Ali Aslam
Biographic Data
| ID | 4269260 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ali Aslam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ali |
| FAMILY NAME | Aslam |
| SIGNATURE | ASLAM A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mount Holyoke College |
| ORCID | 0009-0001-1498-9951 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Response to Critics
We are deeply gratified by the constructive and generous engagement with our book.We are especially moved to be in dialogue and company with this group of scholars, whose work has helped us develop and push our own thinking.In our response, we want to address some of the questions and provocations offered in the individual essays.To begin, our goal was to write a romance.By this, we mean that we chose the genre of romance to carry our argument fo…
To All the Earthborn(e)
On entanglementEBD: What we call "the mythless myth of modernity" denies the truth of entanglement; it is instead predicated on human dominance and mastery of the nonhuman world.This mythless myth of modernity is an accomplice to both capitalism and liberal democracy in the modern era; both appeal to scientific authority and progress to justify their hegemony and domination.Entanglement implies that "political" or "democratic" activity is not exc…
Introduction to Special Issue
What hopes exist and persist for democratic and ecological flourishing in these perilous times?This special issue of Democratic Theory gathers thinkers from diverse perspectives to engage themes related to ecological and democratic flourishing-themes that have become increasingly urgent as democratic attempts to address the climate crisis have faltered while democracy itself appears to approach extinction.In our 2024 book, Earthborn Democracy (EB…
Vital Cosmologies, Multiplying Abundance
There is a lot I like about this book.In particular, I like how it ties together many themes Connolly has written about over his career, especially the last two decades.These themes include pluralism, creed, climate, Christianity and its legacy, capitalism, bumpy time, systems theory/thinking, assemblages, and agonism.Stormy Weather feels cumulative and not just an update; it extends the concept of agonism that has animated Connolly's writing int…
Earthborn Democracy
Democracy and the Unconscious
This essay examines the relationship between democracy and the unconscious. It does so by understanding democracy through the repressed desire for shared power by a collective actor that has episodically realized itself, in ways that haunt political languages, practices, and aspirations. Democratic flourishing rests upon erotic practices through which the demos transgressively transforms politics by embracing what we refer to as democratic narcis…
Visionary political theory
Lauren Berlant’s legacy in contemporary political theory
The politics of repair
Restitution and the politics of repair
A Democratic Turn within Democratic Socialism? State-Centric and Anti-Statist Visions of Socialism and the Challenge of Democratic Mirroring
In this paper, we theorize the democratic aspect of democratic socialism through some of its recent, theoretical articulations and several of its historical, fugitive appearances. To illustrate a potential democratic turn, we highlight how these moments reflect a paradox of democratic spirit: the necessity of cultivating collective consciousness of popular power, while also acknowledging the limits of this power through a lingering attachment to …
Democratic Theory When Democracy Is Fugitive
Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. First, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a cle…
The Future of Bad Collectivity
This article argues for the value of “bad collectivity” to educate and encourage citizens estranged from democratic practices, traditions, and institutions, to participate in the process of democratic will-formation. Originating in Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04, bad collectivity refer to moments of collective identification with injury that briefly transcend a culture of individualism which identifies freedom in terms of legal rights, rather than asso…
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Salat-al-Juma
What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those…
The politics of repair
Democracy and the Unconscious
This essay examines the relationship between democracy and the unconscious. It does so by understanding democracy through the repressed desire for shared power by a collective actor that has episodically realized itself, in ways that haunt political languages, practices, and aspirations. Democratic flourishing rests upon erotic practices through which the demos transgressively transforms politics by embracing what we refer to as democratic narcis…
Lauren Berlant’s legacy in contemporary political theory
Democratic Theory When Democracy Is Fugitive
Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. First, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a cle…
The Future of Bad Collectivity
This article argues for the value of “bad collectivity” to educate and encourage citizens estranged from democratic practices, traditions, and institutions, to participate in the process of democratic will-formation. Originating in Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04, bad collectivity refer to moments of collective identification with injury that briefly transcend a culture of individualism which identifies freedom in terms of legal rights, rather than asso…
Salat-al-Juma
What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those…
The Future of Bad Collectivity
This article argues for the value of “bad collectivity” to educate and encourage citizens estranged from democratic practices, traditions, and institutions, to participate in the process of democratic will-formation. Originating in Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04, bad collectivity refer to moments of collective identification with injury that briefly transcend a culture of individualism which identifies freedom in terms of legal rights, rather than asso…
Books by Our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Salat-al-Juma
What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those…
Democratic Theory When Democracy Is Fugitive
Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. First, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a cle…
Restitution and the politics of repair
A Democratic Turn within Democratic Socialism? State-Centric and Anti-Statist Visions of Socialism and the Challenge of Democratic Mirroring
In this paper, we theorize the democratic aspect of democratic socialism through some of its recent, theoretical articulations and several of its historical, fugitive appearances. To illustrate a potential democratic turn, we highlight how these moments reflect a paradox of democratic spirit: the necessity of cultivating collective consciousness of popular power, while also acknowledging the limits of this power through a lingering attachment to …
Lauren Berlant’s legacy in contemporary political theory
The politics of repair
Earthborn Democracy
Democracy and the Unconscious
This essay examines the relationship between democracy and the unconscious. It does so by understanding democracy through the repressed desire for shared power by a collective actor that has episodically realized itself, in ways that haunt political languages, practices, and aspirations. Democratic flourishing rests upon erotic practices through which the demos transgressively transforms politics by embracing what we refer to as democratic narcis…
Visionary political theory
Vital Cosmologies, Multiplying Abundance
There is a lot I like about this book.In particular, I like how it ties together many themes Connolly has written about over his career, especially the last two decades.These themes include pluralism, creed, climate, Christianity and its legacy, capitalism, bumpy time, systems theory/thinking, assemblages, and agonism.Stormy Weather feels cumulative and not just an update; it extends the concept of agonism that has animated Connolly's writing int…
Response to Critics
We are deeply gratified by the constructive and generous engagement with our book.We are especially moved to be in dialogue and company with this group of scholars, whose work has helped us develop and push our own thinking.In our response, we want to address some of the questions and provocations offered in the individual essays.To begin, our goal was to write a romance.By this, we mean that we chose the genre of romance to carry our argument fo…
To All the Earthborn(e)
On entanglementEBD: What we call "the mythless myth of modernity" denies the truth of entanglement; it is instead predicated on human dominance and mastery of the nonhuman world.This mythless myth of modernity is an accomplice to both capitalism and liberal democracy in the modern era; both appeal to scientific authority and progress to justify their hegemony and domination.Entanglement implies that "political" or "democratic" activity is not exc…
Introduction to Special Issue
What hopes exist and persist for democratic and ecological flourishing in these perilous times?This special issue of Democratic Theory gathers thinkers from diverse perspectives to engage themes related to ecological and democratic flourishing-themes that have become increasingly urgent as democratic attempts to address the climate crisis have faltered while democracy itself appears to approach extinction.In our 2024 book, Earthborn Democracy (EB…
Politics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Democracy (8 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Political philosophy (5 works) · Critical theory (4 works)