ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the various radicalizings of theory and practice driving conceptions of radical democratic community. Liberal understandings of the democratic community typically frame it as the politically oriented public interaction of autonomous, self-interested individuals. Several challenges to liberal conceptions of individuality and community have been set out by communitarian and deliberative critics. Models of shared lifeworlds and reasonable deliberation once again spell out the perceived necessity for a democratic community to be based around some commonality, whether of proceduralism or shared (thin or thick) values. Despite their multidimensionality, many progressive social movements do frame themselves around the perceived commonality and solidarity of a human community, and it is inarguable that such movements are in constant negotiation of the tensions between universality and concrete problematics. Radical democratic community is, rather, informed by the recognition that democracy simply never is perfectly – consensually – homogeneous, pluralist or just or even ever achieved.
