This node aims at reflecting on the processes related to the mobility of ideas through time and space. It also aims at understanding the forms and reasons for the affirmation and circulation of some ideas in a context in which they are not the only ones available, as well as how ideas change in time and space.

In this context, ideas should be thought jointly with the practices they convey by widening the spectrum of the analysis, thus implying that this node should also research the conditions for their affirmation, reproduction and appropriation in geographical and historical contexts, even very distant. Thus, we wonder whether it is possible to discuss the mobility of ideas without binding ourselves to a diffusionist scheme, referring to variation also in epidemiological terms and, at the same time, whether it is productive to distinguish mobility from circulation.

In order to proceed in this direction, the working group set a common target allowing us to progress in a diachronic and interdisciplinary way: the common topic is tyranny, the despotic power or the dictatorship in the spatial-temporal articulations assumed by the use of such concepts.

Therefore, the aim is to keep on questioning, within the framework of the mobility turn, the synchronic and diachronic circulation of a complex device (e.g., crystallisation of ideologies, practices and political, social and economic dynamics). This theme has been defined on the basis that it is recurring in our studies, from the Ancient World (Fezzi, Raviola), to the Middle Ages (Canzian, Gallo), to the Modern Age (Piccinini, Savio, Valseriati, Viggiano), to the Contemporary (Albanese, Basso, Fava, Millan) and the Present (Quatrida). It also seems promising to explore and measure the theoretical import of the paradigm in relation to traditional categories of the social sciences used to thematise the phenomenon (circulation of ideas, diffusion, influence of the effects, transformation) and to activate debate and reflections about how to rethink the comparison action within the working group (and beyond).