Remembering and Decision-making in Times of Social Acceleration: Towards a Democratic Archivology

The project explores what role collective remembering (and forgetting) plays in democratic decision-making. While prevailing approaches in democratic theory emphasize the importance of time-consuming procedures for democratic legitimacy, sociological acceleration theory questions whether democracies still have sufficient time at all. The project assumes that the focus on the linear-progressive dimension of time, which is dominant in such approaches, ignores the importance of the past. It argues that democratic conflicts always have a – varying – historical depth dimension which is to be described by the newly introduced concept of the "democratic archive". The stored experiences and stocks of knowledge can be referred to in decision-making situations. The "democratic archive" allows for the reconstruction of both the potential for adaptation and possible pathologies which arise from the historical depth dimension of democracies.