When I volunteered to review Maia Kotrosits’ After Transformation, I was aware that the book was not conventional in any sense of the word. As a matter of fact, its unconventional character—as described in the publisher’s blurb—was what lured me into reading it. The combination of different writing techniques (poems, aphorisms, short historical essays) adopted by the author results in a most unusual book that brings to mind the late Roman orator Symmachus’ famous sentence about the removal of the Altar of Victory (Rel. III): Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum.
The volume begins with an introduction in which Kotrosits, after acknowledging the influence that Peter Brown’s seminal The Making of Late Antiquity has had on her work, explains that writing her book was triggered by her dispirited mood during the COVID pandemic. This state prompted her to look for new forms of expression within academia, namely poetry and lyricism. For Kotrosits, lyricism is not just a stylistic choice, but also a way of opposing neoliberal and capitalist elements that have affected the transmission of scientific knowledge: “lyricism threatens to overtake this carefully assembled creature, the Scholar, with captivation and un-self-consciousness… It obstructs information-making, knowledge in quantified form. It is not strictly productive, at least not in the neoliberal sense”.
Throughout the introduction, the author argues that, by adopting a lyrical tone, her project aims to confront rationalist discursive styles since such styles participate in historiographical conventions which, in turn, fail to perceive the asynchronous nature of time. In her own words, the book is “a post-rationalist, post-realist experiment in living with and writing ancient history differently”.
After the introduction comes a prologue that revolves around the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus as told by Gregory of Tours: seven Christian brothers hid in a cave during Decius’ persecutions, fell asleep and woke up a century later in a Christian empire. Kotrosits interprets this story through the lens of Cressida Heyes’ Anaesthetics of Existence (2020), understanding that Gregory’s narration “is a story about anaesthetic time… The story is a wish to sleep through the demands and turmoil of living, through the boredom of waiting for change”.
The book is divided into four chapters. In the first one (“Fathers”), Kotrosits digresses about time and several underlying aspects involved in the process of writing in Late Antiquity (the gain or loss of status, prestige and power; the extent to which the Word was understood as transformative knowledge). The author’s reflections, which also incorporate autobiographical information concerning her family, are presented in different literary forms: quotes from modern literature on late antique studies; personal impressions expressed in an axiomatic way; meditations preluded by a reference from a Christian author or text; etc. Following the same pattern, the second chapter (“Notes from the interior”) deals with subjectivity and interiority by examining texts and topics from and beyond Late Antiquity: from Augustine’s Confessions to other late antique authors’ preoccupations with virginity to the gynecological experiments carried out on enslaved women in the late nineteenth century by James Marion Sims, Kotrosits addresses the factors that explain the attention paid to introspective behaviors in late antique society.
In the third chapter (“Saints’ Lives”), the author sets out to analyse the main topics explored in hagiographic literature and how they were articulated to provide late antique audiences with models of suffering, endurance or transformation through pain. Kotrosits associates these internal processes with modern practices of self-exploitation (“Not knowing what else to do, we worked at all hours”) and with mental health problems among students in higher education. The last chapter (“The Passing World”) intends to show how nostalgia, memory and the (in)ability to realize how the world was changing had an impact on the dynamics of late antique culture. The difficulties of living in a transitional time (“the past begs to return and, frustratingly enough, the past has a life beyond writing”) are explored mainly by allusions to texts from Egeria and from the emperor Julian.
The book concludes with a very short epilogue in which Kotrosits poetically conjures up her view on the asynchronic dimension of time and on the continuous changes we live through (“It was a time of change. It was like all times. Dull on the face of it. You lean over the sink, spit, switch the laundry”). Finally, an appendix with information on the late antique authors and texts included in the book is presented.
I would venture to say that reviewing Maia Kotrosits’ book is a more challenging task for a scholar than for someone unfamiliar with the codes of academia. The autobiographical dimension of the book, as well as its creative nature, makes it very difficult to evaluate in a conventional way. Therefore, it can be argued that After Transformation is not a thesis-driven work in that it does not aim to advance our knowledge of an author or of a specific topic, but an experiment to challenge established forms of academic writing and thinking about the past. As the author asks the reader at the end of the introduction, “Read this book laterally, not literally. Read it for proximal and residual effects. Read it for passing impressions, for the grain and quality of relations”.
In reading for these impressions and quality of relations that Kotrosits encourages us to seek, it is possible to ascertain the similarities of this book with others whose style and purpose are closely related to After Transformation. This is also true of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, in which the past is incorporated into the intimate universe of the author. One can also think of Antonin Artaud’s Heliogabalus or the Crowned Anarchist, a work difficult to label precisely because it displays some of the features found in Kotrosits’ book—unorthodox modes of writing; asynchronies; criticism of rationalist discourses at the service of an economic model. Furthermore, in some of the vignettes she composes, Kotrosits’ polyphonic voice is also reminiscent of imperial and late antique writing practices such as ethopoeia or prosopopoeia.
I concur with Kotrosits in her critiques of the dangers of academic professionalization, as well as with her claims about rethinking conventions in our discipline that might hinder the exploration of other kinds of realities. It is also positive to know that colleagues who feel frustrated and confined by the rigid etiquette imposed by academia have a place to share their approaches and free their voices.
Bearing that in mind, I think that the title fails to reflect the weight of her statements in the introduction. Given the complexities of the use of the terms “lyrical” and “history” throughout the book (e.g.: “the importance of lyricism as an epistemology”), their use in the title may be misleading for potential readers if they do not consult the publisher’s blurb in advance. Moreover, the mixture of personal episodes and nods to academic issues can sometimes be felt a bit disconcerting.
Regardless of stylistic preferences, Kotrosits’ book is a significant contribution to late antique studies, although the issues she raises about how knowledge is constructed can also be applied to most fields. After Transformation proves that there are alternative forms of expression and modes of thinking with which we can relate at both a professional and personal level.