Following the traces of democratic disaffection Political representation and contemporary subjectivities

Abstract

In this article we address the problem of democratic disaffection as an unavoidable feature that structures the present political scenario.To do this, we carry out an analysis of the institutional arrangement that produced Western modernity and its impact on subjectivity. In that sense, we show how the emerging subjects of modern institutions found themselves inserted in collective identity frameworks that prepared them to be represented. In effect, we argue that the functioning of political representation cannot be fully understood if it is not located in the modern institutional framework. We understand the crisis of these devices from their loss of legitimacy as authorized transmitters of the ways in which the world was understood and inhabited. In this framework, the ideals that supported representative democracy and the collective identifications that supported it lose their historical meanings. For this reason, we explore the transformation of certain meanings that supported life in common and raise questions about the effective possibilities of achieving high levels of satisfaction with democratic institutions in the present.