Correcting Nonsense about the Ancient Greco-Roman Past

It has been about 2.5 years since I first wrote "Why I Teach About Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World" for Eidolon.  The impetus for it was Donna Zuckerberg's article "How to Be a Good Classicist under a Bad Emperor," which called on classicists to teach more about the diversity of the ancient world. Like my colleagues Sydnor Roy, Denise McCoskey and Shelly Haley and others, I've been teaching iterations of this class for a long time. And, so I thought I would make a statement on why in order to encourage others to do it to. Also, of course, because teaching a class like this can be hard, Syd and I decided to make it easier on ourselves back in 2010 and publish the sourcebook in 2013--Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Sources. It isn't perfect and needs a second edition one of these days to add inscriptions, papyri, early Christian texts, focused material on immigration and enslavement. There is so much material on this topic from antiquity that it really is a life's work to track it all down. I've been gathering other people's syllabi for about two years now in order to make them available to others and to learn from how others teach their versions. And, because there is always more to learn, I am constantly changing my own syllabus.  

What follows is a reflection on the latest iteration of the class with student responses that functions as something of a revision of my Eidolon article and also as a response of sorts to the dangerous view of identity in antiquity and its modern appropriations represented in a recent review of books (screenshot of the opening paragraph--I am not linking to the site):

One of the goals of teaching race and ethnicity in the ancient world (as part of our larger courses and in stand alone classes) is to help disabuse people of these types of unserious and inaccurate positions. It is also to give students tools to identify and understand how such views are racist, orientalist, white supremacist and promote inaccuracies about both antiquity and the modern world in the service of ideology. Our success in the classroom can have impact down the road in making these sort of bad history takes less useful or common. So, here we go... 

**All materials from students used with permission.** 

I can only imagine that the true final project would have coalesced all of these aspects into one final performance on what we have learned throughout this semester. That is also what is so sad and disappointing about this semester, we never got to do everything that the course got to offer. I realize that it must be disappointing to have a plan for a semester and have it totally upended from some freak pandemic. Regardless, I really enjoyed the class and thought of it to be one of the more meaningful courses I have taken throughout my college experience so far. ~student comment

Let's start from reality. This class was not the class I intended it to be when the semester started. I had spent a lot of time this past year thinking about how I wanted to change the class based on the current cultural moment, on responses from the previous iteration, and based on my own shifting interests. So, I changed reading structure--instead of using scholarship on specific passages and text along with the ancient texts and then tagging on the reception of these ideas to the last 3-4 weeks of the term, I integrated the reception throughout and ordered Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning as the textbook we would read along side of the ancient sources. You can see that version of the syllabus (the one I gave out at the beginning of the term) here. I also planned a panel of classicists who work on various aspects of Classics Africana (or Black Classicisms) to come to campus and help us integrate the ancient material with the Kendi and with an exhibition at the Denison Museum called "Say it Loud". It included a performance of the Hype4Homer project. So awesome.  The panel happened, but 3 days later campus shut down. 

Obviously, the move to online teaching required some modifications to my syllabus. This involved reducing the length of readings, adding more visual content and restructuring the assignments. The revised syllabus for the last few weeks can be found here. What isn't visible on the new schedule is the targeted discussion questions on our Learning management System and the memes and audio recordings I asked students to do. The final project was originally for them to write an essay on the intersections between ancient and modern ideas of race and ethnicity and present it in a multimedia format (a program called Shorthand). Obviously, that was going to be rough, so instead I asked them to write a reflection of what they learned in the class and would take away with them to wherever they go in the future. For many students, this was and will be their only Classics course, so I was curious.

The plan for the semester was to integrate the discussion of modern receptions, adaptations, evolutions from, and uses of ancient ideas about race and ethnicity throughout, to help student see more jarringly the way ancient ideas moved into and were used in modern race constructs. Reading Tacitus' Germania and seeing the Nazi use of it at the same time is more impactful than reading it and then looking at Nazi receptions 4 weeks later.  Doing so, however, required that we begin the class with very clear definitions of what race and ethnicity are (or how we would use these terms in class). Students were very clear that the didn't have a definition of either (some had never really thought about ethnicity, for example), but knew that "race is a social construct"--whatever that meant. 

"The fact that race was introduced as “the institutionalization of prejudice and oppressions based on moving signifiers for human difference” because we need a different way to approach it when looking at it in ancient times really made sense. While we look at race as color and appearance now, color was used in a lot of different ways back then...For reasons like these it’s much more productive to view race as a technology that structures human interactions and manifests within institutions. The categorizations of race ideas found in Kendi—segregationist, assimilationist, and anti-racist—were also really significant, specifying two conflicting kinds of racism. But the argument from Kendi that resonated with me most was that racist ideas, hate, and ignorance stem from racial discrimination and policies instead of the other way around. This makes so much sense as I notice selfish motives, primarily money and status, being the actual causes of discriminatory policies not only throughout this class but throughout a lot of material from my other classes..."  ~student comment

"I remember the definitions we discussed on the first day and how we subsequently applied them to the ancient Greek sources dealing with origin myths. Based on these primary sources, I could see that today’s ethnic and racial classifications didn’t fit onto the ancient world as many people would think they did. The rubber really hit the road, so to speak, when comparing the identity discourses within the ancient sources to those that Kendi wrote about. It was clear that ideas of race and ethnicity from the late modern period, give or take, simultaneously incorporated ancient views and departed from them. The kernel of blackness in ancient descriptions of North African populations became exaggerated as the focal point for modern racist ideologies. Through this example and others, I could see that speaking of race and ethnicity in an ancient context requires an appreciation of these different paradigms." ~student comment

We started class with our working definitions and these would be the definitions we would use throughout the term. Importantly, I wanted them to understand that the terms 'race' and 'ethnicity' are not interchangeable, that theories like environmental determinism are not 'racial theories' unless that can be manifested in things like laws or political institutions and then form the basis for oppression (like the Athenian metic system or Spartan helots). As Kendi argues (rightly) racist policy creates racist ideas. By using Kendi and weaving him in throughout the course, student could see how ancient ideas came to be foundational to modern racist ideas. 

I think the class was successful in part because we had clear terms for engagement, I was very clear about why we needed to read the ancient and the modern together--in order to know how the modern world has (mis)used the ancient, they need to be laid side by side. It is unfair to ask students to infer connections that are often so embedded as 'reality' for them--prejudices, assumptions, 'nature'--without some sort of guidance or framework.  

This brings me to the silly book review screenshot above--the idea that a war in antiquity could be somehow the pivotal moment in the history of some imaginary 'western' world identity. So, what did my students learn this term? 

"In fact, just recently I was able to enlighten my younger sisters on where race came from while they were participating in a heated debate considering whether black people could be racist to whites. I overheard the conversation and put what I have learned in this course to the test. After conversing with my sisters I was proud of what I was able to accomplish and realized that this information will give me a step up when entering the workforce. Although preconceived notions and racist ideas may not always be on display, they are in the minds of the people around us and as a black man I am forced to think about that everyday." ~student comment

"I learned quite a bit in this class, especially about how residual some ideas are. I was shocked to read some passages about certain ethnic groups that could still be written today, and how destructive a mindset they could be. It was quite interesting to “track” these assumptions about people from their beginning in ancient times to the present, and see their true origins. My favorite class period was the one focused on the census, and tracking the evolution of racial categories from its inception in the early 1800s. Race has always been one of the biggest issues in America, and the world, so seeing how our ideas of who is who has changed, and how the need to categorize people definitively is so ingrained." ~student comment

"While I understood that racism built on foundations laid in the past centuries (or millennia) before taking this class, the examples I encountered highlighted its presence for me. Linking the caricatures of black people provided by everything from minstrel shows to Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben products today to ancient (and sometimes fantastical) descriptions of specific African groups were helpful in this respect. Another aspect of this is the white European self-identification with ancient Greeks and Romans. 23andme and other such testing services seemed harmless to me a year ago. Even cool - using science to peer into your past. That’s part of their image used to market the product, of course. But based on this class and the various related lectures I attended, I can now see how easily they can be used to affirm a subjective image of someone’s identity." ~student comment

"This class also helped bring attention to the ways in which we as a culture glorify Greece and Rome a lot. It’s really important that we ask, “What is it about us that makes us want a group to be homogenous?” when countries not only today but since ancient times have actually been mixed entities with all different kinds of people within. The fact that being Greek can’t be seen just as being from the nation-state of Greece since they were essentially spread across the span of about three continents was something I’ve never thought about before." ~student comment

"The most important part of this class that I will carry with me is the connection between ancient viewpoints and the foundational beliefs of the United States. To think the education system of the United States was very recently based in ancient Latin and Greek. The reading of ancient philosophers was basic, foundational knowledge necessary to enter into a university. I know now that many of these texts also contain racist, classist, and sexist ideas. The fascination with classicism in the United States ties to our “founding fathers’” creation of a system of government that inherently benefitted straight, white men from the beginning. The mythos that the ancient Greek and Roman empires were white or even racially homogenized only contributes to the place these texts hold in white supremacy." ~student comment

The comments are like this from almost every student. They also say that they learned how to be better critical readers, to question their own assumptions and potential biases, and feel more confident analyzing primary materials. These are all things that are so important in the world we live in today. I am pretty sure all of my students would read that review and give it the big eye roll and F-you it deserves. 

But, it isn't just how we talk about readings and videos and whatnot. Who we give voice to for our classes matters. Bringing in Kendi changed the dynamics of the class and made students, especially the white students, confront some realities they didn't necessarily know or think mattered to them. Also, the panel I organized with my colleague Omedi Ochieng in Communication had more impact on some students than the entire rest of the class:

"This experience also had a big impact on me because, as a woman of color, it really meant a lot to me to see other people of color be passionate about and accumulate success in the classics field; it reaffirmed a message that Dr. Goldman gave the first day of my “Classical Drama” course, that the classics is not just for old, white men. I will always remember this experience for both personal and academic reasons..." ~student comment

After loving the classics for years and being told by their parents that they couldn't be a classics major, and feeling unsure why they even loved classics, to have this student say this meant more than anything else.

 

Classics really can be a classics for all, if we are willing to let go of its ties to whiteness and power, be open to the world beyond the canon, and invest efforts in "non-traditional" courses in translation that can reach more students and can really be transformative for them. None of the quotations in this post are from a classics major--80% of the student had never even taken a classics course before. And yet, it meant something to them and will change the way they engage with the world around them and how the classical appears in it. Teaching this class over the years, and this year most of all, has been transformative for me in so many ways, because it meant something to nearly every student in the class who took the journey with me.

Being "American", Sophocles' Intentions, and the Debates over "Western Civ"

I have this day been having two separate conversations on Twitter that actually revolve upon the same thing. The first was a convo with a colleague on authorial intent and Greek tragedy, inspired by last night's reading of Sophocles' Oedipus by Theatre of War. The second was a query from Shadi Bartsch on mask wearing:

While my first response was flippant (as were all the other commenters), there is, in fact, a very serious answer to this and it intersects with the way we attribute genius to individuals and meaning to plays written by men like Sophocles and also, whether people realize it or not, is at the heart of the "Why we MUST revere/teach/worship Western Civ" industry.

So, what are the connections? Let's start with the answer to Shadi's query.

After my initial flippant remark ("For their purposes, American = a$$hole fascist white person."), she followed up with:

The answer, of course, is yes. One can still be an asshole without being a fascist. But, there is a particular strand of asshole that positions itself as "American". And that has its root in the notions of American exceptionalism, the American Dream™, Manifest Destiny™, bootstrapping mythologies, the myth of the American West and "rugged individualism". There are so many names for it that we have been bombarded with in our school textbooks, in TV commercials (especially for trucks). It is at the heart of Libertarianism and Randianism. At its core is the idea that what makes the US "great" is that we are all out for ourselves. That rampant and unchecked individualism and unfettered competition (CAPITALISM!) is what makes individuals exceptional and so a country full of exceptional people will, of course, be exceptional!

But, as we know, there is no such world as a world where everyone is exceptional. Instead, we end up in a world where some people are "more valuable" than others because they are exceptional while others aren't. This is an idea core to social Darwinism and eugenics (and NOT democracy), but which we used to not say out loud.  Oh, how the times have (un)changed!

So, the exceptional people have more value --they are the JOB CREATORS who just happened to have fired or laid off something like 20 million people in the month of April in order to meet quarterly stock targets. They are the ones pushing to force the 'less valuable' people back to low wage unessential work in order to get their money back even while the US government has literally handed them billions of dollars to cover losses and keep them afloat. This is the reality of American exceptionalism and "I got mine" rugged individualism, but the mythologies that surround it and which MUST BE DEFENDED from the likes of universal healthcare, support for public education, and public health policies that don't involve eugenic-style selection of the type Janet there thinks is normal, has brought those who are most harmed by these myths to become its defenders. And they defend it by rejecting vaccinations and masks in public.

What does Sophocles and authorial intention have to do with any of this?

A colleague (Latin teacher and medievalist by training) had a little back and forth with myself and A. Pistone over whether asking the question "Why did Sophocles write this" functions or matters. Here is the beginning of the convo for context:

There is a difference, of course between pondering what the author of any work might have intended (we obviously intend to convey things when we create) and THE intent of the author as embodying the meaning of the work--Greg is really advocating for the former and this is a totally useful and valid conversation to have, but many people (I will not name names. I will not name names) mean the latter. There is still in classics a strong tendency to treat performance texts as written texts, to ignore the dialogic and oral nature of those texts. Looking for the singular perspective of the author (who may not even be fully responsible for the text as it has come down to us) in the case of performative texts that are, by their genre, defined by their audiences, ignores the nature of the work. But, tragedy, and Sophocles in particular tends to get trapped in "GREAT MAN CLASSICS" in ways that do this. And it was this, not Greg's point, that Amy and I reacted against. He is not the bad guy.

With Sophocles and Oedipus Tyrannos especially there is an idea that the play embodies universal truths. But those truths aren't ones that different peoples at different times and in different contexts are expected to find. No, indeed. These universal truths are really a singular TRUTH that emerges from the intent of a singular genius, Sophocles. And it is for us to both find that truth and to revere the exceptional man who produced them. And if we do not find that Truth, it is because we are incapable of it--we must be a too poor, too not white, too not a man to be able to see the genius' truth. And all those works of scholarship that propose to read Sophocles through feminist or class or other lenses are "revisionist" in a bad way and are denying Truth.

It shouldn't be controversial when someone like me says that texts have meanings that are produced despite authorial intention and at the point of reception and that this means any text can have a variety of interpretations and even 'truths'. It's what actually makes works like tragedy so appealing--because they can be accessed in different spaces and times to produce meaning while still carrying in them all the past meanings that others gained from them. It should not be controversial to say that every text contains truths and not Truth. And, yet, this brings us to our third intersection.

The emphasis on authorial genius and Truth is no different from and a product of the same myths of Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, and the American Dream. And these are foundational to the Western Civilization narrative and so MUST BE DEFENDED.

John Gast "American Progress" 1872

Classics has been at the heart of the American Exceptionalism story since its beginning, but it was in the 19th century, as the "American West" was conquered, indigenous peoples eradicated or removed, and when the Lost Cause myth started us down the road to Jim Crow that things got super entrenched. I've written about this numerous times on the blog (example), there are articles on the way Latin textbooks have been used to perpetuate the ideas of the Happy Slave, etc. The above painting is a beautiful example of the ways "America" (which became especially in the Plato to Nato era the beacon of the "West") has been dressed up by the Classical. And university education and the Western Civilization curriculum have been integral to forging a shared White, elite identity for those who view revering of the canon and the "Great Men" within it is a cornerstone of the Western Civilization narrative. This thread by Dani Bostick on the most recent entry into the "Why We Must Teach Western Civ" catalogue (shockingly, from the National Review *insert sarcastic expression*) pretty much hits a BINGO on what we can come to expect from such articles. But, some people may be unaware of how this elitist argument is part and parcel of the Libertarianism that been intentionally trickled down into the "Everyman Real American" ethos--the one time trickle down has really seemed to work!

The narrative of American exceptionalism is premised on the Frontier Thesis, which argued that it was the westward expansion that forged American identity and which, unsurprisingly, was originally explicated in a speech in Chicago in 1893 at the American Historical Association meeting--coinciding with the World's Columbian Expo. This thesis is, in many ways, encapsulates the way this myth roots the Libertarian ethos at America's imperialist, capitalist core. In decades of cowboy films, textbooks called "The American Experience", and all of us playing Oregon Trail, this idea that America was about our rugged individualism, about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and about how we all could, if we worked really hard, own our own 40 acres and a mule or strike gold (or black gold even) has been burned into us. And it means, essentially, that our freedom, American Freedom™ is about being free to do what we want--even at the expense of others (and ourselves). As Ibram X Kendi put it in a recent Atlantic article "We're Still Living and Dying in a Slaveholder's Republic":

The freedom to do, not the freedom of others to be free from harm--that is supposedly the American way. That is where the singular genius, the competitive individualism, the search the Truth and not truths takes us. And where it comes from. This is at the heart of the Western Civilization narrative. It is the heart of the White definition of American. It is why the same people who will tell us that only Sophocles' intentions matter are the same people who want to rush to open businesses, deny care or relief for those most harmed by their actions, and refuse to wear masks to protect both themselves and others from harm. It's a most undemocratic way to express one's freedom, but somehow those of us who care about others get to be "unAmerican".

The (Black)Faces of Aeschylus' Suppliants

A theatre group at the Sorbonne has been making headlines after a production of Aeschylus' Suppliants they were preparing for was shut down by protestors. What?! This sounds CRAZY! Were the protestors opposed to a possible message of the play as welcoming refugees and immigrants (as seems to have been the point with the Sicilian staging in 2015)? No. They were protesting the play as racist and they have a point.

Here's a picture of the performance (possibly last year's?). See if you can tell me why they might think something was awry:

Notice anything about the actors? Hint--this is a photograph, not a coloring book. That stuff on their skin is #blackface.

Since the protestors blocked the performance, there have been a series of statements from the uni and the director with excuses replete with condemnations of the protestors. John Ma sums it up on a Twitter discussion about it:

The most recent responses have the director saying that it was intended that the actors would wear masks (according to ancient Greek tradition) for the performance, not #blackface. And yet:

Last year's performance apparently had been done in #blackface and, really, do actors do dress rehearsals in #blackface if they are going to wear masks in performance? Why would they not practice instead in the masks and not go through all the time and effort of donning #blackface? And if the director was really interested in capturing the dynamics that emerge from remembering that the Danaids are in the play black-skinned, why not cast appropriately?

Because, one of the remarkable things about the play is that, although the Danaids explicitly refer to themselves as "black" ('black, sun-beaten people" μελανθὲς ἡλιόκτυπον γένος lines 154-5), it is not considered an important mark of their difference at all when they arrive in Greece from Egypt. When the Argive king Pelasgos first sees them, he thinks they look very foreign, but doesn't even notice their skin color:

This group that we address is unhellenic, luxuriating in barbarian finery and delicate cloth. What country do they come from? The women of Argos, indeed of all Greek lands, do not wear such clothes. It is astonishing that you dare to travel to this land, fearlessly, without heralds, without sponsors, without guides. And yet here are the branches of suppliants, laid out according to custom next to you in front of the assembled gods. This alone would assert your Greekness…(ll 245-54).

This play is one of many indicators from ancient Greece that skin color was not usually associated with prejudice. And yet this director managed to take this play and make it all about skin color and prejudice through the employing of a well known racist practice of #blackface--which, by the way, has a long tradition of being just as racist in France as it does in the US.

Additional irony? The thing that marks them as foreign in Aeschylus is their clothing. See anything in the pictures about their clothes? Yep--Greek-style. This director has reversed Aeschylus.

Of course, there is much else to be discussed concerning the reaction to the play. The protestors are reacting to the #blackface and placing it within the context of France's history of colonialism (and its 'official' state denial of racism as a phenomenon in France):

Over the last two weeks, I've given a series of talks on Aeschylus' play and asked myself the question of whether in its original context it was a play about welcoming refugees or about the benefits of the Athenian empire (and so 'colonialist propaganda), or if it was really about the threat and danger of immigrants to Athens. Because audiences aren't monolithic, I think it probably can legitimately be interpreted as all three, depending on who is in your audience.

I've been trying to think of the play within the context of Athens' descent in the 460s and 450s into anti-immigrant policies and strict monitoring of citizenship. The play was performed around 463 BCE, around the time that the new category of 'metic' (translated as 'immigrant' or 'resident foreigner') was created and only a decade before Athens began racializing its citizenship with the passage of the law requiring double Athenian parentage for citizenship and emphasizing its autochthonous birth.

In the play, the king initially rejects the supplication of the Danaids. And he does so based on reasons we all may find familiar--that the Danaids aren't really in danger at home (387-91) or, more importantly:

The case is not easy to judge: don’t choose me to judge it. I have already said I am not prepared to do this without the people’s approval, even though I have the power--if something rather bad should happen the people may end up saying “By giving privileges to foreigners you destroyed our city” (397-401).

And when he is finally convinced to take their petition to the assembly and it is approved and the Danaids enter the city? They bring a war to the city (the sons of Aegyptus invade!), the Argives lose, Pelasgos dies, and, by the end of the last play in the trilogy (our extant play is only the first in a three-play series), the city is under the foreign rule of one Aegyptids (Lynceus) and his wife, the only Danaid (Hypermnestra) who didn't kill her husband on his wedding night. So much for welcoming in refugees as a benefit to the city...

Wow. Hmmmm. I've clearly been feeling a bit cynical given the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee world we seem to have devolved into in recent years.

My point being, however, that the protestors of the Sorbonne production have every right to see the #blackface in this play as racist. They have every right to worry that the play is not being produced thoughtfully or with a message of empathy in mind. Maybe, with his costumes and #blackface, the director was trying to invoke the Ovadia Sicily production. But he failed to understand that France is not Sicily and protestors are well within their rights to sense that a poorly staged, colonialist version of this play could do more to engender prejudice than discourage it. And the director and performers should know better than to don #blackface in rehearsal or performance and then cry foul when they get called on it. 

Classics, Culture, Civilization, Oh My!

Very pleased to be hosting this guest blog post from Maximus Planudes on a history of the terms 'culture' and 'civilization' (in English, French, and German). It will serve as important background for understanding the concept of 'western civ', the history of which I am slowly working through my post(s) on. This is a discussion that bears directly on the history of classics and is well worth the deep dive. This is the first in a possible multi-part discussion. Here also is a collection of examples from the writings of those discussed below (and more!) on culture and civilization.

by Maximus Planudes

“It is never a waste of time to study the history of a word” — Lucien Febvre

If you happen to be old enough to remember the late 80s and early 90s, you might be feeling a sense of déjà vu. Didn’t we already fight a culture war where multiculturalism vanquished western civilization? Well, sort of. Just recently a conservative online magazine published a four-part(!) defense of Western Civilization and a scholar in the audience of a panel on the Future of the Classics asserted the importance of Western Civilization, before devolving predictably into racist insinuations. Against this view, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a few years back, devoted his final Reith lecture to the problems of the narrative of Western Civilization and there is at least one scholar who is tracing out the history of the term and its racist background. There is no real need, then, for me to weigh in on that debate, which is in fact not simply a repeat or continuation of the previous culture war. Previously we argued over what books should be taught; now we ask, “Is the concept of Western Civilization useful?” (Spoiler alert, the answer is ‘no’).

I want, instead, to explore the maddeningly elusive words ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’, and the related words in German and French: (Kultur, Zivilisation, Bildung, civilisations, culture). Here is a semantic field of some contemporary importance, but one with a more than usually complicated history (see the 4!! volumes on Civilization edited by Bowden). Moreover, in current usage, these words often occur in highly polemical political debates and with specialized senses in scientific discourse (particularly Anthropology and Sociology). The history is rather well documented, but the diversity of applications and contexts make a simple exposition impossible and, despite its length, this story is only partial.

I was into stashes before they were cool.

The first question is, I think, Why bother? Obviously (to me at least), Febvre is right: studying the history of words is never a waste of time. These words, moreover, not only play a foundational role in our own conceptualization of the field (Harvard teaches a course, Classical Studies 97b, titled “Roman Culture and Civilization”) but they also inform how others understand us. Neville Morley, for all his anti-badger rhetoric, rightly calls our attention to the persistence of concepts within the humanities. There is symmetry in Marc Bloch’s point that “history receives its vocabulary … already worn out and deformed by long usage; frequently, moreover, ambiguous from the very beginning” (The Historian’s Craft, p157).

It seems a worthwhile exercise, then, to explore the history and usage of important words, especially when they are often used as if they had some sort of clear and stable meaning. I will not offer fixed definitions and then explore how others misuse the words; instead, I will trace the ways the words are used. I’m following Nietzsche here, who asserted “only that which has no history can be defined.”

My goal is to make you as confused as I am. Let’s go.

Part 1: Two Ideas of Civilization

“It would be pleasant to be able to define to word ‘civilization’ simply and precisely” — F. Braudel.

Civilization (1.0) is singular, hierarchical and normative. Its significance arises from its use as an oppositional category to barbarism, savagery, primitive. JS Mill is the clearest exemplum of this idea, although it is baked into the word from the beginning (see Blouin): 

Whatever be the characteristics of what we call savage life, the contrary of these, or the qualities which society puts on as it throws off these, constitute civilization. (Civilization, 1836)

Mill’s discussion leans heavily on the idea of social cooperation and, in general, civilization (1.0) refers to complex social relations and their products.  As a universal quality, a society possesses a degree of Civilization (1.0) that places it in a hierarchy. For example, Europeans have a higher degree of Civilization (1.0), which is a good thing to have and better to share, especially at gunpoint. 

Civilization (2.0) seeks, not altogether successfully, to slough off its normative baggage to serve as a purely descriptive purpose. Civilization (2.0) “simply (sic!) refers to all the features that can be observed in the collective life of one human group, embracing their material, intellectual, moral and political life and, there is, unfortunately, no other word for it, their social life…It does not imply any value judgment on the detail or the overall pattern of the facts examined” (Febvre, Civilization). In Civilization (1.0), a group possess some degree of it; in the second, the group and its civilization are coterminous. Civilization (2.0) becomes much more common when people begin talking about civilizations in the plural (dated to 1819 by Braudel).

Although it might seem like civilization (1.0) and (2.0) do not really play well together, Toynbee was happy to have both, which he distinguished typographically: “civilizations have come and gone, but Civilization (with a big ‘C’) has succeeded”. This statement gives the impression that the two usages remain distinct; the two concepts, however, blend into each other in complex ways.  If Civilization (1.0) has pretensions to universalism, (2.0) tends towards essentialism. This multivalent civilization is associated by Bowden with Quentin Skinner’s discussion of ‘evaluative-descriptive’ terms.

Braudel: What would be
 the most French title?

Finally, it is a real curiosity, Braudel points out, that Voltaire did not use the word civilization since if anyone should have invented and used the term, it was Voltaire. Instead, he titled his book Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations. This title clarifies the idea that civilization (2.0) would translate ‘customs and spirit (in the French sense)’ of peoples. Civilization is tied to customs, traditions, ideas, to esprit, to Geist, to what we today call ‘culture’. This is a place where culture and civilization overlap.  This observation leads me to the next problem: culture.

Part 2: Culture, Kultur, and Zivilisation

“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English Language” — Raymond Williams.

(Jane Fairfax's) heart and understanding had received every advantage
of discipline and culture.

Like Civilization (1.0), Culture (1.0) is singular, denotes a process and is used hierarchically. The established etymology derives culture from Latin cultura and especially from Cicero’s metaphor, cultura animi, which applied the idea of agricultural cultivation to individual self-improvement, using the expression “philosophy is the cultivation of the soul” (cultura enim animi philosophia est Cic. Tusc. II.17.3). This usage and idea returns in the humanist period and informs Francis Bacon and Montaigne at the beginning of the 17 century, where cultura becomes a way of talking about education. Cultura animi is something the individual pursues; it is not a characteristic of groups.

Important changes occurred in German, which borrowed Kultur from French. In part, Kultur retains its sense of cultura animi: it describes individual self-cultivation, serving as a synonym for Bildung. But it also is used, like Civilization (1.0), to talk hierarchically about groups, who possess a certain degree of culture. In the 18th century, Johann Gottfried Herder claimed that each Volk had its own Kultur. He was reacting to the universalizing history of the previous generation, for whom world history was a progression up the ladder of civilization (1.0). And yet, Herder did not use Kultur in the plural. Kultur was still one thing.

Elias: Culture is a cup of tea
and a good book/

Zivilisation, also deriving from French, enters the picture, and the words reshuffle. As Norbert Elias points out, Kultur and Zivilisation were often oppositional categories in Germany. Bildung retains its connection to individual self-actualization. Zivilisation takes on the sense of civilization (1.0) but with often a generally negative connotation, describing superficial manners, stifling bureaucracy, pretty much anything negative and homogenizing in the contemporary world. Indeed, it functions often like “globalization” today.

Spengler: Please tell me again how things
are improving?

Kultur was thus free for a new concept, already hinted at in Herder. As Nietzsche later puts it, “Kultur is, above all, the unity of artistic (künstlerischen) style in the life of a people (Volk). Kultur is the essential character of a people, a character that is expressed in the (typically intellectual, artistic) products of its society. For Christoph Meiners, a classical philologist of the late 18th century, Plato was less important as a philosopher than as an expression of the Athenian achievement. This tendency, to see Kultur as the expression of the unique, authentic spirit of a people, perhaps explains why Kultur can be opposed to the universalizing of Zivilisation. 

In a civilization (1.0) narrative, Plato status as a philosopher, his unique contribution to world progress, would be highlighted. According to Nietzsche: “Zivilisation has one aim, Kultur another, perhaps the opposite”. Spengler famously treated decline as the inevitable slide from Kultur to Zivilisation. Gyorgy Markus states that “the First World War was fought under the slogans of defense of Western civilization, on the one side, and defense of (German) culture against the deadening, materialist civilization of the West, on the other side.”

Of course, it’s not so simple. Other German writers (Hegel, for example) use the words interchangeably. Here is Freud, in the Future of an Illusion (1927): “Human Kultur — by which I mean all those respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal status and differs from the life of beasts (and I scorn to distinguish between Kultur and Zivilisation).” As if things weren’t bad enough, translators from German tend to use ‘civilization’ to translate ‘Kultur’. 

We have seen that Freud scorned the distinction, so the translation of his famous Das Unbehagen in der Kultur as Civilization and its discontents is perhaps no real problem. I’m less sure about the translation of Wilamowitz’ Geschichte der Philologie. Is the translation that “Greco-Roman Civilization … is a unity” the same as Die griechisch-römische Kultur…ist eine Einheit? And let’s not forget that we’ve been Kultur-waring at least since the late 19th century. All the confusion aside, the German use of Kultur in its oppositional sense to Zivilisation is important in the development of culture (2.0).

Part 3: Cultures

The change from culture (1.0) to (2.0) is often linked to E.B. Tayler’s Primitive Culture (1871): “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.

Tayler: Culture is measured in
beard length.

Tayler makes no distinction here between civilization and culture, but he is credited with the anthropological use of culture, or culture (2.0). In anthropological cultures (note the plural), all people are equally cultured because everyone is a product of their social environment. In Anthropology, culture (2.0) is “the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.” Appiah contrasted Tayler’s culture (2.0) with Matthew Arnold’s culture (1.0, more or less cultura animi).

George Stocking, however, argued that despite the famous definition cited above, Tayler used culture primarily in the sense of civilization (1.0). What Tayler did was take civilization (1.0), expand the elements covered, and connect it to an evolutionary model: for Tayler, culture was singular and hierarchical. Tayler describes how over time different groups move up the scale of culture (towards, presumably, Tayler himself). For culture (2.0), Stocking points to the work of Franz Boas.

Boas: Dude, I was on the cover of
Time before it was cool.

Boas did not begin with a fully formed anthropological sense of culture. The following passage comes from his address to the anthropology section at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Brooklyn, 1894)

Was the culture attained by the ancient civilized people of such character as to allow us to claim for them genius superior to that of any other race? First of all, we must bear in mind that none of these civilizations was the product of the genius of single people. Ideas and inventions were carried from one to the other; and, although intercommunication was slow, each people which participated in the ancient civilization added to the culture of the others.

Although civilizations appear in the plural, culture remains singular. The language here reflects multiple uses of the words civilization and culture, as well as Kultur (‘genius of a single people’), while also linking the concept of race. In the development of anthropological culture, the ideas of civilizations, German Kultur and race come together. It is from Boas that culture (2.0) develops. The plural “cultures,” according to Stocking, finally appears in his students’ works. Since the mid 20th century, then, the concept of culture (2.0) explodes, being the motivating concept of anthropology, cultural studies, and Kulturgeschichte, and centrally informing many other disciplines, among them history, archeology, and classics.

The words continue to be used in a variety of ways, reflecting this history, but not always reconcilable. Pierre Bourdieu talks about the role of “cultural” capital and Palm Springs has an Institute for Cultural Advancement. Civilization is a video game, a PBS series, and Boston University has an Institute for the Study of the Origins of Civilization (note the singular). Culture can be appropriated or shared. “Culture” and “civilization” can be ways of talking about race, without using the word, as Steve King does.

Culture is also a way of talking about race, but from the perspective of inclusion, in this graphic from the blog of the Winters Group, a consulting group for diversity and inclusion, titled: "What is Diversity? — Part 6: It’s All About Culture".

The culture umbrella covers a lot, e.g. age = culture. Ok, that’s fine for Millennials, but not for Gen-X, whose culture is defined by its absence.

The umbrella reveals the close connection, which we’ve brushed up against a few times already, between culture, civilization, and identity. That is where I will go next, but this is enough for now.

Sources and Further Reading

• Appiah, Kwame A. 2018 The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.
• Benveniste, Émile, “Civilization: A Contribution to the History of the Word,” in Problems in General Linguistics.
• Blouin, Katherine. ‘Civilization: What’s up with that?’ Everyday Orientalism.
• Bonnett, Alastair. 2004. The Idea of the West. Palgrave Macmillian.
• Bowden, Brett, 2009. The empire of civilization: the evolution of an imperial idea Chicago.
• -- -- -- (ed), 2009. Civilization (Critical Concepts in Political Science) 4 vol. 
• Braudel, Fernand. 1987 (1963) History of Civilizations (Grammaire des Civilisations) tr. by Richard Mayne. Penguin.
• Elias, Norbert. 1994 (1939) “Sociogenesis of the Antithesis Between Kultur and Zivilisation in German Usage” from The Civilizing Process (Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation). Tr. Edmund Jephcott. p.5ff.
• Mantena, Karuna, 2010. Alibis of Empire. Princeton.
• Pitts, Jennifer. 2018. Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire. Harvard.
• Stocking, G. (1982), Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology.
• Toynbee, Arnold. 1948. Civilization on Trial. New York.
• Williams, R. 1976. “Culture” in Keywords

Claiming 'The Classical:' A Reflection

Neville Morley speaks on the EU and the classical.

Last week, I participated in a workshop in London at the Institute for Classical Studies in London called 'Claiming the Classical' with a wonderful and impressive group of students and scholars working to understand how the idea of the 'classical' manifests in 21st century politics. The organizers were Naoise Mac Sweeney and Helen Roche. The idea behind the workshop was a first step in creating a 'international network of academics, researchers and other interested parties. Together, we work to examine the use of classical antiquity in twenty-first century politics." This first of hopefully many meetings and discussions tried to map many of these 21st century political uses. This blog is a reflection on what I took away from it.

So, what is 'the classical' and how do people claim it? 

Put 'the classical' into google and the top choice for completion is 'the classical world.' Typically the 'classical' encompasses the literature, arts, and history of ancient Greece and Rome, but limited to the years between 8th c BCE and the 4th century CE. Give or take a century or two or four on one end or the other. We identify 'the classical' with specific styles of art and architecture, literary forms, genres, with references to specific authors., with specific clothing and weaponry--things that look like a stereotypical "Greek" or 'Roman" thing, like the columns shown above, or togas, or a pegasus. or the sculpture casts shown here in a photo from the Beijing airport shared by Dr. Michael Scott (University of Warwick) at the 'Claiming the Classical' workshop.

Elif Koparal (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) on
the classical in Turkey.

'The classical' typically excludes the 'eastern' Asian and North African neighbors of Greece and Italy--its one of the things that makes the China example above so intriguing: who is the intended audience for this image? Why show Chinese art students copying the classical casts? Should we see these artists surpassing or assimilating 'the classical' through their own engagement? It's hard to say. In Turkey, a land with far more direct claims to the classical than the United States or northern Europeans, we saw the classical being claimed only as a commodity--the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine pasts of Anatolia marketed to 'westerners' who seem to think Turkey's rich archaeological sites are of value.

'The classical' also typically excludes the northern European neighbors of ancient Greece and Rome, except when they wrote in Greek or Latin, or, more importantly for this post, when those northern Europeans were 18th-21st century British, German, or French scholars, artists, and governments, whose claims to be the inheritors of 'the classical' formed part of their national identities at one time or another in their history. These claims by the British and the Germans especially have embedded the classical into the psyches of the nation so that the Parthenon marbles are thought by some to belong more to the British people than modern Greeks.

Anne-Sophie Noel (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon) discusses French President Emmanuel Macron's relationship to the classical. 

 Interestingly, claims upon the classical seem to coincide with the rise of the nation state in Europe, functioning as a heritage for may different groups of Europeans--not only Greeks and Italians. Somehow, peoples whom Herodotus and Eratosthenes placed at the far edges of the world, whom they hardly knew anything about, decided that they were the true inheritors of this classical Greek past. More so than their contemporary Greeks, whom they considered unworthy of their own past. Something still active and part of the reason, something Konstantinos Poulis (ThePressProject) discussed at the workshop in connection with the debt crisis and the rise of Golden Dawn.

Damjan Krsmanovic (University of Leicester) discusses Brexit through the lens of Boris Johnson, known for his claiming of the classical.

The use of phrases like 'Mare Nostrum' and 'Mos Maiorum' to name policies towards refugees also has a history of imperialist claims to not only the space of the Mediterranean, but the past and future of it as well, as Sam Agbamu discussed. I also recommend this post by Ida Danewid "White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean" at The Disorder of Things blog (I plan on getting her article on the topic when I'm back in the office with access).

Sam Agbamu (King's College London) on 'Mare Nostrum' and 'Mos Maiorum' as refugee policies.

The German claims have led to such excesses as the perpetuation of the myth of an Aryan/German invasion and to the Nazi ideal in the ancient Greek sculptural body. The claims of the British rested both on the traces of Roman Britain in their own land and on the British Empire's right of conquest; they viewed themselves as the true intellectual heirs of Plato and Cicero and their power in the world reflected this. The Nazis simply recreated the ancient past to make themselves the genetic descendants of the ancient Greeks.

Julia Müller (Technische Universität Dresden) discussing identitarian movements in Germany. Their online shop is particularly interesting and features t-shirts invoking Thermopylae.

Americans of European descent also have at times over the last few centuries laid claim to the classical as well based on their connections to those Europeans who also claimed the classical. The Founding Fathers looked to classical models to help create our Constitution and to justify our most loathsome institution -- slavery. Consistently since the founding of our country, the classical has been claimed in defence of the continued perpetuation of racial hate and institutionalized racism, of white supremacy and white nationalism, of colonialism and imperialism-- whether it is architecture and art, 'blood and soil' heritage, or some sense of a 'western destiny'. Even those who disavow racism often hold up the decidedly racist and misogynist Athenian democracy, idealized as some sort of golden age, ignoring its exclusions and foundation on slavery (discussed by myself, Denise McCoskey, Curtis Dozier, Liz Sawyer, and Chiara Bonacchi).

These aren't the only peoples or groups that lay claim to 'the classical'. We find 'the classical' in Latin America, Africa, other parts of Asia, like India. Those claims on the classical are often yoked also to a colonized, imperialist (recent) past--the rejection of the classical becomes the rejection of something viewed as inherently European, foreign, oppressive. Juliana Bastos discussed the rejection of the classical in Brazil

Grant Parker (Stanford University) discussed performance artist Sethembile Msezane's anti-classical 'Zimbabwe Bird' during the Rhodes Must Fall protests in South Africa in 2015.

Nandipha Mntambo's 'Europa', also from Grant Parker's discussion.

But claims on it can also be seen as respurposing or appropriating the classical despite the colonizer, or, perhaps, to reclaim a part of the classical from the colonizer. The legacy of classics as a tool for empire is continually being debated, hidden, ignored, studied, and praised--depending on whom you discuss it with. And the question of why anyone wants to claim the classical is bound up to that history.

The history of the classical in the modern world is a history of a field created as a tool of racism, of empire, of classism, of misogyny. And yet, we see broad claims made upon the classical that reject, or at least, refuse these connections. From China to South Africa to Ghana and Brazil, the workshop highlighted not only the far right 'appropriations' that seems to have awakened classicists to our perils, but also artistic and literary uses of the classical that offer new ways to think about what the classical is and can be. Because of its history, however, any claims upon the classical will almost always be political--even when they aren't.

One question that kept returning at the workshop that we never had a good answer for was why peoples and groups claim the classical. Some suggested it was prestige--that classics has been granted historically a place of privilege in many places and so an appeal to the classical is one that seeks to participate in that prestige. I wonder, however, if it isn't the problem of universalism--for centuries European powers have sought to center the classical as a universal value. Why read tragedy? Because it reflects universal emotions. Why read Thucydides? Because he gave us a vision of a shining city on a hill that had a democracy and democracy is, of course, the telos of all political systems, right? I think it's something else--because empire conditioned the world to believe that the classical was the only truly universal culture and so everyone should want to claim it.

The study of classics isn't restricted anymore in theory to only the elite of northern Europe and the US. Women and people of color are no longer [explicitly] rejected from its ranks as incapable of learning Greek or understanding Cicero and Vergil, but this isn't necessarily the reality of classics as a field. The classical has a place in public discourses throughout the world--sometimes because of colonialism, sometimes despite it. And yet, I left the workshop thinking about the Classics for All ideas, our [feeble] attempts to make a more inclusive classics--attempts that refuse to make space for the varieties of classics that exist both in the academy and without. We are still a restrictive field that relies on knowledge of two languages--Ancient Greek and Latin--to act as gatekeeper to legitimacy as an arbiter of the classical.

There are many ways to claim the classical. For too long, we academic classicists have kept ourselves away from the public discourse and, too often, assumed that any classical receptions, references, or claims by national governments, political and social institutions, or movements was a clear good, or at least harmless, so long as it meant that the classical still had a place in our public discourse and we could use it to demonstrate the relevance of our field--as when today (Sat Nov 17) the SCS social media accounts shared an op-ed by Bret Stephens seemingly simply because it contained the word "Plato" in its title. He's not viewed as a friend, ally, or even neutral party by many PoC and women. And even when one's Twitter page says "retweet =/= endorsement", when that retweeter is one's professional organization, it sure can feel like an endorsement.

Not all claims are equal and many a political claims to the classical is done in the name of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a myriad of other types of prejudices. When we share those receptions, those 'fun' or 'insightful' articles that seem innocent enough, but are written by those who peddle in discrimination and prejudice, we link ourselves with their politics whether we mean to our not. By doing so, we send a message about who is and isn't welcome. We limit the scope of who we think can and should lay claim to the classical. Afraid to alienate our traditional base of conservative 'white' men, we continue to alienate most everyone else even as we position ourselves as fighters against white supremacist claims to the classical.

We as professional classicists are (maybe too late) taking up the task of engaging these more nefarious claims on the classical. But this isn't the only reflection we need to do. We must also look at how we have failed in the past to be self-critical in our own claims and practices around the classical. As Denise McCoskey has recently written (and which has been on the minds of many of us who became classicists in the shadow of Black Athena) classics as a field is paying in the 21st century for our failures to come to terms with the origins of the field and its continuing problematics in the 20th century.

We can't only look to the far right, to the fascist and white nationalist claims and try to 'reclaim' those 'appropriations'. We also need to do some soul searching about how we keep our field tied to those structures of racism, classism, and misogyny that were its roots by binding ourselves to notions like 'western civilization' and whiteness and exclusivity. Studying classics shouldn't be about joining an elite club, and yet that is often how we sell it, how we view it, and how we seem to want to keep it--even despite ourselves.

What I took away from this workshop was that we have a lot of work to do.