some thoughts toward a paper on cosmopolitan democracy
grounding cosmopolitan democracy in rights perpetuates a paucity of democracy.
democracy, in any rich sense, any sense beyond mere proceduralism and constructing the populace as machines of the world requires a significant understanding of political enculturation, the creation of the political subject.
it is the acts that construct the culture in which democracy is found, not in any simplicism of rights and protectionism
rights are negative freedoms, they are freedom from others, they are as such antagonistic toward democratic cultures, where it is precisely the others that reconstruct the self in its image, the public and private understandings merge into one and in that one you have a possibility for democracy, a progress, a rousseauean general will of the people not unlike….
democracies are built on positive freedoms, the freedom to do, the freedom to talk, think, move, etc. rights don't preserve that, because culture can squelch them, instead, what one needs is visible actions that promote the positive freedoms of democracy and with that you have a chance for cosmopolitan democracy.
the rubric of this paper is built upon a different sense of cosmopolitan democracy, a democracy of actions, of movement, of transversal communications.
granted, both rights and a progressive democracy can operate in conjunction. however, rights without constructing their active space that territorializes that which is not populated in the negative relations of rights cannot yield a progressive democracy, just a negative space of have nots and do nots.
