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The Future of the Past: Pericles, History, and Athenian Democracy

Chapter of: The Before and the After: Critical Asynchrony Now(pp. 261–284)

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Metadata
TitleThe Future of the Past
SubtitlePericles, History, and Athenian Democracy
ContributorAhuvia Kahane(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.53288/0446.1.13
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-before-and-the-after-critical-asynchrony-now/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightAhuvia Kahane
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2025-01-29
Long abstractThis paper considers the temporality and ethics of democracy, specifically within the context of Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Drawing on J. Derrida’s notions of the future-to-come and democracy, reading the oration through the work of Gomm, opposing conservative Anglo-American readings and invoking the political thought of J. Rancière as well as insights from E. Schrödinger, K. Barad and the sciences, the paper argues that democracy, and indeed Pericles’ Athenian democracy is a practice that is the unity of the “one too many” and “the ‘more, always more’ of unsatisfied desire”, a regime that, as Rancière puts it, is “governed by the judicious use of its own un-governability.”
Page rangepp. 261–284
Print length24 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Keywords
  • democracy
  • à-venir
  • future-to-come
  • Jacques Derrida
  • Pericles
  • funeral oration
  • Arnold Wycombe Gomme
  • Josiah Ober
  • Jacques Rancière
  • Erwin Schrödinger
  • Karen Barad
Contributors

Ahuvia Kahane

(author)
Regius Professor of Greek and A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Trinity College Dublin
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0450-1286

Ahuvia Kahane is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, where he is Regius Professor of Greek and A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture. His forthcoming book is titled Epic, Novel, and the Progress of Antiquity and Orality and the Formula: A Political Rethinking. The co-edited collection Walking Cities: Layer, Trace, Zone, Vector came out in 2024. Together with colleagues from the Royal College of Art and the Ruskin School of Art, he is writing a book, provisionally entitled The Panoramico, on the politics of geometry.