the pharmakonic nature of democracy in ibsen’s an enemy of the people

The paradoxical nature of democracy makes it in essence a subject of philosophical inquiry in terms of socio-political justice. in so far as democracy in itself is mostly the rule of the many than the rule of law, democracy’s concern with justice is naturally pharmakonic than dialectic, meaning that democracy cannot be either good or bad but mutually good and bad. such rendering of democracy is at work when intellectuals of a society, who mostly constitutes the minority, encounter the majority’s tyranny when socio-political issues of higher importance are seemingly at odds with the ideology of the majority. an enemy of the people (1882) is ibsen’s rage at social disease and corruption in a democratic society which is ruled not by reason and intellect but collusion through democracy. ibsen hereby investigates the pharmakonic sense of democracy, which in a derridean sense is simultaneously righteous and scandalous, as well as the possibility of any moral ideals in the face of the artifactualities and socio-political logos in which common citizens believe. in this light, approaching ibsen’s play through derrida, this paper argues that dr. stockman’s aporetic decision in revealing the pollution of the baths and the corruption of the officials, due to his brother’s impure hospitality, is ultimately changed through différance into a messianic hope of reformation and justice, meanwhile dethroning the mob’s democracy for that of the intellectual aristocrats.