Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy

Argues that immigration politics is a central - but overlooked - matter of contestation in the democratic thought of classical Athens.

List of contents

Part I. Autochthony Trouble: 1. The metic in and out of theory; 2. Immigrant passing in Euripides' Ion, the tragedy of blood-based membership; Part II. A Metric Republic in Three Acts: 3. The Republic as a metic space; 4. Plato's open decret; 5. Of mimesis and metic: a reading of democracy in Book VIII; Part III. Evading Detection: 6. Citizen passing in Demosthenes 57: the oration of Athenian blood; Conclusion: political theory from the edges of Athenian democracy; Appendix. A metic timeline.

About the author

Demetra Kasimis is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her research on classical Greek thought and democratic theory has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council for Learned Societies, and has appeared in such journals as Political Theory and Contemporary Political Theory. The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy is her first book.

Summary

Argues that immigration politics is a central - but overlooked - object of inquiry in the democratic thought of classical Athens. Thinkers criticized democracy's strategic investments in nativism, the shifting boundaries of citizenship, and the precarious membership that a blood-based order effects for those eligible and ineligible to claim it.

Product details

• Authors: Demetra Kasimis, Demetra (University of Chicago) Kasimis
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2018
• EAN: 9781107052437
• ISBN: 978-1-107-05243-7
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Classics After Antiquity; Classics after Antiquity
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Antiquity; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Politics; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; European History, HISTORY / Ancient / General, Ancient Greece, Ancient History, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, Civil rights & citizenship, Civics and citizenship