This issue sets out to explore the various discursive mechanisms of depoliticisation, including the disqualification of a political approach to the issues and subjects at stake, the narrowing of the space for democratic debate, and the invisibilisation of politics through the gradual imposition of supposedly apolitical rationalities.

The twelve contributions in this Laboratoire italien issue examine the record of the Genoa G8 counter-summit in July 2001, twenty years after its ferocious repression by the Italian police, by cross-referencing perspectives from social sciences, literary studies, oral narrative, film studies and visual studies.

This feature extends the contributions of Claudia Moatti's book Res publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique which offers another way of looking at an ancient political concept.To study the question of the relationship between language and the practice and to examine the way in which the concept of res publica has been received by posterity.

Invoking "the Republic", calling oneself a "Republican"... Does the term Republic still have any meaning? The texts in this issue show that the polysemy of the word is less a reflection of the evanescence of its meaning than of a polymorphous debate on the definition of citizenship in a world marked by deepening individualism.

The Romans had a rich vocabulary in Latin to describe the voting process. This issue examines how this vocabulary came to take on different meanings, depending on the historical and political contexts in which it was used, in the ancient period as well as in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Classical Age.

This dossier explores a critical approach to "diversity" in its discursive and linguistic dimensions. It debates the meaning of "diversity", the different conceptions it encompasses, its uses, specific variations, in connection with the actors' strategies and in a plurality of enunciation contexts.