How does our knowledge of classical antiquity relate to the present and its problems? How do we as classicists – to address at least a subset of my readers – engage with the world through our knowledge of the classical past, or is our chosen field of activity precisely a means of not engaging with the world? (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘politics’
World in Motion
Posted in Musings, tagged classical reception, Go Went Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck, politics, refugees on September 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Assorted Alliterative Ancients’ Aphorisms
Posted in Musings, tagged China, politics, reception, Tacitus, Tacitus trap, Thucydides trap on September 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »
As I’ve remarked on here before, I really wish I had some grasp of Mandarin, in order to be able to get a proper sense of how Thucydides is being discussed in China: do they simply follow the conventional US international relations reading, and especially Allison’s Thucydides’s Trap theory, on the basis that this will help them understand American foreign policy thinking, or are they engaging with this and other classical texts (including Chinese ones) more creatively? A recent report from the Asia News International website (original link from @rogueclassicist) suggests the latter may be more likely, as it reports on an article from the official news agency Xinhua that speaks not of Thucydides but of the hitherto-unremarked Tacitus Trap. (more…)
Brexit Means Brexit
Posted in Musings, tagged Brexit, CthulhuUK, politics on June 6, 2017| Leave a Comment »
[guest post from the official #CthulhuUK campaign]
If you are exposed to a vacuum, the tears that moisten and protect the outside of your eyeballs will evaporate within seconds. I therefore urge you: DO NOT attempt to read the Conservative Party’s 12-point Plan For Brexit! I, mighty Cthulhu, guarantee the continuing flow of tears over moist, succulent eyeballs. My 13-point Plan for Brexit is truly of the abyss, not merely abysmal.
1. Certainty and clarity that the land *will* be laid waste and your children and grandchildren will curse your name as they cower in makeshift shelters from the Fungi from Yuggoth.
2. End feeble attempts of EU institutions to ban noble British tradition of human sacrifice.
3. Unite all parts of the Union in suffering.
4. Restore historical tradition of wrecking Ireland as well.
5. Cut off all contact with so-called civilisation.
6. Foreigners will be treated in just the same way as natives [evil chuckle]
7. Worker’s rights. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
8. Free cake.
9. Exciting new trading opportunities with Ulthar, Kadath in the Cold Waste and the Plateau of Leng.
10. A new technological revolution, as we return you to the Stone Age.
11. Full cooperation with global terror.
12. A smooth, orderly detachment of Britain from mundane reality.
13. Brexit means Brexit means Bragnarök!
A vote for any other party risks handing over management of the forthcoming apocalypse to weak, indecisive humans who are simply dying to backslide on the self-destructive instincts of the British people. Take back control from so-called experts and their rational calculations! #CthulhuUK
Luxury and Munificence
Posted in Musings, tagged George Monbiot, luxury, politics on May 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »
In this morning’s Grauniad, George Monbiot argues that the fundamental political decision of our age – not solely in Britain or Europe or the West, but across the globe – lies between “public luxury available to all, or private luxury available to some.” My immediate thought was of the famous lines in Cicero’s Pro Murena (76):
The Roman people hates private luxury, it esteems public munificence; it does not love lavish banquets, still less sordid behaviour and brutality; it recognises differences in services and circumstances, the interchange of work and pleasure.
I’ve no idea if this is a deliberate reference (Monbiot hasn’t responded to a query on the Twitter); rather like the “many not the few” line, it’s such a boilerplate contrast that the resemblances don’t necessarily mean anything. (more…)
This Town Ain’t Big Enough…
Posted in Musings, tagged Athens, democracy, ostracism, politics on April 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Wouldn’t it improve British politics (and probably the politics of many other Western democracies) enormously if we reintroduced the Athenian practice of ostracism – holding a vote to decide which disruptive and problematic individual should be packed off into exile for ten years? Actually my reaction when this was raised casually in a Facebook discussion this morning was: no, I can’t think of anything about this that isn’t deeply problematic – but, at the risk of using a sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut, and not at all because I’m procrastinating about writing a lecture and revising a chapter, the reasons why it wouldn’t work are worth a brief discussion… (more…)
If It Comes Up Mud…
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged David Engels, Europe, historical analogies, Historikerstreit, politics on February 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I am not a gambling man – but I know a pretty sure thing when I see one. David Engels has written a substantial rejoinder to the critique of his ‘The EU Is Doomed, Because Rome’ argument written by Roland Steinacher and me, characterising it as an Althistorikerstreit, and concludes with the suggestion that time will show whether he’s right or not. Fair enough; if over the next 20-30 years Europe collapses into civil war – and it’s worth stressing that this is not about a return to warring nation states, according to Engels’ model, but about conflict between suburbs and districts within different regions of Europe – and then willingly surrenders in toto to a single charismatic autocrat, then he wins, and as the prophet of the new regime will presumably be in a position to have me locked up and my property confiscated. We win if it doesn’t. My real problem is deciding what the stakes should be; let’s say 10 litres of fresh water, as that will be worth its weight in gold in any post-apocalyptical wasteland you care to imagine, and will be perfectly serviceable in any case. (more…)
Welcome to the Toga Party
Posted in Musings, tagged Donald Trump, historical analogies, historical comparison, Karl Marx, politics, Roman Republic on January 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The idea behind a Toga Party is obvious: to elevate the conventional student pursuit of drinking to excess by associating it with the well-established image of Roman decadence. Vomiting down one’s front is legitimised by classical precedent! To paraphrase Marx’s 18th Brumaire, the participants find in ancient history the self-deceptions necessary to conceal from themselves the humdrum nature of their activities. In a similar manner, the spate of Roman analogies for the rise of Trump serves to present our current historical predicament in more elevated terms as the crisis of the Republic and the potential triumph of decadent autocracy, as historical events in the grand old manner, rather than any of that tedious or depressingly complex analytical stuff. We are living in time of Great Men and Terrible Villainy and Heroic Deeds and Grand Gestures! The fact that this all derives from a thoroughly old-fashioned and dubious conception of history, just as the toga party is based on multiple layers of literary representation and reception, is beside the point, except for pedants like me. No, the Romans didn’t spend their entire time eating honeyed dormice, shagging their sisters and changing the course of World History with their speeches or battles – but ‘The Romans’ did, and that’s what matters. (more…)
