ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the problems of terminology and historical framing. Rewriting Democracy has this working hypothesis: that postmodernity necessarily and perhaps even opportunely undermines the bases upon which political democracy traditionally has rested; and that therefore some significant work must be done in order to redefine, or restore, or otherwise reconfigure democratic values and institutions for a changed cultural condition. Postmodernity provides for the assertion of a personal uniqueness that is no less complex and creative than the one asserted by Cartesian philosophy: a personal uniqueness not given, but constructed; a uniqueness created as an individual goes from day to day, specifying in particular ways various shared potentials. Postmodernity occludes any easy assumption of common denominators, or of the idea that everyone occupies a common medium, especially the neutral space and time favored in the West precisely as a field of potential reconciliation.
