Abstract

Starting point of Duso's article is a statement about the aporetic structure of two main concepts on which constitutional charts are based. People's sovereignty and political representation ought to be the means for assuring the closeness and the participation of citizens to power. On the contrary, they produce a dualism from which political will and command (i.e. legislation) show an irrevocable otherness and determines a situation where citizens are and feel politically expropriated. It is a consequence of the contradictory denial of "ruling" as a specific political relationship. Facing the impossibility of negating the command inside society, political theory has built the artifice of locating in the will of individuals the source of command. Power belongs to all members of body politic, and the power is of all. The conceptual construction of democracy finds its theoretical limit in the difficulty of thinking the "ruling", because political power and government belong to the rulers and to the ruled. Superseding the aphasia of "ruling" as a specifically political action could open new ways for thinking and acting in the contemporary crisis of modern constitutions.