Abstract

Democratic politics requires the democratic subject’s identifiability to enable accountability. This requirement, stabilizing identities’ classificatory categories of race, sexuality, class and gender, entails essentialist tendencies and invites stereotyping. This essay conjures an imaginary of a democratic politics beyond recognition, a democracy powered by the actions of perceptible yet unidentifiable subjects. This form of democratic engagement allows the subject to show up Footnote** any wayFootnote**, a concept signifying the agency but also the confusion of unrecognizability. In doing so, the essay expands the politics of becoming from democratizing the construction of the self to cultivating democratic relations with the other. It makes the case for (1) unrecognizing, (2) sustaining and (3) co-constructing the other in order to (4) generate ‘other spaces’ or democratic heterotopias.