Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy. By Robert C. Pirro. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. 224p. $38.00.

Extract

Hannah Arendt's so-called nostalgia for the Greek polis stands at the core of most readings of her work, especially in debates between proponents of her concept of action as agonistic and interpreters of this concept as associational or communicative. Many feminist theorists, participatory democrats, and liberals share an aversion to Arendt's philhellenism and criticize her machismo, her apparent neglect of Athenian injustice, and her “republicanism,” with its potential for endangering individual autonomy. Similarly, Arendt's emphasis on the political relevance of stories and her self-acknowledged storytelling have also given rise to extensive interpretations. Arendt scholars, in line with many contemporary political theorists, reject the totalizing and universalizing power of theory and argue that human plurality is better expressed in stories than in abstract homogeneous theory. According to them, by exemplifying or illuminating general intuitions and propositions, storytelling concretizes the understanding of politics. They suggest that stories allow the political thinker to be critical and situated. Moreover, stories take into account forgotten parts of history, or forgotten parts of the political sphere, often denied in theories that cannot accept difference and contingency.