Speaker: Ligia Fabris Campos (FGV Rio de Janeiro Law School), Research Fellow during summer term 2025 within the Research Network Latin America and Gender & Politics at the Faculty of Social Science/Department of Political Science, University of Vienna.
Moderation: Katharina Hajek (Department of Political Science, University of Vienna)

In ancient Athens, citizens had the opportunity every year to ban someone from the community for a limited time through a popular vote called ostrakophoria. The usual targets were politicians who, at different times, were seen as a threat to the demos and the wider public interest. Ostracism was a unique political tool, whose legacy is linked to the heyday of democracy in Athens. What can this forgotten institution teach us today? Some of the lessons that can be drawn from ostracism are that the determination of democratic enemies is contingent on social and political circumstances and must therefore be decided by the citizens themselves; that this decision must be protected from abuse and provide for reparation to the ostracised individual; that threats to democracy are recurrent, which must be reflected in the design of democratic self-defence institutions. Finally, ostracism suggests a new way of approaching political representation, in the negative, as an act of removal rather than installation. The lecture will discuss the logic of ostracism and political exclusion, its limits, possible institutional adaptations, and the general insights it can bring to contemporary democracy, not least to the project of democratic self-defence.