ABSTRACT
Democratic politics is envisioned primarily as a politics of words. Using the Hungarian parliament as a specific case, this chapter shows how ethnography might help in tracing and describing such alignments in practice, pointing at what could be called a 'politics beyond words'. The composition of the parliament might constantly change, but thanks to an artificial distinction between the technical and the political the legislature can operate in an eternal present, in which all issues concerning the political community can be dealt with through a standardised legislative procedure. The chapter discusses the role of politicians (and their bodies) in ever-changing staging processes. It demonstrates that the politics of ethnographic storytelling lies exactly in its capacity to change the frame of critique by opening up new spaces for specific articulations of good and bad democracy. The chapter focuses on the politics of ethnographic stories, that is, their potential to perform critique within a democratic setting.
