Supervisor: Dr Leila Dawney 

Institution email:   a.phillips2@brighton.ac.uk

There has been a recent revival in research on the topic of political authority from a biopolitical perspective. In my research I will develop a biopolitical account of the generation of authority through acts of popular assembly, focusing on authority as an affective and embodied phenomenon. I will then investigate whether such an account can be reconciled with constructivist theories of political representation, giving special attention to the question of agency. Constructivist approaches to politicalrepresentation cast political representatives as creative “makers of representations,” who make a representative claim, which members of a potential constituency can then accept or reject. Building on recent work by Judith Butler, I will consider whether the simple fact of bodies assembling (in demonstrations, strikes, occupations...) can itself be considered both as a claim to represent and a claim to authority. In this case, constituencies could be said to play a much greater role in their own selfconstitution than recent research has claimed. Constituencies of the represented could themselves then be considered as generators of representations and of authority.