| The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens Contributor(s): Pache, Corinne (Translator), Fort, Jeff (Translator) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1890951080 ISBN-13: 9781890951085 Publisher: Zone Books OUR PRICE: $24.70 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 2002 Annotation: Athens, 403 B.C.E. The bloody oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty is over, and the democrats have returned to the city victorious. Renouncing vengeance, in an act of willful amnesia, citizens call for---if not invent---amnesty. They agree to forget the unforgettable, the "past misfortunes," of civil strife or "stasis," More precisely, what they agree to deny is that "stasis"---simultaneously partisanship, faction, and sedition---is at the heart of their politics. Continuing a criticism of Athenian ideology begun in her pathbreaking study "The Invention of Athens," Nicole Loraux argues that this crucial moment of Athenian political history must be interpreted as constitutive of politics and political life and not as a threat to it. Divided from within, the city is formed by that which it refuses. Conflict, the calamity of civil war, is the other, dark side of the beautiful unitary city of Athens. In a brilliant analysis of the Greek word for voting, diaphora, Loraux underscores the conflictual and dynamic motion of democratic life. Voting appears as the process of dividing up, of disagreement---in short, of agreeing to divide and choose. Not only does Loraux reconceptualize the definition of ancient Greek democracy, she also allows the contemporary reader to rethink the functioning of modern democracy in its critical moments of internal "stasis," |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Ancient - Greece |
| Dewey: 938.506 |
| LCCN: 00028985 |
| Series: Zone Books |
| Physical Information: 1.3" H x 6.2" W x 9.1" (1.55 lbs) 360 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Ancient (To 499 A.D.) - Cultural Region - Greece |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Athens, 403 BCE. The end of the bloody oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty. The democrats return to the city victorious. Renouncing vengeance, in an act of amnesia, citizens call for -- if not invent -- amnesty. They agree to forget the unforgettable, the "past misfortunes" of civil strife, stasis. More precisely, what must be denied is that stasis -- simultaneously partisanship, faction, and sedition -- is at the heart of Greek politics. This crucial moment of Athenian political history, Nicole Loraux argues in The Divided City, must be interpreted as constitutive of, not a threat to, politics and political life. Divided from within and against itself, the city is formed by that which it refuses. Conflict, the calamity of civil war, is the other, dark side of the beautiful, unitary city of Athens. Beneath the Greek city erected in totality and ideality, Loraux rediscovers the discord affecting the entire city, the stasis manifesting the fundamental conflictual ambivalence of the civic order. The city, by definition, "is doomed to divide itself in two." In a brilliant analysis of the Greek word for voting, diaphora, Loraux underscores the conflictual and dynamic motion of democratic life: voting appears as the process of dividing up, of disagreement, in short, of agreeing to divide up and choose between. Not only does Loraux reconceptualize the definition of ancient Greek democracy, but she ultimately allows the contemporary reader to rethink the functioning of modern democracies in its critical moments of dissension and divide, of internal stasis. |
Contributor Bio(s): Loraux, Nicole: - Nicole Loraux (1943-2003) was the author of The Divided City, The Children of Athena, The Experiences of Tiresias, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, and Mothers in Mourning, among other titles. |