Where would you want to be when the world ends? I’ve had that phrase running around inside my head for the last couple of weeks, convinced that it must be the tagline for a film that I’ve never actually seen – but I can’t actually find it anywhere on the internet. Which is a shame, because what I wanted to do was start with that and then say, well, of course it isn’t the end of the world – although given everything that’s happened in the last month it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that history is trying to cram in as much as possible having realised that the deadline is rather closer than expected – but only Brexit, but it’s still a valid question. Where would you want to be when your country’s decided to go for self-immolation while jumping off a cliff? (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘EU Referendum’
An Englishman in Berlin
Posted in Musings, tagged Berlin, Currywurst, EU Referendum, Europe on July 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
ISN’T THIS EXCITING!!!!!!!
Posted in Musings, tagged EU Referendum, Hegel, history on July 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »
There’s a powerful passage in Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History where he talks about the appalling experience of looking at the past: the display of passions and the consequences of their violence, the rule of Unreason, the evil, vice and ruin that has afflicted every society humans have ever tried to build – and the temptation to find a way in which this won’t affect us so much:
We endure in beholding it a mental torture, allowing no defence or escape but the consideration that what has happened could not be otherwise; that it is a fatality which no intervention could alter. And at last we draw back from the intolerable disgust with which these sorrowful reflections threaten us, into the more agreeable environment of our individual life — the Present formed by our private aims and interests. In short we retreat into the selfishness that stands on the quiet shore, and thence enjoys in safety the distant spectacle of “wrecks confusedly hurled.”
Hegel doesn’t endorse such an attitude – but to some extent simply offers an alternative route to the same goal, explaining and justifying all the miseries of history as the working through of a necessary process. I’ve found myself thinking of this passage twice in the last couple of days, firstly in relation to Uwe Walter’s observations, in his discussion of the Mytilene Debate and how this might offer a way back from Brexit, about the excitement experienced (if only momentarily) by historians at the spectacle of a truly momentous event, a single decisive decision rather than the usual compromise, muddling through and can-kicking. Then this morning there was a striking phrase in David Graeber’s commentary on the current travails of the Labour Party and the democratising aims of Momentum: “I cannot help find it a fascinating historical experiment.” In both cases these are honest reactions, not in the least intended to belittle the actual experience of being caught up in these events or their possible consequences – but still, I can’t help feeling like one of the people on the sinking ship, as the crew squabble amongst themselves about who gets to wear the big hat and whether the charts can be trusted, while being coolly observed from the shore…
Erase and Rewind?
Posted in Musings, tagged democracy, EU Referendum, Mytilene Debate, Paul Cartledge, Thucydides on July 2, 2016| 3 Comments »
In the aftermath of the onset of BRAGNARÖK, a number of people have been talking somewhat wistfully of the Mytilene Debate in Thucydides (3.36-48), when the Athenians changed their minds about massacring the entire population of a rebellious allied city. I think the first reference I saw to Mytilene on Twitter was from Angie Hobbs (@drangiehobbs) on 25th June (given how rapidly events are developing at the moment, I think it’s important to keep the chronology clear…), offering it as an exemplum rather than an analogy, but in recent days there’s been a blog post by Caitlin Harris, an MA student at Swansea (https://projects.swan.ac.uk/ancient-world/?p=386), arguing that it would be fundamentally undemocratic to deny people the right to vote again with a different perspective; a letter in the Grauniad from one Shoshana Goldhill in Cambridge (now there’s a famous classical surname…) arguing that it shows the ability for democracy to self-correct its own excesses; and an article in the Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung from Uwe Walter (Professor of Ancient History at Bielefeld, for anyone who doesn’t know his work), ‘Man müsste bloß wieder zurückrudern’, drawing on the work of Egon Flaig to explore in detail the circumstances of the second Mytilene debate and concluding by wondering whether the fateful Article 50 trireme that’s been dispatched will be over-hauled by a new Parliament, a courageous government or the obdurate Scots. (more…)
Into Darkness…
Posted in Musings, tagged EU Referendum, historiography, lessons of the past, Star Trek, Thucydides on June 14, 2016| 4 Comments »
A stranger appears in the city. He is awkward and sometimes distant in social interaction, and appears to regard many well-established customs and traditions with curiosity or even irony – but most people are happy to attribute this to the vaguely defined ‘foreign connections’ that are also offered as the explanation of his considerable wealth. That’s enough to win him acceptance in the upper levels of society, even to the point that he is assigned to lead an important mission in the war that the city has been waging for some years. His performance in this role is best described as diffident or hesitant – a former subordinate reports his habit in crisis situations of muttering the phrase proton prostagma, and then generally opting for inaction – and it is wholly unsuccessful. Banished from the city, over the next twenty years he visits many different parts of the region, appearing unexpectedly at every major crisis point in the war, taking notes and talking to people before vanishing just as mysteriously. At the end he returns to the city, remaining long enough to hand over a manuscript – “I have compiled your war,” he is supposed to have said. “Use it well.” – before disappearing from this planet for the final time. (more…)
Debt to Society
Posted in Events, tagged ancient economy, david graeber, debt, EU Referendum, politics on June 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I spent the weekend in Tübingen at a conference organised by John Weisweiler on Debt: the first 3500 years, exploring different aspects of the ideas presented by David Graeber in Debt: the first 5000 years within ancient contexts, from early Babylonia to the early Islamic period; programme can be downloaded here, or follow my attempts at pithy summary on Twitter under #Debt3500. My initial reaction to the idea was that it’s amazing no one had thought of doing this before. It’s not just that Graeber’s book offers some provocative ideas about the roles of debt and money in shaping human relationships (above all, different forms of dependence) that seem well worth exploring in the context of antiquity, but also that the periods we ancient historians are concerned with play a significant role in his overall schema of historical development – this is the Axial Age, in the phrase he borrows from Karl Jaspers, where world-changing intellectual developments went hand in hand with far-reaching economic and social changes, with dramatic implications for everything that then followed up to the slow-motion car crash of contemporary capitalism. (more…)
Immigration, Immigration, Immigration
Posted in Musings, tagged EU Referendum, migration, Thucydides, Xenophon on June 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Evocations of classical parallels and examples in current discussions of migration and its consequences in Europe have been pretty well uniformly unhelpful and polemical, designed above all to evoke the image of civilisation under threat from hordes of savage barbarians massing on the frontiers and threatening to swamp “our way of life”. It’s a little disconcerting; for so many years, following the general trend of the scholarship, I’ve been encouraging students in my Late Antiquity unit to shift their conception of the period from “barbarian invasions” to “migrations”, emphasising the fact that the majority of the Visigoths et al were seeking to join the Roman Empire, not sack or overthrow it, refugees from war and probably environmental crisis and climate change – and now it seems that this has become the prevalent view, but with all the fear and hostility associated with the “invasions” thesis now transferred across to migrants. Whereas once the manner in which these (relatively small numbers of) non-Romans entered the Empire was the crucial historical question, it now appears that any incursion of The Other from Outside is regarded as a threat unless proven otherwise. (more…)
UK Classicists for Better Use of Classical Analogies (oh, and also Britain in Europe)
Posted in Musings, tagged Boris Johnson, classics, EU Referendum, Europe, Marathon, rhetoric on May 10, 2016| 2 Comments »
Has Boris Johnson ever given a speech without throwing in a classical reference or two? It’s part of the brand, clearly – and always reminds me of Josh Ober’s classic study of Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Ober noted the surprising readiness of wealthy Athenians, especially those who’ve chosen an active role in public life, to parade their wealth and their difference from the mass of the citizens, even when faced with the task of winning over several hundred jurors drawn from the ordinary population. The ancient equivalent of a modern British politician taking off his jacket and tie, rolling up his sleeves and dropping a few aitches is conspicuous by its absence. (more…)
Sphinx 