Representation of Others

“His Words were Nourishment and his Counsel Food”: A Festschrift for David W. Holton brings together essays on Greek literature from medieval romances to postmodern fiction. It provides an illuminating first insight into the variety of Modern Greek literature for the general reader, while also catering to more specialised students and scholars with new research findings and close studies of individual texts. The editors and authors, all former doctoral students of Professor Holton at Cambridge, conceived this volume as a thanksgiving present to him on the occasion of his retirement and as a collection which reflects the high quality and significance of Modern Greek studies at the University of Cambridge. The essays explore themes ranging from the erotic gaze and nightingales to cannibalism and dictatorships. Individual contributions discuss the relationship of Greek works with French and Persian medieval romances, the Italian Renaissance and German expressionism, and the influence of Shakespeare on the best-known Modern Greek poet, C. P. Cavafy. Others explore the interrelation of architecture and literature in the Cretan Renaissance masterpiece Erotokritos, the influence of religious texts on Roidis’s Pope Joan, and the assimilation of Byzantium into Greek historiography by intellectuals of Greek Romanticism. On a more personal level, the reader will learn about the experiences of a British Victorian woman translator in 1880s Athens, and the friendship between George Seferis and Sir Steven Runciman. Cretan cities figure in three essays which investigate the literary and historical context of the long Ottoman siege of Chandax in the seventeenth century and issues of identity in the modern-day lives of Chania’s Greek and Turkish inhabitants. Shifting notions of identity are further explored in the contemporary Greek novels of an Albanian immigrant author. His Words were Nourishment demonstrates the remarkable capacity of Greek literature to thrive within the context of cultural exchange and shifting historical boundaries.

The French exploration of Tibet (1846–1912) and its resulting culture has been largely neglected by critics. Accounts of French-speaking travellers in Tibet have mostly been subsumed into the imperial and geopolitical framework of British policy in the region. This framework, which came to be known as the Great Game, informed all British expeditions of the imperial period. Yet the insights and representations developed by French explorers in fact constitute a largely separate and specific cultural paradigm. The approach of the earliest Tibetan explorers is paradoxical inasmuch as they perceived both the land and its inhabitants to be so wild and savage that the existence of a Tibetan culture seemed impossible. Working with a diverse range of French texts and accounts dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, I shall explore this attitude under the heading of what I propose to entitle the ‘Tibetan paradox’. But this paradoxical approach to Tibetan landscape and its inhabitants was to be definitely superseded by one the most unusual travellers ever to explore the country, Jacques Bacot (1877–1965). On the basis of his expeditions, from 1906 to 1910, in uncharted parts of the country, Bacot came to play a leading role in the development of French Tibetology. In the accounts of his travels, Bacot pays close attention to how Tibetans themselves represent their environment. This change in focus signals the emergence of a new understanding of Tibet, for which the term ‘Tibetan médiance’ − to borrow a neologism from the French geographer Augustin Berque − might profitably be coined. Bacot’s perspective marked the first step in the development of an entirely new set of questions that were to arise within the human sciences in France during the twentieth century. As such it constitutes a cornerstone in the literary history of French representations of Tibet.

After 1948, Israel’s governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of othering Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, Arab citizens, and Orthodox Jews. They were physically segregated in their own schools and communities, and the elite culture described them as a threat against the European culture of Jewish immigrants from central Europe. The process targeted Mizrahi Jews before moving on to deplore the “demographic threat” of Orthodox Jews and resulted in the current normative hegemonic discourse in Israel that paints numerous groups as threatening the state. This article proposes a four-part model for understanding “the other” in Israel: contemporary denial and nostalgia for a homogenous past, the view of Zionism as a civilizing mission, the application of separation of ethnic groups in planning, and demographic fear of the other. Altogether, they paint a picture of an Israel that has not come to grips with its past, and therefore continues the process of “othering” in its contemporary ethnocratic framework. Combining the analysis of geographic separation, and planning and media, it presents an innovative understanding of Israeli society.

""Abstract. – In the past few decades, eunuchs have been described as being for the ancient Greeks a fascinating symbol of eastern effeminacy and weakness as opposed to strong, male Greeks, exemplifying ancient Greek orientalism. Greek tragedy has been presented as a major source on the matter, although very few of the characters in the Greek plays we know are eunuchs. This paper examines the three cases that have been produced as evidence. In two fragments of lost plays (Phrynichos’ Phoenissae and Sophocles’ Troilos) there is indeed a castrated oriental slave, but both texts are limited to a few words. There is nothing to suggest that the eunuch either had a major role in the play as a whole or served as a symbol to contrast Orientals and the Greeks. The third alleged eunuch is the Phrygian slave of Euripides’ Orestes, this time a rather important figure in an extant tragedy, but it is shown here that he should not be interpreted as being a eunuch. Thus, eunuchs seem to have been unimportant in Greek tragedy, and consequently they cannot be considered to have been a fascinating symbol of the contemptible Oriental.
Résumé. –  Dans les dernières décennies, les eunuques ont été décrits comme étant aux yeux des Grecs anciens un symbole fascinant du caractère efféminé et de la faiblesse des Orientaux, par opposition aux Grecs mâles et forts – ce qui en faisait une illustration de l’orientalisme grec antique. La tragédie grecque a été présentée comme une source majeure sur la question, bien que nous connaissions très peu de personnages d’eunuques. Cet article examine les trois cas qui ont été produits comme témoins. Dans deux fragments de pièces perdues, les Phéniciennes de Phrynichos et le Troïlos de Sophocle, il y a effectivement un esclave oriental castré, mais les deux textes se limitent à quelques mots et il n’y a rien qui suggère en fait que l’eunuque avait un rôle majeur dans la pièce dans son ensemble ou qu’il servait à symboliser les Orientaux par contraste avec les Grecs. Le troisième eunuque supposé est l’esclave phrygien de l’Oreste d’Euripide, qui est cette fois un personnage assez important dans une tragédie conservée. Mais on montre ici qu’il ne faut pas y voir un eunuque. Au total, donc, les eunuques semblent avoir été sans importance dans la tragédie grecque et ils ne peuvent par conséquent être considérés comme un symbole fascinant de l’Oriental méprisable.
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"""Abstract. Studies on Greek representations of the Persian world often postulate that Greeks viewed eunuchs with contempt, and consider them to be an illustration of ancient orientalism in the ideological sense of the word. However, if the analysis of the mention of eunuchs is strictly limited to the classical period in Ancient Greece contemporary with the Persian Empire, such a view is questionable. Not only are eunuchs not viewed with contempt, but they are only marginally present in Greek literature on Persia. The modern idea that they would have been for the Greeks a negative symbol of the Orient thus appears to be the result of later representations.

Résumé. Les analyses des représentations grecques du monde perse postulent souvent chez les Grecs un sentiment de mépris pour les eunuques, jusqu’à faire de ces figures l’illustration d’un orientalisme antique au sens idéologique du terme. Or, une analyse des mentions d’eunuques strictement limitée à l’époque classique contemporaine de l’empire perse remet en cause la pertinence d’une telle vision, car non seulement les eunuques n’y suscitent pas en tant que tels un mépris avéré, mais leur présence y est au total très réduite. L’idée moderne qu’ils auraient été pour les Grecs un symbole négatif de l’Orient s’explique par l’influence de représentations postérieures.
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