ABSTRACT
This book is about ourselves (subjectivity, citizenship and belonging) in modern society. However, this chapter is situated in ancient Greece, which makes it seem somewhat and somehow the odd one out. But in this case going back in time is an element in an effort to understand one’s own time, an effort that recalls the anecdote about the ‘anthropologist fish’, which would never find out about water. Things near at hand stay out of sight because they disappear in self-evidence. Historical critique may be useful for dissipating the self-evidence around one’s own time by showing that things were not always as they are now.
