BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Other than Sex BC, is a "classical education" relevant in the modern world?

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Cat Chant
09:12 / 17.10.02
because Mediaeval French had morphologies originating in Latin roots, that it was a vehicle for Classical ideologies (you used the term "classics meme", which would refer to culture rather than simply language), which was simply absurd.

Haus paraphrasing Fenris23's argument

The idea of "mondolatinisation" which I keep harping on about - or, in my own termin-ology, of "Rome" as a name both for the archiving (storing & transmitting) of world history in a Eurocentric manner and for the content of that world history as determined by the structure of that archive - assumes or suggests that language, as an archiving technology, is deeply implicated in Eurocentrism. (In this context, Fenris's example of Chinese is really interesting since the Chinese language/s and script/s are constantly deployed as a structure of resistance to Eurocentrism by various French theorists [except Barthes, ever the maverick, who went for Japan], and I'd like to respond to it when I've had a bit more time to think.)

One of the most pernicious effects of mondolatinisation is the illusion that languages are translatable without loss, that "content" can be conveyed through a purely material & contingent "medium of communication". This actually shows up in a really concrete way when I try to read French texts, since my French is sucky & I can only recognise words that share roots with English (or, in fact, Latin/Greek) words: according to some of Derrida's translators, this is actually one of the reasons that cultural studies jargon is so jargonny, because they see signifie in the French and translate signify in the English. It is Latin which allows the illusion that these are the same words: though quite what the relationship between Latin and globalatinisation is, I'm not quite sure.

So for my "burning the classics" to work, we would, indeed, have to get rid of all words with Greek or Latin roots. It would be interesting to connect this up with the early modern period of neologising in Greek/Latin, where Latin stands for "universal translatability".

Pepsi Max - although I think that drowning is finally probably more feasible than burning, I have reservations about drowning as a sort of capitalist enterprise - the idea that all problems are soluble by the creation of more variety... I think something a little more nuanced might be needed, seeing as whatever variety is produced it is usually still serving capitalism (in the capitalist example) or, here, globalatinisation.

Don't have any links for globalatinisation & can't explain it any further than I have, but someone's just photocopied the actual article the term appears in so I may actually be able to argue in a better-informed manner in the near future
 
 
Pepsi Max
09:56 / 17.10.02
Deva> Some responses.

1. Really, really need to thrash out the globalatinization thing. It's from Derrida's Acts of Religion. So I'll try and track that down.

2. Chinese language as resistance to Eurocentrism. OK, references please. Sorry to be picky about this stuff but otherwise it's difficult to follow and develop yr arguments.

3. I have reservations about drowning as a sort of capitalist enterprise - the idea that all problems are soluble by the creation of more variety... I think something a little more nuanced might be needed, seeing as whatever variety is produced it is usually still serving capitalism (in the capitalist example) or, here, globalatinisation.

Yes, but I don't see the creation of choices as being wedded to a particular mode of production. The 'drowning' enterprise is more about i. awareness of other possibilities and histories and ii. the dilution of specific, entrenched discourses. Of course, the devil is in the detail.

So for my "burning the classics" to work, we would, indeed, have to get rid of all words with Greek or Latin roots. It would be interesting to connect this up with the early modern period of neologising in Greek/Latin, where Latin stands for "universal translatability".

Shades of Year Zero / An Un perhaps?

We had to destroy the language to save it.

N.B. Linguistic colonisation is hardly specific to Classical vs. Modern European Languages.

The languages of South East Asia (Thai, Khmer, Javan, Malay) have been influenced in a similar manner by Sanskrit.

More later.
 
 
Pepsi Max
13:06 / 17.10.02
Rrrrreeeeeewwwwiiiiiiinnnnnnnnndddddddddddd!!!!!!!!!

OK. Back to the original question. Why has nobody discussed in any depth how 'The Classics' comes into existence as a unitary body of knowledge? Several people (e.g. haus, deva, bengali) have kinda skirted this without tackling it head on. Can we have someone laying this down?

We're probably talking about scholasticism in medieval universities, the renaissance, the establishment of a curriculum of liberal arts for independently wealthy young gentlemen, etc. To what extent has 'a classical education' been used as a tool for exclusion and to what extent has it shaken that off?

Personally, I think that a "classical education" is fairly irrelevant beyond a little historical appreciation. I particularly object to children being taught Latin or Ancient Greek when they could be learning languages that living people talk.

Especially as models of teaching Latin and Greek (as grammatical systems of verbs conjugations and noun declensions rather than as pragmatic, lived, interactional environments) has aversely affected language teaching in the UK for many years - and in some places still does.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:16 / 17.10.02
Need more. At a wild guess, probably as many people in the world speak Latin as speak Norwegian. Why should anyone (Norwegians included) bother to learn either of these languages when so many more living people speak Chinese or English?

Could also do with a bit more on your last paragraph; one of the most agonised complaints of a lot of people I know is that their language teaching has left them without an understanding of grammar, with the result that they do not understand how to parse sentences and constantly fear appearing unversed in English. Which might be a fault of the expectations they are given, but is still, it seems, a problem. Or do you mean the teaching of foreign languages?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:43 / 17.10.02
It seems to me that it's not the classics which are at the bottom of this but the enlightenment... Blame whig history - that's responsible for the idea of linear history progressing towards the perfection of man, not the classics. Surely we could break out of that mindset? I mean - I don't actually know that many people now who think of the classics as a transparent means of understanding our world*. To me they seem a very opaque means of understanding the classical world... and also, in a way, blaming 'Rome' for current Eurocentrism is a cop-out because it ignores, to an extent, all the people who have committed imperial ghastlinesses using it as a cover, if you see what I mean.

*Insert intelligent para about liberal education in Victorian period, which I will construct as soon as I have found my old stuff on this
 
 
Cat Chant
15:00 / 17.10.02
blaming 'Rome' for current Eurocentrism is a cop-out because it ignores, to an extent, all the people who have committed imperial ghastlinesses using it as a cover

Ooh. Really? More on this, please. Because the original "burning" idea - to render the classics radically illegible - was supposed, precisely, to implicate imperial ghastliness, which has depended on being able to use "Rome" as a cover (amongst other things, obviously, like guns). The Eurocentric structure of history quietly makes possible a lot of good things: but they can only be accessed through implication in imperial ghastliness. As if we all had to pay Bill Gates a dollar for the software every time we accessed the Internet.

But looking at the other example I used originally, of someone saying "I don't get it" to a racist joke - that seems to be more about making visible or legible the structures that mutually implicate Rome and imperial ghastliness, which is certainly a more feasible way to proceed...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:01 / 17.10.02
and also, in a way, blaming 'Rome' for current Eurocentrism is a cop-out because it ignores, to an extent, all the people who have committed imperial ghastlinesses using it as a cover, if you see what I mean.

Unless *it* was using *them* as a cover, if you see what I mean. I don;t know if that is a defensible position, but I imagine one could do something similar to Deva's idea of language elements retaining some fragmentary comprehensibility with thought-elements. I don't know if one could create a convincing argument for it, however...
 
 
Pepsi Max
10:27 / 18.10.02
Haus> Responses:

1. Norwegians. Well, Norwegians have to learn Norwegian as it's kinda their native tongue (in fact they have to learn two forms of Norwegian in school but that's another story). A lot of cultural identity is located in speaking a language. For the Norwegians to try to stop speaking Norwegian among themselves would probably be equivalent to giving up being Norwegian. But many Norwegians (certainly those that leave their country) also speak very good English. Why? Well, with 4 million native speakers, who else is going to learn their language (or so they tell me)?

And the number of non-Norwegians learning this particular language is small (if one discounts other scandanavians practising closely-related tongues). Altho it is taught in the North-Eastern UK under sponsorshop of an oil company with headquarters in the UK and Norway.

That was overspecific, wasn't it?

Latin's a bit different tho. Nobody is brought up with Latin as their mother tongue. I may be wrong but it is a 'dead' language. Or rather an 'undead' one. It is ressurected in the manner of a zombie by its current practitioners - see below for more cheap digs at Latin.

In short, Norwegian as a language option in UK schools is rare - unless there are strong local economic and social reasons for it.

Are there any such reasons for Latin? (Hey, I'm a capitalist alright?)

2. Yip, I was referring to the teaching of foreign languages. Comparing the study of say, French to Latin is rather akin to comparing the study of a living thing to a corpse.
 
 
Pepsi Max
10:30 / 18.10.02
Deva> I have been unable to get hold of the Derrida book. Please spell out what exactly your view of 'globalatinization' is, how it operates, who operates/is operated on, and the outcome of this is. So far, you've given us (well me, at least) some tantalizing hints but at the moment, I just don't *get* it.

Is it linguistic, historical, narrative, yadda yadda?

Cheers.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:11 / 18.10.02
It occurs to me, Pepsi, that that is a matter where the teaching of French needs to get its house in order, rather than the teaching of Latin....

Again, I lack the statistics, but I am assuming that as things stand Latin is taught in fairly few schools in England. So, is your opposition to the teaching of Latin, or the teaching of Latin generally? Are you arguing that nobody at all should learn Latin, because that is going to make historiography in various bits of Europe covering a certain period very difficult indeed, or only that it would be better to teach most people more "useful" languages, and reserve the teaching of Latin to a specialised few?
Problem being, that surely only intensifies the perception explored early on in this thread of Classsics as continuation of the "leadership tools" furnished upon an elite...

Alternatively, you could be expressing the Deva position that the very languages should be destroyed, in which case I honestly don't see much difference between Norwegian and Latin. As you effectively say yourself, Norwegian is a ghetto language, useful possibly only as a good starting-point to learn the far more useful German, much as Latin and French/Spanish/Italian. And, since English is the language of business, it seems increasingly pointless to learn any of those either, whether you happen to occupy a geographical bloc that used to use them or not.

But you've already conflated apples and oranges, I suspect, because the aim of Latin is not to speak Latin but to understand it. That is, to compare it with a "living" language is already like comparing French and Physics - they do different things. Which is presumably why Classics is a humanities rather than an arts degree. It's like criticising the Anglo-Saxon bits of an English degree on the grounds that nobody speaks Anglo-Saxon anymore - technically correct, but not actually terribly productive. And since there is an international community dedicated to understanding Latin, a good cosmopolitan might suggest that its preservation is more important than a backwater, nationalistic language like Norwegian or Welsh.


So, to look at it another way - without some form of classical studies, the history, culture and literature of at least mediterranean Europeover at least a thousand years will become almost indecipherable. Is this a loss worth accepting in order to shortcircuit the imperial colonisation of our own language?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
12:33 / 18.10.02
More than that, it's (Latin, that is) the language of international scholarship right up until the early eighteenth century... It would also of course affect the study of philosophy, philology, some branches of science (though I'm not sure exactly how much Latin you need to understand Linnaean classification). Obviously all those disciplines and lots of others I can't think of are implicated in Eurocentrism, but still I think the loss would outweigh the gain

(and I don't think that the problem of Eurocentrism is a valid reson for rooting out the study of European history/philosophy etc)
 
 
grahamwell
12:54 / 18.10.02
A quick delurk to share something. I've recently discovered abebooks.com which is allowing me to build a little library of favourites. As a general rule scholarly books written before the second world war are peppered with Latin and Greek quotations without translation. If you can't understand Latin (mine is very poor) then it's impossible to follow the argument. It's really irritating. Modern books will always use a footnote with an English translation but with older books you don't get any help. So losing the classical languages means struggling with much of our more recent heritage.

On the main topic, understanding the Classical background can help with unexpected things. I'm thinking in particular of the recent discussion of homosexuality and the Bible - once you have an appreciation of the role of homosexuality in Greek culture (it was a key element in their education system and temple rituals) then the Pauline injunctions and subsequent sexual prohibitions become easier to understand. To know thyself (in my case anyway) is to understand the way in which, through Christianity, the two opposing Jewish and Greek cultures were brought into synthesis, creating the medieval and then modern mind. This kind of cultural archaeology brings you back to Athens pretty directly.
 
 
Pepsi Max
05:23 / 19.10.02
Haus>

So, is your opposition to the teaching of Latin, or the teaching of Latin generally?

The latter. I have no objection to students tacking Latin as a specialist subject in the manner of, say, Norwegian.

...and reserve the teaching of Latin to a specialised few? Problem being, that surely only intensifies the perception explored early on in this thread of Classsics as continuation of the "leadership tools" furnished upon an elite...

Well that depends who is being taught, no? If Latin was taught to all yr privately educated kids and not to yr state schoolers, then may be that provides a "leadership tool". If it's offered to only a minority of either, then no problem.

As you effectively say yourself, Norwegian is a ghetto language

Not in Norway.

...the aim of Latin is not to speak Latin but to understand it. That is, to compare it with a "living" language is already like comparing French and Physics - they do different things.

Well, yes. They do. But mypoint was that in the past French teaching has been treated too much like the teaching of Latin and not enough like the teaching of, well, French.

It's like criticising the Anglo-Saxon bits of an English degree

Which were introduced into the English curriculum to make it more like Classics - i.e. a 'proper' (and serious and difficult) subject.

And since there is an international community dedicated to understanding Latin, a good cosmopolitan might suggest that its preservation is more important than a backwater, nationalistic language like Norwegian or Welsh.

The comparison between Latin and Welsh or Norwegian is flawed. People identify as Welsh and Norwegian. Part of that identification is linguistic. Hence groups struggle to preserve their languages. No one identifies as 'Ancient Roman'.

And if there are good reasons for someone studying Latin - which if you are a historian of any Western period before the 19th century, there probably is - then I dont think they should be stopped from doing so.

I just think that for most people, there are more important things to be teaching them in school.

KCC> How much Latin do modern biologists need - none. Yr much better of learning population statistics/chemistry/geography etc to support yr biology.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
17:08 / 19.10.02
Yeah, but if you abolished Latin you'd have to invent a new taxonomic system, wouldn't you?
 
 
Annunnaki-9
19:00 / 19.10.02
Omnia disce, videbus postea nihil esse superfluum.
 
 
Cat Chant
11:36 / 21.10.02
Omnia disce, videbus postea nihil esse superfluum

Really? What about the racist/sexist/homophobic attitudes I learned when I was younger? What about all the advertising jingles and associations that have colonized my mind and I can't unlearn?

Pepsi, I'm sorry but I cannot be any clearer about what I think globalatinization is. One thing that occurs to me, though, reading back through my posts, is that I said:

'globalatinisation': a communications technology which universalizes the particular (Latin) by designating it a transparent and innocuous medium of communication. Classics (or 'Rome' as I usually call this thing) names not only a body of thought/texts but also the structure of inheritance by which we become members of a European culture which is equated with the Roman Empire

So I suppose what I actually want to burn is the structure of inheritance, rather than the body of thought/texts. The question is what the relationship between "Classics" in its narrow sense - as a historically defined and transmitted discipline - and in its broad sense, as globalisation, the structures of transmission that rely on a Romanization of the world in order for the information that is transmitted to be intelligible.
 
 
illmatic
14:58 / 21.10.02
I've just tuned into this thread - I haven't a great deal to add to the arguements but to go back to Haus's orginal post about what Classical study might be useful for, I think it could help a with the study of Magick. Not this new fangled, post-moderny Chaos Magick that all the kids are into these days, more so the Hermetic traditon.

A familarity with Classics helps when reading Crowley, and a lot of the magi that proceeded him drew on the intellectual traditions of Plotnius, Plato etc. Crowley was very much engaaged in the revival of worship of the pagan gods and epics like Metamorphisis give us a feel for these gods and thier world. How relevant the study of the Hermetic Tradition is to the "modern world" is of course another question.
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
08:57 / 04.11.02
So I suppose what I actually want to burn is the structure of inheritance, rather than the body of thought/texts. The question is what the relationship between "Classics" in its narrow sense - as a historically defined and transmitted discipline - and in its broad sense, as globalisation, the structures of transmission that rely on a Romanization of the world in order for the information that is transmitted to be intelligible.

Deva, If we burn this system of inherritance what will we replace it with to make the information that is transmitted intelligible?
So if I take you right we will not eliminate the study of the classics we will just disconect them from their role of dominance?
How do we disconnect the two aspects of the classics from each other?
What role would education play in these actions?
 
 
Cat Chant
17:05 / 08.11.02
Nietzsche - to be honest, I started this thread so that you lot would tell me the answers to the questions you've just asked, and kick-start me into thinking of a way of defending the work I do on Roman texts. But it looks like I have to do the work myself, grumble, grumble.

I don't think you can disconnect classical texts from the structures that make them legible. I suppose, in a mournfully realistic register, my hope would be that they can be rendered legible otherwise. What Deleuze & Guattari call a "becoming-minoritarian" in their book Towards a Minor Literature. At the moment I'm trying to do this - as I try to do everything, come to think of it - through a combination of deconstruction and sci-fi fandom. But the image that keeps coming to mind is the Valis satellite in Valis which transmits Romanization; should it be destroyed? And to what does it correspond in contemporary globalatinisation?

(Incidentally, Pepsi, I've just read the Derrida article on globalatinisation - I'll type some quotes in over the weekend. He's mostly talking about the Pope.)
 
  

Page: 12(3)

 
  
Add Your Reply