Dissensus

Description

Jaya Klara Brekke et al. :

"Dissensus describes a rupture to consensus (Rancière, 2004; Rancière, 2015). It therefore points to the possibility that incompatible positions might arise, forcing either significant negotiation and transformation in order to accommodate for these, or a split and exclusion. In the context of technology, dissensus, for example, entails foregrounding the conflicting possibilities in the context of algorithmic decisions (Crawford, 2016), or, as we discuss in this article, the possibility of many different and conflicting development pathways. The concept also points to the limits of formalized governance (whether algorithmic or parliamentary) as the established means to negotiate disputes and conflict, because governance methods and mechanisms might themselves become a site of dissensus, forcing significant negotiation and transformation of the given project, or a “fork.” Rather than a problem to be solved, the potential for dissensus to arise is better understood as an inevitable and necessary precondition for different perspectives and possibilities to emerge, and therefore for transformation, growth, and change. In the work of political theorist Mouffe, it is nothing less than the necessary preconditions for a free society (Mouffe and Laclau, 1998). The concept thereby also points to the precise limits of efforts that approach governance as a problem to be solved in any final manner through mechanisms, incentives, and algorithms."

(https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2021.641731/full)

Discussion

Murray Bookchin:

"consensus silenced that most vital aspect of all dialogue, dissensus. The ongoing dissent, the passionate dialogue that still persists even after a minority accedes temporarily to a majority decision, was replaced in the Clamshell by dull monologues -- and the uncontroverted and deadening tone of consensus. In majority decision-making, the defeated minority can resolve to overturn a decision on which they have been defeated -- they are free to openly and persistently articulate reasoned and potentially persuasive disagreements. Consensus, for its part, honors no minorities, but mutes them in favor of the metaphysical "one" of the "consensus" group.

The creative role of dissent, valuable as an ongoing democratic phenomenon, tends to fade away in the gray uniformity required by consensus. Any libertarian body of ideas that seeks to dissolve hierarchy, classes, domination and exploitation by allowing even Marshall's "minority of one" to block decision-making by the majority of a community, indeed, of regional and nationwide confederations, would essentially mutate into a Rousseauean "general will" with a nightmare world of intellectual and psychic conformity. In more gripping times, it could easily "force people to be free," as Rousseau put it -- and as the Jacobins practiced it in 1793-94.

...

If consensus could be achieved without compulsion of dissenters, a process that is feasible in small groups, who could possibly oppose it as a decision-making process? But to reduce a libertarian ideal to the unconditional right of a minority -- let alone a "minority of one" -- to abort a decision by a "collection of individuals" is to stifle the dialectic of ideas that thrives on opposition, confrontation and, yes, decisions with which everyone need not agree and should not agree, lest society become an ideological cemetery. Which is not to deny dissenters every opportunity to reverse majority decisions by unimpaired discussion and advocacy." (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/CMMNL2.MCW.html)