The Symbiosis of democracy and tragedy: Lost lessons from ancient greece

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 659-682

  Chou, Mark ^a   Bleiker, Roland ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

Chaos; Democracy; Greek; International; Multivocal; Relations; Tragedy

Indexed keywords

EID: 66849103922     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829809103238     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (73)

1. We acknowledge the generous feedback of Kimberly Hutchings, the three editors of this Special Issue and the comments from Tim Aistrope, Luke Glanville, Emma Hutchison, Richard Ned Lebow and an anonymous reviewer. Mark acknowledges the Research Funding from the School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland, which helped to facilitate this collaborative project.
2. See, for example, Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Mervyn Frost, 'Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations', International Relations 17, no. 4 (2003); Nicholas Rengger, 'Tragedy or Scepticism? Defending the Anti-Pelagian Mind in World Politics', International Relations 19, no. 3 (2005); Richard Ned Lebow, 'Tragedy, Politics and Political Science', International Relations 19, no. 3 (2005); Chris Brown, 'Tragedy, "Tragic Choices" and Contemporary International Political Theory', International Relations 21, no. 1 (2007); J. Peter Euben, 'The Tragedy of Tragedy', International Relations 21, no. 1 (2007); Richard Beardsworth, 'Tragedy, World Politics and Ethical Community', International Relations 22, no. 1 (2008); Mervyn Frost, 'Tragedy, Reconciliation and Reconstruction', European Journal of Social Theory 11, no. 3 (2008). Also see, for example, the symposium entitled 'The 2500th Anniversary of Democracy: Lessons of Athenian Democracy', PS: Political Science and Politics 26, no. 3 (1993). Of the five essays in this symposium, Athenian tragedy's connection with democracy was only mentioned once, and only in passing in J. Peter Euben, 'Democracy Ancient and Modern', PS: Political Science and Politics 26, no. 3 (1993): 481.
3. See, for example, Cynthia Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking: The Invention of Politics in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); M. I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963); Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Christian Meier (trans. Andrew Webber), The Political Art of Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); David M. Pritchard (ed.), War, Culture and Democracy in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009); Richard Sewell, In the Theatre of Όionysos: Democracy and Tragedy in Ancient Athens (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., Inc., 2007); M. S. Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
4. Among the many examples here see Richard Falk, On Humane Governance (Cambridge, Polity, 1995); Jürgen Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation: Poli-tische Essays (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998); David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995); and Theory, Culture and Society 19, nos. 1-2 (2002) special issue on Cosmoγolis.
5. Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, 'Toward Global Parliament', Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2001.
6. Nicole Loraux cited in Michael X. Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 11; Peter V. Jones, The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 197.
7. Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The "End of Philosophy"?', in Cornelius Castoriadis (ed. David Ames Curtis), Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 21-2; Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The Athenian Democracy: False and True Questions', in Pierre Leveque and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis), Cleisthenes the Athenian: An Essay on the Representation of Space and Time in Greek Political Thought from the End of the Sixth Century to the Death of Plato (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996), 121.
8. Kurt A. Raaflaub, 'Introduction', in Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober and Robert W. Wallace (with Paul Cartledge and Cynthia Farrar), Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 3; Castoriadis, 'The "End of Philosophy"?', 20-2; Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', in Cornelius Castoriadis, The Castoriadis Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 275.
9. Robert J. Bonner, Aspects of Athenian Democracy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1933),117-18; Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy, 6.
10. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, 77.
11. Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 286.
12. Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 361.
13. Charles Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 45, 75, 78.
14. See, for example, Christian Meier (trans. David McLintock), The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 88-9; Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy, 11.
15. David Ames Curtis, 'Translator's Foreword', in Leveque and Vidal-Naquet, Cleisthenes the Athenian, xi.
16. Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 268.
17. See, for example, Robin Barrow, Athenian Democracy: The Triumph and the Folly (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1973); Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking; R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 3; Robin Sowerby, The Greeks: An Introduction to their Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Greg Anderson, The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica 508-490 B.C. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003); Curtis, 'Translator's Foreword', xi; Josiah Ober, The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
18. See Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, 14-18; Ober, The Athenian Revolution; Finley, The Ancient Greeks, 75; Jones, The World of Athens, 202-9; Eric W. Robinson, 'Ancient Greek Democracy: A Brief Introduction', in Eric W. Robinson (ed.), Ancient Greek Democracy: Readings and Sources (Maiden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004), 3.
19. See Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The "End of Philosophy"?', 20-2; Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 275.
20. See Mary Ebbott, 'Marginal Figures', in Justina Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Maiden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 366; Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 78-82.
21. See, for example, Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 273-4; Gilles Labelle, 'Two Refoundation Projects of Democracy in Contemporary French Philosophy: Cornelius Castoriadis and Jacques Ranciere', Philosophy and Social Criticism 27, no. 4 (2001): 78.
22. Nathalie Karagiannis, 'The Tragic and the Political: A Parallel Reading of Kostas Papaioannou and Cornelius Castoriadis', Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 309; Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, 365; Beardsworth, 'Tragedy, World Politics and Ethical Community', 129,132.
23. Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 274.
24. Daniel Ross, Violent Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7.
25. See, for example, Castoriadis, 'The "End of Philosophy"?', 20; Labelle, 'Two Refoundation Projects of Democracy in Contemporary French Philosophy', 80; Castoriadis, 'Power, Politics, Autonomy', in Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, 160; Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 'Democracy: A Greek Invention', in Leveque and Vidal-Naquet, Cleisthenes the Athenian, 108.
26. See, for example, Sara Forsdyke, Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy: The Politics of Expulsion in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); A. R. Hands, Όstraka and the Law of Ostracism - Some Possibilities and Assumptions', The Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959); Donald Kagan, 'The Origin and Purpose of Ostracism', Hesperia 30, no. 4 (1961); Antony E. Raubitschek, 'The Origin of Ostracism', American Journal of Archaeology 55, no. 3 (1951); Rudi Thomsen, The Origin of Ostracism: A Synthesis (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1972); Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Accountability in Athenian Government (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).
27. Forsdyke, Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy, 2.
28. Vidal-Naquet, 'Democracy: A Greek Invention', 108; Donald Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 9.
29. Curtis, 'Translator's Foreword', xi, xx.
30. Bonner, Aspects of Athenian Democracy, 117-18; Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy, 6; Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, 77.
31. See, for example, Christian Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics, 88-9; Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy, 11.
32. Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, 1.
33. Damon A. Young, 'The Democratic Chorus: Culture, Dialogue and Polyphonic Paideia', Democracy and Nature 9, no. 2 (2003): 224.
34. Goldhill, 'The Audience in Athenian Tragedy', in P. E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60.
35. Franz Stoessl, 'Aeschylus as a Political Thinker', The American Journal of Philology 73, no.2 (1952): 113-14.
36. Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Zelenak, Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy.
37. Goldhill, 'The Audience in Athenian Tragedy', 56; Edith Hall, 'The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy', in Easterling, The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 125.
38. Goldhill, 'The Audience in Athenian Tragedy', 55-6.
39. Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, 32, 34; Josiah Ober and Barry Strauss, 'Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian Democracy', in Winkler and Zeitlin, Nothing to Do with Dionysos?, 239-40; Alfred Cary Schlesinger, Boundaries of Dionysus: Athenian Foundations for the Theory of Tragedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).
40. Rush Rehm, Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy and the Modern World (London: Duckworth, 2003), 87.
41. Karagiannis, 'The Tragic and the Political', 309.
42. Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 284. See also J. Peter Euben, 'Introduction', in J. Peter Euben (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 29; Michael Janover, 'Mythic Form and Political Reflection in Athenian Tragedy', Parallax 9, no. 4 (2003): 41.
43. Segal, Interpreting Greek Tragedy, 23, 41.
44. See, for example, Deborah Boedeker and Kurt Raaflaub, 'Tragedy and City', in Rebecca Bushnell (ed.), A Companion to Tragedy (Maiden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 119-22 for full analysis.
45. A. Brown (ed. and trans.), Sophocles: Antigone (Warminster: Aris and Phillips Ltd., 1987), 1-2; R. E. Braun (trans.), Sophocles: Antigone (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
46. In a famous passage, Castoriadis highlights the importance of Haemon's intervention to his father 'not to be wise alone'. Herein, for Castoriadis, was democracy's precepts laid bare. Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', 286; Matthew Sharpe, 'Autonomy, Reflexivity, Tragedy: Notions of Democracy in Camus and Castoriadis', Critical Horizons 3, no. 1 (2002): 113-14. This rendition, for brevity's sake, does not explore the similar proclivities 'to be wise alone' in Antigone's defiance of Creon's decree. Indeed, like Creon, by being wise alone she also sought to purchase order to the utter exclusion of what to her was chaos: the order to be instituted by Creon's decree.
47. Boedeker and Raaflaub, 'Tragedy and City', 122.
48. Hall, 'The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy'.
49. Jean-Pierre Vernant, 'Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy', in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (trans. Janet Lloyd), Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981), 17-18.
50. Ebbott, 'Marginal Figures', 219; Hall, 'The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy', 99; Young, 'The Democratic Chorus', 224.
51. John Gould, 'Tragedy and Collective Experience' and Simon Goldhill, 'Collectivity and Otherness - The Authority of the Tragic Chorus: Response to Gould', in M. S. Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
52. Herbert Weir Smyth, Aeschylean Tragedy (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1969), 10-11.
53. Euben, Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, 24.
54. John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kom-munikativen Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988).
55. William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 157,154.
56. Manfred Steger, Globalism: Market Ideology Meets Terrorism (Second Edition) (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), ix.
57. Ibid., 8-9.
58. See Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca (eds), Critical Theories, World Politics and the Anti-Globalisation Movement (London: Routledge, 2005).
59. William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 51.
60. William E. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 66,94.
61. Ibid., 123-5.
62. Ibid., 126-7. For a further elaboration see Roland Bleiker, 'Visualising Post-National Democracy', in Mort Schoolman and David Campbell (eds), The New Pluralism: William Connolly and the Contemporary Global Condition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 121-42.
63. See William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993/1988), 13.
64. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Auflkärung (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1991/1944), 22.
65. See Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Oxford: Polity, 1991), 3.
66. See Morgenthau's discussion of tragedy in Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974).
67. Maureen Whitebrook, 'Introduction', in Maureen Whitebrook (ed.), Reading Political Stories: Representations of Politics in Novels and Pictures (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 5, 7.
68. Maureen Whitebrook, 'Taking the narrative turn: What the novel has to offer political theory', in John Horton and Andrea T. Baumeister (eds), Literature and the Political Imagination (London: Routledge, 1996), 32.
69. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xvi; Martha Nussbaum, Poetic justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 5; Philip Darby, The Fiction of Imperialism: Reading Between International Relations and Postcolonialism (London: Cassell, 1998), 47.
70. Ernest Hemmingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 1.
71. John Updike, 'Mind/Body Problems', The New Yorker, 26 January 2004, 90.
72. See Murray Edelman, Art and Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 58,143-4.
73. George Packer, Betrayed: A Play (New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2008), which was inspired by George Packer, 'Betrayed: The Iraqis who trusted America the most', The New Yorker, 26 March 2007.