Democracy and Defiance: Rancière, Lefort, Abensour and the Antinomies of Politics

This book explores an often neglected current in contemporary French political thought that challenges the limits of the concept of democracy. It situates the projects of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour in relation to each other, as well as to the larger philosophical question of the nature of democracy itself. In doing so, Bryan Nelson illuminates democracy’s potential as a profound emancipatory and transformative project, offering an unprecedented challenge to modes of domination, strategies of inequality and hierarchies of all kinds.

Against prevailing interpretations, the author draws on the central concepts, problems and polemics in the works of Rancière, Lefort and Abensour to develop a bold conception of democracy that allows us to rethink its character, power and broader social and political implications.

Bryan Nelson is a Liberal Arts & Sciences Professor at Humber College, Toronto, Canada.