| Abstract | In liberal Modernity, the democratic collective will of society was understood to emerge through the public and deliberative freedoms of associational and representational life. Today, in our time of the Anthropocene, democratic discourse is much more focused on the processual formation of responsive, responsible and relational publics capable of ‘self-governing’ in what was previously distinguished as the private or social sphere. In these approaches, democracy is no longer seen to operate to constitute a collective representative will standing above society but as a mechanism of information distribution and empowerment of individuals and communities, ultimately responsible for governance outcomes. Government is believed to only be efficient if it operates through ‘the people’ and democracy is seen to have a circulatory power, operating through the personal decisions made in everyday life. This chapter seeks to analyse how contemporary understandings of the Anthropocene, emphasising multiple worlds, unintended consequences and non-linear causality, draw upon and develop earlier problematisations of liberal universalism, paying particular attention to the work of John Dewey and Friedrich von Hayek. |
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