ABSTRACT
At a time of concentrated government suppression of popular assembly, when it was a newly formulated treason to attempt to 'overawe' parliament, John Thelwall calls for resistance to what he sees as the spectralization of popular opinion. The assemblies of the people gathered at Thelwall's lectures or at London Corresponding Society demonstrations were more fantastical and unreal than a virtual representation of the nation. Thelwall's critique and defiance of political oppression is captured in the footnote, whose content is peculiarly appropriate to its supplementary, liminal status on the page. Thelwall places communal experience and interaction at the affective heart of the radical strategy for reform: it is in 'mixed and crowded audiences' – 'in theatres and halls of assembly'. Thelwall's 'vision of democracy' displaces the visual as the sense which metaphorically determines the political as a 'view' to be constructed by an elite spectator.
