ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the place of intergenerational politics in modern and contemporary political thought. It begins by reviewing three general approaches to the topic in the academic literature: generational sovereignty, generational representation, and generational distribution. The book discusses the critical role of narrative in promoting a democratic orientation to intergenerational justice questions. It focuses on two comedies, Knights and Clouds, and untangles the specific challenges posed by the procession of time: the need to confront human finitude, that is, the fact that lives end and that past decisions limit future ones, and the impossibility of sovereign power. The book concludes with a discussion of space and new public art movements, sounding out some further possibilities for disrupting the urge to generational sovereignty in our own time.
