Democracy’s Violence: Majorities, Identities, and Sociality
Date of Award
Fall 2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Mantena, Karuna
Abstract
This dissertation examines the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, W. E. B. Du Bois, and B. R. Ambedkar to develop a theory of majoritarian domination, and defend a conception of democratic sociality, constituted by fraternity, courageous humility, and concerted social action. The dissertation is divided into five parts. The Introduction begins by explicating a peculiar problem in democratic theory: democracy cannot exist if there is violence, and democracy itself makes violence unnecessary in the resolution of disputes between prospective contestants for state power. Further, by neglecting political violence among or against non-elites this minimal account of democracy is unable to secure equality and fraternity. My examination of the forms of violence in democracies focuses on majoritarian violence and offers a meaningful corrective to this lacuna before introducing the project’s components and method. Chapter 1 begins with a redescription of Tocqueville’s concept of tyranny of the majority. I apply this conceptual method to his writings on the Three Races in Democracy in America. I argue that the treatment of Native Americans and Black Americans, excluded from democratic power, presents a haunting picture of the possibilities of the tyranny of the majority in a conceptual register Tocqueville could only explain partially and abstractly. Chapter 2 takes up W. E. B. Du Bois’ moral psychology of Whiteness in Black Reconstruction. Du Bois inaugurated a method of critical democratic theory that explains the motivations and actions of White and Black Americans in a historical setting replete with tension and potential, the (Re)construction of democracy; and in the midst of contending axes of historical oppression: class, race, gender, and imperialism. Du Bois shows how identities and interests produce violence in democracies, and are reflexively shaped by its imperatives. Chapter 3 picks up on threads in Tocqueville and Du Bois’ writings on majoritarian tyranny as an abstract notion and the transformation of racial domination into caste subjugation respectively. This chapter considers B. R. Ambedkar’s critique of Hindu religion to explain the working of a majoritarian moral psychology, and the empowered subjection it produces in its adherents. His startling comparison of untouchability to slavery, interpreted as critical democratic theory, yields a foreboding account of the possibilities for social equality. Chapter 4 applies the conceptual apparatus of majoritarian domination to politics in contemporary India to demonstrate how the different mechanisms of majoritarian domination attack discursive, epistemic, and institutional pluralism in modern democracies. I also forward a speculative logic of majoritarian violence that explains the upsurge in targeted atrocities in India. The chapter ends with a conclusion to the dissertation. The Coda examines aspects of Tocqueville, Du Bois, and Ambedkar’s thinking about responses to majoritarian domination. I outline the concept of democratic sociality, consisting of association, fraternity, and courageous humility.
Recommended Citation
Naresh, Vatsal, "Democracy’s Violence: Majorities, Identities, and Sociality" (2022). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 797.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/797
