Il ritorno del popolo. Un’introduzione

The Return of the People. An Introduction
In the last years the term «people» has assumed a growing centrality at all levels of the public discourse, imposing itself progressively as a privileged sign of the widespread anti-system sentiments encouraged by the crisis of values and principles of representative democracy. Opposing any essentialist use of this word, this issue of «Meridiana» reconsiders the role played by the «semantics of people» in the space of political experience of «our» modernity. This issue adopts therefore a multidisciplinary perspective focused on the numerous factors – both historical and theoretical – that are currently involved in the dynamics of constitution of modern forms of collective identity. The result is a polyphonic contribution moving from the founding experiences of the «Age of Democratic Revolutions» to the most advanced political experimentations taking place in the tumultuous context of the present «post-national era».