A SINGULAR ANTIQUITY

The reception of Classical antiquity by modern Greek society was subject to a complex historical process, now in need of rigorous reappraisal. Instead of merely importing older cultural genealogies from post-Enlightenment Europe, Greek intellectuals constructed their own readings of the past, based on the notion of an uninterrupted continuity in the history of the Hellenic nation.

Archaeology was called upon to perform a crucial role in forging a new identity for Greece based on the antiquity of Hellas. This idiosyncratic approach combined the rationality of Western episteme with the metaphysical certainties of Romanticism. Archaeology in twentieth-century Greece became therefore both an agent of intellectual advancement and a privileged participant in a heated debate on culture, heritage, and national identity, all projected against the inevitable backdrop of an unmediated past. Although this development was not peculiar to Greece, the Greek case constitutes an eloquent example of the way the vestiges of the past may be used to enhance the national imaginings, in a country whose antiquity is explicitly (if paradoxically) evoked as a proof of its modernity.

A Singular Antiquity is an attempt to investigate the ideological strategies, somewhat improvised yet at times quite effective, through which the materiality of Greek archaeology has been employed as the foundation for the metaphysics of Greekness. It brings together – for the first time on such a scale and with such breadth of coverage – archaeologists, historians, cultural anthropologists, as well as historians of literature, art, and architecture, in order to discuss the ways in which archaeology has established itself as an authoritative cultural agent in modern Greece. More than just a sidekick to nationalism (as an older, monolithic, approach would have it) archaeology in the twentieth century – the archaeologies practised and experienced by state authorities and private individuals, intellectuals and laymen alike – generates the utopian promise of cultural emancipation in the face of an academic discipline which, quite surprisingly, breaks its modern matrix and transcends its historical boundaries.

Price: €20
ISBN 978-960-8347-96-0

CONTRIBUTORS:
A. Bounia; V. Calotychos; D. Damaskos; M. Diamandi; A. Gazi; O. Gratziou; E. Hamalidi; Y. Hamilakis; Μ. Herzfeld; V. Karamanolakis; K. Kotsakis; A. Koufou; A. Leontis; V. Lambropoulos; D. Markatou; Μ. Mazower; M. Mouliou; D. Mourelatos; D. Philippides; D. Plantzos; N. Sakka; G. Tolias; D. Tziovas; D. Tzortzaki; D. Voudouri.

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