The cultural quagmire

It has been fun over the last few weeks teaching my graduate students a few things about medieval Greek political and intellectual history. They had never heard of Procopius' Historia Arcana for instance -they are graduate students of political science mind you, some of them holding diplomas from departments of philology. They were equally ignorant of the circumstances of Photius' assumption of the patriarchal office in the 9th century or of the exegetical controversies surrounding Constantine VII Porphyrogennitus' De thematibus. I don't blame them and I must say that their response has been rather encouraging: many of them are open to looking at these things through different glasses. But the obstacles are formidable.

Throughout their schooling they have been taught that "Byzantium" (the Eastern Roman Empire) was an ethnically, culturally and politically Greek state in the "national" sense that the official ideology of the 19th century defined it -minus the considerable subtlety that even the national historiography of the time (e.g. Paparrigopoulos) displayed. To the average modern Greek person Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian were great Greek leaders, in exactly the same way that Pericles, Alexander, the last Palaeologue, Kosmas the Aetolian, Kolokotronis and Venizelos were. If you ask them to explain the "greatness" of Justinian the embarrased silence is well nigh universal -with the possible exception of some garbled noises referring to his military conquests in the west and the building of Hagia Sophia.

In this ludicrous tale the military dimension in is always pre-eminent. For the chief idea underpinning it is that once "we" were κοσμοκράτορες: "we had" the whole world which was then wrested from us by succesive onslaughts of the "bad guys", i.e. the Romans, the Franks, the Turks, all the way to the present with the role of the ravenous wolf feasting on the entrails of God's chosen race currently played by the "troika" in collusion with the inevitable Americans. On this reading the history of the world over the last two millenia has been stamped by a gigantic anti-Greek conspiracy. Of Roman law and its despotic slant, of Justinian's oppressive and anti-Hellenic religious policies and the ruinous internal consequences of his military and edificatory megalomania not the slightest awareness.

So it is always very enjoyable for me to read to them from ch. 8 of the Historia Arcana the passages describing the dullness (ὄνος νωθρός), meanness and rapaciousness of this ruler that rained material and spiritual destitution on his subjects thus preparing the eventual dismemberment of his realm. But of course it is a veritable riot to cite from ch. 9 the sexual exploits of his consort Theodora. One has to tread very thin ice here in trying to avoid becoming pornographic.

The serious challenge, however, in all this is still to explain the "greatness", i.e. the overarching historical significance, of this emperor in particular, as well as the crucial value for European civilization in general of the Hellenic language and culture saturating the apex of East Roman society -all the while eschewing nationalist trash. I am saying this because among academic circles (especially the faction of the "Lacanian left" which has controlled manu militari Greek academia over the last couple of decades) the anti-national spirit has been indeed pronounced. But this stance has been underpinned by the arcana of post-structuralist balderdash. Their entanglement in a web of pure theory (that only they themselves understand) derives from and in turn enhances a monstrous ignorance of actual history, camouflaged by their elevation of "history itself" to the chief theoretical category. The aim of this project has been to demolish, along with the nationalist myth, the notion of Europeanism, of civilization, of rationality itself, culminating with a strident denunciation of the very concept of meaning in life and in discourse.

If you do it this way, then myth, arbitrarily constructed world-views, mystical flights of fancy, the spasms of emotionality and even biological animality itself are ensconced in the very heart of intellectual and political endeavor. This is not the defeat of nationalist ideology, but its triumph.

Under this view everything (all theories, values, ideals) are mere self-validating ideologies. And in this case nationalism (along with Nazism, Stalinism, Polpot-ism, Ayn Rand and Tea Party lunacy) becomes a legitimate choice. The post-structuralist current of thought usually styles itself as "Marxist". But in Marx ideology (as false consciousness) is defined as the opposite of scientific meaning and truth: the concept has validity only in the frame of this antithesis. If you abolish this contrast, then all consciousness is false (or true) at the same time -i.e. we are now talking nonsense. Then each individual or group is at complete liberty to define as axiomatically true its own ideology and to blast as false all the others. The procedure is completely arbitrary and beyond all logical, moral or social control. The only means of adjudicating among all these theoretic Machtsprueche is the possession of raw power.

And thus the militaristic spirit, the most deleterious ingredient of nationalism, becomes the condition of existence and "historical success" for all ideologies. The adulation of violence, open or disguised, has been the bitterest fruit of this malignant line of thought. It is no accident, then, that our "Lacanian leftists" have been the most dogged proponents of political violence. Behind their fake anti-nationalism they have been weaving a gauze of "historical" legitimacy around the most apalling acts of arson, vandalism and even murder that have plagued Greece for the past three years.

In a country that has barely been touched by modernity, post-modernism is in academic vogue. It feeds into and is cheered on by a repulsive cast of rotten media types and populist dunces faking the politician, all stirring up the most virulent version of the traditional nationalist lie: that of the "immaculate people" expiring in the clutches of their western enemies. If this knot is not untied then all "rescues" of Greece by means of European loans etc. are exercises in futility.