Mind the gap: Lawrence Hamilton and aesthetic representation

Abstract

Lawrence Hamilton’s conception of aesthetic representation is part of the representative and constructivist turns, and I use a critical reading of his work to examine how we can conceptualise the constitutive character of representation; and the implications for political institutions and activism of taking representation as constitutive. I show how Hamilton limits the effects of the two turns in two areas in particular: the notion of human needs and the focus on political institutions at the expense of activist politics.

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Notes

1 My primary focus is on Hamilton’s (2014b) most recent book, Freedom Is Power, because this is the most developed account of his argument, and because this is where he connects his accounts of needs, power and freedom to representation. Although there is a general drift towards a (more) post-foundational position in his work, I treat his work as a whole for the purpose of this paper.

2 The account of needs in developed in The Political Philosophy of Needs (Hamilton 2003) and is then brought into the account of power, freedom and representation in Freedom Is Power (Hamilton 2014a). Already in The Political Philosophy of Needs, representation plays a role: first, more generally in that Hamilton argues for the need for institutions and a coercive state; and, second, more specifically, ‘[a]ccountable and publicly elected representatives must control evaluative procedures and decisions’ concerning needs (Hamilton 2003: 183). Freedom Is Power develops the general and the specific arguments for representation. I am less interested in the distinctions between needs, interests and preferences, and more interested in how these categories are constituted in the tensions between universal and particular and between objective and subjective (which, I hasten to add, do not simply map on to one another).

3 In another place, Hamilton (2014a: 83) writes of ‘direct political activism’ that it is naïve and creates false hope, but there activism seems to refer to a legalistic form of human rights activism.

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Lasse Thomassen

Lasse Thomassen is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Deconstructing Habermas (Routledge, 2007) and Habermas; A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2010) as well as articles on Habermas, deconstruction, identity politics and radical politics. His book British Multiculturalism and the Politics of Representation is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press in 2017. He is currently working on the category of representation and new forms of radical politics. E-mail: [email protected]