The Political, Politics, and Political Power (Towards a Historical Sociology of Political Visibilities)

The article’s purpose is to analyse the triad of ‘the political – politics – political power’ as a self-projection, self-representation, self-mediation of the political community; the political as a mediating symbolic structure and medium, the political order (nomos) as transcending all types of order, and politics as an activity devoid of its proper subject and finding its institutional form in political power and in the production of pictures of visibility.The starting thesis is that power is not a ‘pre-foundation’, ‘essence’ or ‘substance’ of appearances and visibilities. There is no such thing as the political, politics and political power ‘in themselves’, they always appear as enmeshed in visibilities and pictures of visibility. Thus a new research field is outlined at the borderline of the sociology of public space and the sociology of politics – the field of historical sociology of political visibilities.