Vortrag / Lecture Democracy, Visibility and Resistance

Termin:

6. Februar 2013, 16:15 Uhr, Gerhard-Mercator-Haus

Veranstalter:

Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research
 
The contestations of the formal public sphere of politics and international relations were highly visible; requiring states, governments, political parties, ideologies and policy programmes. Today contestation seem less visible: power appears to be more widely distributed or circulating through assemblages; politics is understood to be more subterranean, taking place beneath the public surface; and agency is seen to be increasingly 'asymetric', 'hidden' or 'localised'. Rather than separating the visible 'public' sphere from the less visible 'private' one, this division is effaced in the politics of 'everyday life'. It seems that it is in the biopolitical sphere of the lifeworld that both democracy and resistance now acquire their meaning. This lecture seeks to reflect on this shift and to problematise the assumptions underpinning it.