Conclusion
Derrida, in his fascinating text Declarations of Independence,[753] right after writing that ‘the founding act of an institution - the act as archive as well as the act as performance - must maintain within itself the signature’[754] stressed the value and strength of constituent words since they transcend the reality and defy the temporality.
Still, the s ignature itself - these constituent words - is as such understood as long as it poses the following question: ‘But just whose signature exactly?’ [755] There is no signature that detaches itself from the ‘ultimate signers’,[756] those people who ‘do not exist as an entity, the entity does not exist before this declaration, not as such’.[757] Founding moments, the acts of constituting a new beginning and a new future, are thereby always involved in this ongoing quest for legitimacy for the people who are made sovereign by the very constituent process.Brazil and Chile are two countries whose histories challenge this signature, the constituent words that transformed their realities and moulded their democracies. Brazil's democratic transition cannot be separated from its constitutional transition, and particularly from the dichotomy control/loss of control of the constituent process, but which continues to deal with a ‘past' that stubbornly attempts to regain the reins of power. Chile's democratic transition, on the other hand, also means a constitutional permanence that steadily delays the expected but unreachable future. Brazil's dictatorship, although having laid the groundwork for a transition that should be ‘conciliatory' to and a ‘continuity' of the ‘revolutionary' period, as the military argued, became in the end a relatively uncontrolled transition marked by the surge of citizenship. Nonetheless, it has since been challenged by the strategic moves of elite groups to regain control over it.
Chile's dictatorship, in turn, not only was successful in negotiating a ‘peaceful' transition, but also limited much of the expected future and the exercise of citizenship through constitutional means. While in Brazil, the signature points to the ‘ultimate signer' who does not exist as an entity but who is there threatening the conquered citizenship, in Chile, the signature is itself the very entity in a current battle with the rising citizenship.Therefore, the timing of the constitutional moment certainly matters as a foundational moment that identifies itself with the rising of citizenship and pluralism. However, the ghost of‘reconciliation', ‘compromises' and ‘bargains' is always threatening a history whose contingencies engendered a foundational moment that is held by the Brazilian people with pride. The reality has proven how that moment - and the ‘conciliatory' interpretation of it - has also been used as a tool to twist the constitutional text by recalling that ‘past’. The recent episodes such as the impeachment of President Dilma Roussef and the election of President Jair Bolsonaro are serious reminders of how this ‘past' is always there waiting for the ideal moment to attack the very foundations of a constitutional moment whose strength of citizenship is its prime feature. On the other hand, although the conciliatory' discourse still strongly resonates in Chile and the formal and informal institutions act to hamper more structural changes to the Constitution, Chile has made important strides towards the encounter of the signature with the forgotten people, even in spite of the recent failure of Bachelet's project for a new constitution.
Founding moments need an active citizenship, and Brazil and Chile, through different means and timings, are learning how to deal with the insurmountable dilemmas of their transitional histories and democratic experiences. They are also learning how to challenge their ghosts. If a founding moment is a central concept for constitutionalism, it is because it defies its own dilemmas by making constitutionalism not an enemy of the citizenship, but the citizenship the very reason for constitutionalism.