Internet and Radical Democracy: Introduction to the Formation of Radical Virtual Democracy
Subject Areas : Research in Theoritical Politics
Meisam Ghahreman
1
,
Majid Abbaszadeh Marzbali
2
1 - Research Assistant of the Department of Historical Studies of the Islamic Revolution (Islamic Revolution Document Center)
2 - Ph.D of Political Science of Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran
Keywords: Internet (Virtual Space) Radical Democracy Virtual Radical Democracy Discourse,
Abstract :
Pluralist radical democracy of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is a way to end any kind of innate thought about political life; a way in which sporadic powers, parallel hegemonies and as a result various discourses are formed. Discourses whose predicates’ capacities to satiation and saturating can turn them to hegemonic discourse; but something which seems very important in this radical democracy is that as a result of cultural development due to post-modernism and language games, otherness and plurality in society must be reserved in contest form. Authors believe that against the real world, this kind of contest can be applied in virtual space; hence we call it radical virtual democracy; a radical democracy which has great abilities to affect social and political life; therefore, the main question of this article which we try to answer is that, how is the formation and realization of radical virtual democracy caused by Internet? The hypothesis of the current writing is that the virtual space of Internet with its unique features like hypertext, hyper-network, interactional action and the decentralization of medium power which is assured by two features of access possibility to virtual identity and technical and non-exclusive skilled facilities, has the ability to form radical virtual democracy.
