Power is a lobster: scenes of a double articulation between constituent and constituted

Abstract

This experiment article is a bet on the understanding of power in its performativity. Beyond the positions of classical constitutionalism that imprison the constituent in the constituted or the so-called radical positions that decree the death of the constituted in favor of a permanent constituent, we affirm that there is neither a constituent power nor a constituted power. What exists is just the power. And this power can only be understood in operation. It is in the relation that things show themselves. And in this relation, power is always shown as a constituent and constituted at the same time. It is precisely in this double articulation that it reveals itself. The relationship is not merely one of cause and consequence, but one of the simultaneous constitution. There is no anteriority in the time and space of one dimension over another. What exists is a process of overdetermination without beginning or end.