Voices from the rising of the curtain: Democracy and deliberation bringing the disadvantaged to the fore

Abstract

A large and growing body of literature has attempted to devise discussion frameworks for school education. However, conceptualizing deliberation able to appreciate the expression of socially disadvantaged people has received relatively little attention. Since the voices of culturally and linguistically depreciated populations would disappear in the institutionalized deliberation process, this paper aims to extend the meaning of democratic deliberation capable of putting forward marginalized accounts. The paper proposes and builds a temporal speech stage named ‘generating deliberation’ on which superiority-based claims can weaken through ‘expressive speech’ anchored in the democratic value of equality. The paper also addresses how expressive speech requires truth-telling based ‘mindful speech’ as a basis for the democratic value of freedom and a more attentive dialogue of generating deliberation. The article first explores divergent assumptions associated with democratic deliberation and their potential dilemmas in foregrounding socially marginalized people. Next, it examines the concept of critical awareness put to work through Rancière’s ideas of dissensus and equality, followed by Foucault’s parrhesia and freedom. Whilst navigating the magnitude of freedom and equality, the paper theorizes generating deliberation as an expressive/mindful conversation that illuminates the socially invisible. The process of generating deliberation would ultimately enrich deliberation participants’ formative experiences of democracy and education.