Staging Democracy

Emily Beausoleil is a Senior Lecturer of Politics at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington and Editor-in-Chief of Democratic Theory journal. As a political theorist, she explores the conditions, challenges, and creative possibilities for democratic engagement in diverse and unequal societies. Connecting affect, critical democratic, postcolonial, neuroscience, and performance scholarship, Beausoleil's work explores how we might realize democratic ideals of voice and listening across difference in concrete terms. Her work has been published in Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, Theory & Event, New Political Science, and Constellations, as well as in various books.

"Working with 'art's most unruly characteristics,' Emily Beausoleil looks past representational or referential art to theorize the power of performance for democratic politics. Improvisation, orality, and ephemerality are among the traits that make performance powerful, especially in repressive settings of apartheid or ongoingly colonial governance. From apartheid South Africa to Canada and New Zealand, Beausoleil shows the power of theatrical encounter to open new possibilities yet to be fully owned by democratic theory. Beausoleil brilliantly opens the way with this humane, intelligent work of theory oriented by practice. A must-read."

Bonnie Honig, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science, Brown University (US), author of Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton, 2009, David Easton Prize), Antigone, Interrupted (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair (Fordham, 2017), and A Feminist Theory of Refusal (Harvard, 2021).



"Staging Democracy shows us how artistic performances can induce and maintain a democratic ethos, and how they are themselves modes of democratic deliberation and decision-making. Through fascinating case studies of anti-apartheid theater in South Africa, the anti-homelessness theater in Vancouver, Canada, and a tourist walk led by the character of Captain Cook in Aotearoa New Zealand, it reveals just how entangled 'the political' is with 'the aesthetic.' Beausoleil's beautiful and convincing defense of artistic performance will be of great interest to all of us who seek ways to combat the rise of anti-democratic, oligarchic, and fascist forces."



Jane Bennet, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities, Departments of Political Science and Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University (US), author of Vibrant Matter: The Political Ecology of Things (Duke, 2010) and founding editor of Theory & Event.