Democracy and Anarchy

At a time when democracy is under threat from new authoritarian forces and tendencies, this book looks back to the Greek dawn of the polis to uncover an element of democracy that has been repressed for centuries: its indissoluble link to anarchy. Whether demokratía is uttered with nervous enthusiasm or utter contempt, this word—whose semantic history is retraced here—points to two interconnected events: it evokes both the people's entry onto the stage of history and the destitution of eve