PhD defence C.R. (Catherine) Koekoek

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation: 

This dissertation explores the democratic importance of informal spaces like bookshops, community centres and theatres at a time characterised by simultaneously too much, and not enough politics. Too much, as a far-right movement is on the rise that uses post-truth as a strategy that undermines the conditions for democracy. Not enough, because the informal spaces where people can come together and express themselves on their own terms, are under threat after decades of neoliberal erosion. In this context, protest (for instance a protest vote on antidemocratic parties might seem like the only way to express existing discontents.
Towards an architecture of democratic infrastructure proposes an alternative, democratic response to these problems. It focuses on the spaces, practices and relations that make it possible to democratically express and organise yourself. The PhD is an interdisciplinary and practice-based political theory based on three concrete cases of democratic infrastructure: a history of community centres in Rotterdam from 1918 until now, an ethnographic study of the oldest feminist bookshop in The Netherlands, and interviews with the directors of the community theatre Rotterdams Wijktheater (with whom Catherine Koekoek has worked and performed since 2018).