[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics (2024) is a collection of papers, edited by Mathura Umachandran and Marchella Ward, which evidence the Eurocentric, white supremacist procedures of classical scholarship and present a set of deconstructive methods for critical engagement with antiquity. The volume is divided into four main themes: “Critical Epistemologies,” “Critical Philologies,” “Critical Time and Critical Space,” and “Critical Approaches.” The collection begins with an editorial manifesto by Umachandran and Ward (ch. 1), offered in dialogue with reflections on the limits and possibilities of critique by Sayyid and Vakil (ch. 2). The fourteen contributions to the CAWS project conclude with a response to the collection as a whole from Dan-el Padilla Peralta (“In the Jaws of CAWS”). The contributors’ collective commitment to disciplinary change manifests in the editorial decision to make the book open access and therefore available to read for free online as well as in print.
In leaving behind the colonial processes which structure western epistemological systems, the CAWS collective recreates the world.[1] The editors’ critiques of ancestral and genealogical claims upon antiquity which figure classical knowledge as a form a biological inheritance (pp. 14-19) are followed up by critical engagements with conceptions of space and time. Helen Wong (ch. 3) brings diaspora studies into conversation with the religious spaces of Delos to tease out immigrant experiences from ancient materials. Umachandran’s (ch. 9) critical deconstruction of the logics of The Barrington Atlas demonstrates how geographies are warped by claims of significance in a manner parallel to the hierarchical distortions of literary canons. Ward’s (ch. 11) critique of classical canon formation as a discursive process identifies teleological linearity as well as civilizationalist exclusion within its underlying procedures. The forging of the “classical tradition” through the exclusion of Islam, discussed by Ward (pp. 175-179), is a consistent preoccupation of the volume as a whole, which takes Critical Muslim Studies as its model (pp. 3-4, with Sayyid and AbdoolKarim Vakil ch. 2).[2] Lylaah Bhalerao (ch. 10) identifies the Athenian Parthenon as a site of jubilant Eurocentrism reliant upon the erasure of its Islamic history. Umachandran also demonstrates erasure in the removal of Palestinian history from maps of the ancient world: “the name for one of the most mapped cities in the world is given as Jerusalem and Hierosolyma but not Al-Quds” (p.150).[3] Nicholas Chukwudike Anakwue (ch. 4), addressing the marginalization of Egypt in classicist discourse as a deliberate removal of Africa from antiquity, and Patrice Rankine (ch. 12), identifying Carthage, Nubia, and West Africa as sites of discursive effacement within western narratives, offer compact examples of the vast exclusions of African culture from the classical canon.
While critiquing these constructed topographies, the contributions also reflect critically upon the interior narratives which both sustain and reinforce disciplinary self-image. Ashley Lance (ch. 5) offers a compelling deconstruction of injustice as an epistemological problem, demonstrating how excesses of credibility are attributed to those most proximate to power, forcing marginalized intellectuals into a position of credibility deficit despite their expertise. In exposing the fraught epistemologies of educational contexts, Lance draws attention to the necessity for changes in structures of knowledge: studying antiquity “can be more than just inclusive, it can be just” (p. 78). Holly Ranger (ch. 13) discusses a classical education as an assimilationist project with aspirations towards class legibility as well as an induction into whiteness. Ranger also critiques public-facing white feminists for their failures to address systemic injustices in the field in favor of a “move to innocence” (p. 216, citing Tuck and Yang 2012: 10) facilitated by rhetorics of empowerment which ultimately preserve and reproduce whiteness.[4] Similarly, Kiran Mansukhani (ch. 14) critiques scholars attempting to find classical influence in Marx’s dissertation in order to argue disciplinary innocence via the rubber stamp of a radical thinker, while simultaneously misunderstanding the Eurocentric, civilizational (and decidedly unradical) premises of the text in question.
Despite the variety of approaches on offer, the collection as a whole presents a coherent revisioning of antiquity, one which does not claim to be complete but invites future contributions to an iterative and emergent collective project. Yet there are some tensions around the principles of reform and abolition in the volume which are most fully present in the section which thematizes critical philology. On the one hand, there is some promise in Krishnan Ram-Prasad’s (ch. 6) offering of historical linguistics, and the many ancient languages which it studies, as an alternative to the narrow Greek-Latin binary which constitutes the classical curriculum. But the problem of linguistics’ disciplinary emergence as an ally of race science, whose discursive logics remain in its current scholarly procedures, is one which Ram-Prasad is right to address directly (pp. 94-101).[5] A related concern, however–and one not directly addressed–is Indo-European’s allegiance to formalism and the resulting disembodiment of language, arising from its study outside of cultural context, which is necessitated by the discipline’s aim of reconstruction via conjecture. IE’s strong emphasis upon form of language, allowing its practitioners to bypass the cultural competencies expected of classicists, does not make it an easy remedy to the positivisms which CAWS here seeks to trouble. Perhaps a future iteration of the CAWS project will include contributions from Near Eastern Studies or Religious Studies, whose constituents are also not limited to Greek and Latin.
The relationship between (dis)embodiment and language is precisely the issue raised by Hannah Silverblank (ch. 7) and Ella Haselswerdt (ch. 8) under the theme of critical philology. Each contribution offers a critical response, rooted in crip and queer theory respectively, to examples of positivistic certainty (or, indeed, “purity”) which ultimately amount to prejudice with real world consequences.[6] Silverblank presents tools for lexical intervention which disrupt the reproduction of able-bodiedness and antiblackness in the translation of Greek terms: amphiguēeis, an epithet of the disabled god, Hephaestus, relating to his conceptual bidirectionality (pp. 110-114); Aithiops, a term used of a people who lived south of Egypt as well as a generic designation for a black person (pp. 115-116).[7] Haselswerdt, meanwhile, addresses disciplinary refusals of Sappho-as-Lesbian by reorienting towards the materiality of Sapphic presences in queer life and art, emphasizing ephemerality, community, and co-creation with the text. Both contributions evidence how philological approaches, by using orthopraxic principles to (literally, figuratively, spiritually) “straighten” ancient texts, fail to see the nuances of human experiences within them. A traditional philologist’s response to the use of theory is to make accusations of anachronism or presentism, but it is these philological procedures, claiming purity and objectivity, which introduce modern prejudices (i.e., anachronisms!) to ancient texts.
Silverblank’s “Crip Philology” and Haselswerdt’s “Deep Lez Philology” join Emily Greenwood’s “Philology, Otherhow” (2022) in attempting to turn disciplinary tools towards reparative ends and, in some sense, subvert them. Padilla Peralta’s closing remarks to the volume identify the globalizing of philology as another strategy offered by those seeking its rehabilitation. Citing an anonymous interlocutor’s instinct to vindicate philology as a tool which could also be applied to “ancient traditions of education in parts of Africa…in China, Tibet, in South East Asia, and in universities of the Arab World” (p. 259), Padilla Peralta expresses reasonable cynicism at what is essentially a paternalistic and colonial aspiration. Yet Padilla Peralta here evidences a reformist attitude to philology, despite his reputation as a disciplinary arsonist. He writes: “Philology can be radical, but in order to do so its ambitions need paring down” (p. 260). Given the fact that philology imagines itself to be invested in “sobriety, objectivity, and rationality,”[8] it is noteworthy that the CAWS project, which, after all, explicitly moves away from “classics” on the grounds of its false claims to “objectivity” (e.g., p. 6), still retains philology. While some might have an appetite for forgetting philology as well as classics, several of the volume’s contributors evidently hold some optimism as to the potential for its reform and use as a liberatory tool.
In its collectivity and variety, its effortful interdisciplinarity, and its self-annotating, self-critical practice, this exciting collection of papers represents part of a wider sea change occurring across ancient world studies. The contributions to the volume are refreshingly direct, clearly written, and, as an open access publication, available to anyone interested in its approaches. Critical Ancient World Studies is a generative, thought-provoking text. Iterative application of the critical mechanism at its core will guarantee even more field-expanding work in the years to come.
Bibliography
Bellei, F. 2024. “The Nose at the Crossroads: An Intersectional Reading of the Pseudo-Vergilian Moretum.” TAPA 154: 213-250.
Blouin, K. and Rao, A. 2024. “‘In the Presence of Absence’: On Classics and Palestine.” Paper delivered at the Res Diff 5 conference, 22 March 2024. https://youtu.be/g4HSEkdTmeY?list=PL4iZ3UhdrOHpwOyNUj4-InaEqEWqhgpph; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Bromberg, J. 2021. Global Classics. Routledge.
Čulík-Baird, H. 2023. “Erasing the Aethiopian in Cicero’s Post Reditum in Senatu.” Ramus 51: 182-202.
D’Angelo, N. and Stewart, J. 2024. “Reconceptualizing Difficulty in Classics Using Critical Pedagogical Approaches.” Res Diff 1: 10-29. https://ancienthistorybulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DAngelo-Stewart-Res-Diff-1.1-2024-10-29.pdf; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Demoule, J-P. 2023. The Indo-Europeans. Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West. Trans. Cronin-Allanic, R. Oxford University Press.
Derbew, S. 2022. Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
Eccleston, S.-M. and Padilla Peralta, D. 2022. “Racing the Classics: Ethos and Praxis.” AJP 143: 199-218.
Everyday Orientalism (EO) and Critical Ancient World Studies (CAWS). 2024. “In Solidarity with Palestine: A Roundtable.” Zoom webinar, 23 Jan. 2024. https://youtu.be/PkrZefr1xqo; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Greenwood, E. 2022. “Classical Philology, Otherhow.” AJP 143: 187-197.
Gumbrecht, H. U. 2003. The Powers of Philology. University of Illinois Press.
Güthenke, C. 2020. Feeling and Classical Philology: Knowing Antiquity in German Scholarship, 1770-1920. Cambridge University Press.
Haley, S. P. 1993. “Black Feminist Thought and Classics: Re-membering, Re-claiming, Re-empowering.” In Rabinowitz, N. S. and Richlin, A. eds. Feminist Theory and the Classics. Routledge. 23-43.
Haley, S. P. 2009. “Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies.” In Nasrallah, L. and Schüssler Fiorenza, E. eds. Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies. Fortress Press. 27-50.
Kotrosits, M. 2020. The Lives of Objects: Material Culture, Experience, and the Real in the History of Early Christianity. University of Chicago Press.
Masuzawa, T. 2005. The Invention of World Religions. Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. University of Chicago Press.
Nguyen, K. 2022. BCMR review of Bromberg, Global Classics (2021). https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.02.40/; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Olender, M. 1992. The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century. Harvard University Press.
Rankine, P. 2019. “The Classics, Race, and Community-Engaged or Public Scholarship.” AJP 140: 345-359.
Tarrant, R. 2016. Texts, editors, and readers: methods and problems in Latin textual criticism. Cambridge University Press.
Tuck, E., and Yang, K. W. 2012. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education and Society. 1: 1-40
University Network for Human Rights (UNHR). 2024. “Genocide in Gaza: Analysis of International Law and Its Application to Israel’s Military Actions since October 7, 2023.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66a134337e960f229da81434/t/66fb05bb0497da4726e125d8/1727727037094/Genocide+in+Gaza+-+Final+version+051524.pdf; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Authors and Titles
Introductions
- Towards a Manifesto for Critical Ancient World Studies – Mathura Umachandran and Marchella Ward
- Critical Muslim Studies and the Remaking of the (Ancient) World – S. Sayyid and AbdoolKarim Vakil
Critical Epistemologies
- Reading for Diasporic Experience in the Delian Serapeia– Helen Wong
- Recentering Africa in the Study of Ancient Philosophy: The Legacy of Ancient Egyptian Philosophy – Nicholas Chukwudike Anakwue
- Epistemic Injustice in the Classics Classroom – Ashley Lance
Critical Philologies
- Comparative Philology and Critical Ancient World Studies – Krishnan J. Ram-Prasad
- Forging the Anti-Lexicon with Hephaestus – Hannah Silverblank
- Sappho’s Body as Archive: Towards a Deep Lez Philology – Ella Haselswerdt
Critical Time and Critical Space
- Colonial Cartography and the Classical Imagination: Mapping Critique and Dreaming Ancient Worlds – Mathura Umachandran
- Away from “Civilisational” Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean: Embracing Classical and Islamic Cultural Co-presences and Simultaneous Histories at the Parthenon and Ayasofya – Lylaah L. Bhalerao
- Queer Time, Crip Time, Woman Time, Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Muslim Time… Remaking Temporality Beyond “the Classical”– Marchella Ward
Critical Approaches
- A Loss of Faith Brings Vertigo: Icarus, Black and Queer Embodiment and the Failure of the West – Patrice Rankine
- Critical Reception Studies: The White Feminism of Feminist Reception Scholarship – Holly Ranger
- The Anti-radical Classicism of Karl Marx’s Dissertation– Kiran Pizarro Mansukhani
Afterword(s): In the Jaws of CAWS: A Response – Dan-el Padilla Peralta.
Notes
[1] As Padilla Peralta (p. 258) notes, CAWS enacts and improves upon the promise of a globalizing “classics” as outlined by Bromberg’s (2021: 97) reconfiguration towards “the recognition of alternative antiquities and the amplification of voices from outside of the field’s traditional spatial and temporal boundaries–and, importantly, from outside of the field’s traditional centers of knowledge production.” On Bromberg 2021 as a timely intervention at a critical moment in classics’ disciplinary history, see Nguyen 2022.
[2] Umachandran and Ward (pp. 3-4) cite ReOrient, a journal of Critical Muslim Studies, as a model for the CAWs project. ReOrient defines Critical Muslim Studies as “an epistemological orientation” which “includes a critique of Eurocentrism and positivism and an engagement with decolonial and postcolonial thinking.” See https://criticalmuslimstudies.co.uk/about-us/; link accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
[3] On the silence of classicists, archaeologists, and ancient historians regarding the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, see Everyday Orientalism (EO) and Critical Ancient World Studies (CAWS) 2024, Blouin and Rao 2024. On 15 May 2024, the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), a consortium of human rights centers at colleges across the world, published a report which states the following: “After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention [of 1948]” (2024: 2).
[4] For a similar discussion of public intellectuals seeking the “aura of virtue,” see Kotrosits 2020: 154-158.
[5] The history of comparative linguistics’ development hand-in-hand with race science is also the history of comparative religion (or “world religion”); see Olender 1992, Masuzawa 2005, Demoule 2023. On classical philology’s “co-emergence and co-dependency with race science,” see Eccleston and Padilla Peralta 2022: 210.
[6] On the “pretense of pure philology,” see Rankine 2019: 348. D’Angelo and Stewart 2024: 14 discuss the implications of philological purity in relation to classics as an “autodidactic or anti-pedagogical discipline” which “claims to simply teach itself.”
[7] On the Black feminist lexicon as a critical response to prejudicial translations of ancient racial terms by modern scholars, see Haley 1993, 2009, with Bellei 2024. As Silverblank (p. 115) notes, the authoritative Greek dictionary, the LSJ, gives a prejudicial definition of the Greek term Aithiops; for a similarly egregious definition of Aethiops in the Latin dictionary, Lewis and Short, see Čulík-Baird 2023: 183n3. Derbew’s emphasis upon “blazing” (i.e., “shining”) rather than simply “burning” in the etymology of Aithiops (2022: 14) demonstrates a broader semantic system in which the term operates.
[8] Gumbrecht 2003: 4. Despite philology’s projected self-image of objectivity, it is nonetheless identified even by its own constituents as a system not only of “probabilities and persuasion” (Tarrant 2016: 29) but also emotion (Güthenke 2020).