Earthborn Democracy by Ali Aslam

Earthborn Democracy by Ali Aslam

This book offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis, allying visionary political theory with environmental activism.

Are you tired of democratic theories organized only around human exceptionalism and institutional representation? Then this is the book for youEarthborn Democracy exposes layer after layer of the unconscious modern myth as it engages the pertinence of Indigenous earthborn myths to democracy. It is time, the authors show, to replace simplified stories of causality with morphic fields of entanglement, doing so to release the potential vitality of democracy today. A bracing study, always alert to how earthborn we are. -- William E. Connolly, author of Stormy Weather: Pagan Cosmologies, Christian Times, Climate Wreckage
Part manifesto, part how-to guide, 100 percent visionary political theory, Earthborn Democracy reframes how we understand worldmaking, ecology, refusal, rituals, myths, and the experience of natality, a birth out of and by the earth. The authors invite us to reimagine democracy and discern its relationship to freedom and flourishing through acknowledging first the fundamental entanglement connecting all the world’s humans and nonhumans. -- Neil Roberts, coeditor of Creolizing Hannah Arendt
In a time of peril, Earthborn Democracy offers incisive ways to understand our deep desire to live in a just world and both practical and poetic maps for how we might achieve it. -- Barbara Smith, author of The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom
I found this to be an incredibly compelling argument and discussion of the myriad ways in which democracy and environmental justice are entangled, using a nonspeciesist frame, humbly leaning upon Indigenous thinking and practices, and generously incorporating the work of other leading thinkers. -- Adrian Parr, author of Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World
Earthborn Democracy asks what sustains collective life and enables us to work together for a sustainable future, particularly when we live under persistent crisis. Deeply interdisciplinary, original, and really delightful to read—a conversation among the authors that imbues the text with life, play, and joy. This visionary political theory is committed to imagination and renewal, ambitious and humble in its commitment to community and solidarity. -- Sara Rushing, author of Virtues of Vulnerability: Humility, Autonomy, and Citizen-Subjectivity
Resuscitating political theory's mission to break down outworn ways of thinking, Earthborn Democracy dares to imagine alternative ways of coexisting, and even thriving. -- Keally McBride, author of Collective Dreams: Political Imagination and Community
Bracing and visionary, Earthborn Democracy confronts our conjoined ecological and democratic crises with the moral gravity and imaginative vigor they demand. Insisting that democracy is unavoidably bound up with more-than-human flourishing, it offers an unflinching and inspiring challenge to begin rethinking our politics and remaking our world. -- Alyssa Battistoni, author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
Earthborn Democracy is an important and vibrant intellectual journey. Refusing the ‘failing political-cultural stories’ of our despairing, anxious age, Aslam, McIvor, and Alden argue that we need to cultivate myth-making and rituals that shake us away from despair and toward the determination and imagination to act and fight for a better world. Earthborn Democracy is a book we need right now in the face of perilous threats to democracy and the climate. -- Kevin Bruyneel, author of Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States

Ali Aslam is associate professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Ordinary Democracy: Sovereignty and Citizenship Beyond the Neoliberal Impasse (2016).

David W. McIvor is associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. He is the author of Mourning in America: Race and the Politics of Loss (2016).

Joel Alden Schlosser is professor of political science at Bryn Mawr College. His books include Herodotus in the Anthropocene (2020).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780231216425
Title	Earthborn Democracy
Author	Ali Aslam
Series	Critical Life Studies
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Columbia University Press
Year published	2024-09-10
Number of pages	232
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.