Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone: Astra Taylor with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

What we want, what is possible, and why democracy is so hard to realize.

Democracies exist around the world, yet the institution seems to be in crisis everywhere we look. With rising inequality and xenophobia worldwide, the ideal of government "by and for the people," might be facing extinction.

In Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone, Astra Taylor argues that true democracy has never really existed. Weaving together history, critical theory, storytelling, and interviews, Taylor asks us to consider if democracy is a means or an end. Can the outcome we desire, whether it's peace, prosperity, equality, or liberty, be achieved without democracy? What does it mean to rule and who counts as "the people"? 

Taylor is the author of the American Book Award-winning People’s Platform, a documentary filmmaker (What Is Democracy, Žižek!, and Examined Life), and contributing editor at The Baffler. She will be joined in conversation by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, senior editor at The Nation magazine and the author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen.

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The Program Room opens at 6 PM.

ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.