Presentist democracy

the now-time of struggles

Isabell Lorey

pp. 149-163

in: Andreas Oberprantacher, Andrei Siclodi (eds), Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

The democracy movements of the occupations of public spaces since 2011, being critical of representation and identity, have invented and continue to invent a new form of democracy, for which Lorey proposes the term "presentist". Presentist democracy does not mean simply the negation or the other side of political representation. "Presentist" does not stand in a dichotomous relation to re-presentation; it emerges rather through a rupture with dualisms between refusal and engagement or consensus and conflict, by a break with identitarian confrontations between "us' and "them". In the midst of the presentist, the exodus opens up a breach for constituent processes that is directed to the emergence of new political subjectivations.