| Beginning with Rousseau, a tradition of political thought has assumed that the people can demonstrate its will directly, without representation. By contrast, a Hobbesian approach to political identity has insisted that a people cannot coalesce into a political unity without a representative who would represent the identity of the people to the people. Without such a representation, there would just be a collection of individuals without the unity of will and imagination to be able to act in concert with a distinct political identity. The establishment of such a representation of the people becomes the key challenge for every political order in its attempt to maintain itself in the world and, consequently, one of the fundamental issues for thinking about politics. In our newly released special issue on “narratives of belonging,” guest-edited by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rösch, our contributors examine the challenges of constructing the narratives of belonging that are crucial to both an individual’s sense of their place in the world and a collective’s ability to maintain its own unique identity. |
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