·Rahel Süß
Research
Rahel Süß research and teaching interests include the history of political thought, contemporary democratic theory, and digital democracy. She is particularly interested in the effects of digital technologies on democratic politics, artificial intelligence and democracy, and theories of democratic renewal.
A Political Theory of Digital Democracy
Democracy and new digital technologies are twin objects of deep, though ambivalent attachment in the contemporary liberal imagination. What, then, is “digital democracy”? My current research project explores two central questions: (1) How have liberal ideas shaped and limited the way we think of both democracy and digitalisation? (2) What might a radical democratic conception of both terms involve? I begin from the assumption that democracy lives not as a lofty abstraction but through its material forms: and ours is a digital age. In speaking of digital democracy, then, I argue that we must understand each term through the other. Liberals imagine digital technology through their understanding of democracy, and increasingly understand democracy through their encounter with technology. My claim is that when liberals imagine digital technologies as democratic, they obscure forms of power that constitute those technologies, in their ownership, design, and control. Therefore, we must ask the question: How might a radical alternative to liberalism understand both democracy and digitalisation differently, and use the encounter with each to reshape our understanding of both?
Publications (selection)
Experimental Democracy
How can democracy open up to the demands of the future? Liberal democracy cannot uphold the commitment to freedom that it promises. This is a crisis with deep roots in historical injustices. It is also a crisis of legitimacy that requires a fundamental new political imagination. Experimental democracy presents a new paradigm of empowered democracy and develops a framework of future oriented democratic politics for the digital age.
Publications (selection)
The Politics of Provocation
Within the liberal tradition of democracy, social conflict is often understood as disagreement and democratic institutions as embodying fair procedures for resolving disagreement. The politics of provocation presents us with a different possibility. Understanding social conflict as conflict over power and resources, it is more attentive to questions of equalizing power between citizens. It develops an argument for why in societies with large inequalities in resources and power, the impulse for greater democracy lies not merely in new inclusive and participatory institutions. Instead, democracy is about the possibility of provoking conflict and organising collective power in different domains of social life.
Publications (selection)
Kollektive Handlungsfähigkeit
Die Arbeit mit dem Begriff der „kollektiven Handlungsfähigkeit“ hat einen praktischen, nicht nur theoretischen Sinn: Es geht nicht nur um die Präzisierung und Problematisierung eines Begriffs, sondern um die Verwirklichung einer Möglichkeit zu handeln; darum, diejenigen Potenziale auszumachen, durch die es kollektiven Akteur*innen möglich ist, Brüche und Diskontinuitäten im Common Sense herbeizuführen. Es ist das Begreifen, das mit einem kritisch-subversiven Eingreifen in die Verhältnisse einhergeht. Die Frage, warum trotz der anhaltenden Krisen keine Transformationsprojekte wirkungsmächtig werden, wird auf die Frage „kritischer“ und „subversiver“ politischer Handlungsfähigkeit projiziert. Wie kann diese im Spannungsfeld von Herrschaft und Widerstand genauer begriffen werden? Insbesondere der Begriff einer kollektiven Handlungsfähigkeit wird meist unklar verwendet und bedarf der Präzisierung. Dazu werden drei einschlägige Theorien (Gramsci, Holzkamp und Laclau/Mouffe) befragt
Publications (selection)