An Interview with Wendy Brown: Redoing the Demos?

Abstract

The following discussion with philosopher and political scientist Wendy Brown seeks to apply her provocative and indispensable ideas to recent political events and problems, in particular focusing on her work in Undoing the Demos (2015) and returning briefly to consider Politics Out of History (2001) in today’s context. The questions were collectively authored and the interview itself was conducted by Sebastian Raza via Skype on 23 May 2017. We would like to thank Wendy Brown for the generous contribution of her time and for answering the questions so directly and clearly.

Capitalism, Democracy, and Territorial Forms of Exception: Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism

“…While the case studies that weave through this book are in themselves strong, it is a pity that Slobodian does not engage with contemporary literature on capitalism and its relation to democracy from fields such as political geography and sociology, as this, along with a more detailed conceptualization of both exception and sovereignty, would bolster his analysis of the places and spaces in question. Wendy Brown, for example, addresses precisely these questions in Undoing the Demos (Brown, 2015; Gane, 2016; Burgum et al, 2017). And on the logic and trajectory of contemporary capitalism, a source that immediately comes to mind, alongside work by figures such as David Harvey, is Bhattacharyya’s (2018) Rethinking Racial Capitalism , which centres on the role of racism in enabling key moments of capitalist development and addresses the ways in which racial capitalism is ‘intimately intertwined with the processes precipitating ecological crisis’ (p. x).…”