S08E03: Dilip Gaonkar on the “Degen­er­a­tions of Democracy” 

This episode explores con­tem­po­rary fears about the decline of democ­ra­cy. Is the cur­rent down­ward spi­ral actu­al­ly part of a rhyth­mic oscil­la­tion of democ­ra­cy? And giv­en its cen­tral­i­ty to mod­ern polit­i­cal life, can democ­ra­cy real­ly be erad­i­cat­ed? Lis­ten to hear about how the chang­ing forms of the demo­c­ra­t­ic project must be under­stood with ref­er­ence to his­tor­i­cal dynam­ics and log­ics of capitalism.

Guest fea­tured in this episode:

Dilip Gaonkar is a Pro­fes­sor of Rhetoric and Pub­lic Cul­ture at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Chica­go, where he directs the Cen­ter for Glob­al Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
His main fields of inter­est are the intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tions of rhetoric and the polit­i­cal impact of glob­al moder­ni­ties. Dilip has edit­ed sev­er­al books on glob­al cul­tur­al pol­i­tics, such as Glob­al­iz­ing Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Alter­na­tive Moder­ni­ties, and Dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty and Dis­sent in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies. And he has co-edit­ed sev­er­al impor­tant spe­cial issues for jour­nals, includ­ing on Laclau’s Pop­ulist Rea­son, one on Cul­tures of Democ­ra­cy for Pub­lic Cul­ture in 2007 and Tech­nolo­gies of Pub­lic Per­sua­sion with Eliz­a­beth Pavinel­li in 2003. In 2022, Dilip co-authored thevol­ume, Degen­er­a­tions of Democ­ra­cy, with Charles Tay­lor and Craig Calhoun,