Conversations: Deconstructing 'Classicism' and So-Called Western Civilization, w/ Dr Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Liv and Michaela speak with Dan-el Padilla Peralta about his new book Classicism and Other Phobias, breaking down the 'Founders of Western Civilization' myth, the field of 'Classics', and the racialized mess its often made. Find more about the book https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691266183/classicism-and-other-phobias?srsltid=AfmBOooNqqmClxo_Lz-ZcYxaIW58u_WF_WyOl_ZLScbfyLtuHm7kL_LU, and the article Racing the Classics https://collaborate.princeton.edu/en/publications/racing-the-classics-ethos-and-praxis/. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 1:05Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host. Back with another conversation episode. I told you all that we'd been recording these for a while, and I was not lying. Okay, okay, so firstly, most importantly, well, not maybe most importantly, but firstly, Michaela is a large part of this episode, which I'm so thrilled with. Whenever the time zones permit, we are trying to get her included because I'm really interested to have like more voices involved. And this episode specifically, okay, I'm gonna be like,

• 1:42Liv Albert?

  I'm gonna be a little vulnerable with you all right now and just say that I, so we recorded this episode a couple of months ago now, and I have been so excited for you all to hear about it, but I also have been like, so we spoke, let's, let's get, let's get right, right to it, because this episode is so good, and it's really, the issues are all on me. Today's episode is with Dr. Dan Alpadia-Peralta, whose work I have been familiar with since I became a part of like the academic realm in classics in like any way. And he's kind of been on my list of like,

• 2:23Liv Albert?

  Oh my God, I would love to have a conversation, but I also like feel so unprepared. Because so much of the work that I have seen Danell working on is is based in like the really racialized aspects of classics, like the really problematic stuff around how, not necessarily like the ancient world itself, but that too, but in larger part, like the ways that the last hundred, 200, 300 years have impacted how we see the classical world. And I say that specifically because it is

• 3:06Liv Albert?

  the biggest issue in all of this realm is of course, like the Greece and Rome of it all and the whiteness that has been like placed upon them in recent centuries in order to like raise up this idea of the West being somehow superior to anyone else. Of course, it's all bullshit. It's based in so many different phobias. Actually, this, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize what I was doing with the title there, but it is based in so many phobias, um, you know, be they racism or xenophobia or all of these different things. And that is what Dr. Pardia Peralta's book is

• 3:47Liv Albert?

  about. So, oh my gosh, we had him on the show specifically because he has this new book out called Classicism and Other Phobias. And again, didn't use the word phobia intentionally, then just immediately realized how smart I sounded, less so when I admit it. Um, and, and so the the vulnerability is coming in where I say, I, I had no idea how to make this conversation happen. Um, there's so many moments where I'm like, I don't know what to ask you. I just want to know everything. But like, this is so far beyond my realm of understanding because it is so deep into like the academia of it all, which if anyone needs a reminder, like my BA, I graduated

• 4:32Liv Albert?

  in 2012 and I haven't returned to anything academic, except all of these interactions that I have with academics all of the time. But I'm not in that world. And so I just found myself like at a complete loss for like what questions to ask or like how to move the conversation forward and Danell's responses were so great and like he helped immensely, but like I'm super self-conscious of this episode because I just very much felt like I had just had no idea. I just wanted to learn everything and hear everything, but I was like, oh God, I don't know how to get us there. Which is also why I'm so glad we had Michaela. Um, I know that this conversation turned out wonderfully, but I'm just kind of prefacing it because I,

• 5:13Liv Albert?

  you know, I, I would like to be, I would like to be the type of white person who is like, oh my gosh, I am so steeped in my own privilege that like, I don't know how to have this conversation, but I want to have it so badly. And I want to learn and like, I am, I'm constantly looking for ways to learn and, and to like, understand the world beyond my own white privilege. And so I was utterly privileged to be able to do that. But I also just feel like, oh my God, oh dear, I have no idea what I said. Um, and so there's some anxiety coming through, uh, i- i- in, in how I introduced this, but this episode is so great.

• 5:52Liv Albert?

  And it's so interesting. And we really just talked about all the ways that like racialization, and I don't mean like race, but I mean, like the way that like it is turned into something else, like the way that affects how we learn the classics, the world itself, you know, so much of, of this book also, um, came out. Uh, the, the beginning of the book and you'll, you'll hear me talk about it, but like the very opening is, is a reflection on the student movements for Gaza and for Palestine and kind of how that formed this book. And that's, I mean, obviously in large, like, uh, what is an even bigger push towards me being like, oh my God, we have to have this conversation.

• 6:33Liv Albert?

  Um, and so I just know you're all going to love it. It's utterly fucking fascinating. You're going to learn so much. I hope you go out and read more from Danell and, and just generally take in this type of stuff because it's really important. We can learn about the ancient world and we can love it and obsess over it. Like I'll obviously do, but I also think it's just so important that we. Simultaneously understand the ways in which our understanding of the ancient world has been so heavily influenced by Western supremacy and white supremacy and whiteness in general and all of those constructs and like how that has formed everything.

• 7:13Liv Albert?

  It's just like it's such an important element if we're going to understand the ancient world with any kind of empathy and understanding for the current one. And I think that is so important. I mean, now more than ever, it was important when we had this conversation two months ago and now it's like, bah! So I, I, I'm gonna stop rambling now. You can tell that I'm anxious. But this episode is so good. I am so grateful. I'm so grateful to Danell for coming on the show and for indulging in my inability to ask cohesive questions. And we generally, I know we got a great episode out of this and I'm just

• 7:54Liv Albert?

  gonna sit back and think, I didn't ask anything smart, but gosh, we got a great episode out of it and I'm so excited for you all to hear.

• 8:15Liv Albert?

  Conversations: Deconstructing Classicism: How the Modern World Influences Our View of the Ancient World with Dr. Danell Padilla-Peralta.

• 8:40Liv Albert?

  I'm so excited to have you on the show to talk about this book, which is, okay, I'm, I'm gonna like preface for my listeners a little bit. I, I have not, unfortunately, have not had a chance to, to read the book yet. Michaela, I know, is partway through, which is great. I started reading your pages in. Amazing. I started reading the preface.

• 9:01Liv Albert?

  I started reading the preface because I wanted to, you know, have an idea at least where we can go with this. And then got so consumed by just how you started the preface that I was like, okay, well, now I I know how much, what I need to read about it, but also was already jotting down thoughts on on it. But it this book does both does does and does not fit in with my wider show. So I'm wanting to guide our conversation throughout sort of. I am not an academic, I guess, is what I'm going with here. I am not an academic at all. I left my undergrad in 2012 and never looked back until I started this show and then ended up talking to academics all the time.

• 9:43Liv Albert?

  So this is something that I am both like aware of and also so not in the world of that academic side of these, the wider world of classics. So do you mind just like maybe starting off with like what? Because I mean, the classism and other pho or classicism and other phobias is a great title. And also leaves a lot of like open to interpretation. Do you want to give us like a little idea of sort of why you wanted to write a book like this? What broadly, I mean, this is a huge question, so like just little bits, but like, you know, what what you wanted to address here? And I think that that'll kind of help us chat more about, I mean, any and everything within it.

• 10:28Liv Albert?

  And I definitely want to talk about the preface because the fact that you grounded it in talking about the student protests for Gaza was the thing that made me go, okay, well, now I'm I was not not expecting to see that, but also it was so impactful. I mean, I'm just rambling now is this question, but I would just love to know kind of why you wanted to write this. Where did that fall within, you know, the wider protests in Gaza? Like, how much did that or did it not influence the book itself? I imagine you were writing it, you know, long before those protests broke out and. Does that, is that a vague place to start?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  That's a great, no, that's a great place to start. I mean, I, and I, what I really found productive for thinking about our, our point of departure in conversation was you were talking about your experiences with, with the academy, with, with the university and university education. Because what occurred to me as I was working on this book, um, and what serves as a rationale for the book is helping to people think about what the responsibilities of the university and the academy are, right? So I, in all of the work that I, I see myself doing, um, as, as a teacher, as a writer, um, and as a, as a member of the academy, I, I, I take very seriously the, the obligation to orientate people, um, to the world of obligations that exists,

• 11:44Speaker 01

  not just beyond the university's walls, um, but, but within the universities too. And that really connects these two domains. Um, so when I, I began working on, on this book, um, for a lecture series, um, back in 2022. And at the time, you know, we were as, as a, as, as, as a, as a world and, um, as, uh, and, uh, in the angu sphere and in the global north, coming out of, um, a pandemic or telling ourselves that we had come out of a pandemic. Um, and in that context, I was very taken with the notion that, uh, there was a special and unique responsibility that, uh, academics had to shoulder.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Um, and I saw that responsibility as being, um, in some ways, um, uh, uniquely, uh, acute, uh, for practitioners of ancient world studies. Like I, I, I, I've, you know, long been sympathetic to the argument that, uh, there is a meaningful place for the study of the ancient world in modern communities. Um, and that in fact, how to draw distinction between ancients and modern is actually part, um, uh, of a, of a more, um, multi-form, uh, and, and, and complex process that communities all around the world are involved with. Um, and so as someone who claims to be, or has been a Associated with the study of classics.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  I thought that it would be useful to begin thinking about a book. Where we took seriously the notion that this process of world making distinguishing ancient worlds from modern ones. Is actually bound up with very present day concerns. Um, uh, concerns that strike to the very heart um of who um we choose to um. Uh, define ourselves as and to whom we choose to pledge our allegiance. Um, so with the book in its uh early. Uh, movements, I I was most concerned with thinking about uh the relationship of um. Black American and Black diaspora communities. Um, uh, and there I was drawing on several resources.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  I was thinking in the first instance of my own upbringing as a as a Dominican American in the US Dominican diaspora. Um, as a descendant of enslaved persons, um, and as a descendant um, uh, of. Those who arrived with conquering and malign intentions um on the shores of the Western Hemisphere. Um, I also, though, wanted um to situate my work in classics and in ancient studies. Um, in explicit dialogue with Black Studies. Um, and so I saw that um, the, the, the project of the book provided me with a special opportunity for. Bridging across a disciplinary divide that in my view did not need to exist.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Um, and that in turn um drove what um proved to be um a sort of moment of reckoning with, with the book. Namely, my sense that I had to do some hard work. In thinking about which kinds of communities um to hold myself accountable to. Um, so this now brings us to the present moment. Um, it was indeed in the latter and final stages um of, of drafting the book and revising the book. Um, that the student protests um, uh, began and. I found myself at different points during the protests um in advocacy for students and advocacy for.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Um, uh, Palestinians and advocacy um, uh, for the right to express opinions. Um, uh, about uh the unfolding genocide. Um, really taken aback by the vehement uh response um at my institution and at other institutions to the very notion. That. Universities should have a role to play in elucidating and clarifying moral and political commitments. Right. And that is ultimately what led to the preface that you see leading off the book. It is a preface that at once lays out a vision for the book, a book that is going to be concerned about this

• 15:52Speaker 01

  more general process of differentiating ancient from modern and from think and a process of a kind of discernment about what antiquity can mean for the present moment. But also, at the same time, a book that seeks to revisit questions about the role of the academy and the university and that is committed first and foremost to the idea that there has been a collective failure, an institutional failure in reckoning with the protests themselves and with the invitation to a real clarifying moral vision that they extended.

• 16:32Liv Albert?

  There's so much in that. I'm utterly, I don't even know quite where to go from that because I'm so interested in all of this. And also, I feel it's, it's an interesting thing being on the outside of academia while also being pretty hyper aware of what goes on to a degree, you know, like I, I studied a while ago now, but obviously in my work on the show, I'm constantly trying to reckon with, to whatever degree I can reckon with the, you know, Western supremacist nature of classics, of the interpretation of it, of like how we see

• 17:16Liv Albert?

  Greece and Rome, you know, especially as compared to the wider Mediterranean and everything within that. But I don't, I don't often find I have the, you know, the resources or. I don't even know the word I want, but just like I don't have a grasp on kind of how that stuff is happening on the academic level. So it's, it's interesting to, to hear about it, you know, from, from this perspective, especially, you know, with, or I suppose, you know, when it does come into conflict so specifically with Palestine and with the student protests and things. And I don't, you know, want to make it all about that, but that's, that's what's in my head, especially from,

• 17:57Liv Albert?

  you know, not, not having that, that wider academic, um, world knowledge. But to me, and maybe this is a way to kind of guide us into more of what you wrote about, but to me, the thing that, that stands out constantly and, and makes me, it, it feel like I am, you know, slowly losing my mind is the way this stuff is, is a, talked about as if, you know, I mean, the, the idea that the world of classics isn't political, or that history isn't political, or that, you know, it basically just the way that we do and don't teach about Palestine, or learn about Palestine, or any of these things. And obviously it's representative of like, a much larger issue when it comes to,

• 18:41Liv Albert?

  I mean, I guess to put it like a really fine point on it, like the overarching like Western supremacy and white supremacy that's like inherent in the study of classics. And this isn't leading to a question, I realize, I'm just kind of talking about it. Um, but I guess I'm just interested in like, what, like what, I mean, I, what you were looking to achieve on, on the side of this, this, I don't know, the reckoning, I guess, that you know, that you're looking in. And, and how it aligns, I guess, with, with black studies too. I'm interested in that and how you were looking at that combination. I mean, and the, the, Michael and I are Canadian also to, to sort of just have that overarching, like, I know a lot about

• 19:25Liv Albert?

  Americanness, but I am not in that realm. And so I'm, I guess I'm just generally interested in kind of how you were, you know, looking at these things and how you were, you know, connecting the fields in whatever way, or, or just this, the broader kind of what you wanted to look at in this, like the wider issues within this field. And yeah, this is not a good question. I apologize.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  No, no, that is a, that is a, that is a, a, a, a great question. And actually you're, um, You're referencing, you know, your, your Canadianness, Aaron McCall's Canadianness. Makes it even sort of more trenchantly obvious to me where, where to come in. There, there is this tendency, you know, I, I found this to be true in the academic study of classics. I found it to be true in other disciplines. I, I, I find it to be true in the university, but I also find it to be true in non-university contexts, to insist on, on the necessity of a certain species of parochialism, right? So the idea there is that, well, we can't always be responsible to, to all commitments beyond those that are circumscribed,

• 20:37Speaker 01

  they're bounded by the, the, the day-to-day work that we do. So like, we have to, we have to pick and choose.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  And I, I, I've always found this to be

• 20:48Speaker 01

  a pretty inhibiting way of operating and, and actually like a ethically compromised way of operating. And I, I see in the, the, the, the greater work of, of the humanities or of a defensible humanities to invoke this idea that Candace Chu and Ignacio Sanchez Prado have both discussed. A call to think about how capacious we can be when we think about the interrelationship of the practice of the humanities and our wider moral and political commitments, right? It's all happened that, um, early on, um, in the protests on our campus,

• 21:30Speaker 01

  um, I was teaching a course on the history of citizenship that ranges from the ancient Middle East and ancient Greece and Rome, uh, down to, uh, the 20th and early 21st century. And we had this spirited discussion in, in that course of, um, a text that I really love to teach, which is Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. And in that letter, there are several instructive moves for anyone who wants to think about, um, the, the range and arc of moral commitments. One is the toggle between ancients and modern. Just as the prophets of the 8th century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of Their hometowns and just as the apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel to the far corners of the Greek Roman world.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my hometown, right? So I mean, there's, there's, there's already in, in, in the work of King, and it should be noted. Other civil rights activists and philosophers and understanding of how the threads of antiquities in the plural. Can weave their way into the fabric of modernity and the kinds of ethical claims that might be developed to answer very specifically modern. Demands, but then there's the other side of, of this issue that King raises in that same letter and indeed in the very next paragraph.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  The interrelatedness of all communities and states. And this is where I find the most sort of piercing summons to move beyond that parochialism that I identified a moment ago as a property of disciplines. Of, of institutions, academic and non academic, of nation states for that matter. When now we connect back to your self interpolation as, as Canadians. And to embrace instead a form of critical engagement with the world. That acknowledges the inescapable network of sexuality tied to in a single garments of destiny that King. Wrote about and that others have since philosophized about that to me seems an obligation.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Can and should be carried out within the halls of the university, but that can also be profitably and meaningfully pursued beyond the university as well. And so what I, I found, you know, harrowing is that in much of the conversation. That occurred in connection with the soon protest on my campus and many other campuses. There was little to no recognition of the degree to which the humanities afford a structure for thinking that. Necessarily summons people to extend the range and depth of their moral vision. Right? If you're serious about what the humanities can accomplish or how transformative they can be.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Then you should be prepared to entertain the notion that one of the things they call you to do is to think far beyond the. Horizon of moral possibilities that had been presented to you as a given when you were younger. Right. So that that that seems to me like such a a deficit, crying out for remediation and rectification. And how university institutions and how centers of learning were contending with the the the the the call to action of the protest that I felt it was necessary at that point to think how to make a recognition of that central to the opening movements of the book. At the same time, I also thought that the book itself would move in that direction charted

• 24:55Speaker 01

  by civil rights theorists and and and philosophers, inasmuch as the book made a case about the interrelatedness of communities and states that look specifically at the forms of knowledge production that ensue from these different communities and states. And would then argue on the basis of some of the links that can be recovered among these. What do we do when we prioritize certain traditions over others? What do we do when we adopt these supremacist postures that overrepresent a particular and like rather sclerotic understanding of the ancient world over the multiplicities of ancient worlds that we can use to clarify our own ongoing ethical commitments. That to me was the twofold ambition of the book.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yes, I find that really interesting because when I, you know, I'm only, I'm on the second chapter and I'm like, I was trying to get through it yesterday, but I was like, no, this is a book I need to sit and digest because I'm an indigenous person as well, Canada, though, I mean, technically our territories were in both countries, but you know, it's modern borders. And it's something I think about so much about sort of the westernization mindset toward things versus other cultures mindsets. Specifically in relation to mine, where I'm a huge land back person. And the amount of times I have to explain to people what that means is exhausting.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Because there's just this like concept of how you can own land that is very Western that does not exist within really my people's traditional traditions. So, and in the introduction.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Of your book on I I I don't normally like writing in books, but I literally was like on the bus reading this, got to the dentist's office. I was like, give me a pen, give me a pen. I need to be underlining things. I'm like, oh, God. Um, it was like on page seven where you said, if whiteness is the condition of total ownership of the earth, then blackness is the condition of non-ownership. And it just, it got me thinking of sort of like these constructions of um cul- cultural constructions of things where, you know, the West has this idea of what does ownership look like? What does, what is land supposed to be used for? What is? Um, what does education look like? What does law in a proper society look like that has so entrenched in?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  You know, especially in North American ideals versus um and like I'm not familiar with the black sides of things because that's not my experience. And but like when it comes to like my people, I'm like, you know, for us, we believe we're stewards of the land. There is no ownership. You cannot own the land. We take care of the land and how that entrenches into how we view the land and viewing, taking care of other people. Where it's like, the idea is we're all in a way extended family. So we're supposed to all take care of each other, but this doesn't extend into like when I go into academia, when I'm at school, that's not there where that community sense isn't

• 27:54Speaker 02

  present and it's uncomfortable and it's strange for me. Um, but it was just, yeah, I'm, where am I going with this?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  I guess it's just this like, the construction of classics as a discipline, the university system is so Western that it's how do we disentangle that into something new in our modern day where now we have so many different sort of traditions and and people coming from different backgrounds where, hey, this, this, you know, Western tradition, Western white tradition may not actually be the right, perfect way to do it. And yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I mean, that you settled on on that passage already to me is um. Is energizing because it means that one driving aim of the book has already seeded itself in the mind of my reader.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  So, you know, that definition, that sort of definition structured as a conditional that takes one idea from W. B. Du Bois's writings and seeks to expand it. Also looks ahead to a discussion I have in one of the later chapters about the extent or willingness of people like Du Bois, who figures prominently in my account, can sort of meaningfully grapple with Native/Indigenous claims and philosophies. So you were absolutely right, I think, to alight on the sort of possession/dispossession axis

• 29:38Speaker 01

  and my mapping sort of whiteness and blackness onto it as, to some degree, patterning the book and its argumentative architecture. And at the same time, in zeroing in on that and then drawing attention, as you did, to the extent to which the worldviews and orientations and sensibilities to land and to stewardship that characterize Native/Indigenous philosophies vary considerably from this notion of dispossession. You already charted out one of the epistemic limits of the book in its text, right?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  So in the book itself, I talk about how Du Bois, for all his gifts, and there were many and varied, really had some shortcomings when it came to acknowledging the destructive pervasiveness of settler colonialism and the agency of those who, despite the exterminatory logics of settler colonialism, remained alive and with a claim to the land, right? And there, the move, as I see it, again, is twofold. Because on the one hand, I want to say, okay, Du Bois had this limit. He could not see past this.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Particular way of construing the world, a way that had become alive to him as a function of his socialization, his training, his entire conditioning within and past the academy and so on. But that is also a meta-reflection on the book In Your Hands, right? Because of course, there are things I can't see, because I don't occupy the subject identities of the people who can see them, right? So here again, as I try to emphasize at different points in the book, the call is not to a kind of mastery. Any sort of notion of mastery that would presume that I could lay claim to the totality of experiences of minoritization

• 31:42Speaker 01

  and subjection would be false on face and false on closer inspection. The call is rather to a sort of sympathetic alignment and solidarity that would recognize that there are many other voices that need participating in the conversation. And that there are perspectives that we can talk about as being structurally alienated from the work of the academy, because the holders of those perspectives have been shut out from university contexts. And so we would want to begin the work of transforming the knowledges that receive attention and curation in the academy by welcoming

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Putting those perspectives. But, and this is another point I emphasize in the book, representation is the beginning, but not the end.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  So, you know, once, if there should be some success in welcoming practitioners of those kinds of embodied knowledges, then the next step is to think about how the knowledges themselves that are the site of their interventions will necessarily have to undergo change, right?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that just reminded me of a quote, and it was literally on the page right before, page five, the, oh, I'm going to say this name wrong, but the Kadri Ismail quote, "The trouble with dead white men is that some are not men, many not white, and an alarming number not even dead." Where it's like, yeah, and this is something I've kind of tackled with when I've talked to, because I'm currently just doing my undergrad here at UBC. And I have had sort of like Not really conflict moments, but knock up moments with some professors where I've just been like, well, why do we conceptualize it this way? Could it be this way? Could it be this opposite way? Like, this is my perspective of how I view land and ownership. Why are you saying that the way the West has viewed it has always been,

• 33:29Speaker 02

  is the way that the Romans viewed it? Or is the way the ancient Greeks viewed it? Because when I look at sort of how the discipline is now, it feels like it is the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome are such a construction of what the early field wanted it to be, to reflect their own purposes and aims in the world and sort of that early colonial way of justifying what they were doing. And they were like, look, the ancient Greeks and Romans did this. Okay, more the Romans. But, you know, it's, there's, there's something in it where I'm like, this feels more like it's a construction to justify modern actions. And how much of that is true? And how much of it isn't?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  So when I come in with a different perspective, I'm like, I'm not saying the ancient Greeks were like my people. But I'm saying, what I am saying is, could it be more leaning towards that way than the way that you're prescribing it? Where does it say that it's like the way, like, you know, it's, it's, it just feels like the field is such a construction of what a certain group of people wanted it to be in order to justify their actions at the time. And that still is being held on to so tightly today. Like, I even had some guy I knew from like, high school at my tenure reunion, was, he was all like, oh, I'm teaching myself ancient Greek. And I was like, okay.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  And then he was like, me and my other friend were talking about Sappho and sort of the queerness of it. And he got so upset. He was like, well, have you read it in the original? I'm like, no, that's Aeolic. That's, like, he was like, I have. And I'm like, oh, you've read Aeolic? You understand? He's like, yeah. And I just don't like it when people put their modern agendas on ancient things. And I was like, oh, honey.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Oh, we're not gonna have a conversation about this because you're not open for it. But, oh, honey. And but it feels it's that sense where so much now, and I think there is a push to move away from that, but so much of the field now feels like this is what it is, this is what it has been. We kind of have to stay within those confines. And I really am enjoying your book because it's pushing that aside where it's like, does it fit? Is that what it is? And who says, you know?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  No, I I'm so glad that you're enjoying the book precisely for that reason. And I mean, I I'm

• 35:54Speaker 01

  in in in to to think for a moment with the example that you gave of the the the not friend as as versed himself in in the Greek original.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  I I I sometimes find it difficult to convey this point, and I I I am gonna apologize apologize to all, you know, listeners for what may be a sort of flavor of of patronizing that comes to in this point. But it's it's very hard to get one's mind around how genuinely difficult recovery in ancient world and all of its complexity is. And I I what I I find most challenging about some of the conversations I've had in recent years with people who are not only, you know, likely to disagree with me for various reasons, but who insist that I'm somehow projecting some kind

• 36:48Speaker 01

  of modern or contemporary ancient world, is that if you believe, as they say they do,

• 36:57Speaker 01

  in the, you know, the the difficulty of recovering in full, the many and varied elements of of the ancient worlds and, you know, the cultures of the Greeks and Romans and other Mediterranean communities and whatnot, then surely you should subscribe to the idea that we need every single resource at our disposal. And that would mean taking into consideration the perspectives and knowledges of people who may, for instance, know something more about queer sensibilities and notions and perspectives and theories than you. Right? So like, it it would, for me, any predication of the idea that antiquity is complex and multifaceted.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Has to set up the, what seems to be an unavoidable conclusion, namely that for precisely that reason, we need every single possible interpretative resource at our disposal. And those interpretative resources lodged as they are in not, not just sort of disembodied abstract knowledges, but in the kinds of worldviews that, that each of us by virtue of the concatenation of life circumstances has come to hold and nurture, that exactly is what is needed, right? So to me, the, the, the, the, the objection that I, I see raised in many circles, but especially those

• 38:26Speaker 01

  that originate in, in, in certain

• 38:31Speaker 01

  more conservative corners of the classicist universe, that such engagements amount to a sort of a synchronizing projection into the ancient world, seem to me open to counters on two grounds. Such, such an objection fails to take seriously the complexity of the ancient world, and it also fails to take seriously a point that you had raised, Michaela, which is that those who are raising this criticism themselves occupy subject positions that require interrogation and analysis, and that will invariably lead them to impose

• 39:12Speaker 01

  the forms of interpretation and reconstruction that are locked in step with their own subject positions. Put another way, and this is a, a point that I sort of raise here and there in classicism and other phobias. If you are coming from the position that, that we are holding, you know, the, the we being the three of us.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  It is much easier to arrive at an analysis of the relationship between positionality and interpretation than it is if you arrive from the subject position of your frenemy.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  So because that second subject position assumes that everything that is knowable about the ancient world is only knowable by reference to its own already constructed form of subjectivizing that ancient world. Whereas we are in the position of saying, okay, we recognize that we have these perspectives and that there are also potentially other perspectives and that each of these perspectives will necessarily result in a differently tussulated understanding of the ancient world, but that collectively we can arrive at a reconstruction of those ancient worlds that is far more dynamic and far more robust and that crucially

• 40:29Speaker 01

  doesn't foreclose avenues of interpretation before we've even begun traveling them, right?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, it's sort of the people have always been people and people have always been complex, dynamic, insane weirdos. Like, that is normal. To think that they were just this one stagnant thing is narrow-minded and restrictive and strips them of their humanity.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:06Liv Albert?

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• 41:48Liv Albert?

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• 42:32Liv Albert?

  so find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at quince download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too and when quince asks where you heard about them let them know it was me let's talk about myths baby it's the best way to support the show

• 43:11Liv Albert?

  just because I've been I mean I'm sorry no I'm so here for all of this and I'm also like wow I'm out of my depth in certain elements but in a really interesting way and I love it but something that I've been thinking about in just listening to to both of you talk about this is the way I connect it and so I'm just I'm gonna put it on like I'm simplifying it a little for my listeners because also it's what my brain's doing um but I'm thinking about this in the way that it it manifests through translation I guess is the the what I'll keep simple because you know I'm always coming at the ancient world from the perspective of

• 43:52Liv Albert?

  Angry feminist verging on misandrist, closer and closer every day. And so to me, it comes through in that way where I, you know, I, I, I'm loving all the new translations, often done by women, admittedly, unfortunately, primarily white women. But they are coming at it from this distinctly different position than most of the translations prior. You know, whether it's Emily Wilson's translations of Homer, or I, I, I think about Ovid, the translated by Stephanie McCarter, because she and I talked about it for, for the show a few years ago. And I, I just distinctly remember her talking about coming at some of these translations,

• 44:36Liv Albert?

  you know, from a place of bias, of recognizing your human bias and whatever that looks like. And so often, you know, up until very recently, the world of, of ancient Greece and Rome, so specifically, like, I don't even want to say the wider Med, because I really mean them, like, has been, you know, a, a, as you were saying too, Michaela, it's been interpreted by this like very specific subset of people who have decided what it looked like and what it didn't look like. And anytime anyone tries to counter that in whatever little way, you know, you come up against so much pushback in, in, in various ways.

• 45:18Liv Albert?

  And obviously, like, it, it varies in degrees. But it, it is, you know, it, it, it's such an, it, it's obviously like a very complex issue. And like, there's so many moving parts. But I just always, I, I go back to what, what you also said, Michaela, like, people were always people. Why is it that when we want to examine these elements of the ancient world and the people in it, you know, we are? It is told like, oh, it's not that way, or you're you're putting your modern, you know, intentions on to anything, but everything was it the the every old white man over the last 2,000 years or so has put their

• 46:03Liv Albert?

  bias on to the interpretation of the ancient world. It's just that we then collectively decided that wasn't biased. That was history. Whereas everything now where we're trying other people outside of those initial minds, you know, are are trying to understand not differently, but more like understand more about the ancient world. And there's always that pushback from the like, oh, no, you know?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  And it feels like those the the old white guys are treated as the authority and like the touchstone like that is where we should start at when understanding this world.

• 46:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, there's no going back and taking back what they did to look at something from a more. I don't even want to say like objective, but just like recognizing bias like that's the thing I think that a lot certain people are able to do in this realm and then but very often, you know, the the people who are pushing back against any kind of reexamination. You know, are the ones who believe that they don't have a bias or that history is objective and that it, you know, I don't it's I'm just constantly screaming into this microphone lately about how every single thing that we know from history is

• 47:16Liv Albert?

  subjective and and, you know, determined by people over however many, you know, millennia, but none of it is just like inherently the truth. And so why are we? So I don't know. Yeah, it's it's an interesting. It's an interesting disaster and obviously like looking at these ways of solving it or also just like, yeah, questioning these things, pushing back against these ideas. I don't know. Again, I'm just kind of. Free-flowing thoughts here, but I love, I I I'm fascinated by this project of trying to break down these things. And also, my gosh, it it feels monumental.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it is. It is a monumental undertaking, but you know, we we we have many openings available to us. I mean, you you had already remarked the value and meaningfulness of translation as a a space from which to contemplate the the the the incrustations and the distortions and the perversions of um, the many, many centuries of notation of these texts, as well as the um, uh, potentially emancipatory moves towards giving these texts new meanings that speak also at the same time to ancient complexities and uh, to modern sensibilities and perspectives, right? So, you know, I I've been

• 48:42Speaker 01

  uh, teaching um, over the course of the summer. Um, and uh, with with my um, co-instructor for a summer course um, for high schoolers, uh, uh, we um, came up with a plan for, you know, teaching the Odyssey and um, spent the past few days on on the Odyssey. And one of the things that we wanted to train the sites of the high school students on um, was how translations conceal within themselves a universe um, of uh, suppositions that that range um, across the full spectrum um, of um, ideological interpretative commitments, right? Um, and in in in for today's class, one of the things that we wanted to focus their

• 49:24Speaker 01

  attention on um, was the rather explicit misogyny um, of of previous translations in English um, of Homer's Odyssey. So for instance, they um, had uh, as their assignment today to uh, read through Odyssey Book 22, and we had um, uh, communicated to them that we would spend some time in class today discussing. The execution of the suitors and the execution of the enslaved women who had slept with the suitors. And so one of the things that my co-instructor did was to prepare a handout for them in which the different translations provided by Adam Ward Fitzgerald, Fagels, Lombardo, Green,

• 50:06Speaker 01

  and Wilson were sort of dutifully lined up and cataloged, right? And when you get to the moment where we see Telemachus deliberating along with his father on what to do with the enslaved women. In the translations prior to Wilson, you see these effusions of misogyny. You have multiple translators who take the description of the enslaved girls and cast it as a, as an assault on their status by explicitly designating them as sluts or whores.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Wilson's translation, in its simplicity because of its fidelity to the Greek, dispenses with all of that. I mean, these were girls who lay beside the suitors. Like, there's no need to play up the emotional stakes of the moment by then weaving into the Greek through translation something that is not actually there. I mean, yes, for sure, Telemachus is talking about how the activity of the enslaved women, which, it should be noted, was not volitional, was something that poured shame on his head and on the shame and on the head of his mother. But that's one thing.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  But to then pass the description of the enslaved girls as equivalent or identical to our language of slutification or whoring is another move entirely. Like, I mean, that's where you see more apparently than you can at other instances, the extent to which.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  A particular mode of male self-fashioning and orientation within a patriarchal misogynistic world order asserts itself through the practice of translation. Right? And so what I see my responsibility as a classicist nowadays, to the extent that I'm even willing to abide the term classicist comfortably, and that's something that I also discuss in classical and other phobias, I see my responsibility as simply to provide people with some of the resources that they might need in order to understand how and why these decisions have been made at the level of reconstructing and interpreting the texts that have come to be fixtures in what I

• 52:27Speaker 01

  describe as the over-representation of the Greek and Roman world. And that, to me, is rewarding for two reasons. One of them is that it makes clear that I have no intention of, you know, doing away with texts like the Homeric epics, right? So like, I mean, there's like often this criticism in certain circles that those of us who are sort of most committed to transformative work within the discipline simply want to cast aside all of the texts within the discipline. To insist on a revision and restructuring of the discipline's priorities is not the same as to say that the literary and material culture elements of the discipline will have to be thrown

• 53:11Speaker 01

  out. We are for expanding the range of affordances and possibilities for connection with the ancient past, not for constraining or constricting it. At the same time, though, and this now goes back to that sedimented tradition that we were discussing, one does have to reckon with how these materials have been and continue to be interpreted, and how those interpretations directly cohere, in many cases actively buttress forms of subjection and domination in the contemporary moment. And so if, you know, to go back to an earlier juncture in our conversation, we see the responsibility of our training as lining up an opportunity for critical engagement

• 53:54Speaker 01

  with the contemporary world of ethical obligations, then it would stand to reason that one of the targets of that preoccupation should be the identification and remediation of these forms of interpretation that have so far served to buttress forms of domination, right?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Yes, uh, and this was just all reminding me of a quote towards the end of. Yeah, I've, I've been, I've been marking up this book so much because there's been certain phrases that I'm like, it's so perfect, but it was, um, at the end of the first chapter, you're talking about the eroticization of disciplinary practices. And then the second reason of it where it objectifies um, the site and the field of study. And it was that, that used like the objectifying. Where I was like, yes, like, cause that's what happens. It's like they have such a, you know, like, hard on for ancient Greece and ancient Rome that they, it's, it has to be, it, it's so perverted and fetishized outside of what it could possibly

• 54:53Speaker 02

  be. And when they bring in things where like, oh, you don't like, love it enough. So you want to be away with it or something like that. Like I, I, my point of view, I'm like, yeah, but I was taught if I, if I love something enough, I should be most critical of the things I love. Because I want them to be good and I want them to be better. So why not pave the avenues? So it's, but it's, it's that sort of like viewpoint that people are, I call them hellaboo's, who are so obsessed with antiquity in a way that is so uncomfortable that I'm just, you know, it's like, if I meet a guy and he's like, I love the Roman army. I'm like, I'm, we don't need, let's end it there. Go, it's fine. It, it's sort of that

• 55:37Speaker 02

  fetishization of it that, and the objectification of the s- study itself that doesn't allow it to expand or move. And instead just feels like it roots it within one point of view that then is used to hurt others essentially. And

• 55:59Speaker 02

  pushing back against that doesn't say that we don't love it. I think it means that we do absolutely love it. We want it to be for everyone. And you know, when I read the Iliad, I truly think it's for everyone. Cause I'm like, so many other people are going to get different perspectives from this. And when they tell me, I'm going to have a new thing to love about the Iliad, you know? So it's taking it out of one person's hands and putting it into everyone's hands and seeing what we can do with it that I think is really. Important. I don't know where I'm going with this anymore.

• 56:29Liv Albert?

  No.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 56:30Liv Albert?

  Well, I, I think that just, you know, led me to also consider the ways like, I mean, just connecting with all of this in this way that there is this certain sort of realm of this study of this field that, that really, you know, gets quite reactionary to any kind of push to this idea, yeah, that because you criticize or want to look at, you know, different elements that might make the Greeks and Romans look bad, or, you know, whatever, this idea that if you want to do that, you know, you're not doing it right, or you clearly just, you know, or have something against it. You want to cancel Homer. It's such an

• 57:15Liv Albert?

  interesting mindset, this idea that if you are interested in looking deeper, pulling back the layers on either, you know, the, the sources themselves, or the way that we have interpreted them over the centuries and millennia, you know, you're somehow doing damage to not only the field, but the ancient Greeks themselves, you know, like, it's such an interesting and dark element of this. And I think, I mean, it also, I think probably goes pretty hand in hand with, you know, one of the other things that I, I'm not less familiar with how it is in the academic world, but certainly something that I talk about

• 57:56Liv Albert?

  a lot, that the way that, that Greece and Rome is so tied with white supremacy and with really distinct and overt white supremacists. Um, I, I'm curious, actually, now I'm just going to ask questions of people who are in this realm, but I, I imagine that's something that should be kind of brought up at the beginning of any degree these days. And it certainly was never mentioned to me, but I started in 09, and so who knows? But that's something that I, you know, try to remind people all the time is, you know, Michaela, you said, yeah, like a guy who says that he's obsessed with the Roman military, like big red flag. Like, I think that any, any white man that comes up and is like, I'm a big fan of Rome. Like, you gotta ask questions because that, you know, there is an issue.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Specifically about Rome?

• 58:39Liv Albert?

  Yes. What do you like? And what, do you have any comments, you know? And, and I think that that's something that so often gets kind of ignored because people have this hard on for Greece and Rome. And so you also don't want to admit that like very dangerous white supremacists also love Greece and Rome for all of these reasons. And

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Hey, the Nazis loved Sparta.

• 58:59Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, and Atlantis and everything, right? And it's, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's something that I imagine is very difficult to navigate in that world with me. It's like, well, I can just ramble into this microphone and remind all of my listeners this on the regular and, and really try to drill that in that like we, we should be aware of where these things are coming from. But I don't know. Again, this is not forming into a question, but I'm just fascinated by the way that, that that kind of mentality ties right in with the same people who, who say, we want to cancel Homer because Odysseus was kind of a piece of shit, but I love the book anyway, you know? And it's, there, there's a lot kind of, yeah, going on there that is, yeah.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  I guess a small thought on top of that is I think if I'm trying to understand them, I feel like they think by us criticizing them, we are denying these figures from antiquity, sort of their honor or their humanity, where in my perspective, when I look at it and go, well, you know, Odysseus did a lot of things wrong. There was a lot of moments where he was a real shitty person and made lots of mistakes. I think that grants people their humanity because humans like, there's, there's one thing I know in life is that I'm gonna hurt people I love and don't care about and unintentionally, hopefully unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, and I just have to be the better person and apologize for it. And that's, that's human.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  We do that. And I feel like my perspective, when I look at antiquity is I'm trying to grant that humanity, but I feel like those people feel like I'm trying to take humanity away. I don't know why. Well, I do know why, but yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  But again, that's part of the work, you know, that, you know, I, I see as central to my responsibilities as, as it's of complexifying the antiquities that they hold dear.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  In the process, the moral and affective attachments that they have developed around those antiquities, right? Because for me, and this, you know, picks up a thread in, in Mikhail's comments, the idea that I could somehow be attached to something without having a critical orientation to it, flies in the face of my every day being in the world.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Like I, we, if, if, you know, as I say to some students, if, if the, if the family template or um the relationship template is a good one for you to think with in this context, like feel free to use it. Certainly, we are critical of the people we love.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  That, and, and, and that's okay, um, because we see, you know, in, in, in our good moments, we, we see that work of criticism as constructive, you know, we, we, we want to do work together, um, to be in community with each other, and that necessarily entails um a willingness um to identify where someone can improve, and also, the, the corresponding bidirectional element of this is that one must be open to criticism oneself, right? So to posit some kind of inert um space for

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  intellection where criticism of this kind is off the table, simply doesn't fly for me, like I, I, I, I I have an impossible time understanding it. Um, even it should be noted for those folks who have like strong religious attachments, um, that might have inculcated within them a sort of devotional praxis, that's not dislodged from the work of criticism either. So I think about, you know, I had, I had a very religious upbringing, and, you know, it's not like we were um sitting in complete thaw without, thrall without the capacity for critical inquiry, um, uh, when, you know, we were in church

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  or in Sunday school or whatever, like one, one idea was that we could actually develop forms of criticism that were tuned to the specifics of those sites, right? They might vary, they might have been different from the kinds of criticism that we were conducting in say the, the classroom space of my public school or my private school or whatever, but the idea was that criticism was on the table.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  As I see it now, you know, there are these spectacular and world bending modes of critical inquiry that have come online in the fields of critical ethnic studies and its adjacencies, critical race theory, for instance. And I find it a source of excitement to plug into those conversations to see how others in these very and very complexly textured disciplinary spaces are thinking about the kinds of critique that one can perform

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  in order to arrive at both a satisfying understanding of how aesthetic works function, but also at that deeper level of ethical engagement with the world that we were discussing some minutes ago, a more robustly developed understanding of how our knowledge work can interface with the responsibilities we have to our communities and societies, right? And that, to me, is so much more energizing than this sterile vision that at the end of the day, we just sort of sit in a kind of one directional gaze of admiration

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  at the weaponry of Roman soldiers and the FC or whatever. Like, I mean, I studied the Roman army too. But like, I mean, it's not to say that I adopt a posture of unthinking love and admiration for it. Because I know that one of the obligations that attaches to any interpretative work in the historical record is to always look for ways of sharpening the resolution of the focus that we have adopted, right? Say, okay, like, how can I, and this is now to adopt a favorite phrase from Imes Zaire's Letter of Resignation, how can I deepen and bring into coexistence all the particulars? How can I make the universal be enriched by every particular?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  That, to me, is where we can really attain a kind of traction in the work that we undertake as students of the ancient world.

• 1:05:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I just good quote like I'm taking that one in because I mean, I mean, in bringing using the the Roman Empire as an example, I think is great because like it is or the Roman military, what what have you, but like it is, you know,

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Military complex.

• 1:06:04Liv Albert?

  Well, it it is something that that we should be engaging with and studying in all of these things, but it is simultaneously has to be something that we are engaging with critically and and with acknowledging, you know, I mean, so many different complexities, but I think the thing and I think it kind of, you know, brings us a little bit back to how we started. But, you know, I think engaging with basic human morality in this in the ancient world and and in, you know, whatever broad or specific ways, I think is so important and it is odd to me that it it is so often

• 1:06:45Liv Albert?

  pushed up, pushed back against, you know, I mean, whether it's whether it's queer studies or or enslavement, or, I mean, the very e- e- existence of Palestine in the ancient world, like all of these things, you know, we're, you know, there's this idea that we we shouldn't be putting our modern morals onto it. I get told that all the time, usually just from, you know, mythological feminist stuff, me being angry that Zeus rapes every woman that he sees and and so often there is this pushback of, oh, well, it's that's just the way it was. That's modern morality you're putting on this world. And it's like,

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  The word just means to seize.

• 1:07:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's human morality. That is, it's the basic understanding of being a human being, like, in putting, placing more morale, just using morals, placing morality, whatever, however, I'm phrasing it poorly, but like, that the idea of of using that kind of lens to look at the ancient world should should be so inherently normal that it it it is an odd thing to have to kind of fight against this idea. I mean, but it's become my kind of. My like rallying cry, the, the, the type of people who come at you and say that Rome invented Palestine, or Rome named it that, Rome did that, and therefore it's not real.

• 1:08:12Liv Albert?

  And like, I mean, it's, it's wild on so many reasons, like, oh, Rome naming a place actually doesn't mean that the people should be genocided. Weird, I know, but also factually, that's untrue. And, and it's such a wild thing to me, and I think, I think the, the genocide in Gaza and generally the, the situation in Palestine as a whole is such a, it's such a visceral example of this wider issue of like, apparently, you know, when we should or should not place morals on to our understanding of something. And I think we should always be using basic human morality. And, and, and again, this is not, you know, turning into a question or anything, but it's,

• 1:08:54Liv Albert?

  it's fascinating and infuriating, and it's an odd thing to, to even being in a discussion where the, the overarching idea is, is to look critically and, and tap into your humanity when studying something and then like being okay with, with that thing, you know, changing or looking a bit less shiny, you know? It, it's, yeah, again, it's, it's one of these, I struggle with it even from a, I don't know if it's neurodivergence or what it is, but this basic logic or lack of logic in the alternative of like, how can I not think of this, this subject in this world, you know, with my morals that are inherent to me?

• 1:09:37Liv Albert?

  Like what, how would, how would one study that without thinking, I am a human, these people were humans? You know, like, it just feels so like natural to be like, well, obviously, like, we're all people, we're all flawed, we're all biased, we're all real and, and, you know? Again, not, not a question, just a sort of screams into the sky.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Screams into the void. No, but I, I, I think, I mean, there too, I, there's another opportunity for us to, to think together because it's in, in, in, in what you just sampled and in what we were discussing earlier.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  We we are coming up against the tendency on the part of many

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  uh adherents to the study of the ancient past, or you know, people who have some interest in the ancient past, to put that study of the ancient past like within a grammar of possession, right? So, I mean, it it to to to think with with Palestine and Gaza for a moment. I I am reminded of a conversation I had with a counter protester um back in

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  early May um of last year. Um, and I think to how the counter protester at one point said to me, well, you know, even the name Gaza is is a is a is a Hebrew name. We we gave it to them, right? Now, this is not true, since the earliest attestation of the name actually occurs in the military records of the 15th century Thutmose III. But like I like the, you know, the the the idea here is that there is some kind of nexus between um some privileged claim to antiquity and ownership or possession um of that antiquity as a warrant for domination in the present, right?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, so that that is, as I see it, the co- the the the construction that that counter protester gave evidence of, you know, in spite of themselves. And and that is actually far from being sort of alone or isolated in the uh types of engagements with antiquity that we see on a regular basis across a host of media and in a variety of different contexts, right? So there, you know, I I I keep circling back um to a point that Michaela had made earlier. Um, what would it take to enter into a relationship with the communities of the ancient Mediterranean and other antiquities that is not one of possession, right?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Or that does not see claiming those communities as a prerequisite for or as a corollary to? Of domination in the present, like what would this look like? I mean, really there you are talking about projects of stewardship, of of of of guardianship. You you are no longer talking about some kind of uncritically reflexive, ah, you know, the the patrimony of the ancients. Or this has come to us as some kind of inheritance that we own. Like I, one is, one moves far from that at the very moment that one begins to think seriously of the possibilities that await unlocking for a relationship that is premised on something more akin to stewardship.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  And so that that to me is another area where there remains much invaluable work to be done. Because that that that work can be individual in nature and it's a collective. It it has to unspool across a variety of different collectives. But ultimately, it has to be animated by the belief that there is a real aridity, a kind of lack of, not just color, but I mean, really of aesthetic vibrancy, an ethical vibrancy in accounts of the ancient world that see it as simply one other domain to claim and possess.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  And I think, like, this for me also, like, okay, maybe I'm a little bit anti-capitalist at a moment, but like, capitalism is so much, it's it's so basis in the self. It's like so singular and like solitary and it's about what self can kind of do, or at least where it is now today. That when it comes to ownership, ownership then is a very singular thing. So when people approach antiquity from that point of view, there is a sense of like, they feel like, oh, well, this is, this is like my burden to bear kind of thing. And it's like, and so it gets personal if you say, well, I don't know, I think that's maybe people start feeling attacked versus like stewardship for me is so community based.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  It is. Opens up the floor to everyone and it tries to not like it's not, you know, it's not perfect. There's no, there's no perfect, well, is there, systems are fine until you add people into it. We're the problem.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  But like, there's that community sense to it where it's going, this is something that is not ownable. It just is, and it's our responsibility to make sure it is cared for. And so it, the, the burden of responsibility is less because we are able to kind of all take little bits and pieces of it. But I, that's why, well, like for me, it feels like ownership is such a Western context because, uh, or um, concept. Cause that is so ingrained in them. And even when I go to Greece now, like I, I, I always sometimes worry that like, am I part of the problem too? When I go to Greece, cause I'm here to see ancient stuff and I get very excited about that things.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  And sometimes I know a little bit more than the actual Greeks here, but I don't want to be that person. But then, you know, I have a friend who's Greek and she was like, yeah, Michaela, at the same time, you walk around and you'll see a random, small, tiny street. You'll go down and you find the weirdest thing and then you're just sitting there for half an hour, talking to a random Greek person about their life. And you've learned about the modern Greek stuff and she's like, and at the end of the day too, you also are against the Western idealization of what Greece is. Because that included leaving modern Greeks out of the picture. They were not the inheritors of ancient Greeks. Modern Italians, you know, before, you know, I don't, I don't remember when it was last century, when the Italians suddenly became white.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  The Western perspective, but modern Italians weren't even considered the inheritors of the Roman Empire or of, of Rome. So it's, it's such a, it's a concept and it's built and it's made and it's not real. So why don't we all just love it and take care of it and, and make sure it stays alive and also expand it? Because you know, Greece didn't grow up in a vacuum. Rome didn't grow up in a vacuum. In fact, every time I look at Greece and they're like, this is the high border of Greece. I'm like, that's really sad compared to so many other different ancient civilizations that were like.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  So amazing, like, okay, they built big buildings, but that was their high point. It's a little bummer for them. Like, Athens couldn't even empire well enough. This is, this is, this is, this is your, this is ridiculous.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  And so like, like my university, they changed the name of the program. It used to be classics. Now it's called Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies. And I love that because so much of Greece is Eastern influenced. Like, we can't remove that. So much of Rome is Eastern influence. I mean, think about many obelisks there are in Rome, or how many adoption of Egyptian deities and beyond. These places didn't go up in a vacuum and everywhere existed. And I love the point in the book where it's like, where you were saying, like, could other cultures have their own versions of classics? And I think that just challenges, what do we define as classics? What does that actually mean if we remove the Greece and Rome from it all?

• 1:18:16Liv Albert?

  It just, this is like the least intellectual point I could make right now, but I, I, when I was in school, I did a double major in English literature and classics. And just from like a grammatical point, the term classics means so little if you are not in it. Like, when I used to tell people, oh, like, I study classics. Because I was also an English Lit major, they'd be like, oh, you mean like Shakespeare? You know, like, the classic literature. And I'd have to be like, no, like, for reasons that I don't know how many people could actually define.

• 1:18:53Liv Albert?

  Like we call Greece and Rome, the classics for like, no, really, there's, and it's, you know, obvi- like that, I mean, I know this, it's an old conversation now, like how odd and tired and, and problematic that freight, that term is, but like, just again, least intellectual. Grammatically, it's just baffling and I don't know why, you know, I, I mean, I also, I don't call myself a classicist because I also don't have like any formal anything, but like, it's just odd to me. I don't know.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  To bounce off that, I have a friend who, when he describes to people what I do, he calls me an archaeologist and I'm like, no. Not at all what I do. And it wasn't until he had a coworker who came from Ireland. And he told him, oh yeah, she's an archaeologist, she does classics. Only then did he know what classics was. Nobody in North America did. And I think that is so telling where it's like, oh.

• 1:19:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I think it's, it's intentional and not, I mean, or maybe originally intentionally oblique where it's like that it's kind of meant to oblique opaque. Where it's kind of meant to be this like thing that is bigger, right? Because it's about making that world, the, the epitome of everything.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Or it's a reflection of where the construction of what, of what classic is, comes from and where it originated from.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  And this is why, I mean, the, the inadequacy of classics as, as a label, the, the, the, the challenges associated with its ever altering use, the, the differences in what ancient studies gets designated in, in the global north and beyond, all brought me to the position of saying that we, we at the very least need some kind of treatment of what classicism, the process whereby you make something classical or you designate something as classical is. Like we, we need some way of understanding what this actually is. Because clearly it is separable from the discipline that is known as classics, right? Because you pointed out.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  We we we refer to the classics of English literature. We talk about classical music. We we we have all of these sort of informal and semi-formalized ways of marking out those things that are within any one sort of tradition or disciplinary practice canonical, or that occupy some kind of privileged position of valuation, right? But what we need, what we could stand to benefit from is some overarching structure for thinking about that theoretically and saying, okay, like, well, what is this process? Right? What does it look like? What are its component parts? And I mean, that's something I talked briefly about in the introduction as a way to set up some of the chapters of the book. And there, one of the things that I I I tell readers I'm interested in is, how is it

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  that at some point in the past few centuries, ancient Greece and Rome became understood as classical civilizations, right? They they underwent this process that I describe as classicism, right? They they came to be known as classical. But how does that come about? And and with what implications, right? In the same way that other disciplines have had moments of sustained reckoning around their practices of classicism, I I'm thinking especially of classical music because of Louvre, Eli Hisama and others. So too does the discipline of ancient studies have a have a moment now to think seriously about what the implications are of saying, okay, what we do is classical?

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Or what we study are these classical texts? Well, if we're clear about what that means and also about the process through which that assignment is made, then we can be more precise about what may need rectification in the contemporary moment, right?

• 1:22:46Liv Albert?

  Not to like, you know, put you on too much of a spot and and you know, you kind of just went into it a little bit, but like, I'm so curious, kind of, did you? Did you come to like this conclusion? I mean, you you kind of went into it just there of of like, kind of what what we need to do, but I'm I'm curious if you have any kind of. Thoughts on how, how the, these larger issues surrounding the study of the, I don't even want to say the ancient world, because we really are talking about like the quote unquote classical world, Greece and Rome, right? Like, you know, as somebody who is not at all an academic, like, and, and speaks primarily to just regular people who are nerds about this stuff.

• 1:23:27Liv Albert?

  Um, you know, do you have thoughts on, on the, the broader ideas of this world and like, how every, non-academics might, you know, be kind of taking this into, into account and like, you know, start trying to just conceptualize this and then, you know, I don't know, make it all better.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I have, I have many ideas on that front. I mean, so for, I, I, I, in the book itself, I, I, I make a series of claims, some of which are, are negative claims, right? So one, one claim is there has been a move in, uh, the past, you know, few decades and especially, um, in the past quarter century, to say that any problems that, um, are identifiable is stemming from

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  the privileged content of classics and the exclusionary modes that have been adopted, um, to zero in on that content, um, can be remedied if we just sort of cast a wider net, right? And here in the book, I say it, it's not really that straightforward. Um, because if one thinks about, for instance, the work, the excellent work being done in classical reception studies, um, or if one thinks about, um, some of the visual artistic work that I discuss in one of the books later chapters, I focus on, uh, on the artwork of Cahene de Wiley with a, um, a shout out to, uh, the work of, of Carol Walker and others.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  If you look at that, there are two UC efforts to sort of reclaim or adapt or repurpose, um, aspects of ancient Greece and Rome, but to do so in a way that looks at and, and seeks actively to engage the interests of modern and contemporary communities in a way that, that is far more flexible and far, uh, more, um, uh, evocative in my, in my view. And yet.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Even when you look at those ambitious projects of reclamation and renegotiation, and of counter storytelling, too, you see that there's like a ceiling that they hit. And the ceiling, as I see it, has to do with the move to designate most, if not all, things as classical in the first place. It is a dilemma that is fundamentally rooted in the capitalist architecture that lies behind classicism and its emergence in the early modern period and beyond. You get into this business of differential valuation straight away.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  It's linked to commodification, right? So one of the things that I remark in connection with people like Ahein de Wiley is that, well, it gets some of these artists like attention and also money to certify some of this like really innovative work that they may be doing as having some kind of commitment to ancient Greece and Rome. And when you realize that there is this really tight coupling of the overrepresentation of ancient Greece and Rome and like the commodity circuits of the modern and contemporary world, it does begin to seem like one of the moves that requires undoing is the entanglement

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  of classicism with racial capitalism, right? I mean, this now picks up on something that Michael had brought up a while ago. But then there's like another and separate set of interventions. It could be possible in the hands of communities of interpretation, much more capacious in vision than, you know, I have in the book, to move towards forms of valuation and care that don't rely on this system of classicism at all, right? So this would mean being very aggressively non-canonical at a minimum.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  But that that comes with other commitments too. I mean, that comes with commitments like both for folks who are like training in these fields, but also folks who are engaging with these fields outside the context of academic training and so on. Like, if you do want to study ancient worlds, how responsible are you to other corners of those ancient worlds? Besides, you know, the the Mediterranean, like what kinds of skills do you need? How do you enter into fruitful collaboration with people who have those skills, who can teach you those skills? And here now, again, we go to something that I'm interested in partly because of the work of Native Indigenous theorists, like how do you adopt a position towards the development

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  and refinement of these skills and the cultivation of networks of support and solidarity that is not extractivist in nature, that does not see the acquisition of those skills as something that operates one directionally, and that does not see the territory of the engagement with the past as a territory that is fit for enclosure? That that that is like a much harder task, right? And I I don't provide any definitive answers at the end to how that work should proceed. I only say that at a at a minimum, the steps to that work require much more careful elucidation.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  And one aspect of that elucidation that I was taken with, you know, after finishing up the book, is how to think about the nature of the present moment and the challenges to various forms of progressive flourishing that we see really receiving sustained state-backed support in many corners of the world.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  How do we respond to this moment of crisis? How do we respond to the emergence and consolidation of various sort of neo-fascisms everywhere? I see that as true, not just for the United States, where I happen to live and reside, but also the country of my birth, the Dominican Republic. And I see it as true in countries where I have lived, including the UK. And there, I think, as we had discussed early on, there is like a real enduring obligation to be attuned to the demands of the contemporary political moment.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  If one is to think about how to make sure that things that we might love from the antiquities that we cherish travel with us. If we really do care about Homer, okay, well, how can Homer travel with you across the great divide? That divide being, of course, the separation between what has happened so far in the global north and the global south, and what is likely coming our way, given the interlocking violences of the turn to fascism and the ecological catastrophe that is occurring every single second, right? So to think about the futures of the disciplines of antiquity

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  is, in my view, inseparable from thinking about our futures as collectives and as humans together. And so no answer can come from any one person. It has to be negotiated collectively.

• 1:31:04Liv Albert?

  Oh. Yes.

• 1:31:10Liv Albert?

  It's one of those like, yeah, it's one of those things where I'm just, you know, I take it all in. I agree with you so completely. And when it's something like that, it's like, what? How does, you know? How do I stay positive about the future? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting, I'm like, thinking about my, you know, my little role in, because I always want to be better in whatever way. And, you know, it's a funny thing, doing this particular job, because I am both, you know, talking to the public about this stuff, and I do love it, and I'm simultaneously like a...

• 1:31:50Liv Albert?

  Screaming leftist into a microphone and, and you know, those, those things like I think are inherently related and I can't imagine separating them, but it's a, it's a funny, I mean, that's nowhere near enough, nothing is, but like, it's an interesting thing to, I don't know, imagine these, the various elements of, I don't know, the horrors, it's.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think there's also something about people in this field, both in the sort of public side of it as Liv and I do, and then also the I kind of straddle the lines, it's very uncomfortable, you know, the academic and then the public side of it, where to recognize that there is a responsibility in it and that the responsibility is not just to antiquity, but it's also to our modern day and our present world. Cause while as much as I love the world from 2,500 years ago, I'm not living in it. I am living now with all the horrors happening and that is much more, I am much, I am much more interested in making sure that people today are taken care of. And that's something I love is being used to hurt them.

• 1:32:58Liv Albert?

  Well, I mean, I think it's a, it's a good reminder that everything is political and that everything, you know, e- everything within that, this realm or, or just, you know, wanting to improve, whether it's the field or the world or politics, whatever, like, you know, everything is intertwined and it's a good reminder to, for rather a good reminder to remember that, I guess. You know, like everything is, is so connected. There's a whole, I mean, and it's, you know, so often the same people who we've been talking about this that have these issues with thinking people want to cancel Homer or whatever, but it's the same people who think like, oh, leave politics out of it. And you know, it's

• 1:33:37Liv Albert?

  that this reminder that politics is in everything. And if there is, it takes a very specific type of privilege to be able to pretend that that's not true and. Just a good, I don't know, I'm, I want to leave my listeners with something and it's, I guess, be political in every single thing in your life because the entire world is political and everything that went into every moment that we live up to this point was political. So.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Vigorous cosign.

• 1:34:01Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's, that's just how it is. Unfortunately, it's just, it's all political, all the time, everywhere. You can't escape it. And I am so jealous of the people who pretend like they can. I'm just like.

• 1:34:14Liv Albert?

  No, you're not.

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  The terrible way to live. Okay, but you know, sometimes I would like the peace of ignorance.

• 1:34:21Liv Albert?

  You're the best great white man.

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but unfortunately I was born, you know, queer indigenous woman. So here I am. I'm just gonna, you know, suffer. It's fine.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  Uh, um, is there a, um, I guess, is there a part of the book that you really had a, really especially love and adore? That's not just all of it because I'm, once again, I'm on the second chapter. I'm like, how much more excited should I be than I already?

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Well, I, it's, um, yeah, I'm always taken aback at, um, re encountering my own writing. Um, as it's hard to remember who it was who wrote that. Um, well, like I, I, you know, I, I do have these, we were talking a moment ago about the sort of pessimisms that the, um, present moment, um, fosters. But I, I'd like to believe that there is valuable work to do, um, still, um, to change the world. Um, and that there, there's a responsibility

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  for those of us, um, working in ancient studies to, to, to do right, um, by, uh, the promise and prospect of world changing activity. And, you know, there's a sort of false humility that, um, Sometimes asserts itself among scholars of the ancient world. The it's false because ultimately at their core, I do not think that they fully subscribe to its implications. The false humility asserts itself most insistently in those moments where people do express

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  either a desire for their studies to be apolitical or attempt to characterize their studies as apolitical. And there are, of course, you know, various calibrated

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  stages of engagement with the political, but like the ultimately the the substructure and superstructure of what we do is defined by politics. And I I I take the the political work associated with the study of the ancient world very seriously. Not least because true to an almost Aristotelian approach to politics. I want to work with others in order to live well with them.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I I do think of those moments in the book where I I I try to reflect on what that living well might mean or entail. I mean, there are moments in the book that are cranky, right? Like in the conclusion, I I have like all these sort of moments of sort of targeted bullying at at people who I think have like not either sort of failed to fully understand what some of this work is about, or who like are engaged in like active forms of

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  collusion with like quite retrograde projects, or who in the service of that collusion are intent on, you know, what I think are rather devious forms of mischaracterization. But setting, you know, that that work to the side, and I think it is necessary to call out people when they make these kinds of moves, I do sort of plant myself. Most in those parts of the books where a meaningful attachment to the political work of ranging within and beyond disciplines rises to the surface. So that's that's where I would put it.

• 1:38:12Liv Albert?

  I mean, I take I my political, I want to say side, but I'm like, it's it's all of me. But like, that is something I, you know, I'm kind of always trying to grow and which also, I think, fuels me in a way that is so important. So I, yeah, I appreciate that that that's kind of the the lighter side for you, I guess, or the favorite. Or also, I'm excited to read where you call out the more, you know, problematic actors, for lack of another term, but also because I'm like, I think I can predict some things, names of organizations and such that I might, I might see in there, just curious, curiosity. But that, I mean, I'm, that's a lovely, I think,

• 1:38:56Liv Albert?

  way to to wrap up this episode. Thank you so much for doing this. It's been very fascinating and generally just a lovely, a lovely chat. I mean, and a little dark, but like, in a good way, which is half the conversations I have on this show, if not more. So you're in good company. Is there anywhere that my listeners can, or our listeners can read more from you, hear more that you might want to share, other books, we'll obviously mention and link this one in the episode's description, but anything else you want to share with the listeners?

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  So I am in the finishing stages of another book. It's a book on how the ancient Greeks and Romans come to be understood in the Dominican Republic, which is where I was born and where I spent the first few years of my life and where much of my family still lives. And that that book, I hope, will come out sometime in 2026 or early 2027. So be on the lookout for that. The one other thing I would suggest to folks who are interested in thinking more about this kind of work is that there is an article I co-authored with my colleague at Brown, Sasha

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  May Eccleston, entitled Ethos in Praxis, Racing with Classics. And that article, which came out in a special issue of the American Journal of Philology, affords an introduction to some of the work that has defined both the

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  Enterprise of classes and other phobias, but also the world building that in collaboration with others I have come to see as increasingly central to the progressive politics that we were professing our commitments to a moment ago. So that, those are just two things to keep in view. One, a book project to materialize in print sometime in 2026, and another, an article that came out a few years ago and that I find as a co-authored project and a reminder of all that is good about working together. And in the words of my colleague, Sacha Mayeckelston, being good company.

• 1:41:21Liv Albert?

  Oh, I like that. I'm gonna go read it and then link it in the episode, but mostly because I want to find it and read it first. So, thank you. Yeah, this has been really, really great. And I'm thrilled to have had you on the show and also to keep reading this book because I think that you're touching on so many things that I, that I, that I sort of amorphously think about when I do this show, because my goal is always just to like, give a shit is the way that I try to say it, like, in the simplest and silliest, and just make things better through this sort of work and field and everything. And it seems like an attempt at that. And I really value seeing those existing in the world

• 1:42:05Liv Albert?

  because there's, you know, so much of the other side of, of ancient Greece and Rome. So, thank you.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Of course. No, thank you both for having me. This has been a real treat.

• 1:42:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah, thank you, Meg.

• 1:42:33Liv Albert?

  Uh, thank you all so much for listening. I, again, I'm so grateful for that episode. An enormous thank you again to Dan L. for coming on the show and having such an interesting conversation with Michaela and I, and for indulging in so many of my rambles. And, oh my God, I just. I'm so excited that you guys are finally listening to this episode. It means a lot. And again, like this is a topic that I've always really wanted to focus on more on the show. It's just about like the best way of going about it and finding the best people to talk about it. So I'm just utterly thrilled for this little step in that direction. Enormous thank you again. You can find links in the episode's description to Classicism and Other Phobias,

• 1:43:16Liv Albert?

  Dan L's new book on this topic, and also some of the other things he has written and worked on, because he's done utterly incredible work in the overall field of like how we study the ancient world. And I think it's just really important work. And I'm just very excited. I think it's really important work and I'm thrilled to have been a small part of it in this one episode. So thank you all for listening and enormous thank you again to Dan L for being such an incredible guest. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a thing we're still building, but gosh, we're trying. In this world where

• 1:44:03Liv Albert?

  screams into the abyss. I don't even know. I don't even know what to say anymore. So I am Liv and I love this shit so much despite how deeply entrenched it is with so many horrorers.

• 1:44:23Liv Albert?

  I'm Liv and I love this shit.

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

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