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University of Edinburgh
Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts
Issue 29 | Autumn 2019
Title
Co-instituting the Constituency: The Constituencies of Brexit and Ghislaine
Leung’s CONSTITUTION
Author
Calvin Duggan
Publication
FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
Issue Number
29
Issue Date
Autumn 2019
Publication Date
13/12/2019
Editors
Amy Waterson
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Co-instituting the Constituency: The Constituencies of
Brexit and Ghislaine Leung’s CONSTITUTION
Calvin Duggan
University of Amsterdam
Traversing cultural studies and political theory, this paper asks how any representative is to
represent a diverse constituency, given that any constituency is necessarily co-instituted—that is,
made up of—multiple and conflicting bodies and interests. Arguing that the term has suffered from a
deficit of enquiry within the theoretical and critical humanities, this article thus aims to re-figure the
concept of constituency. The specific understanding of constituency formation within the context of
British political system, something especially visible in the wake of the EU referendum and its
aftermath, highlights that constituencies are understood within this context through an atomic logic—
that is, that each constituency is made up of individual constituents. Thinking with the notion of
constituent power allows for a better understanding of the co-instituted nature of constituencies: how
and by whom they are co-created. This, in turn, undermines any understanding of political
representation as a merely bi-directional practice between representative and constituency. Finally,
a close reading of Ghislaine Leung’s CONSTITUTION helps probe further both a bi-directional account
of constituency formation and the notion that constituencies are themselves atomically structured,
upsetting set theory in the process and allowing us to better apprehend the co-constitutive relationship
between constituency and constituent.
The phenomenon that is Brexit has raised serious questions as to the nature of the notion of
constituency. During a small, but significant, parliamentary debate held in the House of
Commons on 4 Dec 2018—the first allotted day of debate on the (first) EU Withdrawal
Agreement—Labour MP Chi Onwurah stated:
In making my remarks, I will try to be less divisive than the times in which we find
ourselves, because these are very divisive times. Newcastle reflects that: we voted
49.3% to leave and 50.7% to remain. We reflect the diversity, division and commonality
of the UK. ... we have strong remainers and committed Brexiteers. How am I to
represent that? (UK, UK Parliament, House of Commons; Parliamentary Debates, 4
Dec. 2018; c.831)
Onwurah’s contribution invites us to ask how any representative can fully represent such
diverse constituencies. On this point, political theorist Hannah Pitkin wrote that the assumption
that (political) representation is a reflective practice—that is, that representatives are to act
exactly as the represented would—regularly runs into problems when contemplating the
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relationship between a political representative and “an entire constituency, an unorganized set
of people” (144). For Pitkin, “a constituency is not a single unit with a ready-made will or
opinion on every topic; a representative cannot simply reflect what is not there to be reflected”
(147). Pitkin nicely illuminates Onwurah’s conundrum:
presumably (but not obviously) … the representative must vote as a majority of his [sic]
constituents would. But … [i]s he really literally to deliberate as if he were several
hundred thousand people? To bargain that way? To speak that way? And if not that
way, then how? (Concept 144-5)
A familiar response to these questions entails the recognition that the constituency must in
some way be constructed by its representative. Ernesto Laclau, taking this idea even further,
describes political representation as “a two-way process: a movement from represented to
representative, and a correlative one from representative to represented” (158). Whilst this is
an important move which begins to unravel the power dynamics of political representation, an
in-depth exploration into the concept of constituency challenges the validity of a merely bi-
directional account.
Running with Pitkin’s assertion that constituencies do not come pre-formed, the
question is thus: how—and by whom—are they co-created? British politics, with its uncodified
constitution and particular legal and political definitions of the notion of constituency, provides
fertile ground for a thorough investigation into the term’s potential as a critical concept. How
might we reconceive of the constituency in a moment where British parliamentary practices
have been interrupted by the (potentially) direct democracy of the EU referendum? Through
close attention to the ways in which the notion of constituency is being transformed in British
politics in the wake of the EU referendum—but also by attempting to contribute to this re-
conceptualisation ourselves—we might be able to better grasp, in the words of Lawrence
Grossberg, “what is going on” in our current moment (“Does Cultural Studies” 1).
The article begins with a survey of the work done with the concept of constituency
within the critical humanities, highlighting the lack of attention paid and thus also the timely
nature of renewed study. This section also examines the specific meaning of constituency
within British parliamentary politics, highlighting that constituencies are understood within
this context through an atomic logic—that is, that each constituency is simply an aggregate of
its individual constituents. Leading on from this, I focus on the notion of the constituent power,
exploring the co-instituted nature of constituencies: how and by whom they are co-created.
Finally, I perform a close reading of an art exhibition by Swedish artist Ghislaine Leung
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entitled CONSTITUTION. Leung’s work helps probe further both current understandings of
constituency formation as a merely bi-directional process and constituencies themselves as
atomically structured.
Defining the Constituency
Though the term constituency has enjoyed considerable usage within the vague constellation
of what we might call the critical humanities, it has received relatively little “concept-work”
(Stoler 17). That is, little attention has been paid to its potential as a critical concept that might
help us better understand what is going on. I will begin by surveying the small amount of work
that has been done.
Edward Said wrote that, for the public intellectual, “a constituency is principally a
clientele” (18-19). In this rendition, the constituency is conceived as “a community … based
principally on keeping people out and on defending a tiny fiefdom” (19). Constituency
formation in this rendition is little more than the reinforcing and fixing of boundaries. As an
alternative to this model, Said suggests “a more open sense of community as something to be
won” (19). This sense is more in line with Stuart Hall’s political use of constituency: that which
is there to be “cultivated” and “crystallised” (22), but also “constructed” (27), built and
mobilised (28). Hall and Said paint a picture of constituencies as contingent and contestable.
From another angle, Simon Watney, cultural critic and AIDS activist, wrote of the “gay
political imperative to think of its constituency as unified and homogeneous,” whilst
simultaneously acknowledging that the community is in fact “complex [and] divided” (64; 59).
In doing so, he points to the paradoxical nature of any constituency: that it form a unified
collective whilst simultaneously taking into account its inherent multiplicity. Paul Gilroy, in a
different context, describes how “the black poor … supply the [black] elite with a dubious
entitlement to speak on behalf of the phantom constituency of black people in general” (33).
Gilroy, like Watney, points here to the potentially non-democratic forms that evocations of a
unified constituency can take. As with Said and Hall, Gilroy’s remarks also emphasise the fact
that constituencies do not come pre-formed.
The concept of constituency, though touched upon by these theorists, remains
underexplored in each case. The word constituency also seems to suffer from a deficit of
definition in the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) simply defines it, in the first
instance, as “[a] body of constituents”—that is, the “voters who elect a representative.” More
broadly, it is “the whole body of residents in the district or place represented by such a member,
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or the place or district itself considered in reference to its representation” (“Constituency, n.”).
UK law prefers the latter of these three related definitions, with constituency legally defined as
“an area having separate representation in the House of Commons” (UK, HM Gov.;
Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986; section 1.2). The UK Parliament’s glossary of terms
concurs with this, describing a constituency as being “the specific geographical area that is
represented by each MP in the House of Commons,” adding that the “[p]eople who live in an
MP's constituency are known as their constituents” (“Constituencies”). This understanding of
the constituency takes it to be a whole made up of parts - that is, constituent parts. This I call
the atomic model of constituency formation: where each individual constituent is taken to be
the indivisible unit that makes up the larger system. Yet I argue that even within British politics’
own performance of constituency formation, the constituency is never simply the sum of its
parts. A constituency, in British politics, never includes all of its constituents, and a
representative never represents all of her constituents.
In the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, candidates are only required to obtain
a relative, as opposed to an absolute, majority. This means that it is possible for a winning
candidate to receive fewer votes overall than the other candidates combined. In other words,
an MP is able to win a seat in the House of Commons whilst receiving less than 50% of the
popular vote in their constituency. This is not an uncommon occurrence. A report by the
Electoral Reform Society found that, in the 2015 UK General Election, 331 MPs out of 650—
that is, over half of them—“were elected without an absolute majority,” with a further eight
candidates winning on 35% or less (Garland and Terry 22). These figures are striking, and they
do not even account for voter turnout. Doing so reveals that 191 MPs, equating to almost 30%
of the seats available, “were elected with the support of less than 30% of their whole electorate”
(23). In other words, over 70% of those eligible to vote in these constituencies—a category
which itself still disregards many: those under the age of 18, those unregistered or improperly
registered, the homeless, and the mentally ill—did not (co-)constitute the majority.
Within the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system then, the so-called majority may
often be a (numerical) minority. For Deleuze and Guattari, there is no reason to assume that a
majority must be larger in quantity than its minorities; on the contrary, the majority is not
“established among those who possess that right [to vote] but is exercised over those who do
not, however great their numbers” (291). Far from being a question of quantity, the “[m]ajority
implies a constant, of expression or content, serving as a standard measure by which to
evaluate” itself (105). That is, minorities are always-already excluded from the very
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measurement processes that continually re-articulate the majority in its becoming. It is in this
sense that “[t]he majority in a government presupposes the right to vote” (291).
Jacques Rancière can help us probe the significance of this statement, and of
majoritarian practices more broadly, further. Building on, but also disrupting, Aristotle’s
assertion “that a citizen is someone who has a part in the act of governing and being governed,”
Rancière states that “another form of distribution precedes this act of partaking in government:
the distribution that determines those who have a part in the community of citizens” (Politics
of Aesthetics 12). The majority is thus not formed (exclusively) as a result or effect of political
practices; it is inextricably linked to such practices, but also to a wider set of actions that
constitute the very foundations of democratic governance itself. This is what Rancière refers
to as the “distribution of the sensible,” the practices and cuts which preclude certain bodies
from having a place in further practices and cuts (12).
In this sense, the majority can be seen as—to use the distinction put forward by critical
legal theorist Illan Rua Wall—as the “power-over” rather than the “power-to” (384).
Acknowledging that romance languages such as Latin and French have two different words for
the one in English (potentia and potestas; puissance and pouvoir), Wall identifies “power-to”
with democracy and the people—what Rancière would call politics—whilst “power-over”
refers to that held by formal state political institutions, what Rancière would call the police. If
the majority is always the work of potestas, always the power-over, the power-to is realised
within the constituent power.
Co-instituting Power
The act of constitution always-already implies and necessitates some form of collective
construction. In this sense, the concept of constituency links to the notion of “the constituent
power,” which “speaks of a collective practice, involving a plurality of actors coming together
to co-institute, to establish jointly” (Kalyvas 105). The noun constituency is of course
etymologically related to a cluster of other words: constituent, constitution and the verb
constitute. Andreas Kalyvas, political theorist, notes that the etymology of these words lies in
the latin constitūere, consisting of “the prefix con-”—meaning “with” or “together”—and
“[t]he verb statūere … which means … ‘to set-up,’ ‘to construct,’ ‘to place,’ ‘to erect,’ ‘to
establish,’ ‘to create.’ The word constitūere, therefore, literally denotes the act of founding
together, creating jointly, or coestablishing” (90). In this sense, the constituency, like the
constituent power, belongs to the multitude. It cannot be formed alone.
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Legal scholar Joel Colón-Ríos, a specialist in constitutional theory, writes that “[t]he
theory of constituent power”—derived primarily from, and thus associated with, the French
and American revolutionary contexts—“holds that in every society there must be a legally
unlimited constitution maker—someone who can create constitutions at will” (“Constituent”
132). This figure is often taken to be some version of “the people”—that is, a constituency.
However, Colón-Ríos notes that in a British context, the “concept of constituent power has
many affinities with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty” (“Five” 5). This means that
Parliament, not the people, possesses the constituent power. In one sense, this is because
Parliament is constituted—that is, co-instituted—by the House of Commons, the House of
Lords, the monarch, the Government, the Official Opposition, etc. Yet, in a sense more true to
the definition of constituent power as a “power-to,” it means that Parliament—and only
Parliament—has the power to enact and amend the UK’s constitution. Despite the fact that it
is Parliament and not the people that traditionally possess the constituent power, there is still
much to be gleaned about the creation of the constituency when considering the constitution of
Parliament. Indeed, whilst not a mere bi-directional relationship, these two processes are
undoubtedly entwined. Within the context of Brexit Britain, the clash between notions of
Parliamentary and direct democracy—or, “Parliament vs the People” as some would have it —
has reopened the debate as to who exactly holds the constituent power: representatives or
constituents.
Complicating this further, Colón-Ríos suggests that
there is another way of understanding the relationship between the doctrine of
parliamentary sovereignty and the concept of constituent power: constituent power
involves the power to create a Parliament, and it has to be possessed by an entity prior
to Parliament. Can this entity be the people? (“Five” 10)
Yet it should not be taken for granted that “the power to create Parliament” exists a priori the
formation of Parliament itself. Legal scholars Martin Loughlin and Neil Walker refer to this as
the paradox of constitutionalism. Though formative of, and thus logically prior to,
governmental power, the power of the people “can only be exercised through constitutional
forms already established or in the process of being established” (Loughlin and Walker 1). Lisa
Disch makes a similar point through what she calls the “constituency paradox”: that
“democratic representation must posit as a starting point constituencies and interests that can
take shape only by its means” (600). As such, it makes little sense to apprehend Parliament and
its formation by its constituency—the “people”—in a linear, temporal logic. The people’s
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“power-to” is clearly constrained in some way by Parliament’s “power-over” it, even while
Parliament’s constituted power is constituted by the people. The constituency does not solely
exist before or after that which represents it.
Loughlin and Walker draw attention to the fact that formal governmental modes are
always-already “in the process of being established,” an important move which acknowledges
that the constitutional power, just as the constituted power—that is, both the constituency and
the representative—should be “treated not simply as a ‘segment of being’ but a ‘process of
becoming’” (3-4). This understanding of the constitution as a process in movement rather than
as fixed object—a factor acutely legible in the British context due to the absence of a singular,
written constitution—“does not settle the question of the relationship between constituent
power and constituted form” of government (Loughlin and Walker 4). Perhaps settling the
question is neither achievable nor desirable. Instead, an attention to the becoming-
constitutional allows for an acknowledgement of the very tension that provides the constitution
with its democratic potential.
Loughlin and Walker understand constitutions “as ways of representing particular
interests as the public interest” (4; emphasis added), clearly echoing Michael Saward’s
assertion that, “[a]t the heart of the act of representing is the depicting of a constituency as this
or that, as requiring this or that, as having this or that set of interests” (301). Yet this bi-
directional model of representation—where representation and constituency mutually
constitute each other—does not adequately or fully account for the formation of constituencies.
Constituencies are created by those that claim to represent them, but they are also co-created
by their constituents. This relationship, between constituency and constituent, is heavily
interrogated by Ghislaine Leung’s CONSTITUTION.
Differential Constitution
Ghislaine Leung’s CONSTITUTION—an exhibition commissioned by and housed at
Chisenhale Gallery, London, from 25 January to 24 March 2019 (see fig. 1)—poses pertinent
questions to our understanding of the concept of constituency. CONSTITUTION seriously
challenges both a bi-directional account of political representation, one that sees constituencies
as formed solely by their representatives, and an atomic view of constituency formation, where
the constituency is taken to be nothing more (or less) than the sum of its constituent parts.
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Fig. 1. Installation view of: Leung, CONSTITUTION; chisenhale.org.uk, photograph by Andy Keate, 2019,
chisenhale.org.uk/exhibition/ghislaine-leung. Accessed 23 May 2019.
The exhibition handout for CONSTITUTION contains an interview of Leung by Ellen
Greig, a curator at Chisenhale Gallery. In it, Leung suggests that the exhibition tries to offer “a
more material understanding of constitution, [and asks] questions of how and where things are
constituted” (Exhibition). Leung poses a series of questions that explore the divergent and
overlapping connotations of the English word constituency: “What is the constituency? Who
am I as a constituent? What are the constituent parts within an institution … ? How do we
understand how a policy is constituted? How do we understand how we are constituted by each
other and ourselves?” These questions are, perhaps necessarily, open-ended. Yet they point to
the ongoing reformulation and reformation of constituencies, as well as to the ever-pressing
need to better understand these constituency-forming practices and what materialises as a result
of them.
Leung emphasises the feelings of contingency and interdependency that
CONSTITUTION is supposed to evoke, placing it in direct tension with the notion of a
constitution as a statement of first principles, as solid ground for independence. Leung intends
her work to “maximise or amplify contingency” but also to bring to the fore “how and where
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things rest on each other” (Exhibition). That is, CONSTITUTION seeks to “foreground
[contingency’s] relations and its reliances.” Leung’s work is about connections, but not always
in the places and ways that one would expect to find them. Indeed, it is the very logic of fixed
relationality that Leung’s work upsets: “what is interesting in terms of the constitution of a
thing, is the question: where does that stop and start? It is impossible to say.” CONSTITUTION
thus foregrounds the relation between part and whole, but not wholly in ways we have come to
expect. The exhibition troubles common-sense sequential and causal relationships, making
materially manifest the paradoxes of set theory through its invocations of hierarchy and
banality.
Fig. 2. Close up of: Bosses, from Leung’s CONSTITUTION; chisenhale.org.uk, photograph by Andy Keate, 2019,
chisenhale.org.uk/exhibition/ghislaine-leung. Accessed 23 May 2019.
When talking about CONSTITUTION, it is difficult to know whether, or at least when,
to talk in the singular and when to talk in the plural. CONSTITUTION is, in itself, a single
exhibition, but it is also made up of a plurality of works. This is of course true of the majority
of exhibitions, but CONSTITUTION actively draws attention to this tension. Bosses, one of the
exhibition’s artworks, is an acute example of this. Bosses is a collection of collections. It
comprises 20 smaller works, each entitled Bosses II, which themselves are comprised of two
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mugs, each with the words “The Boss” emblazoned on them (see fig. 2). In the text produced
to accompany the entire exhibition, Bosses is (anonymously) described as follows:
a row of forty ceramic objects with black text printed on them are wrapped in pairs in
an abundance of red heart and clear cellophane with a combination of oversized pull
bows and light pink and red curled ribbon that sits, entrail-like, at the base of each
object. (Exhibition)
This description highlights the way in which Bosses is constituted of differing materials, all
with their own symbolic baggage. The painstakingly specific description of, for example, the
“clear cellophane” and “light pink and red curled ribbon” foregrounds the mundane, banal,
everyday objects that combine to produce the artwork, objects which in another context would
be part of another assemblage completely, thus (partially) meaning something different
themselves. As just one small example, the “clear cellophane,” if located at a supermarket,
could variously be seen as contributing to, that is co-constituting, a sense of hygiene, efficiency,
wastefulness and/or environmental damage.
In contrast to the detailed description of the wrapping, the mugs and their written
adornment are merely described as “a row of forty ceramic objects with black text printed”
(Exhibition). This description—though not incorrect—is extremely vague, performatively
demonstrating that the selection of what exactly constitutes an object or a collective is always
a field of possible contestation. These objects—cellophane, mugs, text, hearts—are not simply
predefined tools which are selected to make up a toolkit, nor are they different coloured paints
on a palette, offering creative, but finite, combinations. Rather, the “objects” themselves, the
constituent “parts” of the “whole,” are partially constituted by the whole and through the
practice of representation. Representation is thus not as simple as correct correspondence to
some fixed constituency; what that constituency is is (in part) an effect of its representation.
Using a different tactic, the description included in the “LIST OF WORKS” section of
the exhibition handout states, and I think it is worth reproducing in full, that Bosses “[c]onsists
of Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses
II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses II, Bosses
II, Bosses II, Bosses II.” This list has the effect of ridiculing the notion that the whole (Bosses)
is nothing but the sum of its parts (Bosses II). The monotonous repetition of the same title 20
times almost renders the words unintelligible, meaningless. The list in and of itself does not
help one come to any greater understanding of what Bosses consists of. It is as if one were to
describe a particular Member of Parliament by listing each of her constituents, yet rather than
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naming each person, referring to them only as “constituent,” rendering something along the
lines of: “A Member of Parliament consists of constituent, constituent, constituent, constituent,
constituent, constituent, constituent, constituent, constituent, constituent, constituent…” and so
on. The list appears to be utterly meaningless, but this is precisely the parody: this is indeed
how political representation is often figured. What does an MP do? They represent their
constituency. But what exactly is the constituency? Nothing but “[a] body of constituents”
according to the OED (“Constituency, n.”). This laboured listing of each edition of Bosses II
points to the inadequacy of a causal logic that only allows for a whole to be the sum of its parts.
At the same time, this list poses something of a challenge to the radical egalitarianism presumed
by democracy; that all names be subsumed within the title “citizen” is the premise on which
many calls to the demos are made, including those that relate to Brexit.
While Bosses cannot be reduced to a mere aggregate of its constituent parts, it is
nonetheless (co)constituted by the different editions of Bosses II. The description in the “LIST
OF WORKS” explains that “[e]ach pair of gift-wrapped ceramic oversized ‘The Boss’ mugs is
a work. … The work Bosses physically exists when all 20 editions are brought together via
exhibition loan” (Exhibition). Leung clarifies further that all twenty editions of Bosses II
“constitute the work Bosses. So, for instance, if the separate editions of Bosses II go into
different ownerships, in order for the work Bosses to be shown again, those collections will
need to work collectively to reconstitute it.” Bosses, then, cannot exist without each and every
edition of Bosses II.
All 20 editions of Bosses II constitute Bosses; but again, each edition of Bosses II is
itself constituted of mugs, plastic, ribbons, etc., which themselves are constituted by/of various,
differing materials and practices. Bosses is a work constituted by and of other works; but it also
co-constitutes the exhibition en masse, alongside the other works. Bosses leaves us with the
sneaking suspicion that constitution is not a linear process. It’s (co)constitution all the way
down, yes, but this works both ways: it’s also co-constitution all the way up. Bosses comes to
mean, comes to be, in relation to both its constituent parts (Bosses II) and that of which it itself
is a constituent part (CONSTITUTION). The expected linear, causal logic of
constitution/representation—that is, that the smaller things makes up the larger thing—is
interrupted by the very names of the two works. Bosses II makes up Bosses; Bosses does not
exist unless and until all twenty editions of Bosses II have been brought together. In other
words, Bosses II must first exist before Bosses is even a possibility. Yet that statement is clearly
incompatible with any form of linear, causal logic: Bosses II comes numerically—and thus, in
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a certain sense, logically—after Bosses. Indeed, the use of roman numerals invokes the naming
system of monarchs or popes, where they are used as ordinal numbers to indicate sequence and
order. Bosses II and Bosses disrupt the expected sequencing and ordering of representational
practices, reminding us of their contingent nature. Bodies and practices both constitute and are
constituted by other practices in entangled ways that a simple causal logic cannot adequately
account for.
So, is Bosses nothing but the sum of its parts? Is each edition of Bosses II nothing but
the part of a whole? An emphatic no. Leung sees Bosses as “a proposal for equality and
community,” but this is neither a practice of unanimity nor consensus” (Exhibition). Rather, in
a turn of phrase that echoes Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe, respectively, Leung sees
any notion of community or constituency, as containing within and as part of it “disagreement
and agonism as well” (Exhibition). For Rancière, “[p]olitics arises from a count of community
‘parts’, which is always a false count, a double count, or a miscount” (Disagreement 6). All the
“parts” of a community are thus never accounted for in its constitution; the distribution of the
sensible which constitutes those counted necessarily entails constitutive exclusions (those not
counted).
Conclusion
The concept of constituency clearly demands critical reappraisal, not least in the wake of the
EU referendum. Actively and continually reconfiguring our models of constituency formation
will allow for a renewed understanding of practices of political representation. Refusing to
update our current ideas of what a constituency is—beyond an atomic logic where the whole
is taken to be nothing more or less than the sum of its parts—means that we will not be able to
adequately grasp what is going on in these turbulent times. Ghislaine Leung’s works
powerfully demonstrate that parts need not pre-exist the whole. Instead, the “whole”
necessarily entails its constitutive exclusions, those that must not be conceived as belonging to
the whole, whose very existence as a (political) subject is foreclosed. Whilst a bi-directional
model of political representation goes some way to accounting for this power imbalance, it
ignores the more collaborative nature of constituency formation. A constituency cannot be
formed by its representative alone; it must be co-created by its constituents. Constituents
constitute constituencies and constituencies constitute constituents, but they do so
differentially. Not every constituent makes up the constituency, and the constituency cannot
represent all of its constituents.
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The concept of constituency enables us to think differently about the multiple, entangled
layers at work in any representative practice. Constituencies are not fixed sets that work as if
in a pyramid scheme, but rather imperfect and incomplete Venn diagrams, whose internal
relations are ill-defined by logics of causality and sequentiality.
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Works Cited
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Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.
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ssrn.com/abstract=2319154.
---. “Constituent Power, the Rights of Nature, and Universal Jurisdiction.” McGill Law
Journal/Revue De Droit De McGill, vol. 60, no. 1, 2014, pp. 127-172,
doi:10.7202/1027721ar.
“Constituency, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, Mar. 2019,
www.oed.com/view/Entry/39839. Accessed 4 June 2019.
“Constituencies (Constituents).” Parliament.uk, www.parliament.uk/site-
information/glossary/constituencies. Accessed 4 June 2019.
Disch, Lisa. “Democratic Representation and the Constituency Paradox.” Perspectives on
Politics, vol. 10, no. 3, 2012, pp. 599-616. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23260181.
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Author Biography
Calvin Duggan recently completed a research Masters’ degree in Cultural Analysis at the
University of Amsterdam. His research intersects formal politics, cultural studies and
posthumanist thinking. He is also a co-founding editor of Soapbox: Journal for Cultural
Analysis, an Amsterdam-based publication for postgraduate and early-career researchers.
