Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088219860858 |
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
| Author | Michael PA Murphy |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219860858
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(3) 361 –380
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088219860858
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Potentiality, political
protest and constituent power:
A response to the special issue
Michael PA Murphy
University of Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
Emergent forms of political protest and constitution often provide limit cases for
their contemporary theoretical models, and transnational protest movements from
Occupy to Democracy in Europe 2025 are no exception. The recent special issue of
the Journal of International Political Theory offers a number of different conceptual paths
towards understanding these developments, revising and refreshing categories like
civil disobedience, opposition, resistance, as well as constituent and destituent power.
However, the plurality of perspectives in the special issue leads to a certain degree
of uncertainty in the use of terms. This response to the special issue begins with a
reflection on its major conceptual developments, addresses the missed encounter
with Giorgio Agamben’s theory of ‘destituent potential’ and develops a framework for
contrasting different theoretical approaches to political protest and constitution through
their relation to potentiality. This taxonomy of emergent forms of political protest and
constitution complements the substantial theoretical developments undertaken in the
special issue by making the important conceptual relationships between them more
readily visible. As well, by demonstrating the applicability of potentiality to the study
of International Relations, this framework contributes to the project of the theoretical
investigation of international politics.
Keywords
Civil disobedience, constituent power, destituent potential, Giorgio Agamben,
potentiality, transnational protest
Corresponding author:
Michael PA Murphy, University of Ottawa, 120 University Private, Social Sciences Building, Ottawa, ON
K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: mmurp078@uottawa.ca
860858IPT0010.1177/1755088219860858Journal of International Political TheoryMurphy
research-article2019
Article
362 Journal of International Political Theory 16(3)
The recent special issue of the Journal of International Political Theory (February 2019) on
the topics of constituent power, civil disobedience and transnational democratic resistance
offers a rich theoretical foundation for understanding world political events such as the trans-
national Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 or Occupy. By reflecting systematically on
foundational concepts of political protest and constitution, contributors challenge the static
political imaginary by which International Relations (IR) is too often bound (Walker, 1993).
As new modes of resistance enact novel political imaginaries, core conceptual frameworks
must adapt along with them. By treating the subject of constituent power and transnational
protests at the intersection of political theory (with its sophisticated conceptual building
blocks) and IR (with its empirical perspective on the big questions of world politics), the
authors demonstrate the utility of approaching major events from the perspective of interna-
tional political theory (IPT).1 Covering a vast expanse of conceptual territory and cross-polli-
nating different strands of theoretical inquiry, the special issue should serve as the catalyst for
sophisticated theorizing on the nature of political constitution and the continuing role of con-
ceptual levels like the ‘national’, ‘transnational’ and ‘international’ in a globalized world.
My response to the special issue considers the various conceptual models through the
role of potentiality in each analysis of political protest and constitution, bringing the
important missing work of Giorgio Agamben on destituent potential into this debate. It is
necessary to engage Agamben in this conversation for two reasons. First, his conceptual-
ization of destituent potential is a radical and innovative way of theorizing political protest
and constitution largely absent in the special issue. To this end, this article addresses the
absence of destituent potential in the IPT literature. Second, because Agamben’s account
of destituent potential emerges from his reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics rather than
strictly political work, it helps bring to light the role that potentiality plays in our political
imaginary. Inspired by Agamben’s framing of political constitution in terms of potential-
ity, it is possible to develop a taxonomy of different conceptualizations of political protest
and constitutional change. While the plurality of approaches is a strategy (Niesen, 2019a:
5) and indeed a strength of the collection, the fact that authors either use different concepts
to describe similar phenomena or the same term to describe different phenomena can
make it difficult to mobilize the concepts developed in the special issue in analysis of
world events. Following Agamben’s lead and reframing these concepts in terms of poten-
tiality allows for a clearer understanding of how the concepts are related to one another.
Because the discussion here is necessarily theory-heavy, the first section reviews the
conceptual contributions of the special issue, and the second section turns to Agamben
and his link between constituent power and potentiality. Here, I will introduce the con-
cept of destituent potential and develop a taxonomy of political constitution in terms of
potentiality. The concluding section applies that taxonomy to the special issue’s key
developments, and returns to the discussion of the contribution of IPT.
Resistance, disobedience, or constituent power? –
Disentangling concepts
The special issue arises to address the multiple articulations of resistance that oppose
constituted structures of power – in German termed Herrschaft, translated as ‘rule’.2 For
Daase and Deitelhoff, rule is the primary question of post-Cold War IR theory,
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