Language, Democracy, and the Paradox of Constituent Power: Declarations of Independence in Comparative Perspective

ISBN-13: 9781138606869 / Angielski / Twarda / 2021 / 192 str.

Catherine Frost

Opis

In this book, Catherine Frost uses evidence and case studies to offer a re-examination of declarations of independence and the language that comprises such documents. Considered as a quintessential form of founding speech in the modern era, declarations of independence are however poorly understood as a form of expression, and no one can completely account for how they work. Beginning with the founding speech in the American Declaration, Frost uses insights drawn from unexpected or unlikely forms of founding in cases like Ireland and Canada to reconsider the role of time and loss in how such speech is framed. She brings the discussion up to date by looking at recent debates in Scotland, where an undeclared declaration of independence overshadows contemporary politics. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and using a contextualist, comparative theory method, Frost demonstrates that the capacity for renewal through speech arises in aspects of language that operate beyond conventional performativity. Language, Democracy, and the Paradox of Constituent Power is an excellent resource for researchers and students of political theory, democratic theory, law, constitutionalism, and political history.

Spis treści

1. The Speaking Sovereign  2. Declarations of independence as proto-legal performatives  3. America’s Declaration of Independence as index case  4. Poetic prophecy in Ireland’s 1916 Proclamation of the Republic  5. Canada’s Secession Reference and the trickiness of sovereign speech  6. Scotland’s festival of democracy  7. Paradox, riddles, and the Saturnalia of language  8. Conclusion: Moving in the gap

O autorze

Catherine Frost is Associate Professor of Political Science at McMaster University, Canada. Her teaching and research interests are in political thought and history, including political community, nationalism, and collective identity, as well as communications theory, literature and new media. Her research centers on questions of representation and justice and asks how and why systems of representation are created and re-created and how this reshapes politics. Before joining McMaster, Frost held research fellowships at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and before entering academia, she served as a policy advisor in the Ontario government and a communications advisor in the private sector.