Participation is free of charge after registration with the organizers (here).
On June 21, at 9.00 – 10.30 CET, I am part of the panel “‘Political Participation’ in Democracy History: A Contested and Ever-Changing Concept and Practice?”, organized by Anne Heyer (Leiden) and Zoé Kergomard (Paris).
Chair: Ido de Haan (Utrecht) Discussant: Harm Kaal (Nijmegen)
Participants:
Anne Heyer (Leiden): When did the Masses become Political?
Theo Jung (Freiburg): Battling with Words or Fists? Changing Modes of Participation in Political Meetings in Britain and Germany (1867-1914)
Carlos Domper Lasús (Zaragoza): The University Work Service. A politicizing experience under Francoism, 1950-1970
Zoé Kergomard (Paris): Is electoral abstention also a form of democratic participation? Rethinking the value of voting in the young Vth Republic (1960s-1980s)
On January 13 and 14, I am attending the conference
Languages, Discourses and Practices beyond the Vote: New Perspectives on Politicization in the Nineteenth Century
which was originally planned in Madrid, but is now held online. The organizers, Oriol Luján and Diego Palacios Cerezales (Madrid), seek to build on recent debates on nineteenth-century processes of politicization, collective mobilization, citizenship-buidling, electoral practices and petitioning.
In my own contribution, titled
Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
I will discuss the politics of applause, cheering and other modes of vocal support and disapprobation.
Theo Jung (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
Emmanuel Fureix (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Visual History and Popular Politicization in the 19th Century: Approaches and Proposals (France, 1814-1871)
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Second Session– Mass Politics? Associations and campaigns
Maartje Janse (Leiden University), Voluntary associations and political participation
Diego Palacios Cerezales (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Comparative cultures of mobilisation. Transnational Catholic campaigns in the 19th century
12.35 Lunchbreak
15.00 Third Session – Representation and citizenship
Henry Miller (Durham University), Petitioning and representation
Florencia Peyrou (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Women, politics and politicization in Spain (1808-1874)
Volker Köhler (TU Darmstadt), A Republican Intermezzo? Changing Perceptions of State and Citizenship in the city of Mainz, 1793-1814
17.00 End of the day
Thursday 14 January 2021
9.30 Fourth Session – Popular mobilisation
Álvaro París Martín (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), Popular Royalism in the Marketplace: Women, Work and Everyday Politics in Marseille and Madrid (1814-1830)
Jordi Roca Vernet (Universitat de Barcelona), Popular mobilization through the National Militia. Cities and liberal revolution
10.50 Coffee break
11.00 Fifth Session – Participation in elections beyond vote
Malcolm Crook (Keele University), Hoarse throats and sore heads: popular participation in elections before democracy
Oriol Luján (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Political citizens, thanks to or despite the law? The empowered voice of subjects in electoral claims
To mark the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the German Empire, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Orte der Demokratiegeschichte and the Otto-von-Bismarck foundation recently held a workshop on the Empire’s political culture. Its contributions have now been published online and will soon also be made available in print.
My own contribution, titled
Cultures of Dispute in Imperial Germany
adresses the changing practices and organizational forms of political meetings. It shows how these slowly transformed from an arena of controversial debate to a more monologous form, focused mainly on the demonstration of the strength and energy of different political parties. Sketching the changing dynamics between speakers, audience, and outsiders, I argue that a more detailed analysis of the varying modes of (not just verbal) participation and interaction such venues encompassed can shed new light on the ways the society of the Kaiserreich dealt with political plurality.
The program includes papers on various institutional, intellectual, cultural and political aspects of the German Empire’s governments, parliaments, parties, social movements, military, and citizens.
My own paper, titled
Cultures of Dispute in Imperial Germany
adresses the changing practices and organizational forms of political meetings. It shows how these slowly transformed from an arena of controversial debate to a more monologous form, focused mainly on the demonstration of the strength and energy of different political parties. Sketching the changing dynamics between speakers, audience, and outsiders, I argue that a more detailed analysis of the varying modes of (not just verbal) participation and interaction such venues encompassed can shed new light on the ways the society of the Kaiserreich dealt with political plurality.
The workshop’s (NB updated on Oct 26, 2020!) program can be found here:
An article I wrote for Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy has been published online. In it, I survey the state of current scholarship on political silences and propose a way forward for future research by means of a re-engagement with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and its concept of expectations.
Mind the Gaps: Silences, Political Communication, and the Role of Expectations
Through this link, the first fifty readers can access the article online for free. After that, please contact me by email.
Abstract
Predicated on a one-sided focus on political “voice”, analyses of political silences traditionally focused almost exclusively on their negative role as the harmful absence of participation or responsibility. More recently, a new appreciation for the wide spectrum of political functions of silence has gained ground, including forms of willful renitence and even active resistance. Yet this thematic expansion has also resulted in a loss of focus. Lacking a common analytical framework, research on political silences risks limiting itself to the purely additive: finding and filling in ever more minute ‘blank spots’ on the periphery of the map of political research. Building on the work of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, this paper proposes a solution to this dilemma by means of a reconsideration of the political role of expectations. In political discourse, the expected distribution of moments of silence and articulation expresses established power structures, while unexpected silences and the breaking of expected silences conversely present a powerful means of calling these into question. Focusing on this ambivalence paves the way to a new systematic typology of political silences as a distinct mode of political communication. But above all, it points to the value of silence as an analytical probe, an instrument to fathom the expectations and constraints structuring political discourse in various contexts and spaces. Besides providing the study of silence with an overarching research focus, such an approach would thus build a bridge between the issue of political silence and wider debates on the structures of the political field as a whole.
The article is part of a special issue titled Silence in Political Theory and Practice, edited by Mónica Brito Vieira. Its contributions include
Mónica Brito Vieira (York), Introduction
Theo Jung (Freiburg), Mind the Gaps: Silences, Political Communication, and the Role of Expectations
Toby Rollo (Lakehead University), Democratic Silence: Two Forms of Domination in the Social Contract Tradition
Sean Gray (Harvard), Silence and Democratic Institutional Design
Mihaela Mihai (Edinburgh), The Hero’s Silences: Vulnerability, Complicity, Ambivalence
Mónica Brito Vieira (York), The Great Wall of Silence: Voice-Silence Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes
The print version will be published next year in vol. 24, issue 3 of the journal.
Die Stimme des Volkes und sein Schweigen: die Kommunikationsrevolution von 1848/49 zwischen Erwartung und Erfahrung
[The People’s Voice and Its Silence: The Communications Revolution of 1848 between Expectation and Experience]
has been published in the 59th volume of the Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, a special issue under the title “Changing the World – Revolutions in History”.
Preliminary drafts of the contributions were discussed at a workshop held in Berlin in October 2018 (call for papers), before they were prepared for the publication now available from J. W. Dietz Verlag.
My contribution discusses the 1848 German revolution as a ‘communications revolution’. Whereas earlier research had understood this concept mainly in terms of the infrastructural contexts of revolutionary developments, I argue that it can be fruitfully applied to the specific contemporary understanding of what the revolution was and what it aimed to achieve.
Building on a widespread understanding of politics as an articulation of the people’s voice, contemporaries conceived of the revolution first and foremost as a breaking of its silence. The article sketches how this understanding of the political meaning of the revolution impacted revolutionaries’ language use.
Focusing on the first national parliament in Frankfurt, it delineates the negotiation of speech and silence in this decisive political arena as well as the reactions this elicited from outside. Thus, it offers a new interpretation of the 1848 revolution in terms of the changing expectations put on politician’s communicative action and of their impact on political practice.
The volume’s introduction, written by Kerstin Heinsohn and Dietmar Süß can be read online here. The other contributions (summaries) are available in print.
On February 7 and 8, I’m taking part in a workshop on current research on nineteenth century political and social history organized by the DFG funded Project Political Participation in the Provinces located at Saarland University.
I’m commenting on a panel on ‘Politics and Publicity’, encompassing papers by Angela Heinemann (Duisburg-Essen) on the emotional history of student associations and gymnastics in early nineteenth century Germany and by Christian Maiwald (Cologne) on the contestation of press censorship in Vienna in the same period.
Other panels address themes like ‘Participation in the Periphery’, ‘Elites’, ‘Politics and Religion’ (commented on by my colleague Christina Schröer), ‘Politics and Infrastructure’ (including a paper by my other colleague Konrad Hauber). The workshop is concluded by a general discussion moderated by Professor Armin Owzar (Paris).
Many thanks to the organizers, especially to Professor Gabriele Clemens and Amerigo Caruso for getting together what looks like a very interesting workshop.
It consists of four contributions and an introduction.
Silence as a Mode of Political Communication: Negotiating Expectations – Theo Jung.
Interpreting Silence: A Note of Caution – Sean W.D. Gray.
Two Political Ontologies and Three Models of Silence: Voice, Signal, and Action – Toby Rollo.
Silent Agency – Mónica Brito Vieira.
A pre-publication online version of the text can be read here, the published version here.
The Critical Exchange proposes a reconsideration of the multifarious forms and functions of silence in the political field, which cannot be reduced to the effects of silencing or of secrecy alone, but also encompass silent resistance, denial and a multitude of performative practices constitutive of individual or group identities.
My own contribution concerns the current state of research into political silences and some of its weaknesses. It proposes a re-orientation focused on the role of expectations, starting from the premise that communicative silence functions as the expressive omission of an expected signal.
Auftritt durch Austritt: Debattenboykotts als parlamentarische Praxis in Großbritannien und Frankreich (1797-1823)
[Performance by Means of Withdrawal: Debating Boycotts as a Parliamentary Practice in Britain and France (1797-1823)]
has been published in the 58th volume of the Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, a special issue under the title “Practising Democracy. Arenas, Processes and Ruptures of Political Participation in Western Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries”. At a workshop held in Berlin in November 2017 (Call for Papers, Program), the preliminary drafts of the contributions were discussed and prepared for the publication now available from J. W. Dietz Verlag.
My contribution asks under what circumstances the refusal to participate can itself become a mode of political practice.
Participation is often understood to be a fundamental value of democratic politics. But under some circumstances, the conditions of given opportunities to take part in political decision making processes are structured in ways that prohibit their de facto effectiveness. In such cases, political groups may choose to exit from established platforms and institutions in order to symbolically express their disapproval of the given situation.
Taking the example of oppositional groups’ parliamentary boycotts in the context of the changing systems of early parliamentarism, my contribution argues that the refusal to participate can itself be a forceful mode of democratic practice. Cases from the Irish, British and French parliaments shed light on the specific logic and political relevance of these boycotts in the historical context of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The volume’s introduction, written by Anja Kruke and Philipp Kufferath, may be found online here. The other contributinos are available in print.
In July 1789, a phrase was introduced into French political discourse that would quickly become a standing expression: le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois. Taking this political bon mot as a starting point, the article traces the uses of and responses to collective silences during the French Revolution. It is argued that silence cannot be reduced to just the lack of ‘voice’ indicating suppression or political impotence. Rather, it must be understood as a mode of political action with a rhetoric of its own. Sketching this rhetoric not only highlights the nature and functions of a mode of political communication too often disregarded. It also shows how the controversies surrounding these silences reflected some of the major political questions of the day, playing a key role in the renegotiations of the communicative spaces of politics set off by the Revolution.
I’m glad to announce that my article
Theo Jung 