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September 05, 2005

the shining glory of great deeds

I missed the watching Question Time on the House of Representatives today, as the ABC free-to-air broadcast showed Question Time in the Senate.

Politics is about performance. If the politics in Senate is an expression of deliberative politics, then the House of Representatives, is a stage for political theatre. We citizens, watching through the live television feed of the action in this publicly organized space, are the audience.

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Heinrich Heinz The united Coalition team

The players, or rather actors, are evaluated in terms of the style of their performance. The performance model of politics gives us freedom as virtuosity, then the appropriate criteria for judging action is greatness.

This kind of politics is driven by a fierce agonistic spirit in which everybody has to distinquish themselves from all the others through unique performances to show that he was best of all.

It is a politics for the sake of politics.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 5, 2005 10:23 PM

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» politics as performance from philosophy.com
Hannah Arendt's conception of politics as performance places the emphasis on political theatre and the consumate political actor. It is contrasted from politics as administration and the ethical critieria of everyday life.... [Read More]

Tracked on September 6, 2005 04:29 PM

» the play of perspectives from philosophy.com
One aspect of politics as performance as a disclosure of self and a common public world is that it recognizes the plurality of opinion in the political world. This plurality is based on the play of perspectives that the difference of position creates. ... [Read More]

Tracked on September 13, 2005 03:24 PM

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