Shooting Yourself First in the Foot, then in the Head: Normative Democracy Is Suffocating, and then the Coronavirus Came
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Shooting Yourself First in the Foot, then in the Head: Normative Democracy Is Suffocating, and then the Coronavirus Came to Light Paul R. Carr 1 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This text starts with the premise that ‘normative democracy’ has rendered our societies vulnerable and burdened with unaddressed social inequalities. I highlight three central arguments: (1) Social media, and, consequently, citizen engagement are becoming a significant filter that can potentially re-imagine the political, economic, and social worlds, which increasingly bleed over to how we might develop and engage with ‘democracy’; to this end, I introduce a brief case study on the nefarious interpretation of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 to underscore the tension points in normative democracy; (2) Capitalism, or neoliberalism, needs to be more fully exposed, interrogated, and confronted if ‘normative, representative, hegemonic, electoral democracy’ is to be re-considered, re-imagined, and re-invented; the perpetuation of social inequalities lays bare the frailty of normative democratic institutions; (3) Covid-19 has exposed the fault lines and fissures of normative democracy, illustrating here the ‘common sense’ ways that power imbalances are sustained, which leaves little room for social solidarity; I present herein the case of the economic/labor dynamic in Quebec during the coronavirus. Ultimately, I believe the quest to re-imagine a more meaningful, critically engaged democracy, especially during a context that is imbued with a political, economic, and public health crisis, cannot be delayed much longer. Keywords Normative democracy . Coronavirus . Covid-19 . Hegemony . Social media .
Social inequalities . Citizen engagement . Neoliberalism . Québec
* Paul R. Carr [email protected]
1
Département des sciences de l’éducation & Chair-holder, UNESCO Chair in Democracy, Global Citizenship and Transformative Education (DCMÉT), Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), Gatineau, Québec, Canada
Postdigital Science and Education
Introduction We are taught to believe that we live in a democracy, that we have freedom, free speech and all sorts of rights and liberties, and that we are in control of our destiny. It is helpful to deconstruct every contour, nuance, concept, and meaning of democracy. To start, the ‘democracy’ I am referring to above is the larger-than-life, win-at-all-costs, ‘normative, representative, hegemonic, electoral democracy’, the one with the, generally speaking, two main political parties, highly controlled elections, representatives who, in some way, (supposedly) represent constituents, the common legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions that are supposed to be neutral and devoid of political influence, and the other trappings that give the sense that one would have to be literally insane to not endorse such a regime (Carr and Thésée 2019). Some might argue that we have no alternative, that we have no way out, and that this system that we have been led to believe is so fundamentally es
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