Community-based energy governance and the political: Towards a post-foundational energy democracy

Community-based energy governance (CEG) is increasingly seen as reconfiguring existing socio-environmental power dynamics, contributing to just and democratic energy transitions. Despite its perceived “positive” implications, CEG has often been instrumentalized, undermining its potential to transform the spatialities of the existing energy system more democratic. By critically reviewing how the concept of community is mobilized regarding CEG, we seek to delineate how this mobilization entails a degree of romanticization. We then offer an alternative conceptualization of community by drawing upon a post-foundational understanding of space and community, particularly theorizations by Jean-Luc Nancy. We argue that understanding CEG through his ontology of “being-with,” which demands a world where every singularity can expose itself, can create a space for the political. In other words, this ontological understanding reconceptualizes CEG as a contingent political disruptibility of the existing order, rather than merely an institution, or politics. This provides a fundamental guideline to avoid instrumental appropriations of the concept of community and grounds more critical conceptualizations of community in energy and environmental geographies. Furthermore, it guides us to understand energy democracy through CEG as a disruptive political sequence of democratization, instead of an institution that is often instrumentalized with a scaling-up discourse.