Singular Antiquity 7: Mouliou on Greek Museums (1948-present)

Greek archaeological museums get a very bad press as bureaucratic and badly administered institutions. Marlene Mouliou's essay, "Museum Presentations of the Classical Past in Post-War Greece: A Critical Analysis" offers a historical context for the modern institution. The essay appears in Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008), pp. 83-109.

The Greek museum as we know it is physically a post-war phenomenon, since the archaeological service had to dismantle all exhibitions at the wake of World War II. Whatever was on display was buried into protected basements. Museums were reinstalled after 1948, offering an opportunity for rebirth. Mouliou divides the history of Greece's postwar museum history into three phases and examines the political forces that shaped them. At the end of the essay one is left with great admiration for the institution. Museums in the West hardly needed to negotiate among so many objectives and deflate so many pressures.

Phase 1 (1948-1976) is characterized as the period of regeneration. The classical past was here presented as linear artistic evolution. The reopening of the National Archaeological Museum and the Acropolis Museums signaled a national resurrection after Fascism. Christos Karouzos, Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou and Yannis Miliadis used a concept most prominent in art historical practices of its time, the linear evolution of monuments and the desire to illustrate the aesthetic essence of each cultural period. Their mentors were scholars like John Beazley (with whom Paspyridi-Karouzou studied). This is no different than the way art history surveys are still taught in the U.S. Speaking from my own experience, much of what I do on a daily pedagogical basis is navigate neophytes through Gardner's Art through the Ages or Janson's History of Art. The Greek museum of the 50s, 60s and 70s functioned as a place to cultivate connoisseurship and to teach the inherent spirit of artifacts and soul of a period. Mouliou beautiful articulates the social forces that brought about Greece's national idiosyncrasies, from the sudden emergence of a tourist industry to the growing intervention by foreign powers. There are only two exceptions to the predominant connoisseurship. One comes from the Athenian Agora, where the American School of Classical Studies at Athens introduced thematic (rather than evolutionary) organization. The Agora museum, a controversial restoration of the Stoa of Attalos, moreover, introduced a particularly American obsession with texts, growing out of the education structure of American classics departments. In the Agora, antiquities were constantly supplementing or illustrating textual literature and history. The second exception came in 1975 at the Museum of Volos. Here, George Hourmouziadis introduced concepts of New Archaeology and focused on the social role of archaeology.

Phase 2 (1977-1996) can be characterized by an unsustainable expansion, which was a double edged sword. In 1977, Presidential Decree 941 gave archaeology today's administrative structure, the organization into Prehistoric, Classical and Byzantine Ephorias. New personnel opportunities, a growing number of rescue excavations and a booming number of museums dramatically affected the practice of archaeology and its social role within the welfare state. The resulting administration, however, was inflexible. It compounded earlier dysfunctions into a permanent status quo and it greatly stifled intellectual and interpretive work. Museums grew into places for storing rescue finds. The scholar got bogged down and creative solutions were thwarted. And come to think of it, the Ephorias' double responsibilities of rescue excavations and museum administration do not make good partners.

Within this context grew a phenomenon called the "Vergina Syndrome." Andronikos' exhibitions of Macedonian finds from Vergina were quickly politicized. The 1978 show "Treasures of Ancient Macedonia" became an international block buster, traveling to the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe. Dealing so closely with issues of modern states (the Macedonian Question), Andronikos' model for success was dangerously subservient to the service of national ideology. New exhibition possibilities and the renaissance of the Museum of Thessaloniki had positive effects. But some critics argued that Vergina simply encouraged a senseless treasure hunt. Traveling exhibitions, like the 1977 Aegean Art show, caused a different kind of political agitation. Greek citizens began to protest the expatriation of their works. Demonstrations in Crete against the Aegean Art show called for a "battle of the amphoras" or the "kidnapping of gods." Grass roots movements and disaffection with U.S. foreign policy took an interesting form of archaeological activism.

Phase 3, (1997-present) is described as the period of opportunities. Greece's entrance into the European Community in 1981, the founding of the Hellenic National Committee of ICOM in 1983, the hosting of the Olympic Games in 2004 and affiliations with a dynamic diaspora placed the Greek museum into a new globalized setting in which old rules (national rebirth, political persecution, xenophobia) ceased to be either viable or productive. Outwardly focused discursive considerations, exo- and macro- systems began to fall into place. Mouliou gives a wonderful overview of contemporary museum trends, discussing thematic exhibits like "Child in Antiquity" and "Mind and Body." Clearly, any coherent museological theory is lacking in modern Greek practices, but there is a shared anxiety that the museum is losing its audience. The old-school "hoarding up treasures," nationalist ancestor-worship and eclectic connoisseurship are strategies with little utility in a globalized world. Hourmouziadis, again in 1999, reiterated the need for educational programs. Given the general public's love for archaeology, the absence of "public archaeology" in Greece is striking.

Marlen Mouriou's essay should be mandatory reading for any scholar coming into contact with the Greek museum system. Understanding the historical roots of individual initiatives certainly justifies the Greek idiosyncrasies; one is amazed, in fact, how flexible Greek museums have been to changing realities. At the end of the essay, the reader senses Mouriou's deep concern for the future along with a slight hint of optimism. The bureaucratization of the Greek state and the establishment of the Ephoria system in 1977 seems to be more of a hindrance. Creative solutions are needed now more than ever. Greek museums have a lot of potential and Mouriou's critical reading shows the presence of great talent even within the sclerotic framework.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Singular Antiquity 6: Gazi on Greek Museums (1900-1909)

Between 1900 and 1909, the Greek state built 16 provincial museums in Ancient Corinth, Thera, Chalkis, Mykonos, Nauplion, Delphi, Cheroneia, Delos, Thebes, Herakleion, Lykosoura, Corfu, Tegea, Thermon, Volos and Argostolion. This stunning amount of activity (a rate of three new museums per year) succeeded in distributing archaeological learning throughout the country but, more importantly, established a professional model of management, administration and display. Gazi analyzes the museological principals that emerged during this period in, “‘Artfully Classified’ and ‘Appropriately Placed’: Notes on the Display of Antiquities in Early Twentieth-Century Greece,” in Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008), pp. 67-77.

The museums had some variation; for instance, nine were built in urban centers and seven within or nearby archaeological sites. Yet, they achieved homogeneity in their underlying curatorial principles. An important achievement was to move beyond the strictly repository character of earlier museums and to codify chronological and typological classifications. Common tendencies involved packing as many objects as possible in one space and creating formal connections within media. In short, they followed the strict taxonomic character of museum display in the “age of archaeological flamboyance” (1870-1914). As Gazi points out, the majority of Greek curators had studied in Europe, mostly in Germany. Their dependency on neoclassical models of display is, thus, obvious.

The one exception in curatorial practices came about through a British collaboration. In displaying the finds from Ritsona in the museum of Thebes, Antonios Keramopoulos consulted with the site’s excavators. Percy Ure and Ronald Barrows believed that the contents of individual graves should be displayed in their entirety in order to provide a coherent representation of the society’s burial practice. Gazi credits this new contextual model to Paolo Orsi, who excavated cemeteries in Sicily, but it also reflects a larger debate on archaeological method (Mortimer Wheeler, stratigraphy, etc.) The Ritsona counter-example makes the reader curious to learn more about the history of museum culture in Italy, Britain, France and the United States. Gazi does a great job documenting the 16 Greek museums, but does not include any comparative examples outside of Greece. A discussion of museum practices in Europe would be greatly welcome, rather than assuming that the model was monolithic. Sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia in Aegina and sculptures from the Temple of Bassae, for instance, were displayed differently in the Munich Glyptotech and in the British Museum respectively.

Gazi also discusses Greek intellectual culture ca. 1900 and new notions of history that emerged through Paparregopoulos, Dragoumis, Palamas and other Demoticists. The archaeologist, “a national intellectual,” was caught between two competing models: classical purism versus historical inclusiveness (i.e. the incorporation of post-classical periods in the national identity). The 20th century ushered in the age of ambivalence towards antiquities, in contrast to the age of subservience preceded it. Gazi observes that the curators of the Greek museums were behind the times, stuck in the age of subservience. This might be one of Gazi’s most interesting conclusions with powerful repercussions. The institutionalization of the Greek museum as a palace of taxonomy removed the classical archaeologist from the forefront of intellectual debate. Perhaps at this juncture, 1900-1909, the Greek archaeologist ceased being an intellectual and became a bureaucrat.

Gazi refers to some great secondary literature, such as P. Kitromilides, “From Subservience to Ambivalence: Modern Greek Attitudes toward the Classics,” in The Impact of Classical Greece on European and Classical Identities, ed. M. Haagsma et al. (Amsterdam, 2003), pp. 47-53. She also reminds us to reconsider the role of the archaeologist as public intellectual in literary life and reread seminal literary texts, like Andreas Karkavitsas, The Archaeologist (1904) and Kostis Palamas, Dodecalogue of the Gypsy (1907) and The King’s Flute (1910).

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Punk Archaeology: Athens Street Art

"Graffiti Artists Leave Their Mark on Athens"on ABC Australia discussed the rise of graffiti on the archaeological sites of Athens. I thank Tim Gregory who sent this link to Bill Caraher who sent it to me. Indeed, walking through the streets of Athens in 2007, I first noticed the explosion of Greek street art. The Plaka especially is saturated. In an earlier posting, I explored Anastasios Orlandos' act of resistance by transcribing graffiti from the Parthenon during the German Occupation, see Writing off the Wall: Transcription as Resistance. I think that graffiti has not been seriously discussed in relation to Greek archaeology. How could Greeks archaeologists categorically condemn graffiti but, at the same time, celebrate Lord Byron's scratchings on the Temple of Zeus at Sounion? As an archaeologist of post-classical Greece, I find myself closer to the side of the vandals "defacing" the ancient temples than the purists. One of my favorite archaeological illustrations is a drawing showing a tapestry of graffiti at Ramnous; see Ο δήμος της Ραμνούς, vol. 1 , Τοπογραφικά (Athens, 1999), p. 270. Vasileios Petrakos is one of few Greek archaeologists to publish such defacement in a site monograph. My love of graffiti should not be dismissed at face value on account of my period interests (Byzantine over Classical). We tend to associate spolia, reuse and appropriation with the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. Classical Athenians, however, did a fair share of it, too. For details, you must ask my wife, Celina Gray, who labors over reuse in Athenian cemeteries. For my favorite article on Late Antique spolia, I send you to Joseph Alchermes, "Spolia in Roman Cities of the Late Empire: Legislative Rationales and Architectural Reuse," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994), pp. 167-178.

In this posting, I wish to discuss neither the archaeology of graffititi nor the graffiti of archaeological sites. Rather, I want to highlight the burgeoning scene of Greek street art in a positive manner. Its cultural relevance should be taken seriously. It is Greece's greatest public art and one of the few instances of constructive civil disobedience. I will start with a simple question, which is more than rhetorical. Is modern graffiti inferior to classical art? Of course, classical art is more important, but can we be so sure? One way to test the relative relevance of disparate art forms is to gauge contemporary interests. Although my methodology is by no means scientific, I decided to test cultural value in my local Border's bookstore by conducting a simple statistical study. So, on my way back from work last Tuesday, I stopped at Border's at New London's Crystal Mall. The store contains a modest art selection, covering 18 shelves, or the equivalent of 54 linear feet of shelf space. Scanning carefully all the shelves, I was surprised to find absolutely NO books on ancient art. By the way, my job at Connecticut College is teaching ancient and medieval art (incidentally as Joe Alchermes' sabbatical replacement); my informal survey obviously devastated my sense of academic value. I was disheartened to see that antiquity was found sparingly only in a few general books. I concluded that, similarly, my ancient survey will be the only exposure that my students will ever have to this material. At Border's, a little more than 2 linear feet were devoted to street art, that is 4% of the total shelf space. Thus, we can conclude that for a general American audience, street art is infinitely more important than ancient art. Modern Greek graffiti, moreover, is highly respected within those publications. An excerpt from Nicholas Ganz's, Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents (New York, 2004), pp. 128, 162-163, best summarizes the Greek scene:

"Greece and its local activists were thrust into the limelight through the Chromopolis project. Concentrated in Athens and Thessaloniki, the movement is enjoying a boom, particularly in pieces. Over the fast few years, pioneers such as Bizare or Woozy have continued to make their mark, and new artists are emerging, often working with stencils or characters." Have the archaeologists quoted in ABC missed the movement altogether? Most likely. Reading the official condemnation of graffiti might give us the impression that street art is strictly an underground subculture. This is another misrepresentation. Preparing for the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Ministry of Culture went hip-hop by sponsoring Chromopolis, a project organized by graffiti magazine Carpe Diem. In the summer of 2002, Greece invited 16 internationally acclaimed graffiti artists, including OsGemeos, Besok, Codeak, Bizare, Mark1, and Loomit. The artists created large scale compositions at 10 sites (image above). The works were proudly included in Greece's official Cultural Olympiad and elevated graffiti with venues such as the archaeology of Minoan and Mycenaean food at Birmingham, or a Post-Byzantine art exhibit in New York.

Although by no means would I promote vandalizing archaeological sites, the recent growth in archaeological graffiti seems to fit a larger pattern, the explosion and international prestige of Greek street art. In the American context, it would be difficult to ignore the prestige of street artists like Shepard Fairey, who designed one of the most desirable images for Barak Obama's presidential campaign; see my posting "Punk Archaeology: Glue." The recent press on Fairey is more concerned about his mainstream status; see Melena Rizik, "Closer to Mainstream; Still a Bit Rebelious," (NYT, Oct. 1, 2008). The elusive Bansky also seems to have made a surprise installation in SoHo, and the press went wild, see David Itzkoff "A Could-Be Bansky Appears on a SoHo Wall" (NYT, Oct. 1, 2008). I fall in the group of people who worship those idolatrous artists. And judging from the 4% coverage at Border's, I'm not alone.

The fans of Greek street art are harder to find. But I'm clearly not the only archaeologist of Greece to see cultural vitality in modern Greece beyond the national love of the Parthenon. Guy Sanders, Jan Sanders and Petros Sandamouris administer a wonderful Facebook Group, "Alternative Athens: Beyond Your Comfort Zone." It's defined as follows: "Εκτός των συνόρων: how can you find a real Athens beyond your hotel or institution or group? A member of one Athens based institution has likened their closed community to a huge sow to which its piglets return and suckle year after year. How do we find out about the life beyond our Comfort Zone? This group is intended to be a place where venues outside the bubble are shared and evaluated." Some of the Group members (Jess Hackman, Eva Akashi, Sara Lima, Isabela Sanders) have been photographing Athenian street art and adding it to the communal images. What we need now is a systematic survey, the archaeology of Athenian street art, the mapping of Greece's newest masterpieces. The Wooster Collective is such an organized venture documenting street art globally. I'm waiting for the Essential City Guide to Athens!!!! I had started photographing street art in Philadelphia, but that was a few years ago. One of my objectives had been to record locations through time and show the temporal nature (both deterioration and addition) of this art form. The survey of Greek graffiti must take inspiration from the Geocaching craze, a hobby that unites GPS, Google Earth and treasure hunting. Deb and Colin Stewart introduced me to this and I look forward to joining. A search under Athens, Greece, produced 91 caches in Athens alone. What are we waiting for?

People catalogue all kinds of things. My dear friend jules, for instance, catalogues built-in ashtrays. Although she doesn't see it archaeologically, she is creating the only existing database of this extinct socio-type. In fact, if you have more instances, send them to me, and I'll send them to BUILT-IN-ASHTRAYS. Needless to say, this is the pet project of a reformed smoker and quite the social thinker.

Curious about street art bibliography? The least that I can do is share what I found at Border's in a measly New London mall. You can map that, too; click here. In the spirit of free art, I bought nothing but browsed to my heart's content. In browsing order: Tristan Manco, Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists (San Francisco, 2007); Josh J. MacPhee, Stencil Pirates: A Global Study of the Street Stencil (Brooklyn, 2004); Roger Gastman, Caleb Neelon, and Anthony Smyrski, Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents (New York, 2007); Nicholas Ganz, Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents (New York, 2004); Eleanor Mathieson (ed.) and Xavier A. Tapies, Street Art and the War on Terror: How the World's Best Graffit Artists Said No to the Iraq War (London, 2007); Stephen Powers, The Art of Getting Over: Graffit at the Millenium (New York, 1999), Steve Grody, Graffiti L.A.: Street Styles and Art (New York, 2007); Ryo Sanada, Suridh Hassan, Rackgaki: Japanese Graffiti (London, 2007); Jon Naar, The Birth of Graffiti (Munich, 2007); Bansky, Wall and Piece (London, 2007).

Singular Antiquity 5: Tolias on Gennadios

Greek intellectuals of the 19th century worked very hard to cultivate Philhellenism among the western supporters of Modern Greece. Exporting antiquities to the West helped advertise the international relevance of the ancient tradition and, thus, generate support for the emerging nation state. Statesmen such as Adamantios Korais, a renown classical philologist, or Alexandros Moustoxidis did not encourage anti-exportation laws, but remained silent, seeing the political and economic advantages of dispersing Greek antiquities throughout the world’s collections.

Another school of thought that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries became militant about keeping antiquities in Greece and banning any further export of treasures. Ioannis Gennadios, who is best known for the library that he donated to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, belonged in this latter group and is the subject of George Tolias’ essay “National Heritage and Greek Revival: Ioannis Gennadios on the Expatriated Antiquities,” in A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece (Athens, 2008), pp. 55-65. Ioannis Gennadios, son of the scholar Georgios Gennadios, spent most of his life as a diplomat in London. Interestingly enough, his diplomatic career started when he was fired from a job in a Greek commercial firm because he wrote an apology for the Dilessi/Marathon murders of 1870, see Romilly Jenkins, The Dilessi Murders (London, 1961). Gennadios’ diplomatic career took him to the Hague, Washington, D.C., Constantinople; he spent most of his life in London, where he amassed a personal library of 24,000 books. He married Florence Laing Kennedy but had no children. He died alone at his home in Surrey in 1932.

Two years before his death, Gennadios published a Treatise, Lord Elgin and Earlier Antiquarian Invaders in Greece, documenting 75 cases of looting from Cyriac of Ancona (1440) to the foundation of the Archaeological Society of Athens (1837). Gennadios’ militant position was influenced by Alexandros Rizos Rankaves, who was a student of Gennadios’ father. The Treatise includes a speech that Rankaves gave on May 12, 1842, at the Parthenon, a foundational document for stigmatizing the export of antiquities. Tolias’ essay provides the intellectual and historical context for Ioannis Gennadios’ activism towards “restoring Hellenism.” Tolias warns that “it would be easy to dismiss the positions adapted by Gennadios in 1930 as the romantic ideas of an aged radical patriot.” Rather, we should see the Treatise as an expression of an ongoing tension between Greek nationalism (which sees all Greek antiquities belonging to the Greek state) and Humanism (which sees classical Greece as a universal heritage). The return of the Elgin marbles has been a subject of international debate perculating at different times in history, and most recently as the celebrated cause of Melina Merkouri, when she became Minister of Culture under Giorgos Papandreou’s government. Tolias’ essay brings historical bones to a debate that we presume was always the same. We can almost visualize an 86-year-old Gennadios pacing through his personal library, pulling books out of a collection that he spent an entire life time building. The Treatise suddenly justifies the book collection and illuminates the fundamental nature of a library now owned by an academic institution equally devoted to restoring Hellenism.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Roasting Innovations

The success of Starbucks has been explained in sociological terms. More than selling coffee, Starbucks has constructed a new social environment, “a third space” that is neither home nor office, a place ideal for introspective mental activities like reading, writing, surfing the web. Consistent quality control from the decorative palette to the audio selections are superior to other offerings and strictly enforced. The choice of music, for instance, is neither too popular nor too weird, maintaining a culturally interesting middle ground. Appropriately, Starbucks (Barnes and Noble) and its old cousin, Seattle’s Best (Border’s) dominate bookstore caffeination. Ultimately, however, the success of Starbucks and the rise of the $2 coffee is the product. Elite coffees have displaced dominant household brands like Maxwell House or Folgers because they use a Arabica beans rather than Robusta beans, the two are considered as different species.

On a couple of occasions this last month, I was served inferior Robusta coffee at friends houses (even elite coffee drinkers go with the Robusta beans when serving a big party) and didn’t seem to mind them. Faced with fierce competition, they are improving. Folders continues to dominate the household coffee market, but it wants to gain back its lost elite customers. For the last few years, Folgers has been developing a new roasting technique, “the biggest innovation since the launch of decaf.” See Douglas Quenqua, “Folgers Markets a New Coffee to Cost-Cutting Home Brewers,” NYT (Sept. 19, 2008), p. C10. To do so, Folgers has overhauled its factory in New Orleans, while it’s changing ownership; Procter & Gamble has just sold Folgers to J. M. Smucker (the peanut butter and jam makers). Most importantly, they need to change popular perception. So, they are launching a new television ad campaign, designed by the infamous Saatchi & Saatchi agency. In the circles of art, Saatchi is more of a household name than Folgers. Charles Saastchi is a major art collector. It was his 1997 Sensation exhibition that caused not only a sensation but launched the career of Damien Hirst.

Folgers is realistic about its goals in dissuading a snob coffee drinker like myself, who will pay the price for organic and fair-trade. But I will give a try. I suppose, I’m a little old-school about some things. I cannot stand the new plastic coffee cans. This summer, we bought a grill. I was looking for a good-old-coffee can to turn into a cylinder for lighting charcoal to no avail. The good old metal can that you could recycle into multiple household uses has expired as a product of the 20th century. Newly wed couples will not be able to tie up a gigantic Folgers coffee tub behind their “Just Married” automobiles. The metal can warded off evil spirits on its way to a new household. The Saatchi and Saatchi TV aspires to strike some domestic chords through sound (drawers opening, spoons rolling in a coffee mug, the slippers of a man in pajamas squeak), but I don’t think it will succeed in the apotropeic magical qualities of pre-Starbucks Folgers.

Goodbye AC/DC

The Australian band AC/DC had fans across the musical spectrum, including my own adolescent admiration. It used to be that punk and heavy metal occupied two irreconcilable positions in rock, although, in the 1990s, hybrid genres like thrash metal dissolved the great divide. AC/DC had an incredible ability to stand on a tight rope between a most conservative (classic rock) and a most radical (punk, heavy metal) audience. I was reminded of this fact last week, while tuning into my satellite radio station devoted to Punk (Sirius 29) and confronting the station's take over by AC/DC. Although I occasionally tune in, I had always been a little ambivalent about Sirius’ marketing definition of punk. My sense of the genre fits more comfortably somewhere between Little Stevens’ Underground Garage (Sirius 25), Left of Center (Sirius 26) and First Wave (Sirius 22). The occasional dose of Back in Black or Hell’s Bells is good for the soul, but the AC/DC take-over is unfortunate and, as it turns out, quite insidious.

Unfortunately, my AC/DC nostalgic listening must stop not because they are loud and immature but because they are old, desperate and they've just sold out big time. Desperado classic rockers like the Eagles and Journey are by definition exhausted, a lazy conservative brand befitting Wal-Mart, who has possessed exclusive distribution rights on their records. AC/DC has joined the ranks of the Wal-Mart musical monopoly, see Robert Lane, “Wal-Mart wins Deal on Album and Game,” New York Times (Sept. 30, 2008) p. E1. AC/DC has signed a contract to release their new album exclusively through the giant retailer. It gets worse. MTV has partnered along in producing an AC/DC version of their popular Rock Band video game to be sold exclusively through Wal-Mart, as well. The Wal-Mart family wasn’t able to buy Thomas Eakins' Gross Clinic, but at least they got the little short-wearing rockers.

Goodbye AC/DC. I am sad to see one of the greatest living proponents of male adolescence join the ranks of the Eagles and Journey. On its last tour the band featured its Malcom and Angus Young, still wearing shorts in his 50s. Founded in 1973, AC/DC has gotten old as have its listeners, who have pushed adolescence into an older age. I think that all of Wal-Mart’s AC/DC products should be accompanied by a complementary copy of Gary Cross,'s Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity (New York, 2008). Cross is a culturla historian at Penn State and his readings of contemporary manhood are great; see interview on Radio Times (NPR, Sept. 30, 2008). All news from the rock world are not negative. It has just been announced that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will entertain the half-time show of Super Bowl XLII in Tampa, Florida, February 1, 2009. Truth be told, as a youngster I hated Bruce Springsteen. I saw him as a commercial stadium rock musician; these were the days of Born in the U.S.A. (2004). Almost a decade later, I listened to Nebraska (1982) and realized how wrong I had been; Springsteen is in the same league as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer and the Minutemen. These days, he has shown the world what it means to age gracefully. Maturity has not left us entirely; some acts cannot be monopolized. The revolution will not be merchandized.

Jennifer Ball's Teaching Thursday

I haven't been very good with keeping up my Teaching Thursday discussion going, although I have encouraged friends to give me input on their own teaching. This week, Jennifer Ball, professor of Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, sent me some thoughts on her class. Jenn Ball is teaching a seminar on the pedagogy of art history, where different methods and narratives are discussed and critiqued by the students. Having seen the syllabus already, I thought this was a great ideal. But for the most part, I am excited to have established a small community of readers (including Bill Caraher) who are interested in the interworkings of our discipline and are intrigued by the potential of digital communication.

From Jennifer Ball
Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 12:37 AM

So... I'm writing to you about teaching. Post this or not, but I thought you'd be interested in my small classroom achievement this week:

My class on pedagogy - at The Graduate Center, CUNY - is going very well. In fact, I feel a little guilty about it because I feel certain that I am getting more out of it than they are. Every week, we have great discussions and I get 12 unique views on teaching. I bring in my own teaching materials and I get 12 critiques. I see their assignments, syllabi, and teaching plans and I have so many things that I am excited to try out in my own undergraduate classes. Most importantly, it is pushing me to experiment more than usual in my Early Medieval Art class. So this week, I began something very different for me.

After a few years of trying various approaches to the upper level undergraduate research paper assignment, I decided to throw it all away and start from scratch. In the past, I tweaked this and that aspect of the assignment. I introduced classroom and library exercises but still most of my students failed to even get a good topic going. The ones who did it well would have no matter how my assignment looked, but there were always a number who did not do great research or writing. This year I decided to do group oral presentations instead. The group, who ultimately participates in the grading process by evaluating the other members of the group, I am hopeful will push the individuals to keep to a timeline and meet the smaller deadlines along the way - they have to hand in a written topic, an outline of their presentation, and an annotated bibliography. I have been breaking the research paper into mini steps for some time but students think (perhaps they know) that the final paper is really what matters and simply phone in the other assignments. The final presentation, conversely, is lower stakes - it is not written down of course and only counts for 25% of the overall grade. But the process of the assignment I hope will teach these research and preliminary writing skills that I haven't been able to capture in many of my students thus far.

This past week, I began the assignment by putting them into their assigned groups and giving them each an image. Using that image as the jumping off point, they had to create a mind map of the image in which the group free associates and literally draws all over the image, writing down questions, ideas about the work, connections to it - in essence they were brainstorming collectively. After that, they had to assemble the random notes surrounding their image into categories, putting like ideas together until they whittled it down to 4-5 questions. From there they discussed which of those might be worth further research - a potential topic for a paper. Wow! It went well. I had to kick them out of the room and each group left the room with a 'to do' list and a meeting date for their group to finalize their topics. I learned about mind mapping - something that I do from time to time but had never named it as such - at a workshop on the teaching of writing. This was my first try in the classroom. The images that I gave each group were unknown to them, so I was slightly nervous. But it worked so well, I wanted to write you about it.

Jenn

p.s. I read your friend Bill's posting on his lame classroom setup and was laughing - that doesn't hold a candle to how ridiculously bad mine is (at Brooklyn, not at the Grad Center where the rooms are pretty nice). He's needs to come to the bowels of public education and teach in classrooms that have not changed since 1930.

Singular Antiquity 4: Herzfeld

What follows is a review of Michael Herzfeld, “Archaeological Etymologies: Monumentality and Domesticity in Twentieth Century Greece," in Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and the Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008), pp. 43-54.

Michael Herzfeld is nothing short of a superstar in Modern Greek studies, a founder of an entire discipline of social anthropology, making Greece a paradigm-breaker. His article in Singular Antiquity is as provocative as all his work. Despite its complexity and the variety of avenues it opens, Herzfeld’s explores a singular concept well understood by anthropologists, namely the contradictory relationship between public presentation and private secrets. In this sense, it is similar to Mark Mazower’s essay that focuses closely on land. According to Herzfeld, classical antiquity has provided Greece with a cultural façade behind which private life could enjoy illicit and familiar practices. This is more than the tired duality of public vs. private or Hellenic vs. Romeic identities, it is a historically constructed condition common to modern states whose self-imaging was created by others. As in the cases of Nepal, Ethiopia, and Thailand, Greece created a cultural model not of its own making. And Greeks, of course, hate to be compared with the third world, as evident in the response to Marin Bernal's Black Athena. The classical façade (and later the modernist polykatoikia) is western Europe’s creation; for Greece, it served as an ideal screen to disguise alternative lifestyles. Understanding this duality unlocks the inexplicable patterns of modern Greek life, most notably the juxtaposition between a “stern morality” and “a relaxed attitude to violations of the norm.”

Herzfeld’s anthropological model (inspired by E. Papataxiarchis’ study of eterotita), proves to be extremely useful but surprisingly under-utilized, for example, in architectural studies. Excluding a few case studies (some by Herzfeld’s students), the anthropological lens has not penetrated into interdisciplinary research. Studies of Greek architecture have been limited to understanding formal vocabularies rather than social practices, and they have not revealed the spatial tension between interior and exterior. Herzfeld goes beyond the monument and addresses some contemporary developments, the realization that Greece’s homogeneity was a grand myth. James Faubion’s Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism (Princeton, 1993) opened up subjects of research that have chipped away the monolith. Herzfeld highlights that the system of classical disguise (dominant under the Greek junta and Victorian England alike) has cracked, and pluralist voices have leaped out (Moslem minorities, gay-lesbians- transsexuals, migrant workers, refugees, etc.). Herzfeld sees the dawn of a new age when the classical myth has lost its monopoly. Moreover, he sees a direct relationship between the size of the classical screen and our ability to deconstruct it today. “The Neoclassicists and the crypto-colonizers may have strengthened the classical heritage simply by letting go of it.”

On a personal note, Herzfeld’s essay brought me back to 1994-1995, when two books transformed me: Faubion’s Modern Greek Lessons and Gregory Jusdanis’ Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature (Minneapolis, 1991). Much of what I think today about Modern Greece depends on those two works. Sadly, Faubion has stopped working in Greece and has moved on to equally complex places, such as Waco, Texas, see The Shadows and Lights of Waco: Millenialism Today (Princeton, 2001). Modern Greek Lessons was a double surprise to me. During his fieldwork in Greece, Faubion met Greece’s leading gay-rights activist, who just so happens to be my cousin. Faubion studied the ambivalence of sexual politics with Gregory Vallianatos as navigator. Between 2004 and 2008, Gregory wrote a column in Athens Voice. His short biting editorials have just been collected into a book that I’m infinitely grateful to my friend Anna Androulaki for sending to me. The book bears the same title as the editorial, Akatallilo, and was published by Kastaniotes (Athens, 2008). I read the editorials for the first time. They offer a glimpse through the cracks that Herzfeld discusses in Singular Antiquity. I am so proud of my cousin!

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Singular Antiquity 3: Mazower

In preparation for my review for BMCR, I individually review the essays in A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008). See related links below.

This posting is a review of Mark Mazower's, “Archaeology, Nationalism and the Land in Modern Greece” pp. 33-41.

The first essay in Singular Antiquity is written by renown Modern Greek historian Mark Mazower, who looks at the role of land, soil and property as a register of cultural significance. Nationalism arose in the context of expanding or maintaining the territory of the nation-state and is ultimately connected to the land. Archaeology is another activity occurring within the soil and, as such, it directly grounds the present (and its territorial claims) with the past.

Mazower, however, refuses to accept the wholesale association between archaeology and nationalism, a trope "widely recognized" in recent scholarship and, frankly, the subject of the book. The continuum between nationalism and archaeology breaks down once we consider that, for the most part, land is privately owned in Greece. Of equal importance is the constantly shifting cultural paradigms across Greek history. Even within the 19th century, Bavarian and French neoclassicism cannot be equated with Romanticism. The latter, which flourished in the later part of the century, had emotive effect as its priority, and even welcomed into the canon, non-classical monuments such as picturesque mosques, Byzantine churches and modern peasants. In the 20th century, this ethnographic lens gave way to modernist formalism. Classical architecture was photographed in severe black-and-white contrast and any view of peasants was unfashionable. Mazower warns us that"the nature of the connection between archaeology and nationalism needs to be carefully specified" and placed in a precise historical framework.

Mazower seems turns the spotlight on the social role of scholars. Nationalism, Mazower argues, is not self evident but has been elevated into focus by a politically powerless scholarly community: "the appeal to nationalism can be construed as a legitimizing slogan by a scholarly community all too conscious of its own feeble standing in daily life rather than a self-evident truth of unstoppable force; all the more so as what is to be an archaeologist--sociologically, intellectually--changes so fast between 1830 adn 1950." (p. 34)

Finally, Mazower points out that archaeology as a practice has itself radically changed, moving towards an inclusiveness incompatible with older definitions. "Archaeology has changed enormously, even in the past thirty years. The spread of field surveys, industrial and ethno-archaeology and the boom in museology have diffused the discipline's offerings and led it to sponsor a much wider and more inclusive conception of the past than it once did. The political elite, having grown up on the ideology of eternal Greece, finds it hard to let go." (p. 39) Perhaps in my most extreme reading of this essay, I find evidence of scepticism. My suspicion is that Mazower distrusts the current scholarship on nationalism/archaeology for failing to particularize historical variation. And I think it is true, when modern historians talk about archaeology they rely on an antiquated view of the discipline.

Mazower's essay is enlightening in its nuanced readings of historical periods and in its critique of the subject in general. Mazower is arguablythe most important living American historian of Modern Greece. Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 (New Haven, 1993) should be mandatory reading for all students of Greece. My personal new favorite is an edited volume, After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960 (Princeton, 2000), which deals with the effects of the Civil War. Unlike other books dealing with the military and political dimension of the war, this volume specifically addresses aspects of social life. Mazower is a prolific writer. His Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 (New York, 2006) was greatly received even by a general audience. The same could be said for his earlier study, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (New York, 2000). For me, Mazower shines best in his less general works where a critical edge is evident.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Singular Antiquity 2: Plantzos, Introduction

In preparation for my review for BMCR, I individually review the essays in A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008).

This posting is a review of Dimitris Plantzos, “Archaeology and Hellenic Identity, 1896-2004: The Frustrated Vision,” pp. 10-30.

The two editors of Singular Antiquity bracket the collection of essays by an introductory and concluding essay. Dimitris Plantzos sets the stage with an introductory chapter that achieves three primary objectives: 1) to provide some real flavor on the relation between antiquities and Greekness, 2) to couch this phenomenon in a wider theoretical context, and, 3) to provide a straightforward history of how Greece changed its relation to history through the 20th century. The essay is provocatively illustrated and carries a sharp dialectical style. Plantzos writes like an intellectual, or a good journalist who weighs his words for poetic imagery. “Notes from oblivion,” “Custodians in neverland,” “The Greekness of our discontent,” “Greek archaeology and the post-colonial blues,” From where we stand…,” the essay’s five subheadings, give a good sense of the Plantzos’ effect and a subtle desire to connect with other texts (like Dostoyevsky,’ Notes from Underground, Joyce Carol Oates’, Neverland, etc.) The text itself is crafted to expand questions rather than answer them, a feature that might frustrate some academic readers, but one that seems perfectly appropriate for the maze of meanings that confines Greek realities.

Plantzos begins his essay with an iconographic analysis of the 2004 Athens Olympics, specifically the opening ceremony choreographed by Dimitris Papaioannou. Other illustrations range from Euro Cup soccer games to Greek-Australian parades. With such interjections from popular and political culture, Plantzos succeeds with the first objective, to provide a palpable flavor of archaeological Greekness. I only have one problem with this objective. While giving focus to Greece, it fails to recognize that forms of popular culture are inherently surreal with twisted and contradictory aesthetics. The performative reliving of history can be found in popular culture across the globe; it’s part of modernity. There are endless examples, from the annual reenactment of the Battle at Gettysburg, the Society of Creative Anachronism, to staging medieval jousting competitions and Native American rituals. From England to the American Southwest, archaeology has fed the creative imagination just as much as it has manipulated national ideology. Naturally, Plantzos’ article is not the place to create a global overview of popular meaning, although there is one quick reference made to the Bengal school of art (p. 22). The lack of other national comparisons makes the Greek case-study claustrophobic. One has the feeling that Greece is taken a little too seriously, missing the wonderful theoretical categories of kitsch, camp, and irony that scholars have developed to study popular culture in a positive manner.

The second objective of the article is to relate the Greek case-study to greater theoretical debates regarding history, reality and representation. Plantzos deploys Foucault (heterotopia), Lacan (gaze), Geertz, as well as Winckelmann, Hamann, Herder and Vico to expand the issues. There is not enough room in the essay, however, to explore these connections more meaningfully. On the other hand, they are not just theoretical spice or gratuitous name-dropping. The discourse promises a thread of connections and invites the attention of an audience for whom these theorists have already been digested into house-hold names. I suspect that such literary critics, art historians, post-colonial theorists and cultural critics are Plantzos’ ideal audience. They represent dominant traditions in the humanities but rarely do they concern themselves with Greece. Singular Antiquity should be just as relevant to them as the professional archaeologist.

The third and most straightforward objective is, in my estimation, beautifully handled and seamlessly integrated within the previous two. It is an overview of changing definitions of Greekness in the 20th century. Greeks and non-Greeks alike assume that the nation was consistently defined from the beginning. Plantzos provides a historical overview that should help the non-specialist to navigate through the chapters to follow.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Psychogeography

Mapping historical landscapes is a difficult procedure because the subjective world cannot always mesh through objective description, a prerequisite for mapping. My friend Nick Stapp is struggling with these issues. He is writing a program, or a set of digital procedures that document historical change through the 19th and 20th centuries at Washington Square, one of William Penn's four original squares in Philadelphia. Nick is a man of many talents, with degrees in both archaeology and historic preservation, now going for a Ph.D. in urban planning. He's best known in Mediterranean archaeology for his work for the Corinth Computer Project, directed by David G. Romano at UPenn's Museum. He has taught classes on GIS and archaeology and he has been my GIS mentor. While reading Nick's dissertation proposal, I learned about a couple of interesting new projects.

Yesterday, Richard Florida blogged about a new study mapping personality variations across the U.S., in Peter J. Renfrow, Samuel D. Gossling, and Jeff Potter, "A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics," Perspectives on Psychological Sciece 3:5 (2008) pp. 339-369. Bill Caraher will be happy to learn, for instance, that North Dakotans are happier and more affable than most Americans. Peter Rentfrow's web site (at Cambridge) shows a forthcoming publication that, moreover, relates personality traits to presidential elections. The characteristics studied in the project were Extraversion, Agreeableness, Consientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness. Accordingly, each state has some dominant features that are replicated and reinforced. The data is pretty interesting as is the discussion of criteria used, data collection and number crunching.

The second project takes us to the street. Bio Mapping is a collaborative project that collects data of varying sensorial arousal through street walking. Over 1,500 collaborated in the data collection and some of the maps are available in Google Earth. The San Francisco emotion map is already completed and next in line is T0kyo.

A few months ago, I wrote about new books on the tradition of psychogeography, see Peripatetic History. Psychogeopgraphy was devised by the Situationists, a second generation of Surrealists, who wandered aimlessly through the urban fabric and documented psychological states. They produced installations, urban designs and philosophical tracts. The two projects discussed here extend the spirit of the Situationists and bridge the gap between subjectivity and objectivity.

Smoke

The Republican National Convention featured a relentless backdrop of a waving American flag, a patriotic screen saver. In an earlier posting, I contrasted this modernist image to the Democratic National Convention's use of classical architecture. Realizing how fierce the television ads have become in the last few weeks, I decided to consult The Living Room Candidate, a website discussed in Alessandra Stanley's, "On the Web, a Nonpartisan Look at Those Partisan Campaign Ads,"(New York Times, Sept. 11, 2998). The Living Room Candidate is produced by the Museum of the Moving Image (located in Astoria, NY) and features a fascinating history of political advertisements in U.S. presidential campaigns. My favorite ad comes from 1968, where Richard Nixon paints the Civil Rights movement as an issue of domestic violence. "The First Civil Right" is a psychedelic commercial that employs dislocation to scare the viewer into the need for order.

I had noted McCain's visual attacks on Obama in Architecture Wars. Out of curiosity, I started browsing through the ad war. While doing so, I picked up another feature that supports my modernist interpretation of the new Republican aesthetic. The feature is simply some billowing smoke that floats through the screen. Its movement is similar to the omnipresent billowing flag, but it is quite surprising given the negative associations attached to smoking (health, drugs, etc.) You'll see this smoke in "Sacrifice" (posted Apr. 17, 2008). The flag wavers, the sun shines in yellow over McCain's handcuffs, the clouds float over the Statue of Liberty and lights dazzle through the telling of McCain's personal history. And then for about 30 seconds (min. 1:55-2:30), the most beautiful yellow/red smoke weaves through heroic still images. The smoke makes another appearance behind the words Honor, Courage, Beauty, Perseverance and Leadership in "Character Forged by Family" (released also on Apr. 17, 2008); note min. 0:21-0:27. It's nothing major, but it's highly minimalist, if not trippy. Like the flag, it employs modernist strategies of purity, clarity, transparency and beauty, like the fabrics that Christo draped through the landscape or the smoke of surrealist photography. It's a small thing, but like the aesthetics of the flag, quite distinctive.

In a previous posting, I made reference to the kitsch-inspired wax figures of Duane Hansen. A doll company out of Oxford, CT, has produced some very topical figurines, including a Sarah Palin School Girl doll. The company is called Hero Builders. My niece is turning 4 in just two weeks. Celina and I got her a doll and shipped it in time for her birthday. I haven't thought about dolls for years, but we certainly didn't get her a Palin doll. We went with a sweeter girl, Vanilla Redhead by Corolle. We figured that the pigtails will go well with Kristina's role model, Pippi Longstocking (a Swedish character from `1945).

Rankaves: Postmodern Morea

Our readings of the distant past are influenced by the binaries of our recent past. One such example is the scholarship on the medieval Morea, where Greek versus Latin, Orthodox versus Catholic, Eastern versus Western dominate the interpretive spectrum. Between 1206 and ca. 1230, most of the Morea (or Peloponnese) was a Crusader state of unique cultural expression. After the establishment of the Modern Greek state in 1830, France oversaw the management of the Peloponnese, so it is not surprising that a French scholarly tradition developed, along the lines of colonialist narratives elsewhere in the Mediterranean. This tradition, obviously, sought ideological precedent for contemporary French imperialism. As France’s colonial interests waned in the early 20th century, a competing tradition emerged within Greece. Responding directly to the dominance of French nationalism, the Greek historical narrative responded with an even heavier counter-weight, Greek nationalism. We must not forget that this was also a time when Greece nurtured its own expansionist dreams that culminated with the disastrous Greco-Turkish war of 1922.

I am beginning to rethink through some of these scholarly issues over the Morea, as I start working on a paper dealing with the urbanism and domestic architecture of Mystras. Sharon Gerstel has invited me to give a paper in “Morea: The Land and Its People in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade,” a conference at Dumbarton Oaks. Half of my essay will be about the city’s archaeological fabric, but the other half will be about the city’s fantastic fabric. The houses of Mystras were literaly fabricated in the absence of archaeology. Scholarship on the Frankish Morea was built on the shoulders of a medieval chronicle discovered in a Belgian library by French historian J.-A. Buchon. First published in 1825, the chronicle made an indelible mark not only on archaeological scholarship but in the western imagination at large. After reading the chronicle, J.W. Goethe changed his manuscript of his play Faust. Rather than dramatizing Helena’s marriage at the most logical place, Faust’s palace on the Rhine, Goethe moved the wedding to Mystras (Faust II.2). We know about this change of heart from a note that Goethe left on a playbill one night at the theater. With the help of Buchon’s interpretation, Mystras began to symbolize the inevitable marriage between two seemigly incompatible ideals, the Greek and the Gothic geniuses, the two dominant traditions of the West’s self-fashioning.

Starting with Faust, Mystras has been the site of much mythopoetic activity. The Greek literary tradition begins in 1850, when Alexandros Rizos Rankaves (1809-1892) seriated a novel called Lord of the Morea (O authentes to Moreos) in the magazine Pandora. Rankaves was no stranger to Goethe, having translated Faust into Greek. The next major modern dramatization of the Morea Chronicle took place in the 1930s. Angelos Terzakis’ Princess Izampo is important because it coincides with the first scholarly analysis of the Mystras’ urban fabric and domestic architecture by Anastasios Orlandos.

That being the context, I want to return to a question introduced in the beginning. Does the nationalist narrative hold? For the first time, I’m seriously studying the life and works of Rankaves to discover how surprisingly postmodern mid-19th-century Greek intellectual life actually was, clearly defying the trite binaries that we have constructed as scholars. Some features of postmodernist literature are a self-conscious inter-textuality, a meddling of different voices and a heavy authorial positionality. Examples of these modes in Lord of the Morea have been a pleasant surprise to what I had previously written off as merely a traditional novel. I assumed that Lord of the Morea would only be a faint glimmer of Sir Walter’s Scott’s Ivanhoe 1819) . I will not bother summarizing the plot that involves historical highlights from the medieval chronicle. The novel begins with a jousting competition. Rankaves starts to describe the knights’ elaborate armor, their horses, even the inscribed epigrams, but after Geoffroy Villehardouin, he stops in mid-narrative with an amazing statement. He steps out of the narrative, and speaks directly to the reader. As author, he announces that he will stop describing more visual details because they have little significance for his overall narrative. Then he digresses in addressing the historical legacy of the Frankish period, telling the reader that the Latins came and went leaving very little archaeological testament behind. So, it’s OK that the reader may be bored with the details of heraldry. Rankaves then proceeds with an archaeological voice to describe the field in which the reader MIGHT have confronted the Latin past, as a wanderer, a hiker, or a Romantic reader of the landscape. “Hiking through mountains, the wanderer may discover fortresses perched on peaks like eagles’ nests; or he may find blocks inscribed with heraldic symbols buried among the bushes. The wanderer might ignore these monuments altogether, as he rushes his attention towards the Cyclopean masonry of glorious ancient Greece and its eternal monuments.” The original passage is Greek reads as follows (transcribed in monotonic Greek) .

"Παραιτούμεθα να περιγράψωμεν τας λαμπράς πανοπλίας και τα ποίκιλα εμβλήματα όλων των ιπποτών όσοι εισήλθον μετά τον Γοδοφρείδον. Εις την πρόοδον της διηγήσεως ημών η οχληρά περιγραφή ολίβον συμβάλλεται, και ιστορικώς επίσης δεν ενδιαφέρει πολύ την Ελλάδα. Διότι ήρξαν μεν επ’αυτής οι ιππόται, και την εταπείνωσαν υπό την σπάθην αυτών, αλλ’ ήλθον και απήλθων χωρίς ν’ αφήσωσιν ίχνη της παρόδου αυτών, και το όνομα και η μνήμη των απώλετο μετά κρότου. ή οσάκις ο οδοιπόρος εις αποκρήμνους άκρας ορέων ανακαλύπτει τα φρούρια αυτών ως φωλεάς αετών, ή μεταξύ θάμνων απαντά επί λίθου γεγλυμμένα τα βαρονικά οικοσήμα αυτών, στρέφεται απ’ αυτών μετ’ αδιαφορίας, σπεύδων προς τα κυκλώπεια τείχη των ενδόξων αιώνων, και προς τ’ αμίμητα προϊόντα αθανάτων γλυφίδων. (O Authentes tou Moreos, 1989 reprint, Apanta Philologika (1876) vol. 8., pp. 56-57.)

Rankaves is keenly aware of his audience’s presumed interests. After all, he was himself Professor of Archaeology at the University of Athens, 1844. He breaks the heroic narrative to address archaeology’s internal epistemological questions: Under what conditions does one confront the historical countryside? How do you discover a historical period? And do archaeological monuments compete for attention? I find this to be an amazing passage. It highlights the degrees of scholarly self-awareness within literary genres but it also reveals the inseparable bond between literature and monuments. Medieval fortresses like Mystras accumulated the same cultic status as the Parthenon. I’m trying to trace the process of cultural deification and the creation of a monumental heterotopia (Foucault’s concept) through an archaeological/literary conspiracy (at the risk of sounding paranoid).

Another shockingly postmodern passage occurs in Lord of the Morea when a unidentified knight enters the jousting competition. “At that moment the horns blew and, turning their heads towards the entrance, the audience saw an unidentified knight entering the field, on a black horse without any decoration on his armour.” To English readers, this should immediately ring some bells, reminiscent of the Black Knight in Sir Walter Scott's famous Ivanhoe (1819). Not only is this not a coincidence, but Rankaves breaks his own narrative and tells the reader straight out that the famous novelist is indeed his prototype. In fact, Greek literary scholars have been debating whether Rankaves knight is Scott's Black Knight or the Disinherited Knight In short, this seemingly boring 19th-century historical novel is much more tricky in its narrative mode, flipping between discourses, acknowledging literary quotation, identifying the literary canon, etc. etc. It is not exactly Thomas Pynchon, but neither is it straightforward.

Have we perhaps undersold 19th-century Greek literature? I certainly had, assuming that it would just be cliched nationalism. Come to think of it, Rankaves and his peers epitomized diversity and globalization. The man was born in Istanbul but attended military academy at Munich. He was involved in politics and literature, but he was also one of Greece’s first archaeology professors. Yes, he was one of the early cultural super-Greeks, but he was married to a Scottish woman. He spoke multiple languages, lived in multiple places including Washington, D.C. The recounting of medieval military life must be seen also from a different professional perspective, namely that Rankaves first came to Greece under the Bavarian monarchy as professor of military science at Nauplion, the first capital. His narration of jousting competition, therefore, relates to his teaching of modern warfare. This professional identification puts him in the same category with contemporary travelers like Williams Leake or the French Scientific Expedition, whose objectives were first the accumulation of military strategic knowledge and only second the recording of antiquities. Although clearly supportive of the creation of new Greece, Rankaves' nationalism is not so easy to define. Scholars have noted, for example, that he does not take a pro-Greek position in the Lord of the Morea, but at times seems anti-Greek. Our national equations of modern French=pro Latin, modern Greek=pro-Byzantine breaks down in 1850.

The construction of the medieval Morea across the 19th and 20th centuries is a fascinating procedure. In a previous article, I related this process with the rise of tourism; see my essay in The Architecture of Tourism, ed. D. M. Lasansky and B. McLaren, 2004, pp. 37-52 (PDF available upon request). Even if only for a moment, we must step outside our postcolonial theory-heavy comfort zone and freshly reread some of old katharevousa texts. In Ranaves, I’ve found evidence of postmodern narrative strategies. Being only an amature literary critic, I might be completely off the mark. Nevertheless, my own conceptions have been shattered. I know it’s a major fallacy to call Rankaves a postmodernist retroactively. I take the liberty while thinking of David Foster Wallace, who has sadly just committed suicide at the age of 46. I did not love all his book; his “maximalist” style in novels like Infinite Jest (1997) seemed an acquired taste. For the same reasons, I’ve never loved Don DeLillo. Nevertheless, Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2000) remains one of my favorite books from a brilliant young generation of writers, including Wallace’s friends Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen. On Wallace's suicide, see New York Times obituary (Sept. 14, 2008)

Finally, I want to thank Elias Markolefas, my mentor in all Greek things literary, who sent me a reprint of Lord of the Morea (Athens, 1989, ed. A. Sachines) as soon as he found it at our favorite bookstore, Politeia. Rankaves edited his completed works, Apanta Philologika (Athens 1874-1885) in 14 volumes. He was a profuse writer. He wrote so much that scholars have accused him of being rather sloppy, much like the modern-day blogger. The last two volumes of his Collected Works are devoted entirely on archaeological writings. I'm looking forward to reading them after the fiction.

And a disclaimer: When I was a kid, I loved Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, which I first read in the Greek Illustrated Classics children's series (Κλασσικά Εικονογραφημένα). I remeber a new canonical masterpiece came out every weekend. Ivanhoe (or rather, Ιβανόε in Greek) completely captivated my boyish imagination. So much so, that I decided to write my own heroic comic. I took a bunch of paper, which I divided up into squares, and started to draw the openning scene, naturally a jousting competition. The first (and only box) introduced my invented hero, a knight I called Alen (I have no idea why). Then, I got stuck. I couldn't draw the second box because I had no story to tell. And that was the end of my cartoonist days ca. 30 years ago.

Singular Antiquity 1

About once a year, I succumb to the temptations of book reviewing. This time, I have buckled to a brand new volume on Greek cultural history, Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and the Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece (Athens, 2008). Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos have here collected 25 essays from “Archaeology, Antiquity and Greekness,” a conference held at the Benaki Museum in January 2007.

The literature on archaeology and nationalism has flourished in the last couple of decades, entering even the arena of public debate. Consider, for example, the hoopla over Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure controversy at Columbia University. El-Haj’s quite reasonable Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago, 2001) explores the use of archaeology in the construction of modern Israel. The controversy is detailed in Jane Kramer, "The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a Tenure Battle at Barnard" (The New Yorker, April 14, 2008, p. 50). Archaeology’s role in Greek nationalism has its own growing bibliography, culminating with Yannis Hamilakis’ The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford, 2007). All this literature, of course, depends on the ground breaking work of historian Eric Hobsbawm (Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge, 1990), who briefly considers the case of Greece. For instance, he compares katharevousa with the revival of Gaelic in Ireland and Hebrew in Israel. The discipline of archaeology has become a lot more reflexive with fundamental volumes like Stephen Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A History of Classical Archaeology in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New Haven, 2006), Ian Morris ed. Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies (Cambridge, 1994), and Bruce Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge, 1989). While post-colonial historiography spreads through the academy, it remains marginal to the public narrative. Departments of Classical Studies in the U.S., for example, rarely offer courses on the history and ideological foundation of their own discipline. Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (New York, 1987), the Straussian foundations of the Bush administration, or even Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (New Brunswick, 1987) are inescapable in public discourse, but almost invisible in undergraduate course offerings. Most Classics professors and graduate students care more about conjugations and declensions than the deployment of their discipline in cultural debate. Archaeologists, similarly, tend to shun away from topics of cultural heritage while news of repatriation and antiquity trafficking fill the newspapers.

The situation among Greek intellectuals, academicians, students, politicians and the general public is even more steeped in the comfort of 19th-century assumptions. Greece’s national myths are still relevant since the territorial and geopolitical conditions that gave birth to nationalism have not gone away. Membership in the European Union, Greek business expansion, itinerant labor forces and sharing in globalization does not erase the nationalist myth; it complicates it further through amplification or obfuscation.

Singular Antiquity is, therefore, terribly important. It may be that nationalism and archaeology has itself become a tired topic. The connections were obvious to most people, and not only to left intellectuals for whom nationalism was a critical foil. I think nationalism has not become tired enough. The word needs to spread from the convention centers of academia to the offices of politicians and cultural institutions. The essays in this book make it clear that the topic is far from exhaustion. The Benaki, moreover, should be praised for spearheading cultural debate in Greece and abroad (through this English-language publication)

Singular Antiquity contains essays from 25 brilliant scholars, many of whom are the pillars of Modern Greek Studies in the U.S. (e.g. Michael Herzfeld, Mark Mazower, Vasilis Lambropoulos, Artemis Leontis). I already admire the work of many contributors, but many I have never heard of. Bryn Mawr Classical Review has requested that my review be no longer than 1,000 words and I hope to oblige. The 25 essays in this book (and my wordiness) will need more space. So, I’ve decided to post longer reviews for each essay in this blog. The BMCR has also broken out into further digital openness, through a blog where comments can be posted to each review.

At first glimpse, they essays offer nuanced case studies; the book does not promote some megalithic theory, school or posse. It does not read like a party convention with postmodern platitudes or self-congratulations. For this reason, too, I think each essay deserves separate attention. Not all of the authors are academic superstars. Some are only known to small academic circles and publish in Greek. They range from young scholars unknown outside Greece, such as the art historian Elena Hamalidi, to old giants like Demitris Philippides, whose Neoellenike Architectonike (Athens, 1984) should be in every architectural library but is unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences (even architectural historians). Their work needs to be amplified.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.