Constitutions as Totems and Illiberal Constitutionalism as Hyper-Totemism

Abstract

This article examines the community-forming role of constitutions by interpreting them as totems, drawing on the work of James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, and Émile Durkheim. It identifies three dimensions of totemic trust: the constitution as a collective point of reference facilitating integration, as a link of transgenerational continuity, and as protection against existential threat. It then shows how this trust is sustained in a totemic way through the mechanisms of taboo and ritualization. Finally, this totemic framework is used to reconstruct the logic of illiberal constitutionalism as a form of hyper-totemism—a radicalization rather than an abuse of constitutional trust.