Representación, orden y contingencia

Abstract

In this study, it is emphasized that the link between representation, state, citizens, and democracy does not exclusively refer to popular participation and principles of institutional designation. On the basis of conceptions of representation by thinkers such as Arendt and Hobbes, it is argued that political representation does not only precede, but constantly intervene in the notion of a democracy located in sovereign states. When we examine the conceptual relationship between citizens and state we find a series of decisive dilemmas associated with the life contingency of citizens, on the one hand, and the need for a political order, on the other. This is why the conception of political representation developed in this article is not based on principles of identity or correspondence, but on contingent public spaces and metonymical processes, which make possible to gather dispersed attributes in order to generate notions of overarching political order, such as the sovereign state.