Averzivní demokracie

Events which have occurred in the past decades since the fall of the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe, including the color revolutions, the Arab Spring and the current crisis of democracy in established liberal democracies, have revived an interest in democratic theory and practice and in new forms of participation. In Aversive Democracy, Aletta J. Norval focuses on the interplay between the legacy of democratic tradition and its innovation, and offers a new concept of the origin and rise of democratic demands, relations between citizens, democratic subjectivity and imagination. While searching for answers, he turns to Ludwig Wittgenstein and criticizes the dominating trends in contemporary democratic theory represented by deliberative and poststructuralist radical democracy. Czech readers may find this book particularly interesting as it, being based on experiences with apartheid in South Africa, offers a different perspective of coping with an authoritarian past.