Reconceptualizing Emancipation(s) from the Bottom Up!

Abstract

Democracy is usually understood as a community of self-governing, "autonomous" individuals or groups. Yet particularly for critical theorists, this ideal of self-governance is deeply intertwined with assumptions about emancipatory processes. While some theorists hold that only "emancipated" individuals or communities can truly govern themselves, others conceive of emancipation as the goal that should be achieved through democratic, inclusive politics. In the first step, it is suggested that theorists of democracy take a step back from these debates to scrutinize existing understandings and to reconceptualize "emancipation". From this position, one can then argue that established democratic theories usually provide us only with a vague – and potentially biased – understanding of emancipatory processes. Taking stock of existing theoretical notions, one can argue that decolonial, feminist and intersectional perspectives challenge us to develop a more in-depth understanding of the interrelationship between personal and political emancipation. If we agree on this premise, then then it stands to reason that this whole enterprise requires a "methodological turn": normative theorizing should ground understandings of personal and political emancipation in peoples’ lived experiences, their perspectives, and beliefs. These methodological rationales are based on grounded normative theory approaches. They also underly ongoing work and pilot studies that Dannica Fleuss has conduct(ed) through focus groups and semi-structured interviews with political activists, civil society representatives and "lay citizens".

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