Earthborn Democracy - (Critical Life Studies) by Ali Aslam & David W McIvor & Joel Alden Schlosser

About the Book

"The relationship between ecology and democracy has a complex history and an uncertain future. Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth, and democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions herald crisis if not collapse. It is clear that our present political concepts and institutions are inadequate for meeting the challenges of living in right relation with the more-than-human world and, moreover, that these inadequacies are themselves symptoms of a failing political-cultural story and a lack of concrete practices of ecological renewal, a story that does not recognize that there is no "people" without the earth and that power is not held by humans alone but in common with the natural world--intensifying weather events effected by climate change are only the most obvious example. Earthborn Democracy upends conventional accounts, which view democracy as a modern invention, by probing deep histories of egalitarian political organization beyond the ancient Athenian efforts so feared by the American founders in the premodern Americas, Mesopotamia, and many other egalitarian cultures. Unlike the constitutional democracies in nation-states, which are in service to economic directives, the political practices and stories excavated in the book illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire and orient the work of ecological and democratic renewal. Responses to climate catastrophe call for an understanding of how unconscious desire can be a resource for collective democratic action. Developing an embodied account of the unconscious in which a desire for pleasure is central, the authors examine the knowledge and living traditions of Indigenous communities; the incorporation of "pleasure activism" into contemporary social movements and antiracist struggles; and practices of cooperation-cross-species affinity and relational grassroots political organizing around the world. The resonances across these examples trace the possibility for renewal of individual and collective selves through the work of ecological attunement and restoration. Building from re-envisioned democratic histories and this radical rereading of the collective unconscious, they show how contemporary political experiments and practices might cultivate and channel desires for autochthonous-earthborn-democracy, as the Athenian mythos names it"--

Book Synopsis

Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth. Democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions imperil its survival. Present political concepts have proven inadequate to meeting these challenges, and their inadequacies are themselves symptoms of the failures of prevailing political, cultural, and ecological stories and practices.

This book offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis. Identifying myth and ritual as key resources for contemporary politics, Earthborn Democracy excavates practices and narratives that illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire ecological renewal. It tells stories of multispecies agency and egalitarian political organization across history, from ancient Mesopotamia and the precolonial Americas to contemporary social movements, emphasizing Indigenous traditions and resistance. Resonating across these practices and stories past and present is a belief that we are all--human as well as nonhuman--earthborn, and this can serve as the basis for reimagining democracy. Allying visionary political theory with environmental activism, Earthborn Democracy provides a foundation and a guide for collective action in pursuit of earthly flourishing.

Review Quotes

Earthborn Democracy is an important and vibrant intellectual journey. Refusing the 'failing political-cultural stories' of our despairing, anxious age, Aslam, McIvor, and Alden argue that we need to cultivate myth-making and rituals that shake us away from despair and toward the determination and imagination to act and fight for a better world. Earthborn Democracy is a book we need right now in the face of perilous threats to democracy and the climate.--Kevin Bruyneel, author of Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States

Earthborn Democracy asks what sustains collective life and enables us to work together for a sustainable future, particularly when we live under persistent crisis. Deeply interdisciplinary, original, and really delightful to read--a conversation among the authors that imbues the text with life, play, and joy. This visionary political theory is committed to imagination and renewal, ambitious and humble in its commitment to community and solidarity.--Sara Rushing, author of Virtues of Vulnerability: Humility, Autonomy, and Citizen-Subjectivity

Are you tired of democratic theories organized only around human exceptionalism and institutional representation? Then this is the book for you. Earthborn Democracy exposes layer after layer of the unconscious modern myth as it engages the pertinence of Indigenous earthborn myths to democracy. It is time, the authors show, to replace simplified stories of causality with morphic fields of entanglement, doing so to release the potential vitality of democracy today. A bracing study, always alert to how earthborn we are.--William E. Connolly, author of Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage

Part manifesto, part how-to guide, 100 percent visionary political theory, Earthborn Democracy reframes how we understand worldmaking, ecology, refusal, rituals, myths, and the experience of natality, a birth out of and by the earth. The authors invite us to reimagine democracy and discern its relationship to freedom and flourishing through acknowledging first the fundamental entanglement connecting all the world's humans and nonhumans.--Neil Roberts, coeditor of Creolizing Hannah Arendt

Bracing and visionary, Earthborn Democracy confronts our conjoined ecological and democratic crises with the moral gravity and imaginative vigor they demand. Insisting that democracy is unavoidably bound up with more-than-human flourishing, it offers an unflinching and inspiring challenge to begin rethinking our politics and remaking our world.--Alyssa Battistoni, author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal

In a time of peril, Earthborn Democracy offers incisive ways to understand our deep desire to live in a just world and both practical and poetic maps for how we might achieve it.--Barbara Smith, author of The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom

Resuscitating political theory's mission to break down outworn ways of thinking, Earthborn Democracy dares to imagine alternative ways of coexisting, and even thriving.--Keally McBride, author of Collective Dreams: Political Imagination and Community

I found this to be an incredibly compelling argument and discussion of the myriad ways in which democracy and environmental justice are entangled, using a nonspeciesist frame, humbly leaning upon Indigenous thinking and practices, and generously incorporating the work of other leading thinkers.--Adrian Parr, author of Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World

About the Author

Ali Aslam is associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Ordinary Democracy: Sovereignty and Citizenship Beyond the Neoliberal Impasse (2016).

David W. McIvor is associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. He is the author of Mourning in America: Race and the Politics of Loss (2016).

Joel Alden Schlosser is professor of political science at Bryn Mawr College. His books include Herodotus in the Anthropocene (2020).