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REPRESENTING THE DEMOS: ADAPTING INSIGHTS FROM THE CONSTRUCTIVIST TURN IN POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2021

Matt Simonton
Matt Simonton*
Affiliation:
Arizona State UniversityMatt.Simonton@asu.edu
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Extract

One of the commonest clichés in the study of ancient and modern democracy is the claim that the former is ‘direct’, the latter ‘representative’. A few scholars have recently explored areas in which the Classical Athenian democracy had representative features, particularly the magistracies. These studies continue, however, to understand ‘political representation’ according to the definition proposed by the political scientist Hanna Pitkin, that is, as ‘acting [on the part of the political representative] in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’. In this paper I introduce the insights of the recent ‘constructivist turn’ in studies of political representation to the analysis of Athenian politics in the hope of suggesting, in what will necessarily be a brief and incomplete exercise, how productive this exciting new paradigm can be for understanding the dynamics of ancient democracy. I first lay out the basic tenets of constructivist representation, particularly the notion of the ‘representative claim’ as developed by the political theorist Michael Saward, and argue for their suitability for studying ancient Greek history and political thought. Next, I adapt the model of the representative claim to two episodes of Athenian democratic deliberation, showing how it illuminates processes of demotic will- and identity-formation. I conclude by briefly underscoring how approaching Athenian politics in terms of constructivist notions of representation restores an aesthetic dimension to ancient democratic debate, one that allows us to compare more productively the ‘demos’ of symbouleutic oratory with its counterparts in poetry, sculpture, and other media, namely as a represented object fashioned for creative and rhetorical purposes.

Type
IV. The Body Politic
Information
Ramus , Volume 50 , Special Issue 1-2: In Terms of Athens , December 2021 , pp. 129 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Ramus 2021

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the editors, Johanna Hanink and Demetra Kasimis, for inviting me to participate in this special volume of Ramus; I have received much useful feedback from both of them. An early version of this piece was presented at the University of Edinburgh in March of 2019; there I benefited greatly from the audience members and in particular from many friendly and productive conversations with Mirko Canevaro. Denise Demetriou, Denver Graninger, John W.I. Lee, and Jeremy Labuff also read and provided helpful comments on the manuscript. This article is dedicated to Josh Ober, whose influence on it will be apparent below, in honor of fifteen years of scholarship, mentoring, and friendship.

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