Overview

Violence and tragedy riddle democracy - not due to fatal shortcomings or unnecessary failures, but because of its very design and success. To articulate this troubling claim, Steven Johnston explores the cruelty of democratic founding, the brutal use democracies make of citizens and animals during wartime, the ambiguous consequences of legislative action expressive of majority rule, and militant practices of citizenship required to deal with democracy's enemies. Democracy must take responsibility for its success: to rule in denial of violence merely replicates it. Johnston thus calls for the development of a tragic democratic politics and proposes institutional and civic responses to democracy's reign, including the reinvention of tragic festivals and holidays, a new breed of public memorials, and mandatory congressional reparations sessions. Theorizing the violent puzzle of democracy, Johnston addresses classic and contemporary political theory, films, little known monuments, the subversive music of Bruce Springsteen, and the potential of democratic violence by the people themselves.

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9781107100602

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Reviews

Advance praise: 'What if violence is not just essential to democracy's founding but also constitutive of its practice? How, then, might violence be embraced - rather than disavowed - to sustain and reclaim the democratic? In a remarkable work of stunning insights and surprising juxtapositions, Steven Johnston pursues these questions with tenacity, wit, and eloquence. American Dionysia further establishes Johnston as one of the most innovative and original voices in contemporary political theory. This is an extraordinary book.' Simon Stow, College of William and Mary, Virginia Advance praise: 'Johnston's book proves a critical correction to contemporary scholarship of democracy. His recognition of tragedy's centrality to democratic practice undermines the usual uncritical celebration of voting, groupthink, and individualist freedom in most theories of democratic practice. Instead, Johnston shows that democracy rests on a pedestal of warfare, sacrifice, and ineliminable bloodshed. Johnston's exemplary cases, from philosophers to national mythologies to films, make it impossible to separate commitment to democracy from death-dealing and violence.' Kennan Ferguson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Advance praise: 'American Dionysia confronts a problem that has been crying out for honest consideration: the inescapable role of violence in democratic politics. Inspired by the Athenian Dionysia, Steven Johnston offers a careful, yet exciting and unsettling, account of the ways we can learn from film, song, monuments, and political rituals to live more democratically by thinking more tragically. This book reveals, at its heart, the enjoyable practice of politics when freed from the sacrificial demands of political resentment.' Char Miller, George Mason University, Virginia

Author Information

Steven Johnston is the Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah. He is the author of The Truth about Patriotism (2007) and Encountering Tragedy: Rousseau and the Project of Democratic Order (1999). He has published articles in Theory and Event, Contemporary Political Theory, Strategies, Political Research Quarterly, and Polity. In 2013 he founded the Neal A. Maxwell Lecture Series in Political Theory and Contemporary Politics. He is a regular contributor to the academic theory and politics blog, The Contemporary Condition.

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