Radical Pluralization: Mobilizing the Multiple Self in Democratic Engagements

Pluralism is one of the defining features of democracy. This is a position shared by liberal pluralists, who argue for a multiplicity of interests, ideas, and ideologies (Dahl 1971); feminist democrats who advocate for a diversity of embodied identities and lived experiences (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Young 2000); and agonists, who situate an ethos of pluralization at the heart of a contentious public sphere (Connolly 1995). Although coming from different (liberal, phenomenological, and constructivist) ontologies, all of these theories of democratic pluralism run into the same dilemma. Upon observing the emerging pluralism in the colonially nascent United States, Alexis de Tocqueville (2003 [1835]) was among the first to note that although diverse interest and identity groups foster democratic pluralism, they at the same time require the submission of members to dominant group identities. Being identified along certain corporeal and cultural markers entails essentialism and confines the freedom to express the multiple self. Iris Marion Young (1989) later termed this phenomenon “the dilemma of difference.”