In the last few decades, cultural politics has come back to the centre stage of democracy. The return of culture and democratic backsliding have been somewhat simultaneous and interrelated processes. The ‘cultural turn’ has made democracies look increasingly illiberal, and the only alternative that those opposed to illiberality find is in the language of institutions and constitutions. The problem with this mode of response is it does not sufficiently understand why there is a return to culture and if institutional imagination can adequately address the seduction of culture. We need to begin by asking why democracy and culture are at loggerheads in order to understand what could be an effective response to it without attempting to displace the cultural identification of the majority and without it becoming majoritarian.

John Keane argues democracy needs us to live ‘openly and flexibly’, and that ‘democracy is the friend of contingency’. Democracy promotes indeterminacy and ‘denatures power’ by countering all claims to privilege based on colour, race and religion, among other such identities. Democracy sees nothing as permanent and it ‘tears up certainties’. The ideal of equality necessarily brings diversified groups together and a clash of ideas to learn and unlearn. It is a continuous process of discovery.

At the turn of the century, democracies inaugurated greater spaces to market.

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