Radical Citizenship

Radical Citizenship as in ‘the belonging, expression and allegiance to multiple and malleable identities’ was first elucidated in the doctoral proposals, and papers written by Bachar Chbib candidate for a Doctorate in Philosophy in the communications department at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Chbib contends that in view of administrative, social, cultural, and political changes that have developed in these latter stages of the modern western nation, it is inevitable that the contracts between the citizen and the nation are past due and need to be re-negotiated in good faith.

He outlines the possibility of an alternative relationship between the 21st century capitalist, liberal, democratic nation and its shareholders, the citizen. Citizens collectively are civically determined persons desiring good public guidelines by purposefully communicating with each other, listening to each other's point of view, and being ready to learn and alter their mind based on such channels of communication as may be available to them. Chbib proposes a return to the roots of the citizen/state relationship as in a radicalization of the engagement between the contenders. In his continuous radical citizenship model, the nation and the citizen are to engage into a more candid and transparent contract that allows for a more connected and responsible citizenry within the public realm and a nation more accountable to its citizens (whether subjects or shareholders) and most notably the neighbor (the other). Nationality remains an exclusive concept devoid of inter-subjectivity and requires a radicalization of its concepts of citizenship and public participation to maintain its continuity.

Chbib’s citizen is defined as an inhabitant, occupant or resident of a particular place contrary to many traditional definitions that nominatively reduce the loyal citizen to seeking the protection of a state or nation in which they are naturalized or native to. Radical Citizenship is exemplary of a stateless nation-building within industrial democracies, represented in the most advanced cases of transnational economic, political, and institutional orders.