Lefort and the Question of Democracy--In America

MARTIN PLOT

Constellations. International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory

Blackwell

Lugar: Oford; Año: 2012 vol. 19 p. 51 - 62

1351-0487

In dialogue with Claude Lefort's phenomenological approach to democracy and the question of political regimes, in this paper, I want to pose the following question: what is it that is emerging in democracy’s wake? Is there in germ a new form of society, its features slowly rendered perceptible against the background of the regime theorized and interpreted by Tocqueville and Lefort? In particular, is today’s America—with its war on terror and its anti-government radicalism, with its plutocratic political system and its anti-immigrant xenophobia—slowly drawing the contours of a regime no longer compatible with Lefort’s affinity between a style of thought and a style of being, between a philosophy that embraces indeterminacy and a regime that makes room for its institutionalization? As Lefort famously proposed in “The Question of Democracy,” in such a regime “the exercise of power is subject to procedures of periodical redistributions. It represents the outcome of a controlled contest with permanent rules. The phenomenon implies an institutionalization of conflict. The locus of power is an empty place, it cannot be occupied – it is such that no individual and no group can be consubstantial with it.” All that leading to Lefort’s famous definition: “democracy is instituted and sustained by the dissolution of the markers of certainty.” The question is: Does today’s regime in America still embrace—or is rather reacting against—this dissolution of the markers of certainty? Can we still unambiguously claim that, in America, no social group is consubstantial with power? Does today’s society still welcomes the institutionalization of conflict or is it, rather, reacting against an understanding of power that demands its periodical redistribution and re-legitimization by open, democratic political struggle? Revista indexed en: Academic Search (EBSCO Publishing) Academic Search Premier (EBSCO Publishing) IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (ProQuest) Philosopher´s Index (Philosopher´s Information Center) PhilPapers POIESIS: Philosophy Online Serials (PDC) ProQuest Central (ProQuest) ProQuest Research Library (ProQuest) Social Services Abstracts (ProQuest) SocINDEX (EBSCO Publishing) Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest) Worldwide Political Sciences Abstracts (ProQuest)