Few historians would associate Nicole Loraux with the great Marxist historians who wrote on classical antiquity. Nevertheless, Loraux implicitly presented herself as such, when, in 1981 and, again, in 1993, she made ideology and the imaginary central notions in her work on the funeral oration. This chapter investigates the complex uses of these two ‘re-invented’ notions in The Invention of Athens. In particular, it situates the career of Nicole Loraux within her rich intellectual milieu and teases out how she broke from it. This encompassed Classical Studies because The Invention of Athens, by moving the object of study to the imaginary, was clearly responding to some Marxist readings of antiquity, such as those of Moses Finley and the Italian School. But this milieu also included the French intellectual scene because Loraux, in fact, was always engaged in a dialogue with philosophers and anthropologists, such as Louis Althusser, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis and Pierre Clastres.

The chapter suggests that personal data law includes contradictory views of personhood because it presupposes an autonomous person but a non-autonomous person is also protected.

This introductory chapter lays out the conceptual framework and main argument of the book. It begins by critiquing some existing approaches to understanding Middle Eastern regional order before explicating the concepts of competitive support-seeking and ideological externalisation. An understanding of these principles requires a broader and deeper conception of the state and its ideological apparatus than that normally employed in IR. The chapter advances such a concept, drawing in particular on the work of Marxist theorists Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser. The final parts of the chapter provide an overview of how Middle Eastern states have contributed to the formation of regional order since the end of the First World War.