The Divided City

by Loraux, Nicole

• ISBN13: 9781890951092
• ISBN10: 1890951099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Zone Books

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. 7
Preface	p. 9
The Divided City: Mappings
To Forget in the City	p. 15
To Repoliticize the City	p. 45
The Soul of the City	p. 63
Under The Sign Of Eris And Some Of Her Children
The Bond of Division	p. 93
Oath, Son of Discord	p. 123
Of Amnesty and Its Opposite	p. 145
On a Day Banned from the Athenian Calendar	p. 171
Politics Of Reconciliation
Politics of Brothers	p. 197
A Reconciliation in Sicily	p. 215
Of Justice as Division	p. 229
And Athenian Democracy Forgot Kratos	p. 245
Notes	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 343
Index	p. 355
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