Welcome to the Nineteenth Century: Venezuelan Elections
by Fernando Calzadilla

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Conclusion

Democracy’s paradox, which demands and overrules embodied, participatory practice, also creates a space for non-democratic means of control, the space that exists between social actor and character. Characters are accountable to the discursive formation that creates them and legitimizes their power. That is political accountability. The social actor’s performance falls through the cracks of political accountability into moral responsibility. This is a slippery terrain where the welfare of the res publica (the public thing) and that of the individual might conflict, especially within an economic system that praises the individual over the collective. How is an elected official held accountable for her/his actions? Democracy has not resolved this flaw. But accountability is only second to electibility. The candidate’s performance and her/his ability to trigger the resonant social imaginary at a particular moment are not guarantees that the person will be a just ruler. What we have to judge from a candidate is whether s/he has the ability to communicate and to act convincingly. As we are all influenced one way or another by performances that tap deeply into the social imaginaries and make claims backed by our legitimate discursive formations, the act of voting becomes a fragile moment, susceptible to costly errors—much more when the guarantor of the process’s fairness can be manipulated by social actors out of character.

The terminology used to describe the process (actors, characters, social imaginaries, space, performance) points toward the theatricality that supports our political system. I don’t think that theatricality is a hindrance to it. I don’t think that we have a crisis of representation. Maybe we should understand better the theatrical space between actor and character, so we can understand better how political performance and embodied practices affect our lives, not just at the discursive level, but at the most personal one. Whether we can influence democracy’s accountability is debatable, be it through direct participation in the act of voting or by absenting from it. What we need to make sure is that we are (ac)counted through our actions and that those actions are observed and understood as having meaning. Voting is about counting. We need to make sure that we all count.

Fernando Calzadilla is a theater practitioner, visual artist, and scholar with a multi-cultural background. His interest in performance has taken led him to observe politics from a theatrical perspective. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at New York University.