Within Bounds/Without Limits: "Whither the Neohellenic?"

Abstract

Within Bounds/Without Limits: “Whither the Neohellenic?” Smaro Kamboureli If “Whither the Neohellenic?” is a question that registers a certain kind of crisis, this crisis, I believe, is twofold. On the one hand, it is symptomatic of the crises afflicting many academic fields in particular and academe in general. The radical questioning of old orthodoxies, many of them revolving around Eurocentrism; the rise and simultaneous problematizing of such discourses as those of postmodernism, feminism, multiculturalism, and postcoloniality; the rhetoric of “accountability” and positionality; canon debates and curriculum reform: these are some of the larger issues that speak of what I might call the pathology of the humanities and, by implication, of humanism. No matter on what side of these debates we situate ourselves, we remain painstakingly aware of the historical variabilities that constitute us as cultural subjects, and of the belated urgency with which we need to address them as teachers and writers. “A sound response puts down roots in the question. The question is its sustenance. Common sense believes that it does away with the question. Indeed, in the so-called happy eras, only the answers seem alive. But this affirmative contentment soon dies off. The authentic answer is always the question’s vitality. It can close in around the question, but it does so in order to preserve the question by keeping it open.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982:211) On the other hand, the crisis of the neohellenic is specific to the nature and range of issues with which Modern Greek studies is involved. 1 That studies of neohellenism are historically implicated in what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (1994) call “unthinking Eurocentrism” demonstrates the extent to which the crisis facing Greek modernity today [End Page 261] outside of Greece is disciplinary and at the same time indigenous to the subject. The statement establishing the focus of “Whither the Neohellenic?” as a conference/workshop—namely, that “globalization, the fight against imperialism, the manifestation of otherness or hybridity . . . are qualities or configurations which are not felt to apply to Greece”—holds, at least for me, the key to “the fading of the neohellenic.” To be blunt, I think that these discourses most certainly do apply to Greece and therefore ought to provide some of the perspectives from which we examine Greek modernity. Indeed, I am tempted to argue that we should consider making the notion that these discourses of difference are not relevant to Greece one of our investigating points of de-parture. I am not suggesting here for a moment that, say, multiculturalism would have the same meaning or applicability in Greece that it has in Canada, the United States, or Australia; if anything, various discourses of difference unequivocally declare the imperative to contextualize. But studying Greek culture abroad through the supposedly cohesive image of the seamless historical and ethnic legacy under the guise of which it is often exported does virtually nothing to foster an appreciation of the intricacies informing the modernity of Greece. One small example, which might seem inconsequential to some, illustrates an instance of the cultural and ideological gaps I have in mind here. “Macedonia: 4000 Years of Greek Civilization,” a collaborative television production of the National Bank of Greece and the National Greek Tourism Organization, is an attempt to promote the antiquity of Greek culture by forging its links to “civilization” today. It is, however, a miscarried attempt, for it remains oblivious to the fundamental cultural paradigm shifts that have occurred in the West. And I am not referring only to its images of ancient sites whose geographical locations remain undeclared, thus collapsing the boundaries of the Middle East and Greece. It is the narrative that accompanies these images that exposes, in more ways than one, the nationalist and cultural quagmire behind this particular kind of official discourse: the accomplishments of Alexander the Great are lauded because he aspired toward “internationalism”; in a twist of irony that undermines the expressed promotion investment of this program, this “internationalism” is defined as the dissemination of Greek civilization in lands whose indigenous peoples lived in “total ignorance” prior to Alexander’s arrival! The problems inherent in this sort of packaged history are too obvious to mention here...