Equality as Singularity: Rethinking Literature and Democracy

At least since the age of democratic revolutions, a broad array of literary works has engaged with democracy as practice and ideal, and literature has contributed in fundamental ways to the unfolding of democratic thought. But in recent years "democracy" has become a suspect term, associated with "neoliberalism," or it has been cast as a utopian horizon rather than considered as a flexible and contested concept. In "Equality as Singularity: Rethinking Literature and Democracy," Sandra M. Gustafson explores the role of language and symbolization and the place of literature in the emergence of democratic thought. In a neopragmatist spirit that moves beyond critique to develop a larger framework of democratic meaning-making, she considers the theoretical writings of Pierre Rosanvallon on counter-democracy and the society of equals, and she identifies points of overlap and complementarity in Danielle Allen's work on the Declaration of Independence and democratic citizenship. Gustafson then turns to the fiction of Saul Bellow and Upton Sinclair to show how unresolved conflicts inherited from progressivism and social democracy resonate in contemporary political and literary theory. She suggests how the fresh articulations of equality offered by Rosanvallon and Allen can help us to move beyond those conflicts and embrace a broader spectrum of literary works. She concludes with a brief reading of Orhan Pamuk's Snow to show how a neopragmatist critical praxis offers a distinctive approach to the political resonances of contemporary literature.