Previous articleNext article FreeBook SymposiumSubversive comparisons Comment on Herzfeld, Michael. 2022. Subversive archaism: Troubling traditionalists and the politics of national heritage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Katerina RozakouKaterina RozakouPanteion University of Social and Political Sciences Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreWhat do the villagers of mountainous Crete have in common with the poor residents of a Bangkok enclave? How are the Chao Pom conservative royalists related to the democratic, and enmeshed—albeit reluctantly—in patronage relations, Zoniani? Michael Herzfeld’s long-lasting ethnographic engagement with Zoniana in Greece and Pom Mahakan in Thailand is the occasion but not the sole reason for their unexpected cohabitation in the same book. The two tiny “marginalized” and “isolated” (even if not geographically) communities have a reputation of lawlessness and have attracted the discomfort and, on occasions, violence of the central state authorities. But the reason for state anxiety does not rest merely on these communities’ alleged unlawfulness. Rather, it is their traditionalism and claims to represent an authentic national self that threatens the state’s authority and triggers its uneasiness.Subversive archaists draw upon the ideology of the nation-state, its dominant traditions, and values, and, at the same time, they contest the state’s cultural legitimacy by arguing to represent the genuine majority identity and preserve pure heritage. The concept of subversive archaism is complementary to crypto-colonialism, an important notion also coined by Herzfeld (Herzfeld 2002). Along with other cases, the Greek and the Thai nation-states were historically formed under the direct influence of great colonial forces. However, crypto-colonialism expands to a lasting process of constructing one’s (national) self in the mirror of colonial powers. Both states—with official historiography as their driving force—have constructed their identities on the principle of uninterrupted cultural continuity. Moreover, the crypto-colonial principle has also informed the construction of their respective bureaucratic state mechanisms which aspire to incarnate the (ideal-type of the) Western modern state.It is this bureaucratic modern state that is despised by the two tiny communities that live in the margins of the state. Their “alternative polities,” i.e., forms of social aggregation, primarily based on the segmentary patrilineal kinship of yenia (Zoniani) and mandala-shaped moeang (Chao Pom), may challenge the bureaucratic ethnonational state polity but at the same time they are a valuable resource to it (via the patronage system, for example, in the case of the Zoniani).One of the most interesting and provocative aspects of the book is its subversive comparisons (which is the title of chapter six). While one would probably expect a discussion of the villagers of Zoniana include some of their neighbors in the Mediterranean, Herzfeld consciously rejects this. Herzfeld invites the reader to go beyond regional logics and environmental determinism. To those who are familiar with Herzfeld’s early criticism of the exoticizing, orientalizing, and essentializing tendencies of Mediterranean anthropology, this should be anticipated.Subversive archaism’s comparative perspective emerges from detailed and sensitive local ethnography that is grounded in historical contingencies and, especially, the commonalities in the political history of the two places. This comparative project is only possible because of the author’s long engagement with the two communities, his admirable knowledge of their languages, and his persistent commitment to detailed ethnography that is bound to broader historical processes. Drawing upon specific places, this sort of “ethnographic particularism” (to use his own expression in Herzfeld 1980) is a project of “modest, caveated comparison” (Candea 2019: 137) that refrains from the ambition for generalization but still aspires to produce a larger insight (van der Veer 2016: 26).And yet, it is this project of comparison and the need to anchor it on such an accommodating concept as “subversive archaism” that, in my view, raises questions. Apart from the Zoniani and the Chao Pam, subversive archaism is an encompassing category that embraces very different communities around the world who are in conflict with state authorities and challenge the legitimacy of the nation-state on the grounds of moral and cultural legitimacy. To name only a few of those who appear in the book (sometimes too fleetingly, though), this category includes religious fundamentalists, minority groups, neo-Nazi groups in Europe, supremacist militias in the United States, as well as antivaxxers and antimaskers. Some of these communities are far less sympathetic (to the author and probably to the book’s readers, among them me) than the Zoniani and the Chao Pom as they are advocates of violence, fascism, and bigotry. Yet, their cosmologies call for a thorough exploration—also vis-à-vis the state and its modernist aspirations.The problem begins when subversive archaism becomes a “model” that some groups do not fully fit in. Herzfeld is aware of the dangers of legitimizing subversive archaism in its reactionary and violent versions. However, can we conceptually differentiate such “mutations” (p. 164) of subversive archaism from the ones of the Zoniani and Chao Pom who are the protagonists in this book? Herzfeld claims that the answer lies in these mutations’ uncivil quality, narrowly defined self-interest, and emphasis on individual rights over the common good. Yet this argument is not persuasive and reminds one of the uncomfortable limitations that normative definitions of civil society involve as far as, for example, fascist and violent (uncivil) groups are concerned. How does one measure civility? When does a version of subversive archaism become a “mutation”? When does cosmology turn into “conspiracy theory” and does such a differentiation contribute to or limit our understanding?Michael Herzfeld’s commitment to Zoniana and Pom Mahakan communities is evident throughout the book which, along with the author’s interventions in the respective countries’ public sphere and media, apart from his scholarly contribution, serves the purpose of restoring local dignity and contesting their criminalization. This is admirable and crucial especially as the author very consciously, I suspect, uses the weapons of the devil (see crypto-colonialism as the devil in this case) when he speaks publicly in these two countries as a scholar of a powerful Western academic institution which in Greece, for example, is considered an example and role model of modernism.And yet, the ruthlessness of the Thai state authorities that led to the demolition and almost absolute erasure of Pom Mahakan is quite different from the defamation of Zoniani villagers in media and the police harassment they suffer, culminating in a police ambush in the village in 2007. Zoniana is far from the marginalized and suppressed community of Pom Mahakan. The village still exists, and the reason for the changes it is undergoing is not the bureaucratic state’s abandonment or punishment of subversive archaists—at least no more than for similar changes in other rural areas in Greece. Another crucial difference between the two communities under study lies on Zoniana’s relation to the central authorities, which, although mediated through resilient patronage networks, still remains strong and reflects a most ambivalent relationship with the bureaucratic state (which Herzfeld himself refers to).Of course, neither Zoniana nor Pom Mahakan are frozen in time and Herzfeld mentions the transformations the two communities have undergone in his long-standing engagement with them. However, they still somehow appear as bounded entities of subversive archaists not letting polyphony and internal conflicts exit their doors. Perhaps constructing a solid and impermeable self that aspires to touch on the ideal of an idealized genuine national character is an essential part of the strategy subversive archaists follow. Herzfeld does mention different versions of manhood between younger and older Zoniani, but a more thorough exploration of local contestations of traditionalism would reveal the larger ambivalence of such idioms in the communities themselves. Moreover, nativist claims transcend localities and are malleable, as evident in instances where images of Cretan defiance and agonistic manhood become embraced and celebrated even by bourgeois anti-austerity protesters in Athens (Kalantzis 2016)—the same who would mock their “unmodernity.” Just as the state’s modernity is not always positively perceived (and the state itself, of course, is not an entity but a project that is constantly in the making), traditionalism may be experienced as suffocating by members of the communities themselves, such as women and younger people. Neither bourgeois modernism nor subversive archaism are unitary entities.ReferencesCandea, Matei. 2019. Comparison in anthropology: The impossible method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHerzfeld, Michael. 1980. “Honour and shame: Some problems in the comparative analysis of moral systems.” Man 15 (2): 339–51.First citation in articleGoogle Scholar———. 2002. “The absent presence: Discourses of crypto-colonialism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4): 899–926.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarKalantzis, Konstantinos. 2016. “Proxy brigands and tourists: Visualizing the Greek-German front in the debt crisis.” Visual Anthropology Review 32 (1): 24–37.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarVan der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarKaterina Rozakou is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. Her research focuses on the state, civil society, bureaucracy, humanitarianism, volunteerism, solidarity, migration, and displacement. Before joining Panteion University, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam and, in the past, as a researcher at the University of the Aegean and the University of Crete, and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. She is author of the ethnographic monograph Out of “love” and “solidarity”: Voluntary work with refugees in early 21st century Athens (Alexandria Publications 2018, in Greek), and several articles and book chapters.Katerina Rozakou[email protected];[email protected] Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory Volume 13, Number 1Spring 2023 Published on behalf of the Society for Ethnographic Theory Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724922 © 2023 The Society for Ethnographic Theory. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.