Democracy and the Unconscious

Bibliographic Data

ID6356004
AuthorsAli Aslam (0009-0001-1498-9951, Mount Holyoke College), David W Mcivor (0000-0002-2309-4762, Colorado State University), David Mcivor, Joel Schlosser, Joel Alden Schlosser (0000-0002-9897-3550, Bryn Mawr College)
Year2024
Volume56
Issue1
Pages40-64
Publication date2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3497 • E-ISSN: 1744-1684
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/727908
OpenAlexW4388653432
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

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 narcissism. Democratic decline and impasse are symptomatic of repressed desires for power that have required the people’s abjection rather than coalescing into a self-affirming narcissism of the demos

Democracy · Flourishing · Narcissism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Political theory and Gramsci · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Social Psychology

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