The Burden of Democracy: The Claims of Cultures, Public Culture, and Democratic Memory

by Genevieve Souillac

Overview

This book offers an original contribution to the debate on contemporary democratic ethics. It argues that public culture provides the mediating spaces required for processes of encounter, but should be supplemented with an open dialog on history, memory, and identity. Since democratic modernity is consolidating its new phase characterized by the multiplicity of perspectives, the mediation of conflict, identity, and memory are required to continue fostering mutual understanding and the identification of issues of common concern. The historical emergence of a public culture is a democratic gain. Recognizing this offers opportunities for ethical transformation that respects diversity but also addresses the realities of conflict under conditions of post modernity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739126295
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/09/2011
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Geneviève Souillac is senior associate professor of philosophy and peace studies at the International Christian University of Japan.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Justice

Chapter 1: The Burden of Difference: Pluralist Justice and the Public Sphere

Chapter 2: Moral Conversations and Democratic Hermeneutics

Chapter 3: Particularism versus Universalism: A False Debate?

Part II: Memory

Chapter 4: Secularism, Culture, and Critique

Chapter 5: Laicité and the Memory of Public Culture

Chapter 6: The Ties that Bind: Public Culture and the Debt to the Past

Part III: Encounter

Chapter 7: Normative Solidarity and Public Hermeneutics

Chapter 8: From Intersubjectivity to Encounter

Chapter 9: Exit of Religion, Debt of Meaning

Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book is important because it weaves together both Anglophone and Continental thinking in political philosophy. Examining the role of historical memory in the debate on democratic ethics not only constitutes an original theoretical contribution—ultimately, it can further support the democratic pluralism the book defends.—Marcel Gauchet, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

This is a very important book. It gives us a comprehensive conceptual framework for the creation of the inclusive spaces for public deliberation and mediation necessary in order for "post-colonial," "post-national" and "post-totalitarian" democracies to function. Such spaces are ones in which we can all be ourselves together, not only as individual persons, but also as members of our various communities of belonging. It is only in such inclusive spaces that, together, we can create a common future we can all enter together as full human beings.—Jacqueline Wasilewski, former professor at International Christian University, Tokyo

Editorial Reviews

Text without context is pretext! In Burden of Democracy, Souillac powerfully reveals how the public sphere contextualizes and contains the politics of difference, pluralism and democratic justice as individuals and groups search for meaning and identity in a globalized world.

Kevin P. Clements

The volume is wide-ranging, thorough, and penetrating in the author’s elucidation of the 'burden of democracy' today. This is a stimulating work of original and reliable scholarship that sheds light on the current democracy of France as well as on the current tasks of democratic theorizing.

Shin Chiba

This is a very important book. It gives us a comprehensive conceptual framework for the creation of the inclusive spaces for public deliberation and mediation necessary in order for 'post-colonial,' 'post-national' and 'post-totalitarian' democracies to function. Such spaces are ones in which we can all be ourselves together, not only as individual persons, but also as members of our various communities of belonging. It is only in such inclusive spaces that, together, we can create a common future we can all enter together as full human beings.

Jacqueline Wasilewski

This book is important because it weaves together both Anglophone and Continental thinking in political philosophy. Examining the role of historical memory in the debate on democratic ethics not only constitutes an original theoretical contribution—ultimately, it can further support the democratic pluralism the book defends.

Marcel Gauchet