Giving society a form: Constituent moments and the force of concepts

What meaning, if any, does the question of the social have in constituent moments? In what sense is society’s mode of being relevant to the political creation and transformation of constitutional orders? How are concepts of society placed, mobilized, disputed, and manufactured by practices of constitution-making? The aim of this article is to explore these questions in order to outline a point of entry into constituent moments that pays close attention to how society becomes an object of constitutional reflection and, in consequence, a domain of normative reconstruction and political intervention. The argument I wish to put forward is that the political dimension of constituent moments is intrinsically tied to, if not defined by an immanent relation to the concept of the social; this is so to the extent that constitution- making is a historically situated endeavor, materially invested in concrete and open-ended struggles to give society a form.