The politics, science, and art of receptivity

With so much attention on the issue of voice in democratic theory, the inverse question of how people come to listen remains a marginal one. Recent scholarship in affect and neuroscience reveals that cognitive and verbal strategies, while privileged in democratic politics, are often insufficient to cultivate the receptivity that constitutes the most basic premise of democratic encounters. This article draws on this scholarship and a recent case of forum theatre to examine the conditions of receptivity and responsiveness, and identify specific strategies that foster such conditions. It argues that the forms of encounter most effective in cultivating receptivity are those that move us via affective intensity within pointedly mediated contexts. It is this constellation of strategies—this strange marriage of immersion and mediation—that enabled this performance to surface latent memory, affect and bias, unsettle entrenched patterns of thought and behaviour, and provide the conditions for revisability. This case makes clear that to lie beyond the domain of cognitive and verbal processes is not to lie beyond potential intervention, and offers insight to how such receptivity might be achieved in political processes more broadly

Performing democracy : artistic engagements of identity/difference

With growing acknowledgment within critical democratic theory that formal inclusion is not enough to guarantee real participation in democratic practice, particularly in the context of deep cultural diversity, this dissertation examines the possibilities, challenges, and limitations of various modes of communication when they are used to engage marginalized difference. It takes as its starting point the institutional and individual demand within democracies to not only make space for diverse ways of life, or simply ‘contain enough difference’ – as if this were possible – but to remain attentive to the perpetual remainder and responsive to the changes implied by such differences. This, I argue, defines a democratic ethos: a care for difference and the receptive generosity such care requires. With democratic engagement defined in these terms, I first analyze and critique the ways declarative modes of communication conventionally used in democratic engagement influence and limit both how identity/difference can be communicated, and the forms of civic engagement that emerge as a result. Second, I investigate alternatives to declarative language, specifically the evocative forms of communication used within the performing arts. Using three case studies from South Africa and Canada in which dance and theatre were used to represent marginalized positions regarding race, gender, homelessness, and mental health, my research isolates key aesthetic resources for fostering greater inclusion of marginalized identity/difference. In the process, this research reveals and analyzes effective and as-yet largely overlooked forms of democratic engagement, and brings new insights into how identity and difference can be communicated and coalitions may be formed beyond the static forms of identity politics present in certain kinds of political thought and practice. Ultimately, this project is an interdisciplinary intervention in a disciplinary discourse regarding what counts as available to our political thinking, to develop the means to broaden political inclusion as well as the tools with which to better represent and engage social difference with the attentiveness a democratic ethos demands. In short, this dissertation asks the question, can the performative arts facilitate engagement across difference in ways that a democratic ethos demands?Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat

Editorial: Non-western theories of democracy

A conventional story is often told about democracy. It is a story that begins somewhere in the West, some millennia ago. From there, or so this telling goes, democracy spread across the continents; traversing from the familiar epicenters of Western civilization—Athens, London, Washington, Versailles—to the exotic and sometimes alien cultural landscapes in the East. The idea that such a model of democracy, based on an essentially Western set of ideals and practices, could one day become universal was perhaps unthinkable to most democrats before the twentieth century. However, today there is very little doubt that democracy on a global scale is both assured and desirable. But there should be no confusion here: this story of democratization, and the projection of democracy’s global future, is one premised on “the export of democratic institutions, developed within a particular cultural context in the West,” that has as its culmination “the end of history” and the triumph of Western liberal democracy in all corners of the globe (Lamont et al. 2015: 1)

This is Not Us/This is Us: Dissensus Politics in the Wake of the Christchurch Terror Attacks

On March 15th, 2019, a terrorist targeted two mosques in Christchurch, resulting in 51 deaths and many more injured. In the wake of these events, the Aotearoa New Zealand community struggled to make sense of what they meant for who “we” are. This article traces developments and tensions within the discourse that emerged in the two weeks following the attacks, identifying three significant framings: discourses of unity, innocence, and responsibility. Analyzing these discourses via Jacques Rancière’s theory of politics, we explore whether this marked a truly political moment wherein “the part that has no part”—the Muslim community of Aotearoa New Zealand—was actually heard