Reassuring Democracy

Or perhaps capitalism, modern democracy’s nonidentical birth twin and always the more robust and wily of the two, has finally reduced democracy to a “brand,” a late modern twist on commodity fetishism that wholly severs a product’s salable image from its content.
— Wendy Brown

The idea of democracy is reassuring. It evokes a sense of justice and helps give the impression that citizens are an integral part of power, that their voices are heard, and that their rights and freedoms are represented. Reality, however, shows us that far from belonging to the people, power rests in the hands of a few CEOs and owners of corporations. In Democracy in What State?, a multi-authored collection of essays published in 2011, Wendy Brown reminds us that “if corporate power has long abraded the promise and practices of popular political rule, that process has now reached an unprecedented pitch.”¹ 1 - Wendy Brown, “We Are All Democrats Now…” in Democracy in What State?, Giorgio Agamben et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 46. Five years later, the American presidential election and the methods of the new government have amplified this reality even further.