Pitkin, Hanna 1931-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin is one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. While best known for her seminal book The Concept of Representation (1967), Pitkin has composed several works of lasting relevance to the study of politics. She has shed light on such diverse topics as democracy, justice, gender, action, and the tension between political philosophy and political theory.

In The Concept of Representation, Pitkin utilizes the methods of linguistic analysis, developed by Oxford philosophers such as J. L. Austin (1911–1960), to focus on representation as a concept rather than a set of actual practices. She defines representation ideally as “re-presentation, a making present again” (1967, p. 8), but then moves on to show how this meaning has been distorted and contorted throughout the history of modern philosophical discourse. Every attempt to capture the complexity of the concept misleadingly conveys part of the meaning of representation as if it were the whole meaning. Pitkin surveys the various theoretical approaches to the term representation and finds them all lacking, including the authorization view, expressed by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679); the trustee theory, expressed by Edmund Burke (1729–1797); and the liberal view, associated with James Madison (1751–1836), among others. Each vision is shown to be incomplete by the central paradox of representation—that is, the competing demands of the representative and the represented. Pitkin aims to preserve rather than to reconcile this paradox, and her book culminates in the recommendation that citizens safeguard both the capacity of the represented to authorize decisions and the capacity of the representatives to act independently.

Pitkin’s book has been a touchstone for subsequent work in the area of representation theory. Some contemporary scholars, however, find Pitkin’s insights to be anachronistic for a globalizing world in which practices of representation seem to stretch beyond the boundaries of the nation-state (Mansbridge 2003). Furthermore, scholars sensitive to issues of diversity and cultural heterogeneity have highlighted the ways in which every representative formation can obscure or suppress minority voices (Young 2000).

In many ways, the lasting relevance and importance of Pitkin’s early work has overshadowed her subsequent development as a thinker and theorist. In 1972 she further articulated her interest in conceptual analysis as a fruitful method of political philosophy through an examination of the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). She pays close attention to Wittgenstein’s central notion of “forms of life,” the matrices of human behavior that define the contexts in which a discourse acquires meaning. For Pitkin, political philosophy should proceed to analyze these contexts to enhance our conceptual clarity on terms such as justice, membership, and action. Political theory, on the other hand, is concerned with advocating a change in our current conceptions, as the contexts in which we live and the needs of the human community transform through time.

Pitkin’s The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social (1998) exemplifies her recommended trajectories for both political philosophy and theory. She explores Hannah Arendt’s (1906–1975) use of the social through contextual and psychobiographical analysis, and discusses the ways in which Arendt’s concerns for action are compromised by a residual fear of social conformity. In the end, Pitkin implores her readers to discover ways in which they can become more reflective and critical as agents and actors in the world. In so doing, she echoes concerns born with her 1967 book, and reveals herself ultimately as a committed theorist of democracy.

SEE ALSO Representation

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mansbridge, Jane. 2003. Rethinking Representation. American Political Science Review 97 (4): 515–528.

Pitkin, Hanna. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pitkin, Hanna. 1972. Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pitkin, Hanna. 1998. The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

David W. McIvor