“The Politics of the Swarm”

A concern that shapes this lecture, as we resist a descent into tyranny, dictatorship, and white supremacy, is not to abandon hope for something different. What does ancient Greek comedy, as opposed to tragedy, have to offer to politics now? I focus on the matter of parrhesia, of freedom of speech, which includes satire and mockery of the powerful, on the possibilities of utopianism, often itself dismissed in the present day, and especially on the potential inherent in the swarm, the collective, the commune, the anonymous group, exemplified in the ancient Athenian democracy by the chorus of comedy.