Arendt’s Disappointments and Our New Beginnings: Citizenship and Democracy Reimagined

Description

Explores the legacies of Hannah Arendt's redefinition of political practice and recommendation of alternative public realms

• Explains what we can learn about Arendt’s early, recurring and increasing disenchantment with conventional politics and statists’ manipulation of constituents
• Introduces what we can learn from Arendt to correct for the so-called decline of democratic practice due to vulgar populism and the so-called ‘seductive lure of authoritarianism’
• Places Arendt in the context of various efforts to locate (and create) alternative public realms where interlocutors might contribute to the reimagination of democracy

Hannah Arendt’s recurring disenchantment with conventional political discourses, protocols and practices led her to redefine politics and recommend alternative public realms. Her repeated emphases on freedom, plurality (or pluralism), critique, agonistic exchanges, natality (or new beginnings), equality and the virtuosity of citizen-statesmen, contribute to a reimagination of democracy that bears on current crises facing political progressives. Arendt was ambiguous, at times, yet invariably discerning, prescient and radical. Her adaptation of the pariah’s perspective allowed her to proffer telling analyses of her times and, strangely, of ours.