2. Unrepresentative Claims: Refusing to Represent as Legitimation

• In Event: Political Representation, Power and Inequalities

Abstract

By focusing on representative claims, the constructivist turn in the theory of representation has provided us with an all-encompassing framework able to include different forms of representation, both electoral and not. However, it fails to integrate the movements and situations in which participants, sometimes even leaders and spokespersons, explicitly refuse to claim they represent anyone but themselves. In a political realm in which power and legitimacy seem to be based on the capacity to assert one’s representativeness, how can we understand these unrepresentative claims? Drawing on examples from different movements, this paper will distinguish between four strategies in which unrepresentative claims may function as a way to acquire power and legitimacy. First, when addressing representative authorities, it allows to present oneself as a member of the constituency and thus as being authorized to exert control over the representative. Second, it may be used by a leader who has power over a group of people to avoid or escape accountability. Third, reversing the logic of substantive representation, it allows the claim maker to deny any link to an external interest, thus constructing a position of non-partisanship or impartiality. Finally, unrepresentative claims may paradoxically enhance one’s ability to appear as embodying a group, following the mechanism of pars pro toto that was the core of the medieval repraesentatio identitatis and still functions when it comes to representing social identities.

Author

• Samuel Hayat, CNRS