On Pikachu and the birth of constituent subjectivity among working-class Chileans

Abstract This research addresses how ordinary citizens navigate constitution-making and how their normative horizons are reshaped through that experience. Drawing on immersive ethnographic fieldwork within the Chilean Constitutional Convention, where the author spent several months observing, taking notes, and conducting in-depth interviews to capture how constitutional drafters experience constitution-making, this article argues that constituent subjectivity emerges as a subset of legal consciousness when everyday grievances are translated into the vocabulary of broader utopian legalities. At the same time, constitutional moments can also contract ordinary citizens’ normative horizons, as participatory proceedings unfold within preexisting institutional and social arrangements. By following the trajectory of a bus driver who became known for dressing as Pikachu – an act that led to her election as a constitution-maker due to electoral provisions that allowed non-partisan candidates to register independent candidacies – this article offers new insights into ordinary citizens’ direct involvement in constitution-making and the time-depth of legal consciousness. Her experience illuminates the limits of participatory constitution-making mechanisms, as the reinscription of social hierarchies can occur through the very procedures intended to give voice to marginalized actors. In so doing, the findings reveal constituent subjectivity as an empirically observable dimension of legal consciousness, while institutional and social arrangements shape whether such subjectivity endures over time.