Bodies, Spaces, Claims

Abstract

There is no political representation without performance. When politicians, protesters, or politically engaged entertainers appear in public, they perform political representation. When statues of historical figures are put in the urban space, when people get together to deliberate in an institutional building, when they symbolically occupy the streets or find a virtual space in the media, a performative space of representation is configured. Relations of representation do not exist, passively; they are created (and for that matter, are challenged and disrupted) actively, forged through practice and performance. Representation is a ‘doing’ before it is a ‘being’; it is a performing of claims and counterclaims to speak or to stand for others. Performing is intrinsic to and constitutes representation, shaping the ways in which we conceive roles and institutions and imagine society and democracy. Performing representation is a dynamic exercise generating polysemic outcomes. How can performances of representation be analysed? And when are they democratic? Bodies, Spaces, Claims addresses these and a range of further questions on political representation by proposing theoretical approaches, analysing empirical material, and offering analytical tools for understanding the performativity of political representation.