Endre Dányi is going to join the blog for the month of October. He is the student of Lucy Suchman and John Law at Lancaster University’s Department of Sociology, and he writes on what I shall dare say “the parliment multiple.” Like Anna Marie Mol’s work on the “body multiple,” Endre’s work aims to capture the ontologies of parliment, and he does this with some attention to the interface of the future and the past.

Join me in welcoming Endre Danyi to installing social order!

NOTE: A short snippet about his Ph.D. work:

What is a parliament? And how does it work? In order to answer these questions I suggest that we consider ‘the parliament’ not as a general metaphor for democratic politics, but a specific site that lies at the intersection of distinct political imaginaries. Following a material semiotic approach my research focuses on the Hungarian Parliament – a hundred-year-old socio-technical assemblage that at the time of its opening was the largest parliament in the world. Building upon recent works in science and technology studies (STS) and cultural anthropology that conceive of politics as a set of located material practices, I argue that this seemingly singular iconic site in Budapest sometimes functions as an historical monument, sometimes as a professional organisation, and sometimes as an elaborate set for politicians. Based mainly on ethnographic and archival research, I examine the ways in which versions of a national past, the workings of a political regime, and acts of decision-making get materialised in the Hungarian Parliament, and the political futures that these narratives render real(istic) while keeping others invisible.