Right up to the present time, reference to antiquity has been one of the standard narratives used in the attempt to establish a European identity. Usually, the image of antiquity remains blurred and ambiguous: sometimes the focus is on the 'classical' Athens of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., sometimes on the late Roman Republic, more rarely on the Roman imperial period or late antiquity. Antiquity is celebrated for inventing equality, democracy, and philosophy and seen as a heyday for art, literature and architecture. Its decline and fall are lamented and blamed on moral decay and the attacks of the barbarians. But antiquity is also condemned for slavery and misogyny, totalitarianism and xenophobia, fundamentalism and intolerance.
Either way, the legacy of antiquity continues to be an element in the construction of identity: it is considered to be the cradle of Europe, the roots of Western tradition – indeed, the origin of an Occident whose decline has either long since arrived, is to be prevented by all means, or should finally be brought about.
The evocative reference to 'antiquity' – as a supposedly homogeneous phenomenon of Western superiority – and the call to save the 'Occident' are particularly widespread in right-wing populist circles today, while at the same time, any reference to supposedly Western-European values is met with radical criticism from the left. This makes the search for the ancient roots of European identity as delicate as it is urgent. In order to counter simplistic instrumentalization, light must be shed on the tension-laden diversity of both ancient reality and the ways it has been received.
Historically, many of Europe's cultural, scientific, and political achievements have undeniably been based directly or indirectly on a foundation laid in antiquity by Greco-Roman philosophy, Roman law, science, literature, ancient political ideas and Christianity, economics, and architecture. Perceived and conceptualized as an integral part of Europe, Greco-Roman antiquity, which in turn rests on the shoulders of the older Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, creates a significant frame of reference for many modern forms of cultural self-assurance and identity construction. This frame of reference itself has been transmitted to a large extent through post-ancient processes of vertical acculturation, which can also be observed beyond the European region.
The Abbasids, for example, consciously drew on the ancient philosophical and scientific tradition to document the cultural superiority of the Muslim world over the Byzantines, and in the present day, not least in China, a marked increase in interest in ancient traditions of thought can be observed. On the other hand, since the early Middle Ages, many ruling houses and cultural circles in the West have striven to establish political legitimacy and a spiritual bond with a history rooted in antiquity by developing narratives of cultural and genealogical continuity. In the 16th century, for example, the Habsburgs linked their origins to Hector of Troy. And from Copernicus to the French Revolution and beyond, the connection to antiquity and the legitimization of one's own actions were sought in mythological and historical precedents.
Especially in more recent times, a broad spectrum of political, social, and cultural proponents with different rationales and intentions have rallied behind claims to the heritage of antiquity. Hardly by chance, the European Union was founded with the Treaties of Rome at the Roman Capitol in 1957, and in 2003, in a similarly symbolic ceremony, the accession of ten states to the EU was finalized in the Stoa of Attalos in Athens. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron chose the Athenian Pnyx with the Acropolis in the background as a meaningful historical stage for a keynote address on European democracy. While the interest in ancient myths and poetry and their creative exploration have never died out in the arts, it is striking how often the ancient tragedies, for example, can be found in the repertoire of theaters throughout Europe, especially in recent times. And in connection with the political upheavals in America in the past years, comparisons with Plato's ideal-typical analysis of the decline of states as well as with the conduct of Roman emperors were quickly brought into play.
Over the centuries, identity-creating narratives have always been formed anew from common ancient foundations and continue to be formed today, but in contemporary societies, the identities formed in this way stand in diverse, competing interrelationships with one another and have never merged into a homogeneous structure across all cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic bounds.
Despite all the common ground, historical ruptures within individual or entire groups of traditions have contributed decisively to autonomous further development of the identity-forming references in some cases. Here, particularly the nationally shaped narratives bear consideration. In other contexts, however, Greco-Roman ideas have become part of very different traditions, simply due to specific historical constellations, geographical conditions, and differently conveyed approaches to European antiquity. For their part, these circumstances have established a remarkable and vital diversity, but this has not led to a divergence that challenges the historical and narrative commonality of the foundation in general.
The aim of the conference «Constructions of Identity - The Role of Antiquity in European and Non-European Self-Discovery» is to examine the complexity and dynamics of the processes that apply to very different conceptions of antiquity and that govern, pervade, and animate the narratives of European identity in modern times. However, this extraordinarily broad topic can only be considered by using representative examples from different fields. The processes of creative appropriation will be illuminated by invited experts in a transversal perspective. In order to promote young researchers who are not yet established, there will also be an open call for papers which will be added to the list of speakers.
Congress languages: German, French, Italian, and English.
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