Peisistratus' processional performance

Petridou, Georgia ORCID: 0000-0002-0101-3626 (2023) Peisistratus' processional performance. In: Processions and the Construction of Communities in Antiquity. Routledge, pp. 14-31. ISBN 9781032294490

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Abstract

Recent studies on religion and democracy in Classical Athens have argued that an unmistakable two-directional relationship between religious life and political action religion is obvious in every sphere of socio-political and economic activity (education, healthcare, law-making, law enforcement, etc.) and on every level of societal organization in the city (from the individual to the household, and from the professional and cultic associations to the city-state as a whole). This chapter engages closely with recent socio-anthropological perspectives and looks afresh at the symbolic polyvalence of the epiphanic procession that led the exiled tyrranos Peisistratus back to Athens in the 550s BC (Hdt. 1.60.2-5) as an example of such unmistakably two-directional relationship between religious life and political action. More specifically, this chapter employs “cultural pragmatics,” a methodological approach pioneered by Jeffrey Alexander and Bernhard Giesen that foregrounds performance and emotions in both ritual performance and politics and maintains that Peisistratus’ processional performance pulls together various equally significant defused cultural realities such as texts, narratives, events, symbols, etc. Effectively, the present study joins forces with the other contributors of this volume to discuss the careful ritual construction and signification of that procession, and the means it employed to create a climate of political cohesion and celebration in the community.

Item Type:	Book Section
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2023 08:31
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2024 16:06
DOI:	10.4324/9781003301646-2
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3168198