Representation Needs Resistance

Abstract

In responding to the five excellent articles on Freedom Is Power collected here, I argue that my account of representation in politics runs all the way down, as does my associated views on needs and institutional critique aimed at diminishing domination. I take on board some of the other criticisms levelled at me, but resist the notion that my account of freedom as power constrains resistance. Liberty through representation requires and depends upon resistance; it also institutionalises it.

Notes

1 Although some might like to contest this claim by arguing that these theorists cannot assume this as they think the ‘the people’ do not even come into being until a single representative—the person of the king or a single entity like an assembly—is created, they would be forgetting that, even if in different ways, all three conceive of individuals as having natural rights (based on natural needs and interests) prior to and fundamental for their move into ‘civil society’, in Hobbes’ case via his famous social contract theory.

2 Note that this is linked to my arguments in support of an aesthetic view of representation and it is very unlike the two arguments Furner supposes I am marshalling for the irreducibility of politics to anything else but representation. So, contrary to what Hull suggests on his p. 16, I think there exists a deep contradiction between my aesthetic account of representation and the mainstream views on deliberative democracy.

3 This covers Hull's concerns that my institutional accounts ought also to incorporate the need to have knowledge about what is going on in other assemblies and in legislative matters.

4 For more on district assemblies and an explanation of my adoption of the term and institution of ‘counsellor’ from Ancient Rome (as opposed to the more normal modern English term and institution of ‘councillor’), see Hamilton (2009, 2014b).

5 I also remain puzzled as to why Henao-Castro's second footnote seems to imply that my critique of Arendt does not go far enough as it does not engage with her distorted—and frankly racist—view of colonial and imperial power relations. I am puzzled because the fact that I do not engage it is not because I accept it, quite the opposite: I find it so flawed that it is not worth engaging, like much of the rest of her over-rated political theory. The only reason I spend a short time on her on freedom and virtù is to make clear that what I am taking from Machiavelli is nothing like what she, and many of her acolytes, supposedly adopt from him. I think she is mistaken in her views on Machiavelli. I also think Henao-Castro critique of her work on imperialism is spot on.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lawrence Hamilton

Lawrence Hamilton, BA (MA), MPhil, PhD (Cantab) MASSAf, is Professor of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and NRF/British Academy Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, Wits and Cambridge. He is the author of several books and articles in political theory and South African politics, most recently, Freedom Is Power: Liberty Through Political Representation (Cambridge University Press 2014) and Are South Africans Free? (Bloomsbury 2014). He is currently working on a commissioned book, Amartya Sen (Polity 2018) and a manuscript entitled Human Rights, Human Needs and Political Judgement. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]. Webpage: https://www.wits.ac.za/socialsciences/political-studies/staff/ and http://www.polis.cam.ac.uk/Staff_and_Students/professor-lawrence-hamilton; Academia.edu: http://wits.academia.edu/LawrenceHamilton