This book addresses the conflictual nature of radical democracy. By analyzing democratic conflict in Husby, a marginalized Stockholm city district, it exposes democracys core division between governors and governed as theorized by Jacques Rancière. Tracing the genealogy of that critique, the book interrogates a historical tradition generically adverse to every form of governance, namely anarchism. By outlining the divergent and discontinuous relationship between democracy and anarchy within the history of anarchist thought the author adds to democratic theory The Impossible Argument: a compound anarchist critique of radical democracy.

Markus Lundström is a researcher at Stockholm University, Sweden. He specializes in resistance and social movements and is the author ofThe Making of Resistance: Brazils Landless Movement and Narrative Enactment (2017).