Inequality, Loneliness and Political Appearance: Picturing Radical Democracy with Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière

Abstract

Radical democrats highlight dramatic moments of political action that disrupt everyday habits of perception, which sustain unequal social relations. In doing so, however, we sometimes neglect how social conditions, such as precarious employment, social dislocation and everyday exposure to violence, might undermine political agency or be contested in uneventful ways. Despite their differences, two thinkers who have significantly influenced radical democratic theory (Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière) have been similarly criticised for contributing to such a socially weightless picture of politics. However, attending to how they are preoccupied by the social conditions of inequality and loneliness enables us to recognize two distinct aspects of democratic politics: emancipation and civility. Cultivating an interpretive flexibility to shift between these aspects of politics might enable radical democrats to more clearly picture how struggles for appearances are limited and shaped by the social conditions within which they are enacted.