Democracy as Fetish
eBook - PDF

Democracy as Fetish

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Democracy as Fetish

About this book

Democracy has long been fetishized. Consequently, how we speak about democracy and what we expect from democratic governance are at odds with practice. With unflinching resolve, this book probes the theory of democracy and how the left and right are fascinated by it.

In this innovative multidisciplinary study, Ralph Cintron provides sustained analysis of our political discourse. He shows not only how the rhetoric of democracy produces strong desires for social order, global wealth, and justice but also how these desires cannot be satisfied. Throughout his discussion, Cintron includes ethnographic research from fieldwork conducted over the course of twenty years in the Latino neighborhoods of Chicago, where he observes both citizens and the undocumented looking to democracy to fulfill their highest aspirations. Politicians hand out favors to the elite, developers strong-arm aldermen, and the disenfranchised have little redress. The problem, Cintron argues, is that the conditions required to put democracy into practice—territory, a bordered nation-state, citizens, property—are constituted by inequality and violence, because there is no inclusivity that does not also exclude.

Drawing on ethnography, economics, political theory, and rhetorical analysis, Cintron makes his case with tremendous analytic rigor. This challenge to reassess the discourses on democracy and to consider democratic politics as always compromised by oligarchy will be of particular interest to political and rhetorical theorists.

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Yes, you can access Democracy as Fetish by Ralph Cintron in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Rhetoric. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. COVER Front
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Chapter1: Putting a Text into Motion
  5. Notes to Chapter 1
  6. Chapter2: Democracy Is
  7. Notes to Chapter 2
  8. Chapter3: The Undocumented Among Us
  9. Notes to Chapter 3
  10. Chapter4: Property and Its Entanglements
  11. Notes to Chapter 4
  12. Chapter5: Closings /Openings
  13. Notes to Chapter 5
  14. Notes
  15. Index