According to Rafael Khachaturian, Jean-Paul Gagnon’s 'lexical approach' misses the interpretive dimension of democracy. Instead, we need a self-reflexive theory of concept creation that treats democracy as an unfulfilled political project
Lecturer, Critical Writing Program, University of Pennsylvania
Rafael is a political theorist working at the intersection of contemporary democratic theory, critical theory, and the history of the social sciences.
His research focuses on the changing character of capitalist-democratic regimes since the Cold War, and their effect on democratic subject formation, conceptions of the state, and left social movements.
Rafael earned a PhD in political science from Indiana University, Bloomington (2017).
His dissertation, Discipline, Knowledge, and Critique: Marxist Theory and the Revival of the State in American Political Science, 1968–1989, won the 2018 Stephen E. Bronner Dissertation Award from the Caucus for a Critical Political Science.
