Book Review: Neera Chandhoke, Democracy and Revolutionary Politics
| Author | Shashank Chaturvedi |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916653917 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsPolitical Theory |
Book Reviews 415
justice with best practices, political conflict
with participation and collective autonomy
with ‘responsibilisation’. Another chapter is
dedicated to the fate of law under neoliberal-
ism and is mainly taken up with a careful anal-
ysis of Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission (a US constitutional law case
dealing with the regulation of campaign spend-
ing). Brown concludes with a bleak examina-
tion of North America’s higher education
system, where producing human capital has
become more important than educating critical
citizens.
The first, more theoretical chapters are a
real treat to read, moving skilfully from con-
temporary political theory to original read-
ings of historical philosophers and a clear
analysis of Foucault’s work. The later, more
concrete chapters are uneven in quality. The
chapter on governance is perspicuous and its
critique of governance lingo was long over-
due; the chapter on education is equally
lucid, but not as original; while the chapter
on law does not completely reach its poten-
tial, being hampered by the extensive analy-
sis of Citizens United (which was less
interesting from a European point of view).
I can only end by stating that Undoing the
Demos is an impressive work of political the-
ory written by someone who has the rare talent
of combining political passion with philosoph-
ical rigour.
Christiaan Boonen
(KU Leuven)
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916653919
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Democracy and Revolutionary Politics
by Neera Chandhoke. London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015. 181pp., £18.99 (p/b), ISBN
9781474224017
As the author claims at the outset, through this
work, she intends to highlight the problematics
of democracy and revolutionary violence for
general readers and not only for those who
belong to the academic world. Written from
a ‘global perspective’, the book raises some
fundamental concerns regarding the relation-
ship between political violence and justice
vis-à-vis the state. The work highlights the
complexities and ambiguities involved in the
multilayered aspects of violence.
The first chapter highlights the relationship
between democracy and revolutionary vio-
lence and attempts to unpack the different cat-
egories of violence. The author raises a
pertinent question: Given that violence and
democracy are so antithetical to each other,
how can they both live together in the same
political and conceptual space? In the course of
building her argument, the author intends to
argue that we need to think through the phe-
nomenon of revolutionary violence and also
reflect on how it relates to fundamental presup-
positions about democracy, notably, demo-
cratic justice. Chapter 2, ‘The Many Shades of
Violence’, elaborately discusses the problem
of ‘overloading violence’ with those functional
meanings which it is not supposed to carry.
In the next chapter, through the ‘Saga of
Revolutionary Violence in India’ Chandhoke
illustrates the dilemma involved in revolutionary
violence and its possible repercussions. She
argues that the naxal violence in India (as the
government terms left-wing extremism) has fun-
damentally challenged the legitimacy of the state
on the grounds of justice, but common people
are caught up in this struggle between state
atrocities and the naxal violence. In chapter 4,
the author tries to bring home the argument that
the social disadvantages and injustices inflicted
on the people are major causes of the eruption of
revolutionary violence all over the world. The
last chapter of the book rings a note of caution to
all those who look to political violence as the
solution to social injustices.
Through the concept of political violence,
the author enters into the terrain of critical polit-
ical theory and examines the contradictions
involved in democratic politics which is based
on political violence. The book attempts to
highlight the limitations of political violence as
a double-edged sword. It also underlines ‘the
indeterminacy and unpredictability of this ava-
tar of politics’ (p. 150). Accepting the lapses in
democratic life and imperfectability of demo-
cratic justice, Chandhoke concedes that under-
standing social injustices can help in coming to
terms with ‘violence within democracy’. At the
end, the book achieves the intended goal of
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