Rethinking Political Representation

Abstract

Abstract Rethinking political representation pays attention to the ways in which disability can unsettle or develop the theoretical dimensions of the concept. This chapter explores the intellectual development of political representation in western thought, starting with past theorizations before turning to more recent accounts. It pays particular attention to ideas or assumptions about political representation which could be interpreted as exclusionary of disabled people—either implicitly or explicitly. It draws upon the ideas of a handful of canonical theorists in western historical thought whose work paid attention to the concept, as well as more detailed theoretical work on the political representation undertaken by Hanna Pitkin and feminist thinkers Iris Marion Young and Anne Phillips. The chapter addresses three questions regarding the relationship between political representation and physical, cognitive, developmental, and psychological impairments. What role does rationality play in determining who can be a representative? How should we think about the distinction between who the representative is and what the representative does? And, in what ways does the idea of presence shape our understanding of how and where representation occurs? In answering these three questions the chapter develops the idea of ‘experiential representation’—a form of representation that centralizes the idea of lived experience as a way in which to bridge the descriptive, substantive, and symbolic dimensions of the concept.