Democracy and discourse deconstruction

In this section I want to bring together the two ideas from the previous sections - democracy and discourse deconstruction - and put them together to make a concept I'll call demotherapeia. My thinking goes like this: democracy is when the people have the power, and discourses define what power is. Sometimes people don't even know that they are participating in a discourse that defines power a certain way. So if the people are to have the power, they need to know what the power is and ensure that other people don't have power over them through the construction of discourses. Therefore, democracy should be about discourse deconstruction.

How could this be carried out? I'm going to propose a few things. The first is that it should be done publicly and in a group. The second is that it should be done in a "no-power" speech situation, which means no competition for power, no collective decisions, and no monopoly on political legitimacy. The third is that it shouldn't seek consensus - though, despite saying that, I expect it would lead to standards and norms. The last is that it should be iterative and ongoing.

It should be public and in a group

From deliberative democracy comes the idea that deliberative speech is more effective when it is public, because people need a greater commitment to what they are saying, because they cannot as easily skip over steps of reasoning, and because they are more likely to think through what objections and considerations others might have. From deliberative democracy, too, is the concept that knowledge is produced when people come together and share information that could not be conceived of by a lone individual. These same two points would apply, I believe, to discourse deconstruction: that public statements come with a degree of commitment and that group deliberation can produce knowledge that otherwise would not have been produced.

When a person makes a statement in front of a crowd, they are likely to make a statement that they are willing to publicly commit to, which may or may not be a statement that represents their beliefs. If it does represent their beliefs, and they are willing to make a public statement about it, it is likely because they have the understanding that their beliefs are publicly justifiable. If they are not, then it at least should trigger a level of reflection that their beliefs are not publicly justifiable, and maybe produce some consideration on why that might be. That moment of reflection might not be triggered if the statement is private. It could also be triggered by being asked a question about that statement, even if the question is not specifically one that poses a challenge.

When someone hears the statements of others, they have the opportunity to consider how that statement might relate to their own beliefs. In a process of deconstruction, simply hearing that others use a word in a different way can bring awareness to the idea that this word is part of a discourse. This could also help understand who the beneficiaries of a discourse are, who is left out, other ways of conceiving of concepts, including notions of power and justification. Without the group engagement, other uses of words and concepts would not be as accessible.

It should be in a "no-power" speech situation

Similarly, from deliberative democracy it is worth taking the "no-power" speech conditions. In deliberative democracy this allows people to speak more freely and authentically, and prevents some voices from oppressing others. In discourse deconstruction, this is a striving to eliminate or deconstruct significant notions of power from controlling or constraining the space where the deconstruction happens. That is, if people's speech is defined by or contextualised by power, how can the people have the power?

There are all sorts of power, of course, including social and cultural power. As much as possible, these should be absent, but they can be relatively invisible. They are targets for deconstruction themselves, but, given their informal and often difficult to discern nature, they generally can't be eliminated before the beginning of the process, but rather through it.

On the other hand, formalised processes are much more obvious, such as voting and official positions imbued with power. If there is an official position of power, then people can use the power once they are in the position, and their statements are no longer simply reflective, but vehicles with which to achieve that power. That means that there is a greater likelihood of inauthentic statements to convince people to hand them that power, and they then lose their ability to play a role in deconstruction. That is, the power is no longer with the person, but with the office.

The same applies for a vote on policy, where the power now lies in the vote, and statements may be reserved, guarded or inauthentic because they are not strictly necessary to examine and define power. People may compromise and be deceitful in order to obtain votes, rather than being honest and authentic.

Finally, if power lies all in one place, then people may compete to occupy that place, even if it is not a particular office. For example, if there is only one legitimate place of deliberation, then those who can manage to occupy this place will have power while those who do not will have less power. In that case, people may compete to occupy that deliberative assembly, and if even if the assembly is populated by lottery, those people who obtain a place will have greater power than those who do not. Here, it would be worth looking to part of associative democracy, where legitimacy does not rest in one official assembly, but rather where all democratic associations have legitimacy.

No ambition for consensus

Modern representative democracy aims at collective decisions through legitimate procedures, while deliberative democracy aims for consensus. I don't think that either of these things will work for deconstruction. Collective decisions have winners and losers, and so the struggle will be to implement a discourse, rather than to deconstruct one. Consensus does a similar thing, though more subtly. The ambition in forming a consensus is that one can use the "force of reason" to compel another person to agree, which again frames the process as one of competition where one idea will win out. The idea of deliberative democracy is that this process is done openly and honestly, but there is obviously no guarantee regarding this. There are all sorts of reasons that someone might pretend to have reached a consensus, including just wanting the process to be over, or being worn down. A consensus also still produces a binding result, so there are motivations to stick to one's position because it could win out, and the other party could back down first.

On the other hand, if there is no binding outcome whatsoever, either from votes or from consensus, then the motivation to hold fast to a belief in order to obtain power is lacking, and people are more likely to speak authentically and be ready to change their minds as new information comes in.

Iterative and ongoing

Finally, the process should be iterative and ongoing. This is for three reasons. The first is that there's always going to be things to attend to in society, so there should be a regular way to attend to them. The second is that each time a discourse is deconstructed, some new discourse invisibly takes its place - and there is no end to it. So the process should continue on forever. But, perhaps more practically, it will likely take a person a few reflections to move from unknowingly believing a discourse to deconstructing it, a process that might consist of a lot of little steps rather than a few big ones. If we want someone to deconstruct a discourse, forcing them to get there immediately is unlikely to work, because this exercise of power now shapes the interaction and they are likely to double down and defend their position. A regular occurrence that does not ask too much of its participants is far more likely to be effective.