Even the Greek etymology of "democracy" generates ambiguity and dispute. Demos/kratia translates as "people rule" or "rule by the people." But who were the "people" of ancient Athens? The propertied? The poor? The uncounted? The many? This was a dispute in Athens itself, which is why for Plato, democracy is proximate to anarchy, while for Aristotle, it is rule by the poor. In contemporary Continental theory, Giorgio Agamben identifies a constant ambiguity — one that "is no accident" — about the demos as referring both to the entire political body and to the poor. Jacques Rancière argues (through Plato's Laws) that the demos refers to neither, but instead to those unqualified to rule, to the "uncounted." Thus, for Rancière, democracy is always an eruption of "the part that has no part." Etienne Balibar augments Rancière's claim to argue that democracy's signature equality and freedom are "imposed by the revolt of the excluded," but always then "reconstructed by citizens themselves in a process that has no end."

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 26