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Democracy, Tension and the Constitutive Split of the People
Previously in The Transdisciplinary Vanguard, I introduced the revolutionary agenda of transdisciplinarity and cautioned against its cooptation by revisionist forces. I argued that all problems are wicked, and that revolutionary transdisciplinarity is uniquely positioned to grapple with this because it is an inherently collective and relational practice. In fact, I would argue that real transdisciplinarity is inherently democratic. To understand why it is necessary to explain the importance of friction.
According to Swyngedouw (2011, p. 270), the “constitutive split of the people […] calls the proper democratic political into being”. More simply put, democracy is based on the friction produced by difference. Klenk and Meehan (2017) emphasise the importance of tension in transdisciplinary practices. Holding that friction is an essential part of these practices and arguing that trying to resolve these tensions through fixed typologies and procedures (i.e. through formalisation) is futile. Instead, they encourage us to embrace the productive nature of friction, to strive for contentious engagement instead of artificial and depoliticising consensus (Swyngedouw, 2011; Klenk and Meehan, 2017). And what better way to internalise this friction than to empower the people to control the epistemological apparatus?
So what is the reactionary countermove to this? Part of the counteroffensive is its construction of the stakeholder. A subject (a purposely broad category) that “affects or can be affected” by a particular phenomenon (Hörisch et al., 2014, p. 329). This terms stems from and is set up as the antithesis of the shareholder: a subject that affects a particular phenomenon financially. They really aren’t all that different though. While the stakeholder concept is definitely an improvement considering it broadens the scope of consideration to non-financial factors, it still conceptualises the subjects using an economistic framework. The subjects are ultimately still defined in terms of their interests (i.e. their stakes), and they are usually conceived of within the boundaries of the market. For example, Horisch et al. (2014, p. 341) allude to “a system of cooperation among [subjects] around important values” as the basis of social progress, but attribute this to capitalism rather than recognising that this is just a description of civil society. This tragically emboldens capitalist realism, as it limits the conceivable courses of action to market solutions (as is reflected in the article’s problematic endorsement of carbon markets).