Indigenous Hellenisms/Indigenous Modernities: Classical Antiquity, Materiality, and Modern Greek Society

2009 ◽  
pp. 18-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Hamilakis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Of Greece

This article attempts to briefly highlight an alternative Hellenism, indigenous Hellenism as performed by intellectuals and state bureaucrats, politicians and citizens, and poets and ordinary people, in Greece since the nineteenth century. Through a process of sacralization, classical antiquity was placed at the centre of the emerging modern state, and the material culture of the past (ruins, statues, inscriptions, etc.) gained in status and value. While the new nation of Greece saw itself as the resurrection of an ancient entity, the ideological basis for this national project was provided by a home-grown synthesis of ‘western’ and indigenous Hellenisms. The discussion also argues that it was the crucial work of Johann Gustav Droysen which facilitated this synthesis. It was his idea of a continuity between the ancient and modern worlds that gave Greek intellectuals the impetus to trace their own origins back to the classical past.

Antiquities as symbolic capital in modern Greek society

Antiquity ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (267) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Hamilakis ◽  
Eleana Yalouri
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Western World ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Of Greece

The Great Powers — starting with ancient Imperial Rome and running up to the present — have valued Classical Greek culture as embodying the founding spirit of their own, our own western world. So where does the modern state of Greece stand? It is, more than most nations, encouraged or required to share what might be its particular heritage with a wider world.

scholarly journals The Ways of the Nation: Messianic and Universalist Nationalism 161 in Renieris, Zambelios and Paparrigopoulos

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Pericles Vallianos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
Western View ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Dominant Theory ◽  
Of Greece

The vital cultural project during the nineteenth century was the formation of an authoritative version of the national consciousness that serve to homogenise the disparate populations of newly independent Greece. Three towering intellectuals led the way in this process: Markos Renieris, Spyridon Zambelios and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos. All three adhered to the since dominant theory of the historical continuity of the Greek nation from prehistoric times to the present but held sharply different views concerning the role of Greece in the modern world. Renieris stressed the European vocation of today’s Hellenic culture, given that the foundations of European civilisation were initially Hellenic as well. Zambelios put forward an anti-Western view of the nation’s destiny, tinged with theological fanaticism and a mystical historicism. Paparrigopoulos was the consummate historian who emphasised the links between the Greek present and the past, chiefly through the medium of language, but without hiding the sharp discontinuitiesbetween historical periods.

Searching for a Modern Chinese Monument: The Design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing

2005 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delin Lai
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
Chinese Architecture ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
New Nation

In this article, I address the design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing (1925-31), the most important monument of republican China. By putting it in the context of Sun's ideal for a modern China, the historiography of Chinese architecture since the nineteenth century, various historical associations of competition proposals, the new commemoration rite the Chinese Nationalist Party developed for Sun, and the iconic needs in a cultural politics for awakening masses, I argue that Chinese-style architecture, rather than a readymade system, was an open-ended discourse, in which tradition was examined in relation to the new interest in international architecture. This is epitomized in the design of the mausoleum, in which various ideals for a modern Chinese monument-stylistic, functional, and symbolic-were conceived as part of an effort to fashion the new nation. Modern architecture, in this instance, must be understood as a material embodiment of the struggle to define a modern state.

scholarly journals THE CONDITION OF CRISIS AND THE SYMPTOMS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: FIVE FLIGHTS OF THOUGHT ON THE POST OF THE GREEK POST-POLITY ERA

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandros Kyriakopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The World ◽  
Of Greece

It is a well-known fact that Greece faces one of the most precarious and transformative periods of its modern history. Greek society has come to learn, in a baleful manner, that crisis is the sequence of its former political inefficiencies and a slump that must be overcome. The pressure of this awareness leads people to deface previously established social convictions about the self and the world. In this procedure, social and mass media articulate and (re)produce discourses from above, below and the past so to capitalize the present for a new and solid horizon for the future. This article challenges five beliefs that circulate in the Greek public sphere, inculcating in the collective consciousness their incontrovertible realities. The end of Post-Polity era (the “former” political status quo of Greece), the revival of ethno-socialist movements, the debt crisis of eurozone countries, youth's stand for social change and the role of Greece in this global financial turmoil comprise the contents of this critical debate; one that aims to make sense of what social change feels like in the context of the current global crisis.

scholarly journals Changing the Map in Greece and Italy: Place-name Changes in the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Eleni Kyramargiou ◽  
Yannis Papakondylis ◽  
Fransesco Scalora ◽  
Dimitris Dimitropoulos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Public Dialogue ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Fundamental Causes ◽  
Name Changes ◽  
Deliberate Effort ◽  
Of Greece

The concern of the newly founded Kingdom of Greece for the reestablishment of old place names dates to 1833 and was due to a clear and deliberate effort to break with the Ottoman past and connect the modern Greek state with ancient and Byzantine Greece. In post-Risorgimento Italy, the fundamental causes of toponymic changes wasto lessen the potential for confusion between the numerous homonymous municipalities that, once part of various sovereign states, were now part of a single nation. This article discusses the parallel paths that Greece and Italy followed on the renaming issue, where the internal discourse evolved within similar political and ideological parameters, both at an administrative and public dialogue level. However, despite their similarities, the final decisions in Greece and Italy were dictated by, firstly, the administrative organisation and structure selected by each country and, secondly, the political and ideological priorities, which were set in direct correlation with the domestic political conflicts, as well as the different circumstances each country faced in relation to its borders and the rise of antagonistic neighbouring nationalisms.

Of acts and words

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Alexandra Alexandri
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Modern Greece ◽  
Secular Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sophisticated Analysis

‘Sacralising the past: cults of archaeology in modern Greece’ appears within the framework of recent discussions on archaeology and nationalism and attempts to produce a reflexive and sophisticated analysis of the construction of nationalist discourses, both at the level of state and on an individual basis. Along these lines, Hamilakis and Yalouri argue that attitudes toward classical antiquity in modern Greece constitute what they term a form of ‘secular religion’ which presents distinct affinities with Orthodoxy. In constructing their argument the authors combine a number of analytical domains and touch upon a multitude of issues, all of which merit extensive discussion. However, the main point of their thesis concerns the relationship between the classical past and Greek Orthodox religion, a link forged during the creation of the modern Greek state. According to the authors, apart from being at the roots of nationalist state discourse, this link has also been a persistent, even dominant, feature in the popular perception of classical heritage.

A Review of Mediaeval and Modern Greek

1938 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-99
Author(s):  
N. Bachtin
Keyword(s):  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Of Greece

The Link will appear in May 1938, edited by Nicholas Bachtin. Contributors will include S. Baud-Bovy (Geneva), P. Bizilli (Sophia), T. Castanakis (Paris), P. Chantraine (Paris), R. M. Dawkins (Oxford), R.J. H.Jenkins (Cambridge) J. Humbert (Lille), L. Lacroix (Liége), F. H. Marshall (London), J . Mavrogordato (London), A. Mirambel (Paris), O. Merlier (Athens), D. Talbot Rice (Edinburgh), L. Roussel (Montpellier), G. Theotocas (Athens), P. Vlasto (Liverpool,) A. J . B. Wace (Cambridge).The main object of The Link is to interpret the past of Greece through its present and its present through the past, and thus to reveal the basic unity of Greek civilisation in all its manifestations and throughout its whole development.

Chasing the Past: Geopolitics of Memory on the Margins of Modern Greece

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Sintès
Keyword(s):  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Of Greece

Since 2008, Greece has been at the centre of European current affairs due to the financial and economic crisis. However, it should not be forgotten that before the current crisis the political upheavals of the early 1990s and the collapse of Marxist-inspired regimes had already radically transformed the face of the country. These transformations have been seen as a return of the Balkans’ question, raising issues of border disputes and migration, minorities and national inclusion. They have had far-reaching consequences on the relations between Greek society and its peripheries, and what some have deemed to be its destabilising diversity. In this context, the material presented in this book examines the strengthening of discourses of belonging which draw legitimacy from a glorification of the past and tradition. The fieldwork carried out over the past 15 years on the fringes of Greece has focused on groups who were stigmatised and distanced from standard definitions of Greekness. It provides an original perspective on the changes that the country has undergone in recent decades. The question of the nation-state’s future is raised through close observation on the local scale, leading to a debate about the relationship between areal and reticular territory within the framework of globalisation. This book also aims to provide non-Francophone readers with access to research carried out on these issues in France, shifting the focus of Balkan Anglophone specialists for whom French publications remain a distant province.

Archaeology and the 1820 Liberal Revolution: The Past in the Independence of Greece and Latin American Nations

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Diaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The French Revolution

Nationalism did not end with Napoleon’s downfall, despite the intention of those who outplayed him in 1815. Events evolved in such a way that there would be no way back. The changes in administration, legislation, and institutionalization established in many European countries, and by extension in their colonies, during the Napoleonic period brought efficiency to the state apparatus and statesmen could not afford to return to the old structures. Initially, however, the coalition of countries that defeated the French general set about reconstructing the political structures that had reigned in the period before the French Revolution. In a series of congresses starting in Vienna, the most powerful states in Europe—Russia, Prussia, and Austria, later joined by Britain and post-Napoleonic France—set about reinstating absolutist monarchies as the only acceptable political system. They also agreed to a series of alliances resulting in the domination of the monarchical system in European politics for at least three decades. These powers joined forces to fight all three consecutive liberal revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas, in 1820, 1830, and 1848, each saturated with nationalist ideals. The events which provide the focus for this chapter belong to the first of those revolutions, that of 1820 (see also Chapter 11), and resulted in the creation of several new countries: Greece and the new Latin American states. In all, nationalism was at the rhetorical basis of the claims for independence. The past, accordingly, played an important role in the formation of the historical imagination which was crucial to the demand for self-determination. The antiquities appropriated by the Greek and by Latin American countries were still in line with those which had been favoured during the French Revolution: those of the Great Civilizations. However, in revolutionary France this type of archaeology had resulted in an association with symbols and material culture whose provenance was to a very limited extent in their own territory (Chapter 11) or was not on French soil but in distant countries such as Italy, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire (Chapter 3).

Archaeology in Greek higher education

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (283) ◽  
pp. 177-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Hamilakis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Myth ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
The Ideal

The teaching of archaeology in higher education in Greece cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader realms of antiquity, archaeology and the past in modern Greek society and the context of Greek higher education. A growing body of literature has shown that archaeological antiquities have contributed substantially to the generation and perpetuation of a genealogical national myth upon which the modern nation- state of Greece was founded (e.g. Gourgouris 1996; Herzfeld 1982, 1987; Kitromilides 1989; Morris 1994; Skopetea 1988). This ideology of nationalism not only presented the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization for 19th-century Greece, but also presented the inhabitants of Greece as direct descendants of Socrates and Plato. Intellectuals and the emerging middle class merchants imported this western romantic ideology (so popular amongst the European middle-class of the time) into Greece.

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