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Social & Legal Studies
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Democracy Captured By Its Imaginary: the Transition as Memory and Discourses of Constitutionalism in Spain

Vincent Druliolle

University of Essex, UK

This article critically discusses the permanent celebration and `omnipresence' of the memory of the transition to democracy in Spain, or its power as a referent which makes sense of the present, helps to overcome periods of crisis, and legitimizes policies. It argues that its institution and power as well as the issue of memory and commemorations need to be rethought. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, they are reconceptualized as `re-membering' and the transition is accounted for as an `imaginary'. Its power is also illustrated by the fact that the projects which directly challenge it as the sole legitimate framework for the construction of democracy are criticized for threatening democracy itself. Two such projects are on the one hand the initiatives for the `recovery' of the memories of the Civil War and Franco's dictatorship, and on the other the claim for increased regional autonomy. They are called `second transitions'. The article claims that the heated debates over them highlight the complex intertwining of legal, political and ethical dimensions in democratic society's constitution. It then discusses the very possibility of renegotiating the terms of the democratic political association, the issue which the second transitions reopen.

Key Words: commemorations • constitution • democracy • discourse • founding acts • imaginary • politics of memory • Spanish transition

Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, 75-92 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0964663907086457
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