Against Progress: Democratic Enactments and Embracing a Precarious Future
Against Progress: Democratic Enactments and Embracing a Precarious Future
How can we reimagine a future that escapes dichotomies of progress and regress? What does such a radically reimagined future look like? This paper develops an answer in two parts by arguing for a vision of the future as unstable, calling for modes of response that are distinctly democratic. It sets out an imaginary of the future as inescapably precarious; composed of multiple actants in constant relations of collusion and conflict that escape human ordering or control; a future that we, as humans, must embrace precisely as precarious. Such an affirmation calls for a cultivated democratic sensibility. Following post-foundational perspectives, I identify democracy as constituted by contingency and plurality. This is not simply in terms of an openness to plurality, but a cultivated receptivity to modes of activity that operate below and beyond conscious human willing. An ethos that expresses affirming sensitivity to the uncertainties of a precarious future.
91-104
Gandhi, Tanay
48e43fe7-f906-4f1b-b790-57c203cfb3ab
25 July 2023
Gandhi, Tanay
48e43fe7-f906-4f1b-b790-57c203cfb3ab
Gandhi, Tanay
(2023)
Against Progress: Democratic Enactments and Embracing a Precarious Future.
Polylog: Zeitschrift für Interkulterelles Philosophieren, 49, .
Abstract
How can we reimagine a future that escapes dichotomies of progress and regress? What does such a radically reimagined future look like? This paper develops an answer in two parts by arguing for a vision of the future as unstable, calling for modes of response that are distinctly democratic. It sets out an imaginary of the future as inescapably precarious; composed of multiple actants in constant relations of collusion and conflict that escape human ordering or control; a future that we, as humans, must embrace precisely as precarious. Such an affirmation calls for a cultivated democratic sensibility. Following post-foundational perspectives, I identify democracy as constituted by contingency and plurality. This is not simply in terms of an openness to plurality, but a cultivated receptivity to modes of activity that operate below and beyond conscious human willing. An ethos that expresses affirming sensitivity to the uncertainties of a precarious future.
Text
Gandhi Against Progress_Democratic Enactments and Embracing a Precarious Future_revised_md
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 16 October 2021
Published date: 25 July 2023
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For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 478796
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/478796
ISSN: 1560-6325
PURE UUID: 9af73486-540e-4a1a-a996-211665eed1f9
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Date deposited: 10 Jul 2023 16:47
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:08
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