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Towards Understanding Political Representation as an Ecology: Reconfiguring Approaches to Democratic Legitimacy
No full textThe constructivist turn in political representation significantly broadened our understanding of who may qualify as representative. Yet in doing so, constructivism also complicates our ability to make normative assessments concerning the democratic legitimacy of all these representatives. I argue that a constructivist approach does not necessarily obstruct making normative assessments, but that it warrants an alternative approach. To this end, I propose to allow for a plurality of democratically legitimate representatives, and explore how this shifts our understanding of democratic representation. I work towards an understanding of political representation as ecological network’, which is able to recognise a plurality of legitimate representatives. Ultimately, I argue that this plurality is beneficial to a democratic politics, rather than a danger to it
Burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid en het raciaal contract: een pleidooi voor onbeschaafd verzet
No full textVolgens liberale filosofen zoals John Rawls is het, onder bepaalde voorwaarden, te rechtvaardigen als burgers moedwillig de wet overtreden om zo een groter onrecht aan de kaak te stellen. Burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid kan een legitiem middel zijn om de samenleving te herinneren aan de in het sociaal contract vastgelegde politieke beginselen. Maar wat als dit sociaal contract zelf op een fundamenteel onrecht is gebaseerd? Aan de hand van Charles Mills zijn The Racial Contract betoogt deze thesis dat het liberale begrip van burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid deel uitmaakt van een traditie die niet-witte mensen uitsluit en reduceert tot tweederangsburgers. Juist ook dan ‘beschaafdheid’ als criterium te stellen voor legitimiteit van verzet wordt deze uitsluiting gereproduceerd. De uiteindelijke conclusie die hieruit wordt getrokken is dat de liberale voorwaarde van beschaafdheid per definitie niet op kan gaan voor niet-witte mensen en dat onbeschaafd verzet een gerechtvaardigd alternatief kan zijn
Fighting with Tools: Prefiguration and Radical Politics in the Twenty-First Century
No full textThis article conceptualizes some of the political practices and discourses that characterize recent protest movements such as Occupy and the Indignados. These movements’ strategies are distinguished by the central role they give to the occupation
and recomposition of public spaces and also by their refusal to engage with 10 representative politics and public institutions. Critics argue that this so-called strategy of withdrawal illustrates a categorical misunderstanding of the political. But as notions such as “withdrawal” or “exodus” give only a rather partial account of these movements’ practices and discourses, this paper aims to introduce an alternative, contemporary concept that has a much stronger explanatory potential:
15 “prefiguration” or “prefigurative politics.” In order to flesh out and apply this concept, it reconstructs the political ontologies of two radical traditions that significantly influenced more recent protest movements—namely, early anarchism with its antithetic dialectics (Mikhail Bakunin) and contemporary autonomist Marxism (Antonio Negri).status: Publishe
Más allá del poder dual: prefiguración y la apropiación del espacio
Get PDFIn the wake of ‘assembly movements’ such as Occupy Wall Street, the concept of ‘prefiguration’ has received increased attention in radical political theory. What remains undertheorised, however, is the manner and the extent to which prefiguration often implies a territorial claim as a way to secede from existing power relations and institutions. This article seeks to establish this relation between prefiguration and the appropriation of space. It first retraces the idea of prefiguration as a revolutionary strategy to the Paris Commune of 1871 and reconstructs how this experience led to a split within the international workers’ movement. It then continues to distinguish between prefiguration and ‘dual power’, which was introduced by Lenin, and argues that the latter does not bear the same territorial connotation. Finally, the paper turns to a contemporary example of prefigurative politics that is underpinned by a territorial claim – namely, the ZAD or zone à défendre in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.A raíz de los movimientos asamblearios como Occupy Wall Street, el concepto de prefiguración ha ganado mayor atención en la teoría política radical. Sin embargo, sigue sin ser suficientemente teorizada la forma y el grado en que la prefiguración implica a menudo una reivindicación territorial como una vía para distanciarse de las relaciones de poder e instituciones existentes. Este artículo busca establecer esta relación entre la prefiguración y la apropiación del espacio. En primer lugar, rastrea la idea de prefiguración como estrategia revolucionaria hasta la Comuna de París de 1871 y reconstruye cómo esta experiencia provocó una división dentro del movimiento obrero internacional. A continuación, distingue entre la prefiguración y el poder dual introducido por Lenin, argumentando que este último no posee la misma connotación territorial. Finalmente, el artículo examina un ejemplo contemporáneo de política prefigurativa sustentada en una reivindicación territorial: la zad o zone à défendre en Notre-Dame-des-Landes
The Improper Politics of Representation
No full textRecent debates about representative democracy pose two key arguments. First, they contend that the represented do not pre-exist their articulation, putting in to question the notion that the represented have pre-constituted interests. Second, they contend that representative claims are wider ranging than is normally assumed. They may ‘…be formal and informal, electoral and non-electoral, national and trans-national and manifest in multiple guises and spaces.’ (Saward 2016: 246) These arguments demand a rethinking of how representative democracy is understood and justified. I contend that the constructivist turn inadequately accounts for the relationship between inequality and representation. Unlike classic critics of representative democracy constructivist theorists fail to think the intrinsic relation between property, the proper and representation. While they maintain an agonistic public sphere at the centre of democratic contestation and opinion formation, they underemphasise the disjuncture between democratic equality and representative politics. In short these attempts to radicalise representative democracy inadequately address the sedimented forms of inequality which structure representation. In section 1 I set out the main tenets of the constructivist turn. In section 2 I set out three objections to this account, recalling without vindicating the Marxist critique of representative democracy. Last, I distinguish democratic politics as improper from representative claim making
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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