De-politicising poverty : Arendt in South Africa

The article argues against significant structuring effect of distinction between and as it informs theories of constitutionalism, and with specific reference to South Africa. The distinction underlies constitutional separation of from socio-economic constitutionalism and concerns directly social question, or, in other words, question of poverty. The article traces distinction back to theory of Hannah Arendt that has been so extraordinarily influential to conceptualisation of the political today. It argues that distinction / is not incidental but instead constitutive of way in which Arendt offers a phenomenology of political, on back, as it were, of exclusion of social. The article argues that leverage that this separation offers to imaginary comes at a crucial cost, because it diminishes power of and economic rights to offer redress to continuing devastating effects of poverty in South Africa, and across countries of South.