Bodies, Spaces, Claims: The Theory and Practice of Performing Political Representation

There is no political representation without performance. When politicians, protesters, and even celebrities appear in public, they make or constitute political representation by performing it, shaping how we view roles and institutions and imagine society. Building theory through rich case studies--from the festival stage to the toppling of statues, and from presidential inaugurations to parliaments and council chambers - the book deepens our understanding of political representation by exploring how embodied action in different spaces creates representative claims in our highly mediatized contemporary politics. It shows how a performative take on representation is critical to our understanding of: the symbolism of political authority; the limits of democratic leadership; the politics of material spaces and presences; political empowerment and disempowerment; and the claim to and denial of authenticity in political life.

Paula Diehl, Political Theory, History of Ideas, and Political Culture University of Kiel, Michael Saward, Department of Politics and International Studies University of Warwick

Paula Diehl is Professor for Political Theory, History of Ideas, and Political Culture, and Director of the International Populism Research Network, at the University of Kiel, Germany. She held fellowships and guest professorships among others at Sciences Po (Paris), École des Hautes Études, U-Penn, Institute for Advanced Studies (Bologna) and La Sapienza (Rome). Her research is dedicated to political representation and body performances, the political imaginary, democratic theory and populism, including the normalization of the far right. She developed a concept of political representation that integrates the symbolic and the imaginary dimensions of politics.

Michael Saward is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He was head of Department of Politics at the Open University, and Director of the Midlands Graduate School ESRC Doctoral Training Centre from 2013 to 2016 at Warwick. His key area of research is contemporary democratic theory. In recent years he has focused on the theories of representation and performance. A Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust supported research on Democratic Design (2016-19). He has been a visiting scholar at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and Australian National University.