Democratic Dissent, Vol. 24 - 2017, No. 3
Guest Edited by Robert L. Ivie and Oscar Giner
A Democratic People’s Dissent from War
Democracy’s capacity for peace is more fully realised in dissent, understood as an exercise in what Ernesto Laclau called popular reason grounded in rhetorical contingency to advance an ensemble of claims against ruling elites. In the case of antiwar dissent, popular reason involves linking the problem of war to other social exigencies such as economic displacement, environmental degradation and racial discrimination. Heterogeneous claims such as these are connected through a metaphorical vision, a mythical fullness sufficiently provisional to allow for deliberation with adversaries. Such linking metaphors must convey a sense of human interdependence to create a synergic ensemble of popular demands for transforming military and structural violence. Consistent with this sensibility, the very manner of dissenting is crucial. Dissenters can manoeuvre obliquely to articulate interdependencies in gestures of non-conforming solidarity, which can be facilitated by adopting a self-reflective, stereoscopic gaze towards antagonists and representing differences as complementary.
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Dissent, Protest and Resistance: Discourses of Contestation and Mental Healthcare in Buenos Aires
The aim of this article is to analyse the concept of “dissent” under the light of political practice in Argentina. I propose a critical theoretical position, which differentiates different discourse practices of contestation: resistance, dissent and protest. After a theoretical discussion regarding the difference between actors and contestation discourse practices, I argue the need for an empirical approach to political discourse theory. Hence, I analyse discourses of resistance, dissent and protest in the process of emergence, discussion and (non-)appliance of the National Law of Mental Health in Argentina.
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Doxa, Dissent and Challenges of Rhetorical Citizenship: “When I Criticize Denmark, It Is not the White Nights or the New Potatoes I Have In Mind”
This article explores an instance of citizen dissent being combatted by elite politicians and the dissenting citizen’s resistance to these attacks. Proceeding from Ivie’s and Thimsen’s understandings of dissent as intimately linked to mainstream discourse and of dissent’s potential for democratic participation and rhetorical invention realised by means of rhetorical troping, the article also invokes Phillips’ work on spaces of dissension. The article concludes with a discussion of the difficulties in realising ideals of deliberative democracy as conceived within the conceptual frame of rhetorical citizenship and potential avenues for theory development followed by a discussion of the potential of rhetorical troping to establish consubstantiality in a gridlocked debate.
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Democratic Dissent and the Politics of Rescue During the Twenty-First Century’s “Inhospitable” EU Migration “Crisis”
This article uses critical approaches to examine the ways in which dissenters have objected to the European Union’s current “politics of rescue”. The authors argue that the term “hospitality” has been a key term in liberal theorising about mobility since the Enlightenment, but that various neo-liberal “pull” theories, worries about securitisation and the militarisation of rescue efforts in the Mediterranean have converged in ways that have turned Europe into an “inhospitable” place for foreigners. The authors use three short case studies—of maritime captains’ and sailors’ rescue efforts, academic critiques of FRONTEX and vernacular reactions to the iconic Kurdi image—to put on display the contradictions that exist when illiberal decisions are made by EU communities that are supposed to be democratically governed by hospitality principles. They also argue that the focus on the social agency of “traffickers” deflects attention away from the structural and colonial facets of these migration “crises”.
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Did the Trumpian Counterpublic Dissent against the Dominant Model of Campaign Finance?
Trumpism poses a difficult challenge for counterpublic scholarship: should forms of right-nationalism dissenting against dominant publicity be analysed using the same concepts as other types of dissent? This article argues that Trumpism demonstrated counterpublic dissent against dominant campaign finance publicity by criticising the influence of wealthy donors in both political parties. Trumpism also offered an alternative to the dominant logic of necessary ethical compromise shaping publicity about campaign finance in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United US Supreme Court decision. However, Trumpism failed to foster greater democracy because of the way it posed Trump himself as the only necessary solution to the problems of plutocracy. Counterpublic theory should revisit the way it balances its normative and empirical dimensions to account for the rise of radical-right nationalisms and their publicity outlets.
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Politics by Other Means: Post-Digital Gameplay in Hong Kong
This article considers play in relation to the governance of creativity as well as emerging modes of dissent in Hong Kong. Drawing from post-digital game studies and radical contextualism, the article considers play in three everyday settings, each of which articulates different relations between the material affordances of software, embodied capabilities and the rationalities of institutional macropolitics. In doing so, I aim to explore play as dissent in a context where play is instrumentalised for the biopolitics of the “creative” economy, yet where it is neither connected to “free” expression and performance nor guaranteed of liberal protections. I argue that creativity in Hong Kong is not constitutive—be it of economic assets or a “free” society—but constituted. That is to say, creativity is normalised, trained, excluded, repressed and potentially criminalised. This requires rethinking prevailing universalisms regarding politics as play and creative public performance.
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