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Paper short abstract

What differences to previous narratives if we perform a « thick description » of one major western contemporary political institution? Based on unknown archives, I will give an account of the embodied dimensions - material, social, legal - by which the French Assembly took its form and did persist.

Paper long abstract

Did we substantially consider that politics could have artifacts? What differences if we could plee for, and perform, a « thick description » of one major western contemporary political institution? What is materially required for bringing to life a free, deliberative, representative and sovereign assembly? In the French case a century is necessary for the successful establishment of parliamentarianism, for translating the revolutionary gesture of 1789 - the ideals and principles of representative government and popular sovereignty - into a series of routinized procedures and activities, into a long-lasting and sustainable institution.

Far removed from the disembodied visions of certain philosophical traditions, I will give an account of the embodied dimensions - material, social, legal, technical - by which the French National Assembly took its form and did persist. Based on unknown archives, I will analyse how the material and legal dimensions of the « parliamentary community », and its territory, were defined, delineated, actively constructed. In focusing on the Assembly's machinery, I am suggesting that materiality matters and plays an active role in defining western democratic institutions. It reminds us of the culturality of « our » moral and political edifices. In focusing on the objectives of the French Republican regimes to produce an unmarked and disembodied legislative « body », and on the invention of the « modesty » of the « gentleman deputy », I question the gender arrangements coalesced in the very definition of what counts as « modernity » in western political history.