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An exploration of the roles of conflict and forgetting in ancient
Athens. 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.
"Nicole Loraux brilliantly elucidates how Athenian politics were
'gendered' in the Classical period. She investigates the Athenian
state's interdiction of ritualized mourning by women, in a city
where public mourning constituted a vital act of civic
self-definition and solidarity. "As Loraux shows, the silencing and
exclusion of female especially maternal claims to a crucial
relationship with the city's fallen war heroes served, and was
reinforced by, the ideologically charged, distinctively Athenian
notion of the polis as mother of its citizens. But, Loraux points
out, the voice and audience that were denied the bereaved women in
the political arena were made available to them in the Athenian
theater. She focuses on the representation of mothers in mourning
in the myths that are the substance of epic poetry and,
principally, in Athenian drama, where the dire, menacing
implications of their relentless grief are exposed and played
out."Using evidence from sources as diverse as legal inscriptions,
forensic oratory, ancient historiography, and early religious
treatises, Loraux once again illuminates the culture of democracy,
specifically the institutional suppression of women as a political
and social force in the most flourishing period of Athenian
history." Laura M. Slatkin, University of ChicagoThis volume
includes translations of the book "Les meres en deuil" and the
essay "De l'amnistie et de son contraire."
Between Magic and Religion represents a radical rethinking of
traditional distinctions involving the term 'religion' in the
ancient Greek world and beyond, through late antiquity to the
seventeenth century. The title indicates the fluidity of such
concepts as religion and magic, highlighting the wide variety of
meanings evoked by these shifting terms from ancient to modern
times. The contributors put these meanings to the test, applying a
wide range of methods in exploring the many varieties of available
historical, archaeological, iconographical, and literary evidence.
No reader will ever think of magic and religion the same way after
reading through the findings presented in this book. Both terms
emerge in a new light, with broader applications and deeper
meanings.
The author of this text (translated in this volume from the
original French) elucidates how Athenian politics were gendered in
the classical period. She investigates the Athenian state's
interdiction of ritualized mourning by women, in a city where
public mourning constituted a vital act of civic self-definition
and solidarity.
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