Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again

Abstract

There have been few issues in the contemporary analysis of Greek tragedy as hotly debated as what I shall call ‘civic ideology and the problem of difference’. By this I mean a nexus of interrelated questions concerning the political import of tragedy both for the fifth-century Athenians and for subsequent generations: how does the festival of the Great Dionysia—its rituals and dramatic performances—relate to the dominant ideological structures of democracy? How should critical or contestatory discourse be located within the dramatic festival and within the polis? How should the texts of tragedy be related to the society in which they were produced—and to the societies in which they are still being read and performed? The problem is not merely essential to our understanding of the genre of tragedy, but is also intimately connected to the history and theory of democracy and its discontents. To what degree can democracy respond to criticism and what space can it allow, in theory and in practice, for alternative viewpoints or opposition? In its most aggressive form, such questioning of the exclusions and repressions of democracy is sometimes articulated as a challenge as to whether the costs of (ancient) democracy outweigh its benefits.

Cite this

Simon D. Goldhill (2000). Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again. The Journal of Hellenic Studies. https://doi.org/10.2307/632480

@article{d2000civic,
  title  = {Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again},
  author = {Goldhill, Simon D.},
  year   = {2000},
  journal = {The Journal of Hellenic Studies},
  doi    = {10.2307/632480}
}

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