Reimagining Political Representation Beyond the Margins: Hegemony, Inclusion and Imaginaries of Emancipation

This paper examines the constructivist turn in political representation, critically exploring the evolving dynamics of inclusion for historically marginalized groups within power structures. Against the backdrop of growing demands for representativity in the public sphere—encompassing intersections of gender, race, class, generation, and origin—the research interrogates the co-constitutive understanding of representation that challenges traditional responsiveness paradigms. Drawing on Lisa Disch's (2021) insight that representative practices produce constitutive effects in the public sphere, the paper explores how demands for political inclusion can help construct a normative framework for representation as hegemony. By investigating what is normatively expected from the inclusion of marginalized groups, the research seeks to develop an approach that aligns with pluralistic principles while critically examining structures of domination. Following Chantal Mouffe's commitment to a pluralistic framework that preserves core liberal democratic principles, the analysis aims to complexify our understanding of political representation beyond traditional responsiveness paradigms. Centering Black feminist intersectionality as a critical knowledge and political intervention platform, the article proposes a radical and hegemonic defense of political inclusion and the representation of groups. It suggests that fully acknowledging systems of domination can reframe representative politics as a practice of generating emancipatory imaginaries. Utilizing the concepts of representative claims (Saward, 2010) and political acts (Disch, 2021), the research explores how marginalized groups' political participation can produce counter-hegemonic narratives of "affirmative refusal"—simultaneously affirming citizenship and challenging historical structures of exclusion.