Showing papers in "Journal of Modern Greek Studies in 2016"
TL;DR: The authors proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.
Abstract: Narratives of volunteerism and civil society that emerged in Greece in the beginning of the twenty-first century echoed the modernization and Europeanization visions of Greek society that were proliferating in that era. Public discourses as well as state and EU policies endorsed a model of sociality that included volunteerism and was associated with the production of the new European and Greek citizen. Forms of public sociality, such as voluntary associations, thus constituted laboratories that produced subjects. The reformation of sociality and the invention of volunteerism were embedded in various civilizing projects. At the same time, a certain “lack of volunteerism” was broadly attributed to a general understanding of Greek particularity. This article proposes an alternate perspective that considers new and older forms of public sociality in relation to their cultural formation, where the flourishing of solidarity initiatives in contemporary crisis-ridden Greece is not considered a paradox, but rather the expression of the reconfiguration of the social and its potent political content.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the contemporary moment of crisis in Greece entangled with antiquity, in its physical form of remnants and sites, as well as in its discursive and visual renderings and evocations.
Abstract: How is the contemporary moment of crisis in Greece entangled with antiquity, in its physical form of remnants and sites, as well as in its discursive and visual renderings and evocations? In this article, I explore this archaeo-political dimension, adopting as my interpretative lens the concept of debt, not only as a financial phenomenon but also as moral imperative, as production of individual and collective subjectivities. The contemporary sovereign debt is juxtaposed to the debt owed to the ancestors, a debt that can never be repaid. In exploring this theme, I study a range of phenomena, from performative rituals to cartoons to official and unofficial media interventions. The main case study, however, is the public and media fascination with the recent excavation at Amphipolis in northern Greece, a phenomenon which I interpret as a peculiar occult economy with affinities to national treasure hunting. In the oneiric archaeology of Amphipolis, the ancestors are imagined as coming again to the rescue of their descendants in their hour of need, prolonging thus the eternal ancestral debt. Finally, I argue that both the financial debt and the ancestral debt are associated with the crypto-colonial constitution of Greece since the nineteenth century and that perhaps rupturing the teleology of ancestral indebtedness may in fact initiate the decolonial process for the country as a whole.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses the writings of three British thinkers: the prominent scholar James Bryce, the archaeologist Arthur Evans, and the radical journalist H.N. Brailsford, who discovered and transmitted news about the sufferings of Christians in the Ottoman Empire during times of war and conflict.
Abstract: This article contributes to the growing literature on the history of humanitarian intervention and the politics of humanitarianism in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It discusses the writings of three British thinkers: the prominent scholar James Bryce, the archaeologist Arthur Evans, and the radical journalist H.N. Brailsford. All three have been credited with discovering and transmitting news about the sufferings of Christians in the Ottoman Empire during times of war and conflict. The article showcases the rise in the demand for knowledge about the region brought about by the late-nineteenth-century Eastern Crisis and its early-twentieth-century afterlife. It fills a gap in the literature on British attitudes toward Eastern Europe by offering a comparative reading of long-held Orientalist and Balkanist stereotypes, as well as nationalist visions of international and regional order articulated in a humanitarian language.
11 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors combine archival material and ethnographic research to consider how silence and the encounter with the unthinkable have shaped public history in Greece and find that the Church of the Savior project is largely remembered as a kitsch project of the military regime of 21 April 1967.
Abstract: On July 31, 1829, the participants of the Fourth National Assembly voted to construct the Church of the Savior to express gratitude for Greek liberation from the Ottoman Empire. Research to date suggests that this initiative was revisited in the 1960s by church officials who engaged in an imaginative reading of the historical record to present this phantasmatic edifice as an unfulfilled national vow. Despite the project’s long and complicated history, the endeavor is largely remembered as a kitsch project of the military regime of 21 April 1967. Why is this the case? How are the stories of our past produced, and what kinds of analytics are utilized to create public narratives? Taking a story of spatial absence as a point of departure, I combine archival material and ethnographic research to consider how silence and the encounter with the unthinkable have shaped public history in Greece.
10 citations
TL;DR: Aravantinos, a collector and harmonizer of folk songs himself, appeared in 1903 before Greek audiences in an attempt to promote a national school of music as discussed by the authors, and his ideas on folk song harmonization and national music were in part vindicated by composer Spyros Samaras, a common friend.
Abstract: In 1876, Albert-Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray published a collection of “melodies from Greece and the Orient” in the conviction that he had found vestiges of Ancient Greek music in Greek folk music of his day. Bringing folk music to the attention of the educated classes, he hoped to fertilize art music and create the preconditions for a Greek national music. He also supplied the melodies that he collected with piano accompaniment, that is, he harmonized them. In his mind, harmonization was but the first step toward the formation of a Greek national music. Soon after this, his Greek project was embedded in hindsight in a broader Aryanist project explicitly described in the “Introduction” to his 1885 collection of Breton folk songs. Folk song harmonizations then became the first step toward the formation of the Aryan art music of the future. In the 1890s, he worked with Greek baritone Periklis Aravantinos, alias Aramis, to produce what he thought of as musical arguments for Aryanism. Aramis, a collector and harmonizer of folk songs himself, appeared in 1903 before Greek audiences in an attempt to promote a national school of music. Aramis’s and Bourgault-Ducoudray’s ideas on folk song harmonization and national music were in part vindicated by composer Spyros Samaras, a common friend, especially in the latter’s symbolically loaded Rhea (1908). His and other musical nationalisms were eclipsed by the appearance of the man most readily connected today to a Greek national school of music, Manolis Kalomoiris.
10 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the organization of the memory of Asia Minor in Greece during the interwar period and examines the role of refugees in the integration of refugees into mainstream society without ever directly addressing the burden of the trauma itself.
Abstract: This article examines the organization of the memory of Asia Minor in Greece during the interwar period. The disastrous Greek defeat in the Greek-Turkish War (1919–1922) and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne together constitute a major turning point in the history of Modern Greece. Not only did these events end Greece’s irredentist dream, but they also led to the uprooting of 1.5 million Greek Orthodox people from Asia Minor and their resettlement in Greece. Despite its importance, the trauma that the exodus inflicted on refugees and non-refugees alike was not treated at the time as a subject in its own right; rather, it was subsumed within competing nationalist narratives that were directly related to the ongoing political conflicts that beset interwar Greece. Refugee associations negotiated the memory of Asia Minor for the purpose of achieving the integration of refugees into mainstream society without ever directly addressing the burden of the trauma itself.
9 citations
TL;DR: Seferis as discussed by the authors translated the Song of Songs in 1960 (published 1965), using as his basis the Koine Greek text of the Septuagint but also gaining access to its Hebrew version by consulting other editions.
Abstract: George Seferis translated the Song of Songs in 1960 (published 1965), using as his basis the Koine Greek text of the Septuagint but also gaining access to its Hebrew version by consulting other editions. Seferis’s translation is primarily motivated by a desire to expose the linguistic and textual multiplicity that constitutes the Septuagint itself. Seferis’s translation thus consistently calls attention to the Hebrew that lies behind or alongside the Septuagint’s Greek, to the complex textual status of the Bible, and to the irreducible role of translation in the shaping of literary, linguistic, and theological traditions. In so doing, it unsettles and undercuts conventional ideas about religious dogma, the essence of Greek culture, and translation. The analysis of Seferis’s structural, grammatical, and lexical choices shows that he consistently refuses simply to absorb the Septuagint’s Greek into Modern Greek, but instead underscores difference in hopes of creating a genuinely polyphonic text that would be adequate to the Septuagint.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a combined philological, ethnographic, and musicological approach is used to establish an expanded theoretical framework capable of exploring the interaction between poetry, music, and sociality.
Abstract: The dominant vehicle for oral poetry in the song culture of Kalymnos is the mantinadha, a rhyming couplet in iambic decapentameter. Though this poetic form has been studied extensively by philologists and anthropologists working in the Greek Aegean, a combined philological, ethnographic, and musicological approach is necessary to establish an expanded theoretical framework capable of exploring the interaction between poetry, music, and sociality. In performance, the texts of these poems are stretched, rearranged, interrupted, and delayed in order to conform to the contours of different melodies, each of which makes unique structural demands on the couplets that are sung to it. Close musical, metrical, and ethnographic analysis of several performances and attention to the interpretive choices of the expert performer or meraklis suggests an implicit theory, a model of the internal theory encoded in the music that governs the Kalymnian melody-poetry interface and reveals the ways in which the application of specific poetic and musical techniques both heightens the dialogic quality of these couplets and imbues them with socially poetic power.
8 citations
TL;DR: Rien ne vas plus (1991) and Θα ήθελα (2005) are meta-autobiographical fictions as mentioned in this paper, where the main characters reconstruct their biographical record through the act of writing, while their real-fictional lives are recounted in juxtaposition with the fictions they are crafting.
Abstract: While the twentieth century overall witnessed an unprecedented flood of autobiographies and critical accounts that validated autobiography as a literary genre, the past 60 years have seen the dominance of self-reflexive writing and the rise of metaautobiographies, that is, autobiographies that employ metafictionality. The conjuncture of autobiography and metafiction stems from their shared inclination towards self-exploration and the implicit manipulation of the writing process. Rien ne vas plus (1991) and Θα ήθeλα (2005) take this process a step further: they are metaautobiographical fictions because their character-protagonists reconstruct their biographical record through the act of writing, while their real-fictional lives are recounted in juxtaposition with the fictions that they are crafting. For these protagonists, fiction cannot simply define the self nor write the past but is bound to rewrite both. As their main characters rewrite themselves anew and thus make sense of their vertiginous selves, these two metaautobiographical novels make the reader aware of the process in which experiences are skillfully manipulated to be turned into works of art.
6 citations
TL;DR: The New Acropolis Museum has received mixed reviews by scholars and critics as discussed by the authors, focusing on the lack of attention to the dismantling of the permanent exhibition of the old-acropolis Museum, an important museological artifact of postwar Greece.
Abstract: Since its well-publicized inauguration in 2009, the New Acropolis Museum has received mixed reviews by scholars and critics. This paper is a response to the lack of attention to the dismantling of the permanent exhibition of the Old Acropolis Museum, an important museological artifact of postwar Greece. It delineates a biography of this museum, focusing on its various reincarnations since 1874 and, most importantly, on the installation by archaeologist Giannes Meliades (1895–1975) from 1954 to 1964. Meliades, Ephor of the Acropolis from 1941 to 1961, held that his installation was in-and-of-itself a work of art of its own times, rich in aesthetic claims and epistemological implications. It is therefore imperative to remember and analyze Meliades’s artifact, even as we inquire into what precisely was lost when the Old Acropolis Museum was dismantled. This analysis is premised on the notion that a museum is a relational nexus, whose dismantling may have wider implications for viewers, visitors, scholars, and artifacts.
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the works of Georgios Streit, one of the most famous Greek international lawyers at that time, who argued that Crete formed a state under the "thin suzerainty" of the Sublime Porte.
Abstract: In this article, I address the question of how jurisprudence functioned during the Cretan Question of 1895–1899. For this purpose, I analyze the works of Georgios Streit, one of the most famous Greek international lawyers at that time. First, Streit argued that Crete formed a state under the “thin suzerainty” of the Sublime Porte. By this logic, he effectively denied Ottoman sovereignty, although neither the Great Powers nor the Sublime Porte admitted his interpretation. Second, Streit criticized the Great Powers’ special status in international affairs, defending legal equality among what he considered to be civilized states instead. The equal status of the Powers and Greece would justify the latter’s intervention in Ottoman internal affairs. In conclusion, while Streit’s argument that Crete formed a state found support among international lawyers, his criticism of the Powers’ special status did not, a fact that highlights some of the characteristics of nineteenth-century international law.
TL;DR: Karamouzi et al. as discussed by the authors used the full range of archival materials from this period and set the standard for future studies of Greece's early relations with the EU.
Abstract: the EU, in particular—is one that Karamouzi’s study raises and which invites further study. In short, as the first published analysis utilizing the full range of archival materials from this period, this book is likely to set the standard for future studies of Greece’s early relations with the EU. While the reader is occasionally left wanting more details (for example, more statistical data on the actual impact of Greek accession on the agricultural and industrial sectors of the Nine would have been welcome), Karamouzi’s meticulous and exhaustive use of relevant archival documents is truly a major step forward in studies of this period—one that presaged so much for the later development of contemporary Greek society, politics, and economy.
TL;DR: Papadogiannis et al. as mentioned in this paper pointed out that interviewees may be affected by their current political affiliation and that this divergence might not necessarily be attributed to different experiences, but to a varying signification of similar experiences due to differing political affiliation nowadays or to global political transformations such as the collapse of the Soviet Communist system in 1989.
Abstract: that interviewees may be affected by their current political affiliation. Papadogiannis mentions this “biographical turning point” (146) and stresses that “this divergence might not necessarily be attributed to different experiences, but to a varying signification of similar experiences due to differing political affiliation nowadays” (93) or to global political transformations, such as the “collapse of the Soviet Communist system in 1989” (152). These are the inevitable shortcomings and, at the same time, creative challenges of all historical work. And this book is an important contribution to the study of youth and leisure in post-dictatorship Greece.
TL;DR: In Byzantine studies, there is little to no work on issues of physical or mental disability or on what could be categorized as critical race studies as mentioned in this paper, as well as no work focusing on intersectionality in Byzantium.
Abstract: of study. This imperative, for me, directs us to a field that must respond to contemporary issues, understanding that precisely because Byzantium is tied to articulations of modernity, nationhood, identity, and orthodoxies, its history comes to define the grasps of these ideas on our daily lives. A striking aspect of Byzantine studies that is left unaddressed, for example, is its heterogeneity, which is severely lacking minority voices. Not only are people of color nearly absent from Byzantine studies, but likewise are investigations on cultural, ethnic, and racial identity in the Byzantine sphere. Issues of queerness and sexuality are often engaged with reservation, euphemism, and hesitation, perhaps given the field’s ties to modern Orthodoxy. Thus, for example, terms such as transvestite to describe saints or eunuchs with nonnormative gender identities still persist with little focus on what a transgender or gender-queer Byzantine identity might look like. Furthermore, there is little to no work on issues of physical or mental disability or on what could be categorized as critical race studies. As such, there can also be no work on intersectionality in Byzantium. These are concerns and methods that comprise thriving areas of study in Western medieval history at the moment and which help articulate for us the historical depth (rather than the historical anachronicity, as it is often dismissed) of contemporary conversations around racism, transphobia, ableism, systematic oppression, xenophobia, police states, social injustice, economic inequality, and so on. If Byzantium is to be anything but byzantine, it must certainly strive for an intersectional future, focused on inclusivity in terms of its scholars and scholarship alike.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss cultural and national identities, modernization, and sociopolitical and economic transformations of the Ottoman Balkans, the post-Ottoman nation-states, and post-Cold War conditions.
Abstract: perceptions of Constantinople (Tsarigrad, as it was known in Russia) and its crucial position within the nineteenth-century Russian political agenda (Tina Georgieva). Although the chapters are varied in both approach and theme, certain emphases recur. For example, most chapters destabilize or challenge entrenched clichés and nationalist stereotypes in both Bulgarian and Greek historiographies. To some extent, the volume’s content mirrors Nadia Danova’s own contributions to the fields of intellectual and political history, even though recently she expanded her research to include socioeconomic themes (which issues some of the chapters do likewise explore). And yet within this versatility and high productivity, Danova is one of the scholars who have researched Greek-Bulgarian relations beyond antagonisms, exploring cultural transfers and daily social practices. She also heralded studies on the image/perception of the Other, or so-called imagology, in Bulgarian historiography, another topic that figures prominently in this collection. Many chapters in this volume likewise escape the narrow nationalist framework and interpret historical past within broader Ottoman and European contexts. This collection is an informative and valuable contribution to the study of cultural and national identities, modernization, and sociopolitical and economic transformations of the Ottoman Balkans, the post-Ottoman nation-states, and the post-Cold War conditions. By promoting academic dialogue, many authors not only address issues considered until recently inconvenient by their respective national historiographies but also offer critical interpretations to some sanitized renditions of the recent past. The book has a wider significance for the entangled history of Southeast Europe, Ottoman studies, and nationalism and thus would be of interest to students and researchers in those interdisciplinary fields.
TL;DR: Sutton as discussed by the authors argues that even the most well-intentioned offer of scientistic prediction and/or control of humans is always already a violation of human dignity in a way that careful ethnographic inquiry need not be.
Abstract: boards of trustees, and many fellow faculty members—to see “knowledge as product rather than process” [194]). I would then argue that, where human dignity matters, scientists ought not to treat humanity in the same ways that they treat billiard balls: positivist social science, modeled on the natural sciences, offers a kind of predictability and control over humanity that ethnography cannot. (Whether it actually delivers is another story.) But even the most well-intentioned offer of scientistic prediction and/or control of humans is always already a violation of human dignity in a way that careful ethnographic inquiry need not be. So, yes, for the social sciences, more nuance does mean better. At the very least, more nuance can help problematize, if not pull the rug out from under, certain generalizations—utilized for social prediction-and-control— posing as Truths. In choosing to conduct careful ethnography instead of positivist research, Sutton (wittingly or unwittingly) models the analogy of careful ethnography to Kalymnian cooking as “really addressing questions of what kind of person we want to be and what kind of society we want to live in” (47). One soon gets the impression that good ethnographic inquiry is, like Kalymnian cooking, inefficient; that it, too, involves Pye’s “workmanship of risk” (193), does not take “convenience” as one of its “core values” (45), and is “an imperfect pursuit” (196) and “a project without an end point” (23). Although this is only a short review (by an academic generalist influenced by schizoanalysis) of but one good ethnography, my take on Sutton’s book leaves me wondering about recent academic books in general: What if much of today’s (peer-reviewed) humanities and social science scholarship—supporting, to be sure, in myriad little ways, the value of democratic-knowledge-construction-and-evaluation—is also some sort of collective defense mechanism that helps repress the mounting evidence that institutional space for democratic-knowledge-construction-and-evaluation that values human dignity (that is, the academy at its best) is being, or is about to be, crushed like a juicy heirloom tomato by neoliberalist forces much closer to home than we are usually prepared to acknowledge? (What if my review here amounts to little more than my own coping strategy?)
TL;DR: Katsiaounis, Rokkan, and Servas as discussed by the authors discuss the political parties in Cyprus during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and present a sociological study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy.
Abstract: ———. 1994. Τα Οκτωβριανά και το Κ.Κ.Κ [The October 1931 uprising and the Communist Party of Cyprus]. Nicosia: privately published. Katsiaounis, Rolandos. 1996. Labour, Society and Politics in Cyprus During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre. Lenin, Vladimir. [1917] 1932. State and Revolution. New York: International Publishers. Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan,, eds. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: CrossNational Perspectives. New York: Free Press. Michels, Robert. [1915] 1962. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Free Press. Servas, Ploutis (Σέρβας, Πλουτής). 1980. Κυπριακό–Ευθύνες [The Cyprus problem: Accountabilities] . Vol. 1. Athens: Grammi.
TL;DR: In this article, a map of the prefecture (nomos) of Trikala (23) is shown, where very few of the names of towns and villages can be made out.
Abstract: gatherings of friends in someone’s house, now more commonly take place in a public space (inexpensive tavernas where each can pay for their own food and drink), which is in turn redefined as private. A few minor points. Figure 3, a map of the prefecture (nomos) of Trikala (23), is so small that very few of the names of towns and villages can be made out. It is only a careful reading of the text that can locate two of the three places which marked the boundaries of the research area. Kalampaka is northwest of the town of Trikala, with Pyli to the south. In addition, a plan of the town would be useful, particularly for identifying various neighborhoods, as well as for locating Asklipiou Street, which Knight describes as a “barometer” (25) for judging the impact of the economic crisis and a “metaphorical gauge” (28) for local social and economic stereotyping. The text is also, for this reader, impeded in places by odd word choices—“unanimously” for “uniformly” (30), “recuperate” for “recoup” or “recover” (44), “disinterested” for “uninterested” (91 and elsewhere), “reduced” for “under-reported” (118), “nuevo-riche” for “nouveau-riche” (148)—and by some ungrammatical sentences (particularly with unrelated participial clauses). These are, however, minor quibbles in the face of a fascinating and timely account of creative accommodation to economic crisis.
TL;DR: The Church of Saints Nicholas and Panteleemon in the Sofia suburb of Boiana, one of the best-known medieval monuments in Bulgaria, has been the subject of shifting interpretations reflecting the politics of heritage as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Church of Saints Nicholas and Panteleemon in the Sofia suburb of Boiana, one of the best-known medieval monuments in Bulgaria, has been the subject of shifting interpretations reflecting the politics of heritage. The church’s thirteenth-century frescoes have been utilized in the discourse of Bulgarian political elites since the rise of the Bulgarian nation state in the late nineteenth century. This article reviews that discursive history and ties the most recent interpretations of the monument to forces of globalization and to Bulgaria’s recent entry in the supranational European Union. Considering discussions of the relative adherence of the church’s architecture and monumental fresco program to Byzantine models in the context of the complex attitudes towards Hellenism in present-day Bulgaria, this article outlines possible reasons why the frescoes at Boiana have been seen as the unique product of a native Bulgarian genius rather than of a multilingual and probably multiethnic team of artists who were familiar with and painted in the highly prestigious Byzantine visual koine.
TL;DR: Brouskou's book as discussed by the authors remains fascinating, well researched, well analyzed, and with often startling findings, and it deserves a place in the library of every scholar working on modern Greece.
Abstract: Property—Women as Property (1986), Thomas W. Gallant’s “Agency, Structure, and Explanation in Social History: The Case of the Foundling Home on Kephallenia, Greece during the 1830s” (1991), or Eugenia Georges’s Bodies of Knowledge: The Medicalization of Reproduction in Greece (2008), to name just a few from the most senior and established scholars in the field (although she did include other articles by Hirschon and du Boulay). Despite this serious fault, Brouskou’s book remains fascinating, well researched, well analyzed, and with often startling findings. Scholars working on social and gender issues or on the interactions between state and society in modern Greece will find this an invaluable source. But the book also deserves a place in the library of every scholar working on modern Greece.