Environment, Political Representation and the Challenge of Rights

Speaking for Nature

Mihnea Tanasescu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349559770, 9781137538949
• eBook ISBN: 9781137538956
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tanasescu examines the rights of nature in terms of its constituent parts. Besides offering a thorough theoretical grounding, the book gives a first detailed overview of the actual cases of rights for nature so far. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the rights of nature to date, both analytically and in terms of actual cases.

Part I
Theoretical Elaboration

1

Representation: Structure and Meaning

In this chapter I will describe what I see as the basic outline of non-human political representation in order to give an account of what goes on when we represent. The starting point for this reflection is given by the following issues: what is the structure of political representation, who or what is being represented, by whom, and what kinds of subjects does this activity engage? I will start with a very brief overview of these issues in classical representation,¹ juxtaposing them with environmental political thought in order to see how our political conception of representation is modified (if at all) by the inclusion within its scope of non-human beings.

Seeing how the goal of this chapter is to offer an account of non-human representation, it might seem strange to start with humans. Why, after all, not go straight to the center of the problem, and engage directly with the nature that we seek? As I hope to show, non-human representation is mostly about humans, and it is there that we must continually return if we are to keep any kind of footing in an otherwise complex and confusing activity. Furthermore, the borders between animality and humanity, or humanity and the natural (understood as the not human-made), are notoriously porous, and have routinely functioned as mechanisms of human exclusion (Bourke, 2011). These shifting borders, and their inherent lack of clarity, give important insights into a theory of representation, by bringing some clarity to the process: when we speak for others, we might just be – unknowingly or otherwise – consolidating ourselves. That is yet to be shown. For now it suffices to say that an investigation into the representation of non-humans has to start with, and continually return to, those fidgety political animals that, having become a geological force, find it necessary to endow animals and nature with political being.²

1.1 Classical representation

As Urbinati and Warren (2008) present it, the ‘standard model’ of representation has four key features: representation is a principal–agent relation; it opens up the space where state power and the sovereignty of the people can be identified; it assures some level of responsiveness between representative and represented; and political equality becomes an important element brought about by the extension of the franchise (Urbinati and Warren, 2008, p. 389). This model responds in a particular way to the two most fundamental questions of political representation: what is it about? and who does it? (Saward, 2008). The first question asks what representation is supposed to achieve, and the standard model proposes that representation is supposed to realize the interests and wishes of a constituency. This in turn has been interpreted as either a trustee or a delegate model: representatives can either act as trustees of the interests of the represented, or else be delegated to achieve certain outcomes.

In terms of who does the representing, a focus on the principal agent relation naturally puts forth the figure of the agent.³ The movement between the agent, as the active party in the representational process, and the principal, which is the one providing the interests and wishes to be represented, is confined to electoral cycles. In other words, elections appear as the dominant form of authorization for representatives to act on behalf of their constituency. Accountability also becomes important as another source of legitimacy for the representatives that do the work of representation. Together, the concepts of principal/agent, trustee/delegate, and authorization/accountability have for a long time been the dominant ones for a theory of representation. Others have been inserted within these dyads, and their internal relations have been complicated and contested. It can nonetheless be said that the standard model offers a particular flavor of representation that is primarily tied to elections and that conceives of this political process as a translation of interests, through various avenues, from the represented to the representative. There is in other words a one-to-one relation between constituency interests/preferences and the representative’s intensions and actions.⁴

The above summary gave the classic answers to the questions of what representation is about, and who does it. But the idea that representation has to do with interest translation can be gaged through another lens, namely through the structure of political representation under the standard account. Pitkin noted that, no matter what kind of representation we might be considering, it must involve the ‘making present in some sense of something which is nevertheless not present literally or in fact’ (Pitkin, 1967, p. 8–9). Traditionally, Pitkin’s definition has been understood as requiring some sort of previous identity that could be made present, again. Yet increasingly scholars have questioned this interpretation (for example, Disch, 2011). The idea that there need to be coalesced interests and identities to be re-presented is not as obvious as it first appears. However, the point remains that the structure of representation proposed by Pitkin went unchallenged in the standard account (Urbinati and Warren, 2008) and was widely interpreted as relying on previously coalesced interests and identities that representation could ‘access’. This means that, even though not exactly a straight line, the relationship between represented and representative is nonetheless one based on a kind of mirroring, with interests playing the pivotal role (Mansbridge, 1999; Disch, 2009). Let us call the view of representation that supposes a pairing of interests and actions the referential view, to denote the way in which the representative and the represented refer to each other in the process of representation.

This dominant, traditional understanding of representation has recently come under intense scrutiny. As Saward points out, ‘among academic observers and political actors there is a widespread sense that we are facing a crisis of representation’ (Saward, 2008). From many different camps, the idea that representation can and should function as a vectored relation between political actors and constituencies has been questioned: new empirical observations that do not fit the standard model have worked to undermine it. For instance, this model cannot sufficiently account for how representation can work in international arenas (Held, 1995; Dryzek, 2000), or generally in explaining issues that are extraterritorial (Douzinas, 2000; Benhabib, 2004; Gould, 2004; Bohman, 2007). The standard model functioned under the (not unreasonable) assumption that constituencies are territorially based, but in today’s world many of the salient issues are no longer defined by their territorial belonging. For instance, environmental issues such as pollution are notoriously global, as smog clouds tend to be indifferent to territorial delineations (Dobson, 1996). Furthermore, many different actors that have not been authorized through elections claim to and do indeed function as representatives. Social movements and citizen assemblies, non-governmental organizations and social networks, as well as interest groups and civil society organizations (Warren, 2001; Anheier, 2004; Saward, 2006a; Strolovitch, 2006) have become increasingly important. And most importantly for my purposes, the issue of non-human representation has come to question most, if not all, parts of the standard model (Dobson, 1996; Goodin, 1996; Eckersley, 1999, 2011; Dobson and Eckersley, 2006).

Despite this scrutiny, the attraction to the ‘present absence’ paradigm lingers on even as we complicate our view of interests and identities, apparently distancing ourselves from the standard view of representation. This has real repercussions for the representation of humans and non-humans alike, and it is by focusing on the specificity of the latter kind that important aspects of representation as such are revealed. As often happens, the cases that straddle the borders of a theory are the most illuminating for the whole theory. Seeing how ‘the animal’ and ‘the natural’ have been our borders from time immemorial, functioning as that crucial delimitation which allows us to form a concept of ourselves⁵ (Derrida, 2008, 2009; Bourke, 2011; Shipman, 2011), it is within the domain of non-human representation that we can most clearly see the problems of classical representation as well. But before we get there, we need to turn to some conceptual developments that hold the promise of delivering the theorist from the clutches of present absence.

1.1.1 Enlarging the view: summoning, creating, performing

One of the most promising conceptual developments away from the referential view has been the characterization of representation in terms of representative claims (Saward, 2003, 2006a, b). Saward explicitly proposes a novel way of looking at the dynamics of representation, as opposed to its forms.⁶ ‘Trustees, delegates, politicos, stewards, perspectival representatives – the shifting taxonomies are often illuminating, but they can distract us unduly from grasping what are the wellsprings of such roles’ (Saward, 2006b, p. 298). This is another way of making the argument that, while the different forms of representation that we have briefly touched upon are important and legitimate in their own right, they too easily let a dubious conception of what representation is slide.⁷ Saward goes on to ‘argue the benefits of refocusing our work on representation around what I call “the representative claim” – seeing representation in terms of claims to be representative by a variety of political actors, rather than (as is normally the case) seeing it as an achieved, or potentially achievable, state of affairs as a result of election. We need to move away from the idea that representation is first and foremost a given, factual product of elections, rather than a precarious and curious sort of claim about a dynamic relationship’ (Saward, 2006b).

It is precisely the characterization of representation as ‘a precarious and curious sort of claim about a dynamic relationship’ that allows us to look at the practice of representation, and hence encourages us to think again its necessary structure. The focus on the dynamism of the relationship offers a way out of the ossified interests that are waiting to be discovered and announced. Rather, this view stresses the fact that representations themselves are the primary category in a theory of representation, and that it is through them that we can understand the being of both the represented and the representative. Said differently, representations might be the midwives of the subjectivities that dissimulate themselves as being prior to their own birth.

‘There is an indispensable aesthetic moment in political representation because the represented is never just given, unambiguous, transparent’ (Saward, 2006b, p. 310). The characterization of representation as a creative activity of claim-making allows the concept to travel in the direction of its family resemblances. We could call the different terrains that the concept surveys the ‘territories of representation,’ and even though they encompass as much diversity as a physical landscape, there is nonetheless a family resemblance (Wittgenstein, 2001). To be sure, aesthetic, religious, political, social, and cultural representations differ from one another and within their own territories, sometimes greatly, and it would be a mistake to confuse them. But it would be an equal mistake to treat them as having nothing to teach about each other. The territories of representation can be seen as the total tool-kit of the concept, with different tools and techniques called forth by particular circumstances. But just as sometimes the painter’s brush is useful in putting the final touches on a sculpture, so too the tools available to political representation are often borrowed from others of its territories. It is in this sense that I think we have to understand Saward’s suggestion that there is an ‘indispensable aesthetic moment’ in political representation.

This way of thinking political representation recasts and illuminates the ‘paradox of present absence’ that has been the core of representation theory. Saward employs the following example: ‘the painter Paul Klee took the view that painting did not mimic or copy, or even in the first instance interpret, its referent. What it did, first and foremost, was “make visible” the referent’ (Saward, 2006b, p. 313). In other words, what it did was create its referent, much in the same way that language creates objects that could never exist, as presented, in fact and, more importantly, whose factual existence is quite indifferent to the functioning of language.⁸ The issues of aesthetic and linguistic representation make it possible for us to understand the motivating core of representation, which remains largely unchanged in its political guise.⁹ The question is whether the paradigm of present absence accurately describes this core.

Following Saward’s suggestion that the notion of visibility can have interesting repercussions for politics as well,¹⁰ I want to turn briefly to Merleau-Ponty, particularly to several of his ideas about the nature of painting, occasioned by his interest in the structure of perception. Commenting on the work of Cezanne in his 1945 essay Cezanne’s Doubt, he notes the following: ‘art is not imitation, nor is it something manufactured according to the wishes of instinct or good taste. It is a process of expression. Just as the function of words is to name – that is, to grasp the nature of what appears to us in a confused way and to place it before us as a recognizable object – so it is up to the painter, said Gasquet, to “objectify,” “project,” and “arrest.” Words do not look like the things they designate; and a picture is not a trompe-l’oeil’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1993, p. 68, emphases in original). He ends the paragraph with this wonderful, and for our purposes very suggestive, sentence: ‘the painter recaptures and converts into visible objects what would, without him, remain walled up in the separate life of each consciousness: the vibration of appearances which is the cradle of things.’ The key insight of Merleau-Ponty here is that, through painting, the maker of representations converts that which, without such conversion, would be simply unintelligible, because it would remain unformulated – unshaped – appearance. This is to say that what a thing is cannot be understood outside of its expression. Similarly, political representation converts what would otherwise be unintelligible, into a political subject. All this is to say that to think the problem of representation as a tit-for-tat, an (albeit complex) operation of replication, fundamentally misses the point of representations.

If the world were composed of discrete and unproblematic entities, representation would indeed be a perfect mirroring. As things stand though, even material objects are not simply mirrored by their representations, but rather made to live anew. The strange operations of representation already indicate its ontological implication. Without it, things would remain ‘walled up in the separate life of each consciousness’ which, for politics, means that political subjectivities are made to connect by (and in) the process of representation. Without it, there would be no political being, as opposed to other kinds of human existence. It is through and by the process of representation that political subjectivities are fashioned, distinct from, and irreducible to, existential personhood. Merleau-Ponty is here speaking of painting, but following the suggestion that representations inhabit related territories, and that the issue of visibility is as important in politics as it is in painting, his insights are certainly applicable to the political territory that occupies us. Surely, we must not confuse aesthetic and political representations, even while they reveal their mutual implications. Aspects of the concept remain sealed into their proper terrain. As he aptly suggests in Eye and Mind, ‘only the painter is entitled to look at everything without being obliged to appraise what he sees’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1993, p. 123). The political subject does not have this luxury. In contrast to aesthetic representations, the maker of political representations must already include the appraisal, or the judgment of the object, into the way in which it is summoned into being.

There is indeed a sense in which presence and absence are intertwined in the various terrains of representation. The task of the painter is to make visible certain features that would otherwise remain ‘walled up’, and the task of the political representative is to make visible certain beings that would otherwise be invisible.¹¹ But this activity does not have to rely on a pre-defined being of the represented, nor does it have to suppose the ready existence of interests that can be plucked from the consciousness of another. Rather, the activity of making visible – of representing – is the very medium through which the things we call by the names of interests and identities come into being. The interests and identities thus summoned into existence are precarious – to appropriate one of Judith Butler’s wonderful formulations, representations reveal ‘the volatility of one’s “place” within the community of speakers’ (Butler, 1997). From this perspective, the classical paradigm of present absence is insufficient and misleading, because there is no objective being previous to the representation that could be considered ‘absent’. Absence does not have to refer to physicality, but rather to the non-relevance of a latent feature, to something that as yet has not been articulated politically. Similarly, presence need not be taken as physically there, or else as an evidence (something being evidently so), but rather as the articulation of something newly relevant for politics.

As Disch (2011, p. 105) has already suggested, classical representation goes astray by interpreting the etymological roots of representation as a ‘protocol of unidirectionality’. However, using Derrida’s work on iterability (1967), she claims that ‘re-presentation’ is ambiguous as to where the interpretive accent is to fall – if on making present again, then we are within the classical conception that we are trying to overcome. Inst...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Voicing
• Part I Theoretical Elaboration
• Part II Practice and Meaning
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index