The House of Commons, Rosenstock-Huessy argues, is a body, not a collection of individual units. MPs do not have, as US Representatives and Senators do, individual desks; there is only one table in Commons. And up to the time that Rosenstock-Huessy was writing, MPs were never addressed by name in Commons unless they were under discipline. This anonymity was “at the root of the institution”: MPs “are without personal character, anonymous like a good jury, where twelve ordinary men are the embodiment of public conscience . . . . the individual member is 1/658 of the unit, the will of which is voiced by the Speaker.” What does it do to the mother of Parliaments to have a C-Span camera moved into Commons?
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