrohungen der liberalen Demokratie entwickelt Isabell Lorey eine Demokratie im Präsens, die politische Gewissheiten ebenso aufbricht wie lineare Vorstellungen von Fortschritt und Wachstum. Mit ihrer queer/feministischen politischen Theorie formuliert sie eine grundlegende Kritik an maskulinistischen Konzepten von Volk, Repräsentation, Institution und Multitude. Und sie entfaltet einen originellen Begriff von präsentischer Demokratie, der auf Sorge und Verbundenheit, auf der Unhintergehbarkeit von Verantwortlichkeiten beruht – und ohne vergangene Kämpfe und aktuelle Praktiken sozialer Bewegungen nicht zu denken ist.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy

217 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 2020

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way we talk about ‘democracy’ is woven through with contradictions, inconsistencies and antagonisms. It’s been called ‘the worst system, except for all the others’, vaunted as ‘by the people, for the people; of the people’, fetishized as a thing to be protected at all costs. Yet, in practice it is seen as dangerous, so we see efforts to restrict voting rights, while democratic participation is limited to the occasional say in the appointment of a representative, usually from a narrow pool of candidates selected in secret by small groups of people few of us have access to. What’s more, democracy is seen as something that happens within institutions – organisations or states – that are by definition build on processes of exclusion, and as Isabell Lorey notes in this radical rethinking of what ‘democracy’ might be and how it might be conceptualised, through the construction of a people.

She builds the case around two principal strands of analysis. The first draws on several major thinkers in European philosophical and political analysis – Rousseau, Derrida, Benjamin, Foucault and Negri – to construct a vision of democracy that does not require the construction of an exclusionary notion of ‘the people’ as a singularity with the right to participate. The second picks up on work in her 2015 book State of Insecurity to conceive of a democracy premised on an inclusive feminist ethics of care. It is a demanding (although that might reflect my relative distance from some of the notions she draws on from Derrida and Foucault) but invigorating read.

From Rousseau she draws the notion of the distinction between democracy as representative and as participatory, while Derrida’s role in the emerging argument is through his critique of Rousseau’s invocation of notions of presence in forms of assembly. Here the case draws on work by Derrida that presents democracy as never achieved, but as always to come: while not averse to utopian thinking, Lorey rejects the notion that it is unattainable. These two discussions lay the basis for the next step in the case, an assessment of Benjamin and Foucault to explore notions of time and the present. Benjamin’s theses on history are considered to unravel where agency lies in imperatives for change and for the need to attend to the past, while Foucault’s widely explored notion of resistance as coextensive with power is the basis of the essential-to-the-argument notion of multiple presents: what Lorey calls the present infinitive, suggesting an unbounded multitude rather than a singular people. This allows for the final stage of this strand of the argument, drawing in Negri’s notions of multitude to rupture those exclusionary binaries that define ‘the people’, emphasising but not limited to the patriarchal binary of the distinction of public and private spheres.

This is a fairly dense argument, taking up most of the book (but just on 100 pages) and richly illustrated with cases such as the Paris Commune, the M15 movement in Spain that inspired the Occupy movement, as well as drawing in other places on philosophical work by Jean-Luc Nancy and Henri Bergson: Lorey’s erudition is impressive, as is her integration of writers and ideas not usually seen as aligned.

For the final aspect of the case, the final 40 or so pages, the tone shifts away from this grounding in European philosophy to two aspects of contemporary political struggles: notions of precariousness and the feminist strike movement, notably present in the Spanish-speaking world but also elsewhere. This is where the analysis in State of Insecurity becomes important. Lorey distinguishes precariousness as a condition fundamental to humanity and our need for social networks – we are fragile beings for whom care practices are essential to life – from precarity as conditions of domination that are the basis for protection and care to be apportioned by the state. This is then further distinguished from governmental precarization as actions by the state and individualised forms of self-government premised on insecurity.

It is this shift that allows for the development of a notion of democracy grounded in an ethics of care and the inclusion of multiple modes of being, of a multitude of subjectivities and subjects that is in the present, that does not exclude through claims to representation rather than participation, that calls on multiple modes of engagement, where debts of care are not built on shame and moralities of guilt, and where the social and the political are one. This is, of course, not a template for how to build this system of democratic practice: that emerges in struggle and it’s here that the feminist strikes become important indicators of a form of practice that is consistent with, working towards this continuously becoming-democracy. It’s a splendid piece of utopian writing, posing what might be and outlining some principles for what a successful democracy of care – a feminist-queer democracy – might be in the multitudinous present infinitive.

These are big ideas, and as such they’re supposed to be difficult – but they’re also woven together lucidly to build a vision of what might be. It might not be the last word – I very much doubt it will be, even from Lorey – but it’s a valuable step along the path. At a time when the forces of reaction are powerful, when major states that claim the democratic label (such as the USA) are on the path to theocracy and when fascists are winning elections or mounting populist coups when defeated, this is an inspiring and important contribution.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find it hard to believe someone besides Lorey or her publicist wrote the summary/blurb for this book. For the latter, I can excuse the misdirections, for the former not so much. Or Lorey honestly thinks this is what the book does. Huh. It most assuredly does not for this reader.
I will say Verso needs to reconsider the books it publishes, maybe.
I can say with absolute honesty that I 100% missed how this is any way - besides the words being in the title - a queer-feminist theory of anything. Again, it may be that the author is either queer or feminist, or both, which would make the title factually true, albeit incredibly misleading, for me at least.
I am getting the distinct feeling way too much current scholarship merely requires using/footnoting recognizable names, and their theories/ideas/concepts/associated intellectual cachet and not a whole lot else. Lorey presents almost nothing here that would make me think she is positing any theory, let alone one that is queer and/or feminist. I may be delusional, just to be fair, but I just didn't see it here. There is a lot to absorb/process/parse - Rousseau, Bergson, Derrida, Foucault, Benjamin, Marx... - but it goes nowhere for me. Or never gets anywhere, at least.
Present-ism for Lorey feels more like a "not-these things" than "this thing", and that doesn't work for me, intellectually.
There is no doubt for me that patriarchy and capitalism are garbage that must be quickly discarded, but what smart person - who doesn't belong to the US Republican Party - doesn't already know that? What they are replaced with has yet to be agreed upon, and likely never will be, before those aforementioned two evils ruin the planet for sustainable human life.
Nothing Lorey presents here makes me think intellectuals are on the path to changing that.