In the last decades, debates about political representation have focused the insufficiencies of formalist models. Feminist thinkers recover the value of descriptive representation, renamed as "politics of presence", that they justify based on the notion of "social perspective", developed by Iris Marion Young. In a direction which is, in a large extent, opposite, Nadia Urbinati emphasizes that representation has a character of advocacy, a turn with great influence, even in Brazil. Against such proposals, I maintain the necessity of a theory of representation that gives centrality to the category of "interest", but that simultaneously emphasizes the demand for autonomy by the represented.
political representation; interests; social perspectives; advocacy; autonomy