In this article, written shortly after the most recent elections in Italy, the Italian philosopher Dario Gentili, author, among other books, of Crisi come arte di governo, reflects on the election results, developing the argument that the crisis of democracy has a long history and that there is no necessary link between democracy and liberalism.

The notion of democracy cannot be easily established nor fixed in a strict and rigorous manner. But, according to Paulo Tunhas, professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto and columnist of the Observador newspaper, there are a few conditions common to all so-called democratic regimes, without which they cease to be democratic. These conditions are named and defined in this text.

From the author of the concept of ‘post-democracy’, in a book with the same title, we have an article that revisits the prospective ideas that were developed there. Above all, the tendency to hollow out the notion of democracy and the weakening of democratic institutions are confronted with some current political and economic factors. Colin Crouch, professor at the University of Warwick (England), is a sociologist and scientist.

Barbara Stiegler, a Nietzsche scholar and author of a book on neoliberalism, writes, together with historian Christophe Pébarthe, also from the University of Bordeaux–Montaigne, on the issues and challenges that 20th-century neoliberalism, as a new political phenomenon, poses to democracy in relation to 19th-century liberalism. The course of this reflection leads to the historical – Greek – sources of democracy.

In this ‘View’, the Greek author Nikos Pratsinis writes about Heraklion, the capital of Crete, the island of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. Here we find past and present, gods and humans, land and sea, mythology and poetry, history and geography, architecture and cuisine and personal and cultural memories. Pratsinis is a writer and translator. He lived in Portugal for a few years and, together with the poet Joaquim Manuel Magalhães, translated the prose and poems of Konstandinos Kavafis and selected poems by Yorgos Seferis into Portuguese.

Interview with the musician, singer, poet and former Minister of Culture of Cape Verde. He is also the author of Manifesto of Creolisation, where he talks about the experience of someone born in a fishing village, in Tarrafal on the island of Santiago, and the political and cultural potential of the Creole model.

Drawing on the theoretical, literary and musical contributions of the Cape Verdean musician Mário Lúcio, who takes creoleness as a cultural and political ideal, Marta Lança, programmer and editor of the website Buala, evokes a few key theorists of creolisation and miscegenation, showing what is at stake in this phenomenon that transcends the Cape Verdean context.

Recognised worldwide and represented in the most important art collections, the Italian artist Giorgio Griffa has selected a representative series of his recent works for this Portfolio section of Electra. Considered one of the most radical, eloquent and effective artists of our time, his work, which is already of historical importance, evidences a poetics that combines an original concept of art, an open personal language and a subtle precision of artistic practice. In an essay written for this edition, Francesco Manacorda, an Italian curator who lives and works in London, presents Griffa's work and reflects on the creative process, deciphering its rich cultural significance. Manacorda's text analyses the ‘fine group assembled here for Electra magazine’.

With his book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published in 2005, the American historian Roger Ekirch changed many ideas about past and present sleeping habits. He showed, for example, how the Industrial Revolution radically transformed both the time and the way in which people slept, especially in the cities, passing from a biphasic sleep to a consolidated eight-hour sleep, which he classifies as ‘a modern invention’. Sleep and insomnia are matters of growing concern in contemporary societies. All these topics are addressed by the professor of the University of Virginia Tech in an interview conducted by Diogo Vaz Pinto.