Papers by Angelica Bernal
Hannaharendt Net, Sep 15, 2009
In the late 1980's and 1990's, the "republican revival" emerged as an influential movement in con... more In the late 1980's and 1990's, the "republican revival" emerged as an influential movement in contemporary American constitutional thought. In this paper, I critically examine the republican approach to constitutionalism by bringing into conversation one of its most influential proponents-Frank Michelman-with another theorist not commonly associated with the republican revival: Hannah Arendt. In the first part of this paper, I examine Frank Michelman's theory, in particular his conception of constitutional legitimacy and "jurisgenerative politics" with regards to questions of intergenerational commitment and social change, and review the critiques to his approach. In the second part of this essay, I reconstruct Arendt's constitutional theory and contend that it offers a powerful corrective to some of the criticisms launched against republican constitutional theories such as Michelman's, and indeed that it provides a more fruitful route for reconceptualizing constitutional theory in more inclusive ways.
Oxford Scholarship Online
From classical stories of divine lawgivers to contemporary ones of Founding Fathers and constitut... more From classical stories of divine lawgivers to contemporary ones of Founding Fathers and constitutional beginnings, foundings have long been synonymous with singular, extraordinary moments of political origin and creation. In constitutional democracies, this common view is particularly attractive, with original founding events, actors, and ideals invoked time and again in everyday politics as well as in times of crisis to remake the state and unify citizens. Beyond Origins challenges this view of foundings, explaining how it is ultimately dangerous, misguided, and unsustainable. Engaging with cases of founding through a series of “travels” across political traditions and historical time, this book evaluates the uses and abuses of this view to expose in its links among foundings, origins, and authority a troubling political foundationalism. It argues that by ascribing to foundings a universally binding, unifying, and transcendent authority, the common view works to obscure the fraught...
Philosophy and Global Affairs
This article engages with a creolized approach to the problem and paradoxes of founding. At the h... more This article engages with a creolized approach to the problem and paradoxes of founding. At the heart of the paradox is the issue of political legitimacy: where do a people get the legitimacy to found or refound a new political order? I argue that Gordon’s creolized reading of Rousseau’s problem of the general will—via Fanon—offers us a novel approach to this question: one that neither resorts to an outside lawgiver or projects the solution for a people to solve in the future. Bringing together this solution with my own political reading of the problem of foundings, I contend that Gordon’s creolized general will offers not only a “third way” beyond traditional Rousseauian and Habermasian solutions to the problem, but also a solution that is importantly informed by and can continue to inform real world processes of founding and refounding in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Thesis Eleven, 2021
This article examines the confluence of extractivism, violence, and their resistance in the conte... more This article examines the confluence of extractivism, violence, and their resistance in the context of left governance-specifically the case of Ecuador-through an engagement with the concept of populism. Alongside Bolivia and Venezuela, Ecuador has long been associated with the rise of radical populism and with it an 'autocratic turn' in Latin America. Dispensing with overdetermined accounts of populism as either the antithesis or essence of democracy, this article proposes a third lens-dual populisms-to better grapple with the neocolonial turn toward intensified natural resource extraction and violence. That this intensification took place in the context of a left-in-power in Ecuador was initially surprising given previous alliances between President Correa's party and Indigenous and environmental movements, and its rejection of capitalist and neoliberal developmentalism. With the expansion of extractive industries, and its accompanying violence increasingly becoming a global phenomenon, dual populism posits a third position-one that is at once top-down, state centered, and also bottom-up and social movement focused-to better account for the complex dynamics at work within this turn.
The concept of sumaq kawsay was among the most lauded innovations of the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitu... more The concept of sumaq kawsay was among the most lauded innovations of the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution. Kichwa for the “good life” or “living well,” sumaq kawsay was presented as reflecting a decolonial stance committed to reimagining relationships between citizens, nature, and development. This article examines the relationship between the Constitution’s articulation of sumaq kawsay and the expansion of extractive industries. I outline the Constitution’s elaboration of this concept within a development framework that links the “good life” to state sovereignty and a conception of nature as a site of human management, accumulation, and consumption. I thus argue that aggressive extractivism under Correa’s government is not a contradictory development but is part and parcel of the logic of state power and sovereignty defined by the Buen Vivir framework through the instrumental logics of nature established by the Constitution.
El concepto de sumaq kawsay fue uno de las inovaciones mas celebradas en la Constitucion Ecuatoriana del 2008. Kichwa para "el buen vivir,' sumaq kaway fue presentado como un nuevo contrato entre el estado y la cuidadania, uno que enfatizaba una relacion decolonial y inclusionaria que reimaginaba las relaciones entre ciudadanos, la naturaleza y el desaroyo. Este articulo examina la relacion entre la version del sumaq kawsay articulada en la Constitucion y la expancion del neoextractivismo en el Ecuador. El articulo argumenta que la Constitucion ha creado las condiciones que facilita este neo-extractivismo a causa a su articulacion del sumaq kawsay en base a un marco de desaroyo que une una logica de soberania del estado con logicas instrumentales que definen la naturaleza como objecto de manejo tecnocratico y consumo humano.
Co-Author: Elva Orozco-Mendoza
Abstract will be provided by author.
Page 1. Foundational Crises, Foreignness, and Exclusion Angélica M. Bernal Assistant Professor Un... more Page 1. Foundational Crises, Foreignness, and Exclusion Angélica M. Bernal Assistant Professor University of Massachusetts, Amherst Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Washington, DC ...
Book Reviews by Angelica Bernal
Books by Angelica Bernal
The foundings of constuonal democracies are commonly traced to singular moments. In turn, these m... more The foundings of constuonal democracies are commonly traced to singular moments. In turn, these moments of national origin are characterized as radical polical innovations, notable for their civic unity, perfect legimacy and binding authority. This common view is attractive as it suggests original founding events, actors, and ideals that can be evoked to legimize state authority and unify cizens. Angélica Maria Bernal challenges this view of foundings, however, explaining that it is ultimately dangerous, misguided, and unsustainable. Beyond Origins argues that the ascription of a universal authority to original founding events is problematic because it limits our understanding of subsequent foundational changes, political transformation and innovation. This singular view also confounds our ability to account for all of the actors and venues through which foundation-building and constitutional transformation occurs. Because such understandings of national foundings obscure the many power struggles at work in them, these origin stories are troubling and unhelpful. In the wake of these limited views of founding, Bernal develops an alternate approach: " founding beyond origins. " Rather than asserting that founding events are authoritatively settled and relegated to history, this framework redefines foundings as contentious, uncertain, and incomplete. Indeed, the book looks at a wide variety of contexts—early imperial Rome; revolutionary Haiti and France; the mid-20th century, racially-segregated United States; and contemporary Latin America—to reconsider political foundings as a contestatory and ongoing dimension of political life. Bridging classic and contemporary political and constitutional theory with historical readings, Bernal reorients approaches to foundings, arguing that it is only through context-specific and pragmatist understandings of political origins that we can realize the potential for radical democratic change.
The foundings of constitutional democracies are commonly traced to singular moments. In turn, the... more The foundings of constitutional democracies are commonly traced to singular moments. In turn, these moments of national origin are characterized as radical political innovations, notable for their civic unity, perfect legitimacy and binding authority. This common view is attractive as it suggests original founding events, actors, and ideals that can be evoked to legitimize state authority and unify citizens. Angélica Maria Bernal challenges this view of foundings, however, explaining that it is ultimately dangerous, misguided, and unsustainable.
Beyond Origins argues that the ascription of a universal authority to original founding events is problematic because it limits our understanding of subsequent foundational changes, political transformation and innovation. This singular view also confounds our ability to account for all of the actors and venues through which foundation-building and constitutional transformation occurs. Because such understandings of national foundings obscure the many power struggles at work in them, these origin stories are troubling and unhelpful.
In the wake of these limited views of founding, Bernal develops an alternate approach: "founding beyond origins." Rather than asserting that founding events are authoritatively settled and relegated to history, this framework redefines foundings as contentious, uncertain, and incomplete. Indeed, the book looks at a wide variety of contexts-early imperial Rome; revolutionary Haiti and France; the mid-20th century, racially-segregated United States; and contemporary Latin America-to reconsider political foundings as a contestatory and ongoing dimension of political life. Bridging classic and contemporary political and constitutional theory with historical readings, Bernal reorients approaches to foundings, arguing that it is only through context-specific and pragmatist understandings of political origins that we can realize the potential for radical democratic change.
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Papers by Angelica Bernal
El concepto de sumaq kawsay fue uno de las inovaciones mas celebradas en la Constitucion Ecuatoriana del 2008. Kichwa para "el buen vivir,' sumaq kaway fue presentado como un nuevo contrato entre el estado y la cuidadania, uno que enfatizaba una relacion decolonial y inclusionaria que reimaginaba las relaciones entre ciudadanos, la naturaleza y el desaroyo. Este articulo examina la relacion entre la version del sumaq kawsay articulada en la Constitucion y la expancion del neoextractivismo en el Ecuador. El articulo argumenta que la Constitucion ha creado las condiciones que facilita este neo-extractivismo a causa a su articulacion del sumaq kawsay en base a un marco de desaroyo que une una logica de soberania del estado con logicas instrumentales que definen la naturaleza como objecto de manejo tecnocratico y consumo humano.
Book Reviews by Angelica Bernal
Books by Angelica Bernal
Beyond Origins argues that the ascription of a universal authority to original founding events is problematic because it limits our understanding of subsequent foundational changes, political transformation and innovation. This singular view also confounds our ability to account for all of the actors and venues through which foundation-building and constitutional transformation occurs. Because such understandings of national foundings obscure the many power struggles at work in them, these origin stories are troubling and unhelpful.
In the wake of these limited views of founding, Bernal develops an alternate approach: "founding beyond origins." Rather than asserting that founding events are authoritatively settled and relegated to history, this framework redefines foundings as contentious, uncertain, and incomplete. Indeed, the book looks at a wide variety of contexts-early imperial Rome; revolutionary Haiti and France; the mid-20th century, racially-segregated United States; and contemporary Latin America-to reconsider political foundings as a contestatory and ongoing dimension of political life. Bridging classic and contemporary political and constitutional theory with historical readings, Bernal reorients approaches to foundings, arguing that it is only through context-specific and pragmatist understandings of political origins that we can realize the potential for radical democratic change.
El concepto de sumaq kawsay fue uno de las inovaciones mas celebradas en la Constitucion Ecuatoriana del 2008. Kichwa para "el buen vivir,' sumaq kaway fue presentado como un nuevo contrato entre el estado y la cuidadania, uno que enfatizaba una relacion decolonial y inclusionaria que reimaginaba las relaciones entre ciudadanos, la naturaleza y el desaroyo. Este articulo examina la relacion entre la version del sumaq kawsay articulada en la Constitucion y la expancion del neoextractivismo en el Ecuador. El articulo argumenta que la Constitucion ha creado las condiciones que facilita este neo-extractivismo a causa a su articulacion del sumaq kawsay en base a un marco de desaroyo que une una logica de soberania del estado con logicas instrumentales que definen la naturaleza como objecto de manejo tecnocratico y consumo humano.
Beyond Origins argues that the ascription of a universal authority to original founding events is problematic because it limits our understanding of subsequent foundational changes, political transformation and innovation. This singular view also confounds our ability to account for all of the actors and venues through which foundation-building and constitutional transformation occurs. Because such understandings of national foundings obscure the many power struggles at work in them, these origin stories are troubling and unhelpful.
In the wake of these limited views of founding, Bernal develops an alternate approach: "founding beyond origins." Rather than asserting that founding events are authoritatively settled and relegated to history, this framework redefines foundings as contentious, uncertain, and incomplete. Indeed, the book looks at a wide variety of contexts-early imperial Rome; revolutionary Haiti and France; the mid-20th century, racially-segregated United States; and contemporary Latin America-to reconsider political foundings as a contestatory and ongoing dimension of political life. Bridging classic and contemporary political and constitutional theory with historical readings, Bernal reorients approaches to foundings, arguing that it is only through context-specific and pragmatist understandings of political origins that we can realize the potential for radical democratic change.