Democracy unrealized : Documenta 11, Platform 1

Recently democracy has been the watchword for a range of disparate, yet apparently convergent contestations and negotiations within the global order. Democracy Unrealized, detailing the results of Platform1, the first of four conferences held in conjunction with Documenta 11, presents a context within which the interpretive and conceptual regimes surrounding democracy can be reargued against the claims of a neoliberal ideology. From this globalist viewpoint, democracy described as an unfinished project requires no structural changes, for it is complete in all its foundational features, requiring only small technical adjustments and minor tinkering. This is how the main Western democracies have seen themselves--at best as "incomplete implementations" of equality and justice, rather than as limited, flawed, dead-ended, and problematic. In response to this presumption, this book proceeds from the idea that realizing democracy is partly a matter of bringing to light what liberal democracy has promised but failed to deliver. The emphasis here is on the potential for revision, a reevaluation of values, and the extension and creative transformation necessary to keep in step with 21st-century globalizing processes. This is democracy as an ever open, essentially unfinishable project that in principle has fallen short of its ideals.