Desinstituição e desobediência civil: entre o estado de exceção e a democracia radical

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to present a new reading of the civil disobedience, in order to reveal its po tentialities to build a radical democracy. In section 1 the two main traditions de dicated to think civil disobedience in the last century – political liberalism and constitutionalism – are revisited, and their advances and limitations are indicated. Section 2 substantiates the hypothesis that we live nowadays in a permanent state of economic exception, thus explaining why the conventional understandings regarding civil disobedience – sometimes seen as a mere political pressure mechanism, someti mes as a self -correcting device of the political‑legal system – are insufficient before the paradigmatic framework of post -democracy. Stating that civil disobedience is triggered by the relationship between constituent power and desinstituting power (section 3), whose differences are finally discussed, the article gives an indication of the features and forms of civil disobedience’s action understood as a manifestation of the constituent/desinstituting power.