1st Edition
Democracy and Event The Promise and Perils of Catastrophe
Catastrophes unsettle our safe places within the world. As such, they provide an interesting site to analyze the intersection of our affective and political lives.
Bringing radical democratic thinking, affect theory, psychoanalysis, and discursive analysis to bear on contemporary catastrophic events, Democracy and Event presents a fresh perspective on the study of affect and its impact on democratic sensibilities and practices. Situated in different countries with differing institutional histories and cultures – the Grenfell Tower fire in London, England (2017); the SARS epidemic in Toronto, Canada (2003); the Parkland shooting in Florida (2018); the early days of the COVID-19 crisis and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA (2020) – Elaine Stavro interprets the rhetoric, discourse, and affective communication of politicians and passionate protestors. She examines their linkages to well-established organizations informed by democratic ideals, as well as the context in which they arise, which have a bearing on their ability to challenge neoliberal and authoritarian practices.
Inspired by the urgent need to bring theory back to politics and politics back to theory, Elaine Stavro demonstrates how theory might inform our attitudes to contemporary events while recognizing that political action and events cannot be captured in their complexity by theory. Her skillful engagement with various theoretical approaches, read through the lens of catastrophic events, will speak to a wide-ranging scholarly readership in numerous academic fields.
List of figures
Acknowledgments
1 Theoretical perspectives on democratic sensibilities and democratic practices
Vital materialism: ontologies of lively materiality countering social determinism
Populist thinkers: turning to the political and away from the social
Navigating novelty and indeterminacy – embodied creativity versus the post-human
Rethinking emotion and affect: challenging autonomous affect
The monstrous event
2 Engendering fear and racism during the SARS epidemic: a defi cit in deliberative thinking
The event: the impact of fear
Debates that frame this catastrophe
Abjection: scapegoating the Chinese
The Orientalist thesis – essentializing the Asian – linking negative affect to Social Othering
Media management of the crisis – the pairing of the war on terror and bioterror
Representations and responses to the SARS crisis: China versus Toronto
From fear to disbelief: challenging WHO’s travel advisory
Attending to emotion’s material effects
SARS effects on deliberation and democratic decision-making
Toward a more reliable account of the catastrophe: material conditions – mega slums and global livestock production
Post-SARS
3 Burning inferno: the Grenfell Tower fire in the era of austerity
The event: affective representations overwhelm facts
Confronting vital materialists’ and populists’ thinking on affect and emotion
Social weightlessness
Fostering solidarity: a tangled event that produced multiple narratives and feelings
Challenging earlier narratives – the case for investigative journalism
Applying vital materialism to the event: confederate agency and human responsibility
A new collective subject fails to emerge
Attending to larger frames of reference
The effects of Brexit – ignoring economic interests
The power of neoliberal governing strategies – the demise of democratic practices
4 Students’ passionate participation: a democratic movement in the digital age
The terrifying event
The public sphere in the age of internet and social media – the prospect for democratic opinion formation
MOFL’s success: cultivating affective solidarity and pursuing strategic actions
Differences in social powers: March for Our Lives versus Black Lives Matter
Collaboration across differences: practice surmounts theoretical problems
Striving for a leaderless movement: achievements and compromises
Strategic actions in the face of a history of defeats
The government’s response or lack thereof
Gun culture: another impediment to gun control
Institutional and cultural differences matter
5 President Trump’s response to the COVID pandemic: a ective ideology and authoritarian mismanagement
The turn to facts in a world of fear: a veneer of certainty
Eschewing scientific expertise and journalistic critique
Social Othering strategies: blaming the democrats, China, and WHO
Cultivating a divided and uninformed public: the effects of anti-science and anti-expert sentiments
Efforts to consolidate affective solidarity: “we are all in this together” #alonetogether
Trump’s populism: corporate freedom versus public well-being
Populist leadership: the allure of tough talk
Mishandling of COVID: the erosion of democratic procedures
Addendum
Thinking critically about the pandemic: why were we unprepared?
The promises and perils of the COVID catastrophe
6 The murder of George Floyd and the meteoric rise of Black Lives Matter: the success of an affectively rich event
Affective solidarity: the power of the event
The appearance of Black Lives Matter: a political movement in the digital age
Symbolic politics, celebrity support, performative activism – the process of emotional reorientation
Spontaneous affective events – dismantling statutes waiving public debate
Ambiguity of violence: triggering solidarity and undermining support
The counter-narratives of the alt-right: stoking up fear and loathing
Emotional reflexivity: the power of reason and good arguments
Transforming beliefs: raising awareness of systemic racism
Strategies and ideals of BLM – the complicated path toward instantiating democratic practices
Moving forward: a case for social democracy or billionaires’ charities?
Addendum
Conclusion
Index
Biography
Elaine Stavro is Professor Emerita of Political Theory in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University. She has written numerous articles on Simone de Beauvoir, most recently “Why Thoughtfulness Matters Black Lives Matter and Elsewhere,” forthcoming (2023), in Simone de Beauvoir: A Toolkit for the 21st Century and published Emancipatory Thinking: The Political Thought of Simone De Beauvoir (2018). Her research interest focuses on feminist thinking, continental philosophy, radical democratic theory, and the intersection of deliberation and affect, as reflected in “SARS and Alterity: The Toronto-China Binary” in Political Science (2014).
