You are kindly invited for a talk by professor Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt University) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on Tuesday March 31, 2020. Talisse’s recent and topical book  Overdoing Democracy has been making quite a splash in the US media (see, e.g., here for regular updates). Details below.

VU Main Building

De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam

Room 11A22

15.30h – 17.00h

Overdoing Democracy: The Problem of Political Polarization

Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt University)

Although common analyses recommend that the way to address polarization is to encourage citizens and politicians to “reach across the aisle,” data show that this strategy frequently backfires, escalating rather than easing partisan hostility. Offering an alternative prescription, Talisse argues that polarization is a result of the near total infiltration of political allegiances and identities into our social lives. Today, our everyday activities are increasingly fused with our political profiles: commercial spaces, workplaces, professions, schools, churches, sports teams, and even public parks now tend to embody a particular political valence.  When politics is permitted to saturate our social environments, we impair the capacities we need in order to enact democracy well. In a slogan, when we overdo democracy in this way, we undermine it. The solution is to build venues and activities where people can engage in cooperative activities together in which their political identities are neither bolstered nor suppressed, but simply beside the point. If we want to do democracy well, we need to put politics in its right place.