Estado de exceção, desobediência civil e desinstituição: por uma leitura democrático-radical do poder constituinte

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to present a new reading of the civil disobedience to reveal its potentialities in building a radical democracy. For thisn purpose, in section 1 the two main traditions dedicated to think civil disobedience in the last century – political liberalism and constitutionalism – are revisited,indicating their advances and limitations.In section 2, the hypothesis that, nowadays, we live in a permanent economic state of exception is grounded, which is why the conventional understandings regarding civil disobedience – which see it either as a mere political pressure mechanism or as a self-correcting device of the political and legal system – are insufficient before the paradigmatic framework of post-democracy. At last, after discussing the differences between constituent power and dis-instituting power, stating that civil disobedience is exercised in a relationship in which both are activated (section 3), the article concludes with an indication of the features and forms of civil disobedience’s action, which is understood as amanifestation of the constituent/dis-instituting power.