The Dissensual Logic of Deliberative Democracy

Deeply influenced by Habermasian model of ideal speech situation, theorists of deliberative democracy have been trying to build up theoretical models that can represent an ideal speech situation. Its empirical test also follows this tendency in assessing the quality of deliberation and its distance from theoretical model. However, the overemphasis on consensus and its purity in deliberation may tame the irreducible element of dissensus in political community and turn consensus deliberation into an exclusive and static form of democracy. Drawing from Jacques Rancière’s ideas of politics as interruption, “the part of those who have no part”, and the redistribution of the sensible, I try to displace deliberative democracy with a dissensual logic which gives priority to participation and is based on deliberative moments when new forms of participation are created due to a redistribution of how the order of political community is perceived.