Pierre-Vidal Naquet

Recensione a P. Vidal-Naquet, Atlantide. Breve storia di un mito, Torino, Einaudi 2006 (trad. it. di Id., L’Atlantide. Petite histoire d’un mythe platonicienne, Paris, Les Belles Lettres 2005).
Recensione pubblicata in «RCCM» 50, 2, 2008, pp. 435-439.

A lo largo de su historia, la democracia ateniense encontró diversos modos de oposición que pusieron, en mayor o menor medida, en peligro su persistencia. Frente a esas amenazas reales, potenciales y, en algunos casos, imaginarias, la demokratía puso en práctica una multiplicidad de dispositivos orientados a garantizar su propia conservación.
En base a ello, en la presente comunicación analizaremos de qué manera el régimen político ateniense se organizó para cumplir con dos objetivos estrechamente entrelazados: a) evitar las concentraciones de poder consideradas excesivas en tanto que pudieran resultar contradictorias con el principio de la isonomía; y b) desarrollar una identidad y uno modelo de comportamiento cívicos tendientes a favorecer la unidad y el compromiso de los ciudadanos frente a las amenazas a la democracia. El miedo a la tiranía, en tanto sentimiento generalizado, constituyó un dispositivo dinámico que se amoldó a las diferentes coyunturas favoreciendo la consecución de los objetivos enunciados.

Is there something like a french classical Greece? Is there a specific french way to study, to explain and to understand ancient Greece? Many french scholars seem to think, or to believe, there is, as they say, a "Grèce à la française". Nowadays, it seems that everything has become international, the cuisine which is a painfull idea for a French, and especially science. Many academics do live in a small word, as the british novelist David Lodge has shown more than three decades ago. They share the same dreams, they pursue the same carreer in a few big international universities, they read the same books and articles, they write on the same topics, they publish in the same reviews etc. But does it mean they make science in the same way? That is the main question I want to answer here. I think it is important to question one's own position, before beginning any work in social science, and Classics are part of the social science for me. So I am wondering if there is still some kind of national traditions in classical studies, even if the process of globalisation is now a reality which is difficult to deny. In other words, I would like to clarify my own way to be a scholar interested in the Classical antiquity, that is to say to determinate if I am a french scholar stuck in one and only national way of thinking.

The motivation behind the Danaïds’ flight from marriage to their cousins in Aeschylus’ Supplices has long been debated. For more than a century, prominent classicists have entertained the notion that the Danaïds consider such a marriage incestuous, despite the difficulty of justifying such a claim on the basis of the Danaïds’ language. This article will argue that since Darwin’s discovery of the deleterious effects of inbreeding, the incest taboo has been differently constituted, and that thinking native to our own culture has persistently intruded on attempts to interpret Aeschylus’ play. Having surveyed these problems in some detail, I use conceptual metaphor theory to eliminate the “flight from incest” theory, and posit that closer attention to the cultural biases I identify might help decode the myth’s enigmatic significance to Roman authors such as Vergil.

Πρόκειται για μια προσπάθεια συνδυασμού της ιστορίας των θεατρικών και πολιτικών θεσμών στην αρχαία Αθήνα του Κλεισθένη και της σημειολογικής ανάλυσης του θεατρικού χώρου από την Anne Ubersfeld. Με αφετηρία τις αναλύσεις του Pierre Vidal-Naquet και του Pierre Vernant, αλλά και τις παρατηρήσεις του Κορνήλιου Καστοριάδη ως προς την αθηναϊκή δημοκρατία και το θέατρο, εξετάζονται οι δομές του αστικού χώρου και της αποτύπωσής τους στην πολιτική γεωγραφία όπως είχε συνταχθεί από τον Κλεισθένη, με την Πνύκα στο επίκεντρο της πολιτικής εξουσίας και του ενδιαφέροντος όλων των πολιτών σε σύγκριση με τις δομές του θεατρικού χώρου, ο οποίος δομείται σε ένα σχήμα ομόκεντρων κύκλων ως α. σκηνικός τόπος, β. σκηνικός χώρος, γ. θεατρικός χώρος και δ. δραματικός χώρος.