L'escluso che sempre ritorna. Conflitto, divisione e differenza

This papers aims to be a first and brief introduction to Nicole Loraux’s studies on the athenian polis of the Vth century. Namely, it tries to depict the image of the city, ideologically portraited as He Polis, Loraux has described in her analysis: an ideological city, born from division but always fighting against it. A city resorting to several strategies in order to maintain safe its civic image: from official discourses to myths, from funeral orations to the open censorship and control of civic memory. A divided, conflictual city, where division acts like a bond, rooted in difference and in the opposition between the Self and the Other, political and not-political. But still, through several dispositifs, able to present itself to its citizen as one, homogeneus, in peace, eternal. What is excluded from this civic vision – namely: women, stásis, bodies, and remembrance – cannot be permanently erased. It always comes back, since the athenian city has a constituive bond with it.