‘Ticking a box is no longer an option’: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.
David van Reybrouck lives in Brussels, is a pre-historic archaeologist, but works mostly as a literary writer, and as a non-fiction writer. He’s probably best known for his book ‘Congo: the epic history of a people’, for appearing in the film ‘Tomorrow’ (‘Demain’), and for his more recent book ‘Against Elections: the case for democracy’, which is a brilliant read. We met up via Skype, and talked imagination, Brexit, and reimagining how we make decisions together.
I wonder if you had any thoughts on in what ways the current way that we practice democracy in the West diminishes our imagination, maybe particularly in relation to our ability to imagine something other than business as usual?
You could say that the procedures we use today to do democracy have drastically narrowed down the scope of what is politically imaginable. To me, although I’m interested in politics, it’s become quite a bit of a boring game, really. It’s all about winning elections, trying to build a coalition, trying to run a government, or be against the government that is in power. The bickering that is going on is not very rich. The strategies that are being used for political gain and political loss are less interesting than watching the Tour De France on a boring day.
Political journalism very often has come down to a form of sports journalism, really. Like, who has made what manoeuvre and what will it bring to him or to her. The political game as it is being played these days is a pretty boring one, and a pretty predictable one, yes.
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