Radical Pluralization: Mobilizing the Multiple Self in Democratic Engagements

Pluralism is one of the defining features of democracy. This is a position shared by liberal pluralists, who argue for a multiplicity of interests, ideas, and ideologies (Dahl 1971); feminist democrats who advocate for a diversity of embodied identities and lived experiences (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Young 2000); and agonists, who situate an ethos of pluralization at the heart of a contentious public sphere (Connolly 1995). Although coming from different (liberal, phenomenological, and constructivist) ontologies, all of these theories of democratic pluralism run into the same dilemma. Upon observing the emerging pluralism in the colonially nascent United States, Alexis de Tocqueville (2003 [1835]) was among the first to note that although diverse interest and identity groups foster democratic pluralism, they at the same time require the submission of members to dominant group identities. Being identified along certain corporeal and cultural markers entails essentialism and confines the freedom to express the multiple self. Iris Marion Young (1989) later termed this phenomenon “the dilemma of difference.” In this article, we offer a way forward by introducing the concept of radical pluralization. We follow the trend of an ever more sensitive understanding of pluralism through democratic theory from the liberal pluralism of interests to the feminist pluralism of identities and finally the agonistic de- and reconstruction of group identities. This trend of pluralization, however, comes to a halt at the level of the individual democratic subject. Where theories of democratic pluralism fall short, then, is in their understanding and appreciation of the plurality within the subject. As early as 1986, democratic theorist Jon Elster published an edited volume on The Multiple Self, which proposes making sense of the subject as composed of multiple, competing parts: reasons, emotions, desires, and affects, with subjects fulfilling diverse social roles in diverse contexts and growing and changing over time (Elster 1986). More recently, Hubert Hermans (2020) proposes an Inner Democracy of multiple competing and cooperating aspects within ourselves. If we take this analysis seriously, democratic pluralism needs to acknowledge and, indeed, set free this inner multiplicity. This is what we call radical pluralization. As a practice, radical pluralism takes the form of the deliberate display of the plurality of the self for political aims. For democratic theory, this means extending the value of plurality to the internal configuration of the democratic subject and finding ways to cherish and sustain living this inner multiplicity. As our review assembling liberal, feminist, multicultural, and agonistic democratic theory demonstrates, our understanding of democracy is expansive. Instead of defining democracy in terms of normative models such as deliberative or cosmopolitan democracy (Held 2006), we take a sociological perspective. Rather than perceiving democracy as a set of institutionalized decision-making procedures, we ask how democracy is practiced in the public sphere and the everyday. We understand democracy as those engagements that aim to realize democratic values such as freedom, equality, agency, solidarity, and reciprocity in the political organizing of society and the self. Beyond formal juridical and political institutions, we consider cultural and social practices of representation, social movement contention, and the private sphere, including family and sexual relations and beyond as locations where democracy can take place (Luhtakallio et al. 2024). Following this expansive understanding of democracy, the self and identity formation become sites of potential democratization. Our inner multiplicity has been powerfully demonstrated by intersectional feminist, as well as borderlands scholarship, which will serve as our point of departure towards a democratic theory that recognizes inner multiplicity. Intersectional approaches point towards the inner multiplicity of overlapping social identities, including gender, race, class, and sexuality and show how their recognition is key to understanding structures of oppression and inequality (Crenshaw 1991; Taylor 2017). Borderlands scholarship (Anzaldúa 1987; Barvosa 2008; Keating 2009) provides a new vocabulary for describing the multiplicity of identities, the inner tensions caused by them, and the novel subjectivities emerging from the will to live between these. We draw on and further contribute to the emerging scholarship that brings intersectionality and borderlands studies into debate with democratic theory to investigate the multiple self in democracy (Dempster 2016; Hill Collins 2017; Wojciechowska 2019). Going beyond intersectionality studies’ call for the recognition of and challenge to intersecting systems of oppression, we take inspiration from borderlands studies’ notion of the mestiza consciousness—the state of indefinite in-betweenness, and argue that the multiple self set free through radical pluralization can be deployed as a subversive strategy in and through the lived experience of democratic subjects. We focus on how marginalized subjects mobilize their inner multiplicity in an agentic move to define and constantly re-define their identities. We thus seek to theorize how identity multiplication can serve as a democratic practice. Rather than simply making this claim from our academic position as normative theorists, we explore radical pluralization that is already practiced by people inhabiting marginalized and stigmatized identities. We engage established theories of democratic pluralism with ethnographic and participatory research with activists with experiences of stigmatization in relation to homelessness, substance use, mental health issues, physical disabilities, non-conforming gender identities, and diverse sexualities. In doing so, we avoid producing merely abstract theory and instead engage in empirically grounded democratic theorizing that directly builds on lived experiences (Asenbaum 2022; Brettschneider 2007; Johnson 2022). Through this empirical engagement, we observe that activists enact a politics based and focused on their identities, as suggested by traditional identity politics. These identities, however, are understood as multiple, shifting, and transformative (Meriluoto 2024). Instead of producing positively connoted counter-identifications, activists often multiply their performances in order to confuse and ultimately diffuse identity. To give an example, the ever expansion of LGBT1 to 2SLGBTTQQIAAP+2 is sometimes ridiculed but actually is part of a strategy of radical pluralization that defies the violences inherent to identity confinements.3 Political engagements based on the multiple self, then, are part of a politics of becoming, which denotes a conscious strategy of embracing inner multiplicity as part of democratic engagement (Asenbaum 2023a; Asenbaum and Meriluoto 2023). Taking the logics of pluralization further and applying to the self, then, a for democratic pluralism to identity The a for radical pluralization. The new diverse of identity politics activists engage in and and in the such as or an that to the of activists and Meriluoto 2024). The and of that established practices provides a new means of the multiple self (Asenbaum Asenbaum 2008; we observe and identity performances as and features of radical pluralization. In doing so, we understand the and as but as and Meriluoto 2022). To the concept of radical pluralization, we will first liberal, feminist, and agonistic of pluralism in democratic We will the scholarship on multiple and agentic identities, in intersectionality and borderlands and their engagement with democratic we will these by the of radical pluralization by with ethnographic participatory research on of can be through the of democratic one on and the on pluralism as of democracy and The on from theory through to deliberative democracy. 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