10 - The Individual Spectator and the Role of Imagination in Publics

Summary

Chapter 10 shifts analytical attention to the mindset of the participant as a spectator within the people’s parliaments. This chapter’s focus on the individual provides a reminder that underpinning national patterns in politics are the thoughts and decisions of the individual Kenyan. This chapter reveals particular challenges that affected the spectator’s mindset, which in turn contributed to the reproduction of established political repertoires. Challenges emerged around two states of mind: first, spectators’ unwillingness or inability to take into account diverse perspectives, and second, their inability imagine a common experience. The former was evident through the sharpening of pre-established repertoires across all of the people’s parliaments, and the latter was apparent on social media, where participants’ experiences were individualised and they lost a common object of observation.