From Subject to Citizen – And Back: crises of the republic

Contributor(s): Professor Charles Tripp | This year’s Fred Halliday Memorial Event will explore how and why the symbolic investment in republican discourse and the building of republican institutions can be so detrimental to the rights of the very public that they are meant to represent, even embody.
In the construction and history of the republic, the qualities of liberty, of solidarity and of equality have been powerful affective rallying points, shaping the political imagination and holding out the promise of active citizenship. However, the practices of republics have more often than not borne out the charge of ‘organised hypocrisy’. Even where these principles have not been overturned, there remains a tension between them and the political and economic forces that demand a more disciplined, hierarchical order for the reproduction of their power. Using, by way of illustration, examples from across the Middle East and North Africa, it will nevertheless be argued that these are more