Slowness, Speed and Democracy : On Democratic Time

Given the increasing acceleration of social life, some theorists detect a crisis of democracy. After all, democratic decisions take time. I engage Iris Young, Nadia Urbinati and Sheldon Wolin, who stand in for deliberative, representative and radical approaches to democracy. I argue that the opposition between anti-democratic speed and democratic slowness is not borne out by these approaches; there is a greater complexity to the way in which we should theorize the temporality of democracy. To begin with, Young's approach depends on a rupture in time, namely on individuals who respond to the immediacy of personal narrative or emotionalizing rhetoric, and thereby overcome long-term socialization and experiences. While Urbinati praises Condorcet for the political processes he devises that encourage slowness, the image of political temporality that emerges is one of multiple deliberative processes that are going on simultaneously. While each process may be slow on its own terms, the democratic polity on the whole would, I contend, be ready to reach decisions as needed. Finally, Wolin's account of demotic action itself depends on spontaneity and immediacy. In other words, speed may be an element of Wolin's definition of democracy. The goal here is not to accuse certain theorists of self-contradiction. Instead, I am sketching the complicated dance of speed and slowness at the heart of democracy, which would lead to a less alarmist diagnosis of the contemporary political condition