Benhabib on democratic iterations

1. SeylaBenhabib(born 1950) is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University, and director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. Benhabib is well known for combining critical theory with feminist theory. Publications: Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (Columbia University Press, 1986) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (Routledge, 1992) (ed.) Democracy and Difference (Princeton University Press, 1996) The Claims of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2002) The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) The Rights of Others (Cambridge University Press, 2004) Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press, 2006) (ed.) Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt, (2010) Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times (Polity Press, 2011)

2. Benhabib on democratic iterations • “I argue that a cosmopolitan theory of justice • cannot be restricted to schemes of just distribution on a global scale, • but must also incorporate a vision of just membership. • Such just membership entails: • recognizing the moral claims of refugees and asylees to first admittance; • a regime of porous borders for immigrants; • an injunction against denationalization and the loss of citizenship rights; • and the vindication of the right of every human person ‘to have rights,’ that is, to be a legal person, entitled to certain inalienable rights, regardless of the status of their political membership” • The Rights of Others,p. 3 (separators added)

3. Benhabib on democratic iterations • “I develop the concept of ‘democratic iterations’ show how commitments to • context-transcending constitutional and international norms • can be mediated with • the will of democratic majorities • Democratic iterations are complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and learning through which universalist right claims are contested and contextualized, invoked and revoked, throughout legal and political institutions as well as in the public sphere of liberal democracies” • The Rights of Others,p. 19 (separators added)

4. Benhabib on democratic iterations • iterability, iteration: generally: to repeat an expression • Derrida, Butler, Benhabib • on speech acts: - all speech acts are simultaneously contextual and contain the inherent capacity of any expression to rise above the context (corollary: there are no pre-given and unquestionably ‘normal’ contexts for utterances): - contextuality (meaning depend on context) and - iterability (infinite possibility of repetition, independently of context) - “Hello again! It is time to start the lecture.” - ”I hereby invoke UNDR Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

5. Benhabib on democratic iterations • iterability, iteration: generally: to repeat an expression • Derrida, Butler, Benhabib • performativity - the performance of a certain act (iterability) in a new context - such a performance may change the meaning of the act through its mode of breaking with the normal context for example: person A, not the lecturer says: - “Hello again! It is time to start the lecture.” a 12-year old, a foreigner or a non-citizen raises his/her voice in a local, political debate: - ”I hereby invoke UNDR Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

6. Benhabib on democratic iterations • a performative process (KK’s interpretation) - a mode of action - discursive: communication with others - contextual sensitivity: aims to understand its act through an understanding of the background context (what will it mean to do this here and now) - situational sensitivity: aims to understand what actually can and should be done given this situation) - aims to make a difference and induce change by means of breaking with certain boundary norms of the discourse in question - in a playful?, risky? manner - membership vs. outsider - right to speak (participation) vs. no right to speak - generally accepted moral norm vs. contextual limitations of that norm - the right to have a right (morally) vs. to have a right (legally) - aiming not to: remove all borderlines - but to: question their rigidity, create flexibility and make room for adjustments

7. Benhabib on the paradoxes of democratic legitimacy democracy vs. liberalism (external paradox) - rights of the individual, human rights (≈ a right not to be dominated, not even by democratic rule) vs. - democracy as popular sovereignty (≈ rule of the people/majority, not of the individual) “The tension between universal rights claim and particularistic cultural and national identities is constitutive of democratic legitimacy” (Another Cosmopolitanism 2006, p. 32) - also expressed by Mouffe in her critique of liberalism and deliberative democracy paradox of the people (internal paradox) - “democracies cannot choose the boundaries of their own membership democratically” (Another Cosmopolitanism 2006, p. 35) - a claim often attributed to Derrida