Since the American Revolution; there has been broad cultural consensus that “the people†are the only legitimate ground of public authority in the United States. For just as long; there has been disagreement over who the people are and how they should be represented or institutionally embodied. In Constituent Moments; Jason Frank explores this dilemma of authorization: the grounding of democratic legitimacy in an elusive notion of the people. Frank argues that the people are not a coherent or sanctioned collective. Instead; the people exist as an effect of successful claims to speak on their behalf; the power to speak in their name can be vindicated only retrospectively. The people; and democratic politics more broadly; emerge from the dynamic tension between popular politics and representation. They spring from what Frank calls “constituent moments;†moments when claims to speak in the people’s name are politically felicitous; even though those making such claims break from established rules and procedures for representing popular voice.Elaborating his theory of constituent moments; Frank focuses on specific historical instances when under-authorized individuals or associations seized the mantle of authority; and; by doing so; changed the inherited rules of authorization and produced new spaces and conditions for political representation. He looks at crowd actions such as parades; riots; and protests; the Democratic-Republican Societies of the 1790s; and the writings of Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass. Frank demonstrates that the revolutionary establishment of the people is not a solitary event; but rather a series of micropolitical enactments; small dramas of self-authorization that take place in the informal contexts of crowd actions; political oratory; and literature as well as in the more formal settings of constitutional conventions and political associations.
#6614327 in Books 2017-05-15Original language:English 9.00 x 1.20 x 6.00l; #File Name: 0821422537352 pages
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