...“The result was a specifically Greek
conception of citizenship, in which the fact that men had to behave as
citizens found an institutional form. The belonging to economic or
religious communities was removed to a secondary rank. The citizens of a
democracy considered themselves as members of the polis only in so far as they devoted themselves to a political life. Polis and politeia,
city and citizenship, constituted and defined one another. Citizenship
became in that way a form of life, by means of which the polis constituted itself in a domain clearly distinct from the oikos,
the house. Politics became therefore a free public space as such
opposed to the private space, which was the reign of necessity.”
According to Meier, this specifically Greek process of politicization
was transmitted to Western politics, where citizenship remained the
decisive element.
The hypothesis I would like to propose to
you is that this fundamental political factor has entered an irrevocable
process that we can only define as a process of increasing de-politicization.
What was in the beginning a way of living, an essentially and
irreducibly active condition, has now become a purely passive juridical
status, in which action and inaction, the private and the public are
progressively blurred and become indistinguishable. This process of the
de-politicization of citizenship is so evident that I will not dwell on
it...link
