Bryan Nelson, Democracy and Defiance: Rancière, Lefort, Abensour and the Antinomies of Politics – Edinburgh University Press, April 2024

Puts forward a bold, polemical interpretation of democracy as an emancipatory political project through the work of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour

• For the first time in a single volume, this book carefully assembles, introduces and critically evaluates some of the most important strains of the political thought of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour specifically tailored for the English reader and student of social and political theory
• Through a series of detailed exegetical studies of important primary sources, this book cultivates a bold, polemical interpretation of democracy as an emancipatory political project irreducible to a form of government, collection of institutions or State-form
• Situating its analysis in the context of the history of political philosophy and integrating a breadth of recent scholarship, this book contributes to a range of fiercely debated topics in the current academic literature on democracy and political theory (including domination and emancipation; democratisation and social transformation; anarchy, indeterminacy and social contingency; the identity of the demos or political subject; the nature and function of political philosophy; the symbolic constitution of society; rule, government and governmentality; the State and its forms; the continuity between ancient and modern democracy)

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.