Democratic Piety : : Complexity, Conflict and Violence / / Adrian Little.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2013-2000
• VerfasserIn: Little, Adrian,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Taking on the Political : TAPO
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.)

This book presents an innovative analysis of the nature of democratic theory, focusing on the prevalence of pious discourses of democracy in contemporary politics. Democracy is now promoted in religious terms to such an extent that it has become sacrosanct in Western political theory. This book argues that such piety relies on unsophisticated political analysis paying scant attention to the complex conditions of contemporary politics. The contention is that it is more useful to think of democracy in terms of the centrality of political disagreement and its propensity to generate political violence. This argument is exemplified by the ways in which democracy and violence have been conceptualised in the war on terrorism.Key FeaturesChallenges democratic piety through the application of key contemporary approaches in political theory: complexity theory, post-structuralism and the idea of radical democracyUses the work of theorists such as Jacques Rancière, William Connolly, Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Alain Badiou to interrogate the discourses of democracy which characterise contemporary political debateGrounds the theoretical analysis of democratic discourse with examples from contemporary politics including the war on terror and the struggles for recognition of refugees and asylum seekers

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Pious Discourses of Democracy -- 1 Complexity Theory and Democratic Politics -- 2 Complexity, Democratisation and Conflict -- 3 Democracy, Consensus and Dissent -- 4 Democracy and Violence -- 5 Terrorism, Violence and the Ethics of Democracy -- Conclusion: The Constitutive Failure of Democracy -- Bibliography -- Index