The treachery of writing about democracy (this is not an epilogue)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The title of this article parodies the name of one of René Magritte’s most famous paintings called The Treachery of Images, which, underneath its hyperrealist rendition of a pipe denies it being a pipe (Ceci n’est pas une pipe). Pushing the boundaries of standard epilogue-writing conventions, the present philosophical section discusses our compilation of articles through the lens of apophasis, which recognizes the limits of language to accurately describe undefinable concepts such as ‘democracy’ and ‘the people’. As a rhetorical device that speaks something into being while negating this very possibility, apophasis is a key characteristic of negative theology. Because it accepts the impossibility of defining the divine, it leaves room for the denial of its existence. Yet, at the same time, the apophatic paradox affirms the divine’s existence precisely by acknowledging its transcendental unspeakable nature. Inspired by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, who were themselves inspired by negative theology, scholars from various fields in the arts, social sciences, psychology, and the humanities have already developed useful apophatic-analytical tools in their methodological debates. My suggestion to employ a similar yet adapted lens for studying parliamentary history has been triggered by the thread that ties all contributions to this research anthology together. As they centre on parliamentary meta-discourse about tried and tested procedures, they feature negation, negotiation, and other apophatic rhetoric in the MPs’ struggles to define and perform their jobs as representatives. A more deliberate introduction of the apophatic lens – with an emphasis on apophatic rhetoric of materiality of parliaments in their interactions with the ineffable people – would take the concept quite paradoxically out of this discourse-analytical framework, to draw attention to political and colonial histories of experiences of the unspeakable.