A different constituent power: Agamben and Tunisia

Constituent power is fundamentally the potentiality of radical political change. Revolt, rebellion and revolution are usually imagined when we talk about this power, but we might also include radical dissent, dissensus, subversion and even treason (understood collectively). It remains crucial to current legal and political relations. Even aside from the political unrest and anger currently unfolding around the globe, 2 constituent power is at the heart of our understanding of the legal and political constitution of the modern state. It pervades questions of power, authority and right. Therefore it is perhaps a little surprising to hear Giorgio Agamben suggest that ‘concepts of sovereignty and constituent power which are at the core of our political traditions have to be abandoned or, at least, to be thought all over again... and those who continue to use these concepts uncritically literally do not know that they are talking about’.3 For Agamben, constituent power is too overburdened with biopolitical sovereignty. Constituent power, as traditionally portrayed, presents a paradigm for political and legal modernity. The people wills the legal order – they conceive (of) a constituted order which is imprinted with the stamp of their authority. The law’s legitimacy is thus guaranteed by the originary will of the people. The metaphysics of this schema is not diffi cult to spot – the manner in which the people is constituted as a unity or the authority guaranteed by this unity are direct transpositions of theologically constituted sovereignty. In the wake of the ‘death of God’ the problem for continental philosophy, and Agamben in particular, is how to interrupt sovereignty in a manner which does not simply repeat metaphysical structures.