| Popis: |
Chapter 7 argues that postnationalism’s more time-sensitive ambitions suggest we conceive constituent power not as the authority of rational order or decisive command but instead as the authority to judge. The chapter draws together Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the faculty of judgement and its relation to her theory of narrativity and political action with Seyla Benhabib’s concept of ‘democratic iterations’ and its ties to Jacques Derrida’s work on ‘iterability’. On these conceptual grounds, an account of postnational constituent power counterposed to reification must reclaim a narratival form of the free act: pouvoir constituant narratif. The national and supranational pendants of pouvoir constituant narratif create a space in which the capacity for iterated judgement can arise, a space intended to disclose the iterative (non-identical) nature of norm and decision. The model affords a political community a position from which to judge with self-awareness and self-critique how it exercises its agency always within a ‘web’ of narratives among a plurality of others. It reminds the polity that its actions will form part of its narrative history, interpreted by other states and other generations. Freedom—agency—is on this account less an act unencumbered by interference or domination but an act for which one can take responsibility. It is relational, social, and historical in character. The chapter details how this democratic theory recasts Article 4(2) TEU as the right to constitutional narrative and strengthens criticism of recent abuse of the right by illiberal states. |
