Democrazia e anarchia.
Il potere nella polis

Democracy is indissolubly tied to anarchy. At a time of authoritarian tendencies, when people aim to defend democracy by locking it up and walling it in, this book is based on radical thought and looks at the Greek dawn of the pólis. Its monumental history is deconstructed through an original rereading of the sources: an enthralling account that highlights rebellious events and revolutionary scenarios. Declaimed with nervous enthusiasm or stunned disdain, the word demokratía, whose semantic and political histories are retraced, indicates two connected events: the advent of the people on the historical stage and the suspension of all power that presumes to be original. The specter of anarchy distresses cities. Tragedians dread it, historians observe it, philosophers denounce it. The arché of fathers, owners, indigenous people, and heirs is deeply undermined and deprived of legitimacy, while the space of politics is inaugurated.“Neither command nor be commanded” is the seal of democracy, the banner of anarchic freedom. The protagonists of this tale are women. In a verse by Aeschylus, a revolt of female foreigners, women fleeing from domestic violence, reveals the combination that indicates the ability of the people to affirm themselves. Democracy is born through asylum. And dêmos will never be able to either regress to éthnos by basing itself on ties of blood and territory, or suffocate conflict and division. In a quick-paced confrontation that includes Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Reiner Schürmann, and Miguel Abensour, intellectuals of democracy after the totalitarian drift, Donatella Di Cesare brings a centuries- long repression back to light and offers a new perspective for research into the new anarchism.