Toward a Democratic Groove

Cultivating Affective Dynamics in Institutional Transformation

Bibliographic Data

ID3773997
AuthorsRomand Coles (Patanga, 1033 Darkwood Road, Thora, NSW 2454, Australia), Lia Haro (Patanga, 1033 Darkwood Road, Thora, NSW 2454, Australia)
Year2019
Volume24
Issue4
Pages103-119
Publication date2019-07-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAngelaki (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0969725x.2019.1635831
OpenAlexW2958810836
LanguageEN
References cited16

Theorists of affect and radical democracy have largely overlooked the importance of intentionally cultivating affective dynamics in the process of changing institutions. We address that lack by introducing the concept of musical groove as an intercorporeal feel for improvisational co-creation. Groove in a political context involves specific practices of modulating dynamics, receptivity, and affects in relationship to specific contexts, people, and practices to powerful effect. We explore how early democratic movements during the American Revolution sought to craft institutional forms capacious enough for such democratic groove despite the fact that key intellectual leaders of the time, such as the Federalists and Benjamin Rush, feared the power of intercorporeal affective flows of democratic enthusiasm and popular improvisation. We read Rush’s critique and his efforts to diminish and control these emergences by harmonizing them in the order as a “negative image” of a radical democratic alternative that would foster improvisation and build enthusiasm for catalysing change today. We discuss how improvisation can, as Pierre Bourdieu perceived, simply function to reproduce the limits of a given socio-political game, which is deeply embedded within us as a “feel for the game” or set of affective dispositions. However, we turn Bourdieu’s own critique against itself to find openings for a habitus of political groove and democratic improvisation that he considered foreclosed. We conclude by fleshing out these insights in relation to affective dynamics among political organizing practices and modest institutional changes during a period of rich local transformation in which we participated in Durham, North Carolina

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Democracy · Enthusiasm · Habitus · Improvisation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics · History · Law · Social Psychology

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