Shannon Mariotti

This essay explores Adorno’s neglected writings on democracy in the U.S., composed in English and directed toward an American audience, to illuminate a democratic theory and practice oriented around the concepts of “democratic leadership,” “democratic pedagogy,” and “democratic enlightenment.” Bridging disciplinary divides, this essay brings the lens of artistic modernism to bear on Adorno’s writings on democracy in America to illuminate the distinctive contributions of a political theory that might only appear partial and preliminary when analyzed through the lens of conventional politics. Adorno’s understanding of “democratic enlightenment” resonates with the modernist concept of epiphany and represents a translation of artistic modernism to the political realm. Reworking traditional readings of Adorno’s politics and his relationship with the U.S., this essay reads him as a democratic modernist whose lessons on the meaningful practice of democracy still speak powerfully and practically to Americans today.

In recent years, contemplative practices of meditation have become increasingly mainstream in American culture, part of a phenomenon that scholars call “Buddhist modernism.” Connecting the embodied practice of meditation with the embodied practice of democracy in everyday life, this paper puts the radical democratic theory of Jacques Rancière into conversation with the Zen writings of Shunryu Suzuki and Thomas Merton. I show how meditation can be understood as an aesthetic practice that cultivates modes of experience, perception, thinking, and feeling that further radical democratic projects at the most fundamental level. Reading the landscape of Buddhist modernism to draw out democratic possibilities, we can understand contemplative practices like meditation as a form of political theorizing in a vernacular register. Buddhist modernism works as a practice of everyday life that ordinary users can employ to get through their days with more awareness and attentiveness, to reclaim and reauthorize their experience, and to generate more care and compassion in ways that enable, enact, and extend the project of democracy itself.

In 1776, a group of political outsiders in Pennsylvania seized control of the convention and drafting process to create a robustly democratic and class-conscious state constitution. These com- moners believed governments upheld and extended social and political privilege, serving primarily the interests of wealthy and powerful citizens. They tried to reverse these oligarchic tendencies, particularly through a “common benefits clause”: here the social contract prioritized the whole community and instituted a more horizontal form of equality among citizens. Ultimately, the short- lived Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 left a powerful legacy, largely forgotten but useful to remember. Today, in a broad “new progressive federalist” movement, democratic political action is rising up from city, state, and local governments to interrupt and counteract the oligarchic tendencies of the national government under the Trump administration. This paper shows how common benefit and equal privilege clauses, still on the books in many states, can inspire and inform this movement.