Jakob Kihlberg: "Political Subjectivity and Popular Assembly in the European Illustrated Press during the 1840s"

In political theory there is a growing interest in how the abstract categories of political thought have been experienced in everyday life, for example how people have come to identify as part of “the people”, understood as the primary source of legitimate political power in modern society. Important frameworks for such political subjectivity can often be found in the aesthetic realm and in visual culture. In this paper I will focus on how a graphic vernacular for depicting multitudes as political actors was developed in the expanding network of European illustrated weeklies during the 1840s.