Although democracy has always been hated, the anti-democratic sentiments
of today, warns Rancière, have taken a worrying turn. It is a worrying
turn because alongside the discourse which deplores democracy for its
limitlessness, for the atomism and unfettered consumerism of democratic
society, there is another discourse which suggests that democracy is
only good when spread abroad to defend the values of civilisation. For
most of his book Rancière persuasively challenges this latest expression
of anti-democratic sentiment, and he confidently argues that behind
this new hatred of democracy are entrenched forms of domination,
oligarchies of power and wealth, which no longer tolerate limitations to
the growth of their authority. These oligarchies, he stresses, have
inverted democracy as a term. By reducing it to mass individualist
society, they charge democracy with social homogenisation - much like
totalitarianism - and with collapsing government into the limitless
demands of society. Rancière is not disillusioned about present-day
democracy, to be sure, and yet for him democracy denotes something
different. As the very principle of politics, democracy steers towards a
redistribution of lots and an overthrowing of places in society. For
Rancière it involves a struggle, a movement to displace limits, and he
concludes that in resisting this movement present-day anti-democrats are
erasing politics.
