For my multimedia resource I have chosen to give a synopsis and evaluation of Astra Taylor’s 2018 film What Is Democracy? The documentary is relevant to transnational feminisms because it tackles the very heart of the political issue of our time – what are we advocating for and what are we defending. Democracy under neoliberal capitalism is a regime which is rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, nationalism and expropriation of resources and human bodies for the purposes of slavery. Modern democracy is premised on justice, fairness, and freedom; however, these principles are not being upheld as the plight of the human race exacerbated against capitalist domination which increasingly mobilizes us against one another.
We begin to re-ask the question, how do we want to conduct ourselves. The divide has deepened in every single binary we have created as species beings and hatred and bigotry towards the “other” has reached the pinnacle of height. The film begs us to wonder whether democracy is worth striving for or saving, and if not, what alternatives would be suitable. Can we make democracy out of an undemocratic people? It is at the fundamental level that we must query what informs the ways in which we think, and if there is a social component how has the history of the last six hundred years played out to inscribe misogyny and racialized hierarchies into the body politic. Is it our human nature to be exclusionary? In the film Taylor goes to a camp for refugees from Syria and she asks them their opinions on what democracy means to them, a young woman replies that she will never stop fighting for her voice to be heard, even after all the hardship she has faced. I think that is the part which allures people in the promise of democracy, the “guarantee” of recognition.
For transnational feminists who want to act we must begin by formulating a doctrine of unwavering stances to the most important questions of our time.
Keywords: democracy, globalization, refugee
Author: Anne Goodfellow
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