The hatred of democracy revisited

In his Hatred of Democracy Jacques Rancière defines democracy as a way to have power over two ‘excesses’. On the one hand there is the excess of public participation in democratic life. On the other hand there is the excess of individualistic consumerism. Rancière points out that both are currently identified as ‘not done’ and need to be ‘controlled’. By drawing upon Rancière’s characterization of democracy, this article will lay out the conditions under which ‘control’ has emerged as the democratic principle par excellence and explore how exactly this principle limits what it means to be a citizen. The question that will be put forward is how, within a globalized world where participation in democratic life is limited and individualistic consumerism is not attainable for all, this principle can be validated. It will be argued that, while from the perspective of ‘participation’ in democratic life, this principle might have value; from the perspective of ‘contributions to society’ it has not. Given the fact that these perspectives are both ‘there’, the challenge that will be taken up in this article is to explore how exactly these two perspectives can be made intelligible. The aim is not to come to a reconciliation of two distinct perspectives, i.e. to describe what they are and offer a ‘third’ possibility, but to explore the conditions of possibility of their materialization and/or dematerialization. In order to render these conditions comprehensible - and maybe even implementable in the democratic field - it will be argued that a ‘new’ metaphysical perspective is needed to lay them bare without them being absorbed into a ‘control’ discourse. The point of departure - and arrival - of this article is to make visible and communicable those contributions that emerge in the field of social interactions of have-not people such as undocumented migrants