Description
Much political thought assumes that the sovereign people must appear together acting in concert or as a crowd, yet this paper suggests that there is a too quick assumption of a congruence between the crowd and popular sovereignty, leading to a blind spot concerning the way that the identity of the democratic sovereign people is not a literal identity but an aesthetic operation which operates on and transforms democracy understood as a regime or a form of state sovereign power. This operation both opens a gap in our common sense, at the same time as it proposes a new way to fill it in – both legitimating and opposing democratic state sovereign power as it does so. In this paper I draw on Lefort to develop his recognition that the empty space at the heart of democracy is the secret to its success. The art of democratic politics requires the invention and exploitation of a gap, which, contra Lefort, is not an ordinary feature of democratic power, but something that needs to be constructed using aesthetic strategies which play on the senses, via absurd and disorienting experiences that, in making it impossible to carry on as usual, open up possibilities for political transformation.| Period | 4 Jun 2026 |
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| Event title | Performing European Publics |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Manchester, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |