Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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DEMOCRACY TODAY
The democratic element is brought in by the theory of political
representation as it sets the context for the permanent possibility of
feedback, i.e. the continuous circularity between state and society.
Representative democracy is thus incomplete without the process-element
(the temporal narrative). To sum up: the (spatial) division between
ruler and ruled installs power, and the division of time in different
legislatures creates the possibility of control to power. Periodic rule
and the implied opportunities for contestation form the conditions for
a system in which the representative can appropriately and creatively
‘use’ the (originated) power. The temporal sequence thus prevents the
embodiment or possession of power and ascertains that the place of
power remains empty.
Representation becomes a democratic instrument once the representational
relationship becomes political. [9] I am alluding here to the
way in which a partisan, and thus particular, viewpoint can temporarily
fulfill the role of representing the whole of society and thus represent
the general. The plurality of social and cultural identities that exist in
society gets translated into political “alliances and programs” (Urbinati
2006, 37). These alliances try to provide an answer to the fragmentation
of society, by “articulat[ing] the ‘universal interest’ from peripheral
viewpoints” (Ibid.). Although partisanship is concerned with the
interests of its followers, the fact that their aspirations are “to represent
the general” makes that they translate their partial interests “in a
language that is general” (Ibid.). Laclau gives the same characterisation
of “the only truly political society”. “Universality only exists incarnating
– and subverting – particularity, but, conversely, no particularity
can become political without being the locus of universalizing effects”
(Laclau 2001, 10).
9
Urbinati states this clearly in the following citation. “This temporal perspective transforms
representation into a political resource, a way to perfect democracy by emancipating it
from the destabilizing force of presentism and the one-dimensional character of the will”
(Urbinati 2006, 225). But we could phrase the sentence also the other way around. Politics
would not be politics without the role of representation as it fulfills the role of mediation
through “voice and gesture, spacing and temporality” (Ibid., 37).