Both radical occupiers and police legitimacy invoke democracy’s open form
Evidence
The term does not specify the arrangements, agreements, or institutions by which popular rule could or should be fulfilled. It does not say whether the people will delegate their authority or exercise it directly, whether they will be superordinate (sovereign) or subordinate (subject) to extant laws, whether they will actively assert their sovereignty in formulating and executing a common good or subscribe only to minimalist agreements for living in proximity with each other. Hence, on the one hand, Occupy participants shout “This is what democracy looks like!” when they seize private property (or privatized public space) for the commons, when they deliberate for hours in general assemblies, and when they refuse to produce accountable leaders, representatives, or even make demands. On the other hand, mayors, university administrators, and police invoke democratic law and principle when they evict or arrest the occupiers. There is a deep argument here about what democracy entails—not mere hypocrisy, dissimulation, or instrumentalization of the term. However, a long historical shadow and a contemporary struggle are also in play: Is democracy destined always to be captured and co-opted by the socially dominant? Will the demos always be contained, divided, or subdued in the name of its own political form? — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 402
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s democratic theory background — the undecidability of democracy’s content echoes Laclau/Mouffe on empty signifiers and Rancière’s disagreement. — connects to: Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy