2.4 - Constitutionalism Adrift

Summary

Buoyed by the move to the transnational level, largely released from its confinement in the State form, constitutionalism has in the last couple of decades come unmoored from its traditional settings to become something of a floating signifier on the transnational scale. The nautical metaphor¹ is not altogether unconnected to the flows of capital. The new semiosis of the constitutional involves a productive coupling of two terms, constitutionalisation and pluralism, in a series of articulations that have been largely successful in overhauling the constitutional debate in its totality. In that context, constitutionalisation, a concept bereft of a referent, has been for reasons of its under-determination productively coupled with the concept of constitutional pluralism. My interest in this chapter is with constitutionalisation as a process of ‘becoming-constitutional’, the conditions of that process, the criteria of ascription of constitutionality and its constitutive articulation with constitutional pluralism.