In its constructed form, architecture has often been used as a representation of political power in order to both reify and augment it. What do architectural and political representations share? Perhaps we could think of the relationship between architects and their clients as a variant of Pitkin’s paradox, although architects and political representatives are selected, or assume their representative roles in very different ways-legal representation might be a closer analogy here. The absent constituent delegates responsibility to the present representative and the representative in turn is entrusted with the will of the constituent though they substitute for one another, they are kept in suspense. Nevertheless, it is the paradoxical nature of the concept that sustains it in the political realm, since both political subjects and their representatives must work together to ensure a kind of mutual autonomy. In her classic work on The Concept of Representation, political theorist Hanna Pitkin draws upon the meaning of the Latin verb repraesentare-to show, to exhibit, to bring before oneself-in order to offer a tentative definition of representation as making present again, or as she writes, “the making present in some sense of something which is nevertheless not present literally or in fact.” 1 Immediately, Pitkin notes, this definition sets up a paradox: for one cannot claim that something is both present and not present at the same time.
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