Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.30925/zpfsr.46.2.4
The Social Contract as a Stage Act: On the Theatrical Origin of the Constituent Power in Rousseau
Darko Vinketa
; Sveučilište Johns Hopkins
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* Dopisni autor.
Sažetak
If state power derives from the will of the people, which is understood as indivisible, how can the people, as the original political subject, exercise their power in an institutionally divided manner as assumed by modern constitutionalism? In its attempt to resolve this paradox of constitutive power, contemporary constitutional theory periodically returns to the canonical text of Rousseau’s Social Contract. This article seeks to show how Rousseau’s theory of theatricality, expounded in his public polemic with Jean d’Alembert, can contribute to a more dynamic understanding of the concept of constitutive power within Rousseau’s contractualist theory. Reevaluating the key argument of the Social Contract in the context of Rousseau’s broader philosophical oeuvre shows that the constitutive power, which Rousseau claims precedes the constituted power, exists only in the form of retroactive theatrical narrativization. This refers exclusively to the creative ability of the community to continuously present its own symbolic universe to itself, that is, it exists only within what Robert Cover has called nomos. For Rousseau, in order for such collective representation to be convincing, it must effectively camouflage its theatrical apparatus and falsely appear as that which it is not and which it can never be – it must appear as a public festival of direct democracy.
Ključne riječi
constituent power; Rousseau; social contract; constitutional imagination; theatricality
Hrčak ID:
333945
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.9.2025.
Posjeta: 607 *