Modern Greek Studies at the Crossroads: The Paradigm Shift

from Empiricism to Skepticism 1 Vassilis Lambropoulos

In 1988, the Modern Greek Studies Association of America (MGSA) celebrated its 20th anniversary. It was an appropriate moment for festive occasions, and gestures of pride and confidence as a small academic group has rapidly evolved into a national scholarly organi­ zation of international prestige, with its own forums, activities, pub­ lications, independence, and authority. This development and ex­ pansion also indicates forcefully that the study of contemporary Greece has come of age. While the field of modern Greek studies can trace its history back to the early 20th century, when linguists, folk­ lorists, and historians turned their philhellenic interests to the de­ scendants of the ancients, with the success of the Association it has finally acquired the coherence, comprehensiveness, and credibility of a legitimate research field. Such an impressive achievement deserves to be highlighted and celebrated. It may not even be too early to consider writing the history of the Association-the only one of its kind in the world-as a study in, and lesson of, disciplinary growth. The list of accomplishments is long: the growing number of ·modern Greek studies programs; the establishment of designated pro­ fessorships and endowed chairs; increasing undergraduate and grad­ uate enrollments; the scope and quality of curricula; ten major sym­ posia and many special panels in general conferences; publication of journals such as Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, the Journal of Modern Greek Studies and the book publications of the Association; the scholarly record and reputation of its membership; the interdis­ ciplinary and international character of the organization; and ever­ expanding interest in the fieldby both colleagues and non-specialists. An original, wide-ranging body of scholarly and administrative work has been created with the result that an old area of study has suc­ cessfully emerged as a legitimate and respectable academic field. journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 7, 1989. 2 Vassilis Lambropoulos

Festive occasions often provide collective opportunities forboth affirmationof vigor and self-examination: a celebration of success can be constructively complemented by a criticism of fear, fetish, or failure. It is particularly reassuring to see this already happening in modern Greek studies. I am referring to a comprehensive review of its methods and practices which has been undertaken by many specialists in dif­ fe rent disciplines, and is currently remapping the territory and re­ drawing the boundaries that have separated the field from other areas. Such extensive revision can be perceived as either a critique or a threat: as a critique of notions and legislations which narrow the scope of research by those who deplore limits and controls on inquiry; and as a threat to hierarchy and balance by those who dread the erosion of common sense and authority. There is no doubt that this revision proposes both an alternative vision and a different empowerment. Knowledge and power can no longer be kept artificially separate in any institutional environment (Unger 1975). The debate is about rights, not right and wrong. It would therefore seem to me that an open discussion of this continuing development can only contribute to a better understanding of the field. The moment is no less fe stive than critical. Criticism, indeed, does not violate the spirit of celebra­ tion; on the contrary, one ought to be mindful of gains made and of stakes raised. A radical potential for innovation has emerged. Let us then take a closer look at modern Greek studies at the crossroads of history and practice. I propose that we are witnessing, and we are also part of, a paradigm shift. 2 Twenty years after the official establishment of the MGSA and its academic territory of operation, a revisionary, and often oppositional, collective effort to reexamine its direction seems to have reached a high point of maturity, visibility, and success. So far, a crude line has been tentatively drawn between two camps: the philologists and the theoreticians. The firstcamp appears to include traditionalists who still adhere to criteria of fact gathering, stylistic analysis, and factual reconstruction, while the second includes those who espouse methods loosely associated with the poststructuralist movement. Al­ though the differentiation may not be entirely inappropriate, its in­ stitutional origin (in recent debates within departments of English and other "major" languages and literatures) ought to warn against its uncritical application in other areas. It is true that philology and theory have come to represent today two dominant positions, whose conflict manifests itself with particular clarity and force in literary studies: one position that trusts the autonomy of the 1iterary text and takes its aesthetic importance as its starting point, and another that questions this autonomy and its concomitant cultural authority. The two terms, Modern Greek Studies 3 however, present confusing and distracting difficulties. "Philology," forexample, cannot always be transferred with any accuracy to denote traditional approaches within other disciplines; and "theory" creates the false impression that there can be a distinct activity called appli­ cation.3 Even the designation of the two camps (which encourages one to think in terms of individuals, conspiracies, or sports teams) does not help in locating the source of disagreement. We need to go beyond such misleading distinctions. The positions, practices, and purposes of the two schools of thought require a much more analytical and detailed description. During similar debates within the larger area of interpretive theory, many interesting terms have been proposed: Richard Rorty ( 1982), forexample, has distinguished idealism from textualism, Stanley Fish ( 1985) theory from pragmatism, Terry Eagleton ( 1983) literary from political criticism, Catherine Belsey ( 1980) expressive-realist from pro­ ductive criticism, and others metaphysics from historicism, poetics from rhetoric, or explication frominterpretation. All these distinctions have been useful in outlining the substantial differences separating the two schools and in alerting us to their consequences. At the same time, they often left the door open to misunderstanding or manip­ ulation. A traditionalist, forexample , could defend his work by claim­ ing that he has been a textualist all along (because he deals with texts), or a historicist (because he takes into consideration historical factors), or a rhetorician (because he analyzes rhetorical devices). In another effort (though certainly not the last one) to minimize confusion, I would like to focus on methodological assumptions, and call the two ways of working in modern Greek studies, Empiricism and Skepticism, respectively. It is a tentative distinction which serves heuristic pur­ poses: the clear and succinct articulation and comparison of philo­ sophical disagreements. I shall not spend much time outlining the epistemological contours of each paradigm. My aim is to concentrate as much as possible on the realm of my immediate concern, modern Greek studies.

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Empiricism argues that experience is the dependable source of all knowledge and its justification, that facts are the only possible objects of knowledge, and certainty is derived from direct contact with their reality. The source of literary knowledge, for example, is the experience of literature, and the object of that knowledge is literary reality. the literary facts. Thus the specialist who shares this belief will rely upon experience of a text (and perhaps upon similar experiences of other specialists) to write about it as a datum, an independent entity 4 Vassilis Lambropoulos of intrinsic merit that can be independently approached and objec­ tively analyzed. This is taken to be the most reliable source of infor­ mation, the datum of a complete and disinterested experience. What is usually analyzed, though, is not experience as such (that is, as a personal event) : only the essayist can afford to talk explicitly about it, relay and relish it in unabashedly personal, even private, terms. The scholar will present a contact with a fact, a discovery of a reality, a detailed exploration of a tangible world and an incorruptible truth. Similar claims (about contact, exploration, and discovery) are invar­ iably made in other human and the social sciences: the linguist reveals a deep structure, the historian a hidden motive, the sociologist a secret cause. Empiricism should not be perceived as a homogeneous trend or a monolithic attitude. Within this large area (which often extends beyond the realm of scholarship and is indeed lodged in the exigencies of everyday political reality), various discourses develop, constructing and construing experience and its objects in quite differentwa ys. One can discern a variety of directions, from the impressionistic, which relies more on the experiential dimension (asserting the supremacy of the cultivated sensibility in a quasi-autobiographical style), to the positivistic, which remains on the scientific dimension (asserting the priority of the object or event to be reconstructed). They all share the same confidence in a direct, full (and by definition "parasitic"4) contact with an autonomous, meaningful reality, but their emphasis on the proper conditions of that contact vary. As a typical instance of impressionistic criticism, consider the article "Odysseus Elytis and the Discovery of Greece" by Philip Sher­ rard (1983). The author writes in an introspective mood and confes­ sional mode, with lyrical overtones that range from the mystical to the apocalyptic, about the search for Greek identity and the poet's success in his own quest. The experiences from whichhe draws include not only Elytis' poems but the country itself. His confessed subject is the possible contribution of poetry to personal salvation. After de­ scribing the degeneration of the West into rationalism, he offersthis advice: "The only real way out of this situation is forthe soul to reverse direction, to turn in on to itself and to try to reconquer its lost spiritual cosmos from within. This above all should be the task of the poets" (1983: 277). Elytis' oeuvre, the argument goes, is such an exemplary achievement. This kind of essayistic writing, which obviously falls outside the realm of scholarship, recovers from an epiphanic expe­ rience of literature a transcendental vision, and proposes art as a moral propaedeutic. Modern Greek Studies 5

At the other end of the empiricist spectrum belongs Renata Lavagnini's paper, "The Unpublished Drafts of Five Poems on Julian the Apostate by C. P. Cavafy" (1981). It presents for the first time exactly what its title says in a "diplomatic" (accompanied by commen­ tary) and a critical edition. Here is a typical example of the detailed information offeredon these drafts, specificallyon the poem "Athan­ asios:"

Cavafy Archive, F 57, sheets 1-7. 1 (sheet 1) Strip of thin cardboard, gray-blue on the outside, lighter gray on the inside, 22.2x9.5 cm., with two fold marks parallel to the shorter sides. Traces of clips. In the central space, the title. (1981: 58)

This kind of information is not as trivial as it appears: it documents not the existence of the text but the possibility of an encounter with the work (a privilege the editor has apparently already had); thus a literary datum is not simply presented but guaranteed. Furthermore, despite a conscientious attempt to minimize critical involvement­ honestly and significantly called "intervention" (1981: 57)-and an impersonal, scientific tone, interpretation is far from avoided: after the presentation of each draft and the philological commentary, "in which we seek to reconstruct the iter of the draft on the sole basis of objective data" ( 1981: 5 7), a definitive, "last text of the poem" ( 1981: 57) is produced. Through painstaking investigation of ink, inclination, intention, composition, style, allusion, sources, and historical facts, the creative process ("the path of elaboration") is retraced and its final result (re)constructed. Out of a seemingly fragmentary and incomplete material, a self-conscious product is assembled. 5 Another form that the empiricist approach may take is the faith­ ful cataloguing of influences.6 Rachel Hadas, for example, in her "Spleen a la Grecque: Karyotakis and Baudelaire" (1985) traces the debts of the Greek to the French poet. As her reason for choosing to make the comparison, she gives a biographical parallel: "affinities of temperament" (1985: 21) and their consequences (like syphilis). On the basis of adduced similarities, a careful comparison is conducted which establishes a parallel and highlights the originality of Kostas Karyotakis. This is a noble and enabling exercise: it allows students of Greek authors, who are interested in comparing them with the European and American greats, to excuse the belated efforts of the former by proving them comparable, if not equal, to the latter. Thus Greek letters are made to look modern, interesting, and good (in a Western European acceptation of these terms). A similar task is per­ formed by Diana Haas who, in her "Early Cavafy and the European 6 Vassilis Lambropoulos

'Esoteric' Movement" (1984), traces aspects of the Alexandrian poet's relation to French Symbolism. 7 The appeal to factual evidence is ex­ plicit and simple:

Cavafy's familiarity with a number of writers and artists directly or in­ directly connected with this movement is attested by references in his writings and by his personal library. ( 1984: 209)

The assumption is that a proper collection, objective examination, and careful study of the relevant material will illuminate its true meaning. As in the case of Lavagnini's paper, one is not told where Cavafy's drafts or library may be found. But that is indeed beyond the point: attestation-the act of bearing witness and declaring something to be genuine or true-is the fundamental (rhetorical) strategy of empiri­ cism, not the furnishing of irrefutable evidence. Attestation does not "prove" anything: it simultaneously justifiesownership and greatness, exclusion and canonicity, controlled access and universal accessibility. The collector, the dealer, the specialist, or the archivist can thus de­ termine, in the Elginian name of protection, comprehensiveness, and scholarship, what a document is, where it belongs, and how it should be treated. Among empiricist approaches, classicist contributions to modern Greek studies deserve special note. Classicists have been fascinatedby contemporary Greek literature and culture mainly because of the irresistible promise of continuity.8 It has almost become customary for the eminent specialist (like C. M. Bowra) to trace, in occasional writings, classical influences and cultural debts in Greek poetry and folklore or, to put it in Lukacsian terms, the vestiges of an integrated world in a problematic one (Lukacs 1971). Recently, however, they have turned their attention more to the secrets of the creative process, as they seem to feel that the modern field allows for psychological ex­ planations of artistic intent largely unacceptable by classicist ortho­ doxy. Consider "The Julian Poems of C. P. Cavafy" by G. W. Bowersock (1981). He examines the poet's "obsession" (1981: 89) with the em­ peror, and investigates his motives, from"feelings of guilt and distress over his sexual nature" ( 1981: 92) to "his Christianity and his con­ sciousness of being Greek" ( 1981: 103). Consider also a paper by Diskin Clay, "C. P. Cavafy: The Poet in the Reader" (1987). The title aptly indicates the direction of the search: although the writer claims that he searches for "the signs in the poems ...that point to the texts that lay beyond the poem, but are partially inscribed in the poem" ( 1987: 68), ultimately he is not seeking the reader in the poet but the poet himself-the_ artist, the genius, the true Cavafy-in the reader (of other readers of other readers, of course-a dimension which the Modern Greek Studies 7 paper failsto notice). Clay brushes aside in a footnoteas ju st "diffe rent" (1987: 80, no. 16) Dimitris Dimiroulis' intertextualist approach to the very same problem. The evidence pursued must lead ultimately to the creative subject, the source and origin of greatness. 9 This is stated unequivocally when the critic, even before embarking on his explo­ ration, points to a great similarity between "the attitude of Cavafy the reader" and the "attitude we recognize in the late photographs of this lean, austere, and bespectacled man" (1987: 68). Empiricism always recovers texts, facts, and psychologies; its sources of evidence are reality and personality. The classicist discourse has in many crucial respects formulated the agenda of the fieldby attributing to modern Greece three primary characteristics: uniqueness, belatedness, and inferiority. The challenge has been tremendous and its impact long fe lt. 10 More important for my study is to note that empiricism, by adhering to the same standards of method and analysis, has not been able to question the presup­ positions of that discourse, and has thus responded in ways fe eble, if not apologetic.11 George Savidis (1985), forexample, instead of chal­ lenging the credentials and agenda of classicist superiority (in method as well as in ideology), discards Gregory Jusdanis' Bloomian reading of Cavafy ( 1982/83) with a dismissively anonymous reference to "trendy expressions like 'the anxiety of influence' " (Savidis 1985: 168). On the other hand, he goes on to explore "the Burden of the Past and the Greek Poet" on the basis of a specific "kind of desire: the common literary urge forcreative competition" (1985: 174)-an idea (and even vocabulary) indirectly appropriated, via Jusdanis' applica­ tion, from Harold Bloom's psychoanalytic agonistics12 forthe purposes of empiricist criticism. Thus, in Savidis' essay, the challenge of classics has been met on its own ground (textual and biographical evidence), the burden of belatedness of contemporary Greek poetry has been alleviated through an exposition of its creative uniqueness, and the epistemological issues pertaining to literary method have been neu­ tralized through a defense of adroit, competitive inferiority. If the evidence paratactically presented tends to be mainly anecdotal (from citation of full poems, often without any analysis, to autobiographical justification of perspective), this is immaterial; the true material is the full knowledge of lives, places, works, events he possesses-the reality of the critic's personal experience of literature. The testimonial aspect of empiricism should not be overlooked. It is based on a claim that is meant to defy refutation: one's own full contact with, and knowledge of, what truly happened and what really matters. For example, Edmund Keeley concludes a book of essays (1983) with an interview, "A Conversation with Seferis" [1970]. This 8 Vassilis Lambropoulos piece presents itself not as an argument but as a record: it records a private occasion, an artistic voice, and an authentic view. In an alle­ gorical sense, it captures the essence of empiricist study and proof: the creator as oracle, the critic as mediator, interpretation as listening, understanding as privileged access.13 These are critical principles that inform Keeley's approach to literature. And if the Seferis interview exemplifies his whole work, we can legitimately (i.e., in this case, al­ legorically) take his work as a representative example of empiricism in modern Greek studies. Only part of it qualifies as scholarship. Although systematic and well-structured, it does not often obey methodological rules with con­ sistent rigor or take into consideration scholarly developments in the field.14 Keeley certainly does not indulge in casual impressions or introspective ruminations. He conducts organically structured explo­ rations of literature, based on his extensive familiarity with relevant artistic texts and informed insight: as a careful reader, he examines works that are a priori assumed to be literary, meaningful, coherent, closed, autonomous, and great.15 The rest is explication. But this is the difficulty: neither author nor critic ever fail. Scholarly argumen­ tation and documentation are displaced by testimonial attestation­ the coherent narrative ofan educated and refinedexperience of texts. This kind of involvement is expressed in an essays tic style that, because it is unable to overcome its authorial predilections or resist its aesthetic preferences, ultimately contradicts the very authority it seeks to es­ tablish. As the format, structure, character, and place of publication of his work amply demonstrate, Keeley is less determined to negotiate a scholarly position than to integrate the mode of writing traditionally associated with the "man of letters," that of a well-versed litterateur. He publishes in intellectual magazines (rather than scholarly journals) belles-lettristic studies which analyze in explanatory fashion literary dimensions promoted by symbolist modernism (like tone, setting, at­ mosphere, voice, and allusion). The limited scope of footnotes and the discreet absence of bibliography indicate an eclecticism of sources willing to engage in discussion only with other educated and self­ disciplined sensibilities (rather than scholarly investigations). Keeley is the sensitive yet uninformed common reader's best guide to the field. These observations have obviously nothing to do with an eval­ uation of Edmund Keeley's contribution to criticism. The crux of the matter, in the context of this discussion, is its place and credibility in the larger field. My aim is to place his work, and by implication others like his, in a particular discourse, 10 genre, 17 ideological space, 18 and Modern Greek Studies 9 institutional site19 where it belongs-to situate it within modern Greek studies. What comes under scrutiny is the rhetoric and epistemology of empiricism, not the truth of a work or the content of a signature; a reputation, not a person or a career. It must be recognized, for example, that Keeley's work has played a pioneering and instrumental role in attracting interest to Greek literature, an area that would have been possibly less known and popular today without the wide pro­ motion and publicity that he, perhaps more than anybody else, has contributed. It must also be recognized, however, that this promotion has centered much more on making texts available than on principled, disciplined, systematic, analytical examination. Availability has been achieved through various means: selection, translation, explication, explanation, canonization, mythologization-in a word, populariza­ tion. Keeley established a (version of) Greek literature that was con­ structed according to certain (modernist) standards and was meant to appeal to a certain audience which would immediately recognize it. Making available here meant not just translating (naturally, in a par­ ticular fashion), but also making approachable, understandable, ap­ pealing, original, modern, western, male, and authentic.20 One can go even further: Keeley's Greek literature was meant to appeal to artistic sensibilities. This is why the testimonial documentation weighs more than the scholarly one, the experience prevails over research, and attitude is more depended upon than method. This approach is not new (and has never been limited to literary studies): it has dom­ inated the field for about half a century. It is highly interesting, for instance, that beforethe systematic study of modern Greek literature, authors were already signing its praises: E. M. Forster, Henry Miller, Louis Aragon, Stephen Spender, Lawrence Durrell, Marguerite Your­ cenar, W. H. Auden, Paul Eluard, Rex Warner-a list to which many younger names (like Joseph Brodsky and Yves Bonnefoy) can be added. Writings such as Keeley's (like translations by Jacques Lacar­ riere, Nikos Stangos, or John Stathatos) have contributed substantially to this development because, by utilizing an elegant style of refined sensibility and educated sensitivity, they have won friends for Greek literature. Admittedly, Keeley, as a critic, is closer to D. J. Enright or John Bayley than to Lionel Trilling or David Lodge. Scholarly or cultural criticism have not been among his primary concerns. The strength of his position comes fromaesthetic cultivation, not scholarly sophistication. By introducing this distinction here, I am not necessarily making an evaluative comparison between the two, choosing the one attitude over the other. I am only referring to two categories of critical writing 10 Vassilis Lambropoulos

which are commonly accepted as very different in mode, scope, and purpose. I also find them useful in explaining why Greek literature has been presented for decades as a taste and not, say, a test. In effect, the dominant picture of modern Greek literature produced21 so far by modern Greek studies is a modernist one,22 and has attracted aesthetic and scholarly interest trained in the great mod­ ernist tradition. The majority of works that have been translated are modernist, the majority of comparisons have been with modernist authors, the majority of writers who have expressed admiration belong to that school, and the terms of the discussion of other figures are borrowed from the corresponding critical vocabulary (i.e., that of New Criticism).23 One can see why at a certain point that was a successful way of bringing Greek writers to relevance and prominence: by es­ tablishing similarities and parallels meaningful to the foreign audi­ ence, one promotes and legitimizes his exotic subject. But this tactic carries the ever-present danger of compromise, of giving total validity and priority to already dominant criteria. What is more, accepting those criteria as permanent and using them to evaluate the whole body of Greek literature is ultimately self-defeating. During its early period of development, modern Greek literary studies (possibly forstrategic, among other, reasons) adhered to modernist models and the concom­ itant methods of Anglo-American New Criticism. It may not be an altogether worthless exercise to think retrospectively of alternative possibilities that were cancelled by that choice.24 It is certainly more important, though, to go beyond that period and consider a wider range of methods (and the possible elimination of certain antiquated models). As I have argued, during the firstten to fifteenyears of its official (scholarly and academic) history, the field was dominated by the dis­ courses and practices of empiricism. As a broad outline of dominant trends, this picture gives, I propose, an accurate idea of the roads taken by modern Greek, not only in literary studies but also in lin­ guistics, sociology, history, economics, or political science. Immediate and full contact with the reality of the country and its people was the paramount concern. Modern Greece was produced as a site, a sign, a symmetry, a signature, a specialty, a spectacle, a style. Blindness and insight, quest and return, belief and faith, observation and revelation went harmoniously hand in hand. The socio-political and ideological conditions of production, validation, and dissemination of knowledge were very rarely an issue. This was far from a unique case, and its recognition should not cause astonishment or anger. Developments in other areas followed a similar path: comparable fields, like German (Schmidt 1985) or Slavic Modern Greek Studies 11

(Steiner 1987), started as ethnic studies (fuelled by curiosity, ethnic pride, fascination, political interests, or a search for identity) and evolved into scholarly fields. Modern Greek studies seems to have taken this direction too. Nevertheless, such an evolution should not be seen as natural or unavoidable. Neither does it mean that gaining academic status and scholarly prestige is by definition a good thing to happen.25 It would be naive to take these developments forgranted without examining the forces, mechanisms, tactics, and circumstances involved. An awareness of institutional history and politics is indis­ pensable for a critical understanding of a field or discipline, and for a judicious planning of its future goals (Derrida 1983). We need, therefore, to look closer at the authority empiricism has acquired, if we are to comprehend the present identity of the field better. In a banal sense, everybody is entitled to her or his opinion: Lavagnini to her reconstruction, Haas to her recovery, Clay to his rereading, Sherrard to his redemption. The matter, however, comes under a very different light when we recognize that minor contri­ butions like these or major reconstitutions like Keeley's put firmly in place a canon26 of great works, authors, and achievements, whereby a particular version of history, variation of writing, and vision of identity became dominant, if not exclusive. This, then, is not a matter of private opinion but of public power. A particular discursive for­ mation developed into a hegemonic center of legislative authority (Kermode 1979) by claiming expertise over Greek culture through the dominant modernist rhetoric of intellectual taste and distinction. Its standards enabled certain critics, professors, translators, or editors to play an arbitrating role within the field. The languages of empir­ icism provided the acceptable criteria for appointment, promotion, election, invitation, publication, or citation: they determined what is valid, correct, true, proper, or interesting.27 Thus the same constel­ lation of autocratic reputations dominated editorial boards and com­ mittees, influenced publishing houses and Centers, formulated poli­ cies and positions; they served as readers forjourna ls or departments, as officials in administrative bodies, as advisers to universities and foundations.28 Empiricism for a long time shaped the structure, the agenda, and the image of the field, as well as its relationship with adjacent areas and the non-academic world.29 We need, however, to look at the whole configuration of forces. Investigating reputations is not enough. We need to look not only at what supported the established positions but also at what was left out, in order to locate the conditions of empowerment that gave hegemony30 its privileges of speech and governance. In the specific case of modern Greek studies, if we examine the gaps and margins 12 Vassilis Lambropoulos of scholarly and academic accreditation, we find that mechanisms of exclusion and misrepresentation have been recently struggling to keep a strong revisionary trend under control (or out of the field). This brings me to the second part of my study, a discussion of the alternative school of thought which has emerged during this decade to interrogate the presuppositions, question the credentials, and challenge the au­ thority of the empiricist hegemony. I propose to call it Skepticism.

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The skepticist attitude puts into theoretical doubt the reliability of knowledge claims made by the methods of empiricism.31 The ad­ equacy of grounds for assumptions and assertions becomes a central issue; the guarantees of evidence and proof are problematized; the unmediated access to facts and verity undergoes epistemological in­ vestigation. The skepticists exhibit an intense awareness of presup­ position and method distinguished for its self-reflexive integrity. In an inviting gesture of good faith and openness, they first raise these questions in reference to their own work.32 References to one's own cultural position and perspective have actually become their hallmark. Their research is distinguished primarily by a willingness to admit the necessarily partial and provisional viewpoint defining any particular analysis, including the aesthetic, moral, political, or other assumptions informing it and the specific historical circumstances conditioning it. Skepticists are skeptical about the possibility, credibility, and utility of what may pass as truth33 (including what they themselves do). Let me clarify two points before I proceed. First, the common tendency to misunderstand a critique for an attack must be dispelled. Empiricism and skepticism are two very different languages of knowl­ edge and views of the world; they are two incompatible paradigms.34 The skepticist challenge is to accountability, not to validity. It is an invitation to compare credentials and access, not sources and refer­ ences. Notions such as truth, reality, fact, evidence, and proof, it insists, can no longer be taken at face value;35 they are cultural constructs and as such are liable to analysis as these are objects of study. At issue is not the accuracy of evidence but one's right and access to it. Who and how, the question is posed, decides what counts for a fact and determines its relevance. My second point is related to the previous one. A traditionally convenient (but philosophically naive) way of dismissing the skepticist challenge is to concoct the spectre of relativism and the threat of nihilism (with obligatory references to the Sophists). This reaction, though, misrepresents skepticism. Its anti-essentialist approach does Modern Greek Studies 13

not question ontologically the possibility of truth but interrogates the conditions, practices, and interests of such a (far from natural or unavoidable) inquiry in the firstplace. Thus the question, "What makes you believe that the work of Seferis supports your arguments about it?" for example, does not imply that we can never know the truth of that work but rather aims at reexamining the (far from self-evident) assumption that such a work does exist, autonomous and coherent, out there, inviting independent examination. To ask about the pos­ sibility of truth is a question already dictated from within the realm of empiricist investigation. The skepticist would like to know more about the basis justifying the very question. For the relativist, facts are elusive, inaccessible, or illusionary; for the skepticist, however, they are real and concrete-not as objective and neutral data but as dis­ cursive and cultural constructs; not as explanatory (true or false) re­ sults but as interpretive material and means. Again, the issue is rights, not right or wrong. The empiricist response to the skepticist challenge has been largely one of intolerant rejection, and reached an almost international consensus. Karl Malkoff (1987) in New York ridiculed "the Structur­ alists and post-Structuralists, who, undeterred by the ease of their project, pounce eagerly on texts that seem to deconstruct themselves" ( 198 7: 191). Dimitris N. Maronitis (198 7) in Salonika warned against theories that may be imported from abroad, expressing a preference forthe term "philology," whose etymology "suggests a sympathetic or even pathological relationship of the reader with the literary text." SofiaSkopetea from Copenhagen scorned an "active diaspora" (1987: 36) for raising methodological issues "in the audience, of mixed origin, of modern Greek studies outside Greece" (1987: 41), and accused them of "decadence" (1987: 34) for their (indeed limited) interest in deconstruction. Finally, Richard Clogg (1987) in London proposed that, if modern Greek studies have to face the combined tasks of epistemological reflexivity, historical awareness, and political respon­ sibility, "it might be preferable for them not merely to be isolated but to be quarantined" (1987: 251). Reactions like the above are typical of the chorus of protests, castigations, and renunciations that greeted the rise to eminence of the critique of empiricist epistemology. A rare voice of moderation, Peter Bien tried to put things into perspective by suggesting that "Greek scholarship has entered the fourth and last of Vico's historical ages, the ricorso whose characteristic mode is irony" (1987: 275). This is an insightful proposition which can be construc­ tively discussed. Most empiricists, however, have apparently been alarmed, fe lt threatened, and responded in an impatient, occasionally intemperate tone: why, they seemed to ask, do we need reflexivity, 14 Vassilis Lambropoulos awareness, and responsibility? what is wrong with the field? are we not doing our best? is not what we produce true and valid? Negative reactions can be summarized in two main accusations, fadism and nihilism. In reference to the first, there seems to be a widespread perception that, if one cites a book that is outside one's own narrowly defined discipline and is less than 20 years old, one is succumbing to an intellectual fad. To follow the premises of textual editing, New Criticism, history of ideas, Freudian psychoanalysis, func­ tionalism, economic positivism, or transformational grammar is sound scholarship; but to adopt principles of reception aesthetics, new his­ toricism, genealogy, deconstruction, hermeneutics, fe minism, or semi­ otics, is just trendiness. To talk about myth, irony, paradox, influence, deep structure, origin, system, or mentality is legitimate and helpful; but to look into discourse, gender, margin, intertextuality, hegemony, canon, difference, or otherness (not to mention politics), is only trendy jargon. This attitude ignores the different methodological outlook supporting each terminology. (It also forgets that many terms and principles now canonical in traditional criticism were themselves orig­ inally scorned as fads by, say, the American New Humanism or the German Historicism.) New approaches should not by definition elim­ inate older methods. Some scholars do indeed uncritically adopt and parade buzzwords of new and old coinage. On the other hand, nobody should peremptorily dismiss new methods without studying them sys­ tematically first. In addition, the established model cannot count on pacifying its liberal conscience by graciously making some space for the new one. Sometimes, when models are incompatible, compromise may be impossible. One may freely, for example, continue explaining Cavafy according to T. S. Eliot's mythic method and Seferis' modernist ideal; but one cannot justifiablyexpect to preserve intact his scholarly eminence and institutional authority by practicing an approach which has been superseded in the humanities for some 40 years. The criticism of skepticism for alleged nihilism may be even more politically suspect. It usually combines the charges of relativism and decadence. For anybody with even a superficial familiarity with skep­ ticist writings, however, this accusation hardly accommodates their abundant and intense concern not only with revision and change but especially with ethics and politics. 36 Skepticists, in talking about the circulation of knowledge and the distribution of power, expose the abuses of discursive and institutional authority. In investigating the politics of truth, they explore the civics and ethics of interpretation.37 It is they, not their antagonists, who raise issues of axiology. For empiricists, research is value-neutral- objective, disinterested, dedi­ cated to the precise reconstruction and recovery of facts and data. Modern Greek Studies 15

Skepticists, on the other hand, pose the question of interest: they ask about disciplinary, material, political, ideological, and other interests served by scholarship in the sites of research, writing, and teaching (fromthe library to the classroom, from the conference to the editorial board). They do not claim forthemselves any objectivity or neutrality; neither, though, do they claim that this is a useless, playful exercise of wit and rhetoric: rather, more pragmatically and responsibly, they try to come to terms with historico-cultural conventions and conditions affecting the production and reception of their work. Theirs is an inquiry into the ethics and politics of the profession.38 In modern Greek studies, the detractors of skepticism have at­ tempted to reduce it to a trend, group, or movement. This under­ estimates its breadth and rigor. They have also attempted to portray it as casual and peripheral. This overlooks its strength and consistency. The quantity and quality of the work produced is already impressive, to say the least. Even if we limit ourselves to books only, many very recent or forthcomingtitles come to the mind of this writer (in roughly chronological order, Dubisch 1986; Tziovas 1986; Mouzelis 1986; J usdanis 198 7; Koliopoulos 198 7; Herzfeld 198 7; Lambropoulos 1988; Kitroeff 1988; Layoun 1988; Danforth 1989). To this list, we can add a number of recent Ph.D. theses (which should appear in print sooner or later, in toto or in part): Michalis Chrysanthopoulos, Jane Cowan, Karen van Dyck, Catia Galatariotou, Maria Kakavoulia, Yannis Karavidas, Nadia Seremetaki, Marianna Spanaki, and Charles Stewart. This list, which covers only works in English, is certainly partial and reflectsa compiler's limited knowledge of current research in the field. Nevertheless, it documents, I trust, a drastic shift of interest and emphasis which has already occurred: it shows beyond any doubt that, despite much resistance, skepticism, as a research paradigm, has finally arrived in modern Greek studies and is already exerting sig­ nificant and widespread influence. If this record is measured against comparable publications and dissertations belonging to the discourses of empiricism, the poverty of the latter (again, in terms of both quantity and quality) is quite astonishing. We should look now at its strategies of legitimation39 to discover why. During the formativeyears of the academic field and the MGSA, much introductory and elementary work was done to present to a large audience the contours and landmarks of the area. Seminal works and basic information about major events ought to be made available first, so the argument ran, before issues and problems could be dis­ cussed. To the extent that some initial interest had to be created and some basic importance established, this argument merits serious con­ sideration. At the same time, the risk of a pre-established, pre-emptive 16 Vassilis Lambropoulos

almost, uniformity and canonicity is obvious: it inheres in the very fact-analysis, information-interpretation distinction presupposed. Granted, respectability has to be earned. The cost of compromise, however, of giving to the prospective audience what they want to know, may be high. And indeed it was. Despite the public success of this effort, empiricism has not been able to sustain itself in a consistent, expansive way in the realm of scholarship. The emphasis on data has been from the beginning too strong, the interest in method and in­ terdisciplinary interaction negligible. Thus introductions and anthol­ ogies were followed by more introductions and anthologies, while the scope of research did not really improve, as it remained limited to thematic studies. The best and most visible representatives of empir­ icism, with one or two exceptions, have not been able to produce either a strong, integral, significant body of synthetic research or a line of students who would continue their work. Sooner or later, most of them had eventually to turn to administration or return to translation. As for successors, matters may be worse: who can seriously mention a direction or approach initiated or cultivated by, say, Anna Farmak­ ides, Kirnon Friar, Romilly Jenkins, K. Mitsakis, Stavros Papastavrou, Philip Sherrard, or Constantine Trypanis that any students discussed, followed, or revised? The poverty of empiricism at its most unpro­ ductive shows on the level of scholarly discussion and academic debate that never took root or happened. This school of thought had few isolated disciples and no major successors. There appears to be a generation gap of 15 to 20 years separating skepticist from empiricist work: it is as if during those years when the empiricists were busy taking over institutional places, especially during the 1970s, almost nothing of importance or consequence, beyond the appearance of more translations and surveys, happened in modern Greek studies. Nevertheless, the emergence of skepticism as a scholarly force to be reckoned with did not come as a totally unexpected development to those who were carefully watching certain epistemological tenden­ cies, and were following the theoretical turmoil in the human and social sciences since the late 1960s.40 Signs of an evolving critique were appearing already in the mid-l 970s. Even earlier, research in an­ thropology (as the work of]. K. Campbell, Ernestine Friedl, or Renee Hirschon shows) had acquired a remarkable sophistication which made its specialists pioneers of the revisionary trend. As a matter of fact, I believe that more than any other discipline involved in modern Greek studies, anthropology can take well-deserved credit for a con­ tinuous line of reflection and reformulation, and a quite consistent tradition of debate and dissent (which is still thriving in the diversity of publications by researchers like Anna Caraveli, Susan Sutton, and Modern Greek Studies 1 7

Lukas Tsitsipis or, from what one can gather, in current graduate work). Michael Herzfeld suggests that this departure may be con­ nected with "the relationship between theory and the cultural practices in which it is embedded. This relationship has always represented a pragmatic issue for anthropologists, whose task is empirical but who are themselves not necessarily empiricists" (1987: 1). Perhaps the eth­ nographic emphasis on the concrete and the particular, on the em­ pirical, on "the vagaries of social experience (Greek empeiria)" (1987: 14), did not encourage the "belief in the possibility ofabsolute, context­ free knowledge" (1987: 13) entertained by the various 19th century empiricisms (scientism, literalism, historicism, legalism, sociologism, or folklorism). At the other, most conservative end of the spectrum, history seems to stand firm. Even today, one looks in vain forsigns of meth­ odological reconsideration and revision. History remains entrenched in the most empiricist understanding of research. It is true that the discipline as a whole is not well known for radical moves.41 It is also true that the political and ideological stakes in this territory are prob­ ably higher that anywhere else, since a drastic change in perception and approach could affect the discursive constitution of Greece in a most sensitive and influential way: doing history differently could clearly entail dealing with a different Greece. A theory of facts is presumably harder to revise than a theory of texts, data, or language. On the other hand, if the institutional norms are closely scrutinized, it will become apparent that this discipline has to a large extent suc­ ceeded literary studies in dominating the field. This situation has been articulated in both administrative and judiciary power, since historians have not only gained control over strategic positions but have also delineated an exclusive territory for themselves. Thus they have ac­ quired exclusive jurisdiction over all historical inquiry: the purview of history is only what they deem historical. The past (as tradition, identity, or text) is theirs alone. On the contrary, skepticism (and in particular literary studies, its most advanced and vocal discipline) has taken from the start an unequivocal position favoringtransdisciplinary eclecticism within and beyond modern Greek studies. Within the specific realm, it has pro­ duced studies combining approaches from various disciplines, refus­ ing to obey the rules or respect the autonomy of a single area.42 Taking into account the standards and tradition of each scholarly area is an important prerequisite; reifying disciplinary borders is a positivist inhibition. Research, in order to break through new territories, needs to benefitfrom advances happening anywhere in scholarship, or even elsewhere in the public domain. In addition to adventurous transdis- 18 Vassilis Lambropoulos ciplinary excursions, skepticism has practiced a radical comparativism that engages modern Greek studies in broader discussions of com­ parable developments in other fields. The traditional exercise of es­ tablishing parallels and tracing influences, modelled on comparative literature, has only confirmed the colonial impression that Greek cul­ ture can be charmingly (as opposed to boringly or hopelessly) inferior to its western neighbors. This kind of publicity cannot attract more than condescending interest. To limit myself to literary studies once again, it is typical of empiricism that it molded the Greek poets it promoted on a certain Euro-American modernist prototype, and could therefore solicit the admiration only of authors and intellectuals educated in that movement. No serious history of Romanticism, how­ ever, includes Solomos or Kalvos. In prose, matters are worse: Pa­ padiamandis or Vizyenos remain local heroes for internal consump­ tion. The reason for this failure is simple: scholars in other areas were not told in any scholarly, rigorous, convincing way about differences, peculiarities, irregularities, divergences in the development of Greek culture that may be important for their own research; in effect, they were not challenged to rethink their own models on the basis of the Greek exceptions. Scholarly respectability and academic prestige have not been fully earned by specialists yet. Articles in the field mayappear in periodicals like The New Statesman, Encounter, Partisan Review, Grand Street, and Kenyon Review, but have not been published in journals like Critical Inquiry, New Literary History, Substance, Signs, or Style. Empiri­ cism fo ught hard for an aesthetic and intellectual respectability: it encouraged positive impressions, nostalgic reveries, and the anam­ nestic discovery of origins and parallels. In this endeavor, it fully succeeded, as indicated by the occasional supportive respect of es­ teemed artists (David Hockney), dilettanti (Robert Levesque), men of letters (Henry Gifford), travel writers (Patrick Leigh Fermor), poets (Peter Levi), journalists (Christopher Hitchens), classicists (Peter Green), directors (Martin Scorcese), and prize committees. It has not succeeded, however, in attracting, provoking, or cultivating the sys­ tematic interest of scholars, researchers, scientists, critics, and aca­ demics. The university community at large still lacks a coherent, sys­ tematic, well-documented, adequately investigated representation of Greece. Greek culture may be more promising, more alluring, better known, better attested than ever since the early 19th century, but it remains no less exotic, peripheral, inferior, and ultimately "oriental."43 It has become a crucial part of the skepticist project to mend this crippling deficiency. Its discourses have already broken into rec­ ognized journals like Semiotica, Poetics To day, American Ethnology,journal of American Folklore, Comparative Drama, Critical Exchange, and Philosophy Modern Greek Studies 19 and Literature. Much more has yet to be done. The transdisciplinary and comparativist efforts ought to continue and expand. The task is not easy: there is bias to be fought against, prejudice to be resisted, reservation to be overcome, incompetence to be exposed. Neither is there an alternative, though, since those concerned are not prepared to stay within the ghetto of specialized journals, MGSA symposia, modern Greek studies programs, and committee meetings. If it can be claimed that some elementary credibility has been achieved, then it is time to advance into established or emerging research areas and gain scholarly respectability. It may be justifiably objected that many dangers are lurking in that direction: compromising quality of work so that it can satisfy dominant standards, or granting research the unwarranted status of the highest arbiter. Such dangers are very real, and I would be the last to believe that academia (including its journals and university presses) is in the best position to study a culture. The glorificationof established practices and institutions by a small, strug­ gling field in search of recognition ought to be avoided. The point is to make a point-to win respect not by approving, appeasing, or acquiescing but by interpolating, intervening, and interrogating (Ong 1974). As a minor,44 marginal field, modern Greek studies may even find itself in a central position to function as a catalyst. In the present exciting climate of heated discussions on Anglo-American canons, western imperialism, Eurocentrism, bourgeois hegemony, minority literatures, local cultures, third-world theories, resistance strategies, cultural materialism, black vernaculars, gender power,45 and the pol­ itics of interpretation, an excellent and timely opportunity presents itself forexploring the specificityand difference of Greece, as well as its discursive construction (by, say, Romantic Philhellenism, the dis­ cipline of Classics, or the Marshall Plan).46 Perhaps in the 1950s and 1960s, to attract some interest and gain respectability, similarities and parallels with the West had to be highlighted; now, however, one can afford to emphasize discontinuity, alterity, and heterogeneity. I am therefore defending an active, dynamic involvement, al­ ready under way, of modern Greek studies with current discussions of truth and authority, method and system, in other areas of study and in various disciplines. The field has much to contribute and much to learn from such an exchange. At the same time, I am repudiating the accusations of jargon and fadismfrom people unwilling to admit that their own expertise is a matter of investigative approach rather than investigated facts. From my perspective, the real danger lies elsewhere: not in the vocabulary of theoretical consideration itself but in the uncritical, inconsistent, imitative adoption of its terms and no­ tions. One cannot, forex ample, describe discourse and keep referring 20 Vassilis Lambropoulos to literary movements; claim to analyze institutions and privilege po­ etry as an art; or examine communities or interpreters and deal with talented readers. Satisfying one's poststructuralist interviewer and si­ multaneously pacifying a traditionalist supporter simply will not work: eclecticism is one thing, careerism totally another; bricolage can be justified, hodge-podge or chutzpah cannot. The empiricist and skep­ ticist paradigms are incompatible, and no good will can fuse them: incompatible positions cannot be reconciled, antinomial arguments cannot be combined. Certain lines of fundamental disagreement must be clearly drawn: the Cavafy of Nasos Vayenas and Alexander Nehamas, for example, the Papadiamandis of Elizabeth Constantin­ ides and Mary Layoun, the Seferis of George Thaniel and Dimitris Dimiroulis, the Enlightenment of C. Th. Dimaras and Paschalis Ki­ tromilides, the grammars of Peter Mackridge and Brian Joseph, the interpretation of poetry by Edmund Keeley and John Chioles, the task of history of Richard Clogg and John Haldon, the understanding of society by Theodore Couloumbis and Nikiforos Diamandouros belong to discourses and practices that are mutually exclusive and represent the empiricist and the skepticist constitution of these topics respectively. One cannot play both tunes or have it both ways: intel­ lectual honesty and scientific integrity demand consistency.

*****

The skepticist paradigm and project can be summarized in the four major tasks which I have outlined above. First, a non-romantic, non-empiricist, non-philological political understanding of Greece that focuses on the ethnographic specificity, socio-economic particularity, historical discontinuity, and cultural diffe rence of post-Byzantine ex­ perience. Next, a comparativist approach that contextualizes the local reality in terms of both comparable contingencies of identity in other areas and eras and of multiple disciplinary perspectives. Then, age­ nealogical investigation of what has been variably called the "interpre­ tation" (Jenkyns), "rediscovery" (Tsigakou), "making" (Herzfeld), or "fabrication" (Bernal) of Greece-of its modern representations in the discourses of knowledge and the practices of culture. Finally, a phil­ osophical inquiry into the scholarly methodologies applied to (or more accurately, that have produced) different dimensions of Greek history and culture, in order to gain insights into the object of study and the very constitution of our disciplines. In general, new territories and opportunities for research have opened up, inviting practitioners to a much more lively, dynamic, innovative, creative, and timely inter­ action with their subject, field, institution, profession, audience, and time. Modern Greek Studies 21

I have argued that its 20th anniversary found MGSA and the field it represents at the crossroads. Part of the celebration has been a fundamental internal criticism directed at the structure and ideology of what has been accomplished. Modern Greek studies has established itself as a field but not as an academically respectable one; it has attracted intellectual attention but not scholarly recognition; it has achieved coherence but not excellence; it has shown viability but not eminence. The burden of belles-lettristic understanding and ethnic studies still weighs heavily on its research tradition. However, the essentialist, idealist, and metaphysical epistemology of empiricism, which determined its early course, has been undermined. In the first half of this decade, there began a serious and effective challenge to the disciplinary and institutional hegemony of the dominant discourse. Significantly, this critique has been articulated primarily through scholarship-publications and conference presentations. Thus we can see retrospectively that the early 1980s were a highly critical moment. There was an intense struggle for a different distribution of power. The scholarly future of the field was at stake-the direction it would take, the diversity it would develop, the territory it would explore, the contacts it would make, the audience it would reach. The academic future of the field was at stake too -the programs that would be created, the positions that would be filled, the resources that would be allocated, the affiliations that would be cultivated. A few years later, the situation is remarkably different. The skepticist resistance to the ideological monopoly on data, dates, and documents is widely influencing the course of the field. As even a cursory glance at the current scene shows, skepticism is the counter­ hegemonic paradigm that has already become a major scholarly and academic force, constantly gaining in prominence and recognition. Although the revisionary trend has not exactly prevailed, it is certainly in a position to play a decisive role in negotiations about the character and agenda of modern Greek. People are aware of its strengths and goals. Questions of institutionality, canonicity, regulation, strategy, territoriality, discrimination, and decision making are more than ever openly faced and debated. A new paradigm and interpretive com­ munity have claimed their share in knowledge and power. All indi­ cations support the belief that modern Greek is changing dramatically and achieving finally the academic recognition it has lacked. Cynics (in this case, annoyed traditionalists) may hasten to observe that a new orthodoxy is in the making. This is never an unreasonable fear, and skepticists have already admitted its validity. History reminds us that the leader of the revolution, after its success, can always become the Police Chief. One only hopes that the skepticist disposition will con- 22 Vassilis Lambropoulos

tinue resisting authority (i.e., exclusive power) as much as it used to when it struggled to be heard. On the other hand, it is still worth remembering that the very question of orthodoxy and resistance, of disciplinary knowledge and revisionary power, was first raised and elaborated upon by skepticism, the alternative paradigm which is cur­ rently reformingand remapping modern Greek studies. A lot depends on its success in this endeavor. Nothing less than the status, stamina, state, steam, and stock of the entire field well into the next century is at stake.

"But invective, often a sign of intellectual impasse, can also signal an important crisis or turning point in a field.... Scholarship is built with the bricks that scholars have thrown at one another". New Yo rk Times editorial Oanuary 21, 1988)

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

NOTES

1This is the last in a trilogy of position papers on the tasks of Modern Greek Studies (for the previous ones, see Lambropoulos 1984 and 1984/85). A shorter version, under the title "Modern Greek Studies as Practice," was presented at the MGSA session on "Practices of Cultural Criticism" (chaired by Mary Layoun) of the 1987 Modern Language Association Convention. I am grateful to Michael Herzfeld, Alexander Ne­ hamas, an anonymous reader, and the Editor for tampering with this paper. (After an earlier draft was submitted for publication, I was glad to read a study by Dimitris Tziovas on the theoretical identity of criticism in Greece, which he definesas "humanist empiricism" [1987: 322]. As the section of his book to which the study belongs carries the title "Postmodernism and Skepticism," the convergence of our respective views and complementary examinations will be obvious to the reader.) 2Throughout this paper, I draw all my concrete examples and many of the more general ones fromliterary studies. This tactic was chosen not only because this happens to be my area of expertise but primarily because, since the late 1950s, trends and developments in this area have had ramifications for many concerns and directions of the human and social sciences as a whole. Thus I am not at all privileging literary studies; I am only suggesting that their situation reflects in a fairly representative way the situation in a significant part of the entire field. I am certain that readers from other disciplines will be able to provide their own pertinent examples. In a paper of this short length, one has necessarily to be selective. Since the occasion for this paper was provided by the MGSA anniversary, I am also limiting myself to a discussion of American developments. 3Even Jacques Derrida, whose name has been anathema to empiricist theory, has published only a single, short, early piece of pure, so to speak, theory (1982). The rest of his vast work consists of close readings of philosophical, literary, and scholarly texts. Modern Greek Studies 23

4George Savidis, commenting on a passage by E. R. Dodds, confesses: "Those of us who are not poets but the parasites of poetry-or, at best, the impersonators of poets-may yet hope to attain some moments of this 'added dimension of emotion' during a lifelong dedication to the touting and shared enjoyment of literature" (1986: 173-74). Cf. Hillis Miller's discussion of the logic of the parasite (1977). 50n editing and the authority of the original, see McGann (1985), Moyles (1985), and Parker (1984). 60n influence, see Balakian (1962), Hassan (1955), Hermeren (1975), Rosen (1981), and Shaw (1971). These studies remain decisively indebted to Emerson's essay "Quo­ tation and Originality." Current discussions focus more on tradition, priority, revision­ ism, and appropriation. 70ver the last few years, and especially since the Cavafy issue of The journalof the Hellenic Diaspora (1983), there has been a growing criticism of the innumerable poetic selves (from the erotic to the mythical, from the economic to the political) that Cavafology has so industriously produced. It may be time for this metacriticism to turn its attention to the equally prodigious habit of pairing the poet with established modernist and premodernist authors like T. S. Eliot (George Seferis), Bertold Brecht (George Ve­ loudis), Jorge Luis Borges (Nasos Vayenas), Marcel Proust (Roderick Beaton) or Oscar Wilde (Edmund Keeley). 8Consider Peter Bien's comment: "Our relationship with Classics derives from, and now continues to legitimize, the myth that modern Greek literature, indeed the whole of modern Greek culture, may be best understood and studied as an emanation from ancient Greek culture, with Byzantium providing the link in this supposedly intact chain of descent" (1984: 33). 90n the "disconsolate chimera" (R. P. Blackmur) of the artist as genius and hero, see Barthes (1977), Benjamin ( 1978), Cain ( 1980), Ellmann ( 1987), Feyerabend ( 1987), Karl (1985), North (1985), Ronell (1986), Tigerstedt (1968), and Wyatt (1980). Leven (1980) is a wild parody in the form of a postmodernist novel. I found Nehamas (1987) the most satisfactory approach to the question. 10The representation of Greece in classical studies, together with the ideology of the whole discipline (Calder 1981, Canfora 1980, Nimis 1984, Peradotto 1983), remains a massively understudied subject. Useful information may be found in Montgomery (1923), Pemble (1987), Simonsuuri (1979), Turner (1984), and Webb (1982), among others. O'Flaherty (1986) contains some provocative ideas. Bernal (1987) is a major contribution seriously marred by the author's adherence to the perennial Hebraism­ Hellenism opposition. "The Canonization of Greece in the Human and the Social Sciences," a Colloquium sponsored by the George Seferis Chair of Modern Greek Studies at Harvard University in November 1987, was a pace-setting effort in the right direction. 11As Peter Bien has felicitously put it, "those who teach modern Greek ...per­ petuate the philological modes of Classicism . . . keeping literary studies in modern Greek somewhat removed from the intellectual mainstream insofar as literary theory is concerned" (1984: 33). 120n Harold Bloom's theory of poetic tradition, and its revision of Eliot's model, see Fite (1985), Handelman (1982), Hartman (1973), Mileur (1985), and O'Hara (1983). 130n the interview as a literary genre, see Miller (1985). 141n "Voice, Perspective, and Context in Cavafy," forexample, contemporary Greek criticism is compared with New Criticism, as if this has been the latest school that can be related to the work of Greek critics (Keeley 1983: 3). 15According to Keeley, this "must remain the primary function of criticism when it is performed generously: aiding readers to understand and relish the best work of the best poets" (1983: 3). 24 Vassilis Lambropoulos

160n the problematics of discourse, see Brown (1979), Carroll (1982), Goldschlager (1985), Hogue (1986), MacCabe (1985), and Terdiman (1985); Macdonell (1986) is undependable; Humanities in Society ( 1982) is very useful. 170n the hierarchy and the historicity of genres, see the followingcollections and special issues: van Dijk (1985), Glyph (1980), New Literary History (1981), and Poetics (1981). Fowler (1982) is a basic work, Jameson (1981) stresses the institutional dimension, Rosmarin (1986) proposes a pragmatic approach. 18Particularly relevant in this context are Abercrombie et al (1984), Bercovitch and Jehlen (1986), Davies (1978),Jameson (1975-76), Larrain (1979), Schwarz (1978), Ther­ born (1980), and Thompson (1985); Aarslelf and Eagleton (both in McGann 1985) are an excellent starting point; Praxis ( 1981) published an interesting issue. 19lssues of institutionality have become the most central and controversial in literary studies; Dubois (1978), Hohendahl (1982), Leitch (1984), Redner (1987), and Weber ( 1987) are among the useful general contributions. 2°For a magisterial critique of aesthetic ideology, see Bourdieu (1984). 210n cultural production in general, see Barrett et al. (1979), Baudrillard (1975), Hindess and Hirst (1977), and Macherey (1966). 22Most recent debates take Burger (1984) as a starting point. 23Some interesting anatomies of New Criticism are Foster (1962), Lentricchia (1980), and Meiners (1986). 24Here I am using Feyerabend's "counterinductive method" (1975). 25For critiques of academic humanism, see the two issues of boundary 2 (1984-85), Mitchell (1983), and Spanos (1985-86). 261 have found feminist challenges to canonic dominance instructive and effective; among recent examples, see Gilbert ( 1985), Lauter ( 1985), Munich ( 1985), and Robinson (1985). West (1987) contains some indispensable warnings. 271 am afraid that philosophical discussions of value, like Attlefield (1987) or Meynell (1986), have not paid sufficient attention to debates in literary axiology, like the Critical Review issue (1986). 280n intellectual power elites, see Annan (1955), Bauman (1987), Bove (1986), Elias, Martins, and Whitley (1982), Mulhern (1981), and Ringer (1969) . . 29Here is a concrete and characteristic example. On 8 November 1987, the last day of the MGSA Symposium on "Greece, Greeks, and the Sea," the Athens newspaper To Vimapublished on its "Arts and Ideas" page (72) a brief report from New York on the event under the title "A Taste of the Aegean in the United States." The article included the following: "Professor Lily Macracis, Chair of Modern Greek History at Harvard University, coordinated the organization of the whole event." The statement is, of course, false: there is no Chair of Modern Greek History at Harvard and Professor Macrakis, who does not teach at that institution, was not even a member of the 1987 Symposium Program Committee. Still, it is typical of the way the field is portrayed and reported, in a manner that gives false credit to the wrong people for misrepresented achievements in an idealized context. I realize this may well have been a journalist's mistake. Let us not forget, however, that such mistakes do not happen with other names and events that are simply never mentioned or reported. (The case of perceptions and receptions of Anglophone Modern Greek Studies among scholars in Greece, from reports to translations to invitations to citations, deserves a separate study.) 300n hegemony and resistance, see Bocock (1986), Critical Exchange (1986-87), Femia (1981), Gramsci (1971), Harlow (1987), and Laclau and Mouffe (1985). 31"As Hegel says somewhere, empiricism always forgets, at very least, that it employs the words to be. Empiricism is thinking by metaphor without thinking the metaphor as such" (Derrida 1964: 139). Modern Greek Studies 25

32The list of examples could be long, so I will limit myself here to a few papers: Alexiou (1986), Chouliaras (1986), Danforth(19 84), Dimiroulis (1984), Herzfeld (1987), Joseph (1985),Jusdanis (1983), Kapsalis (1984), Tsianikas (1987), and Valaoritis (1987). 33Michel Foucault is the leading theoretician of truth. The wide variety of responses his work has provoked is well represented in Gane (1986) and Hoy (1986). 34T. S. Kuhn has explained scientific revolutions as a succession of incompatible paradigms; interesting explorations and applications of the subject can be found in Barnes (1982), Clignet (1985), Cohen (1985), Green (1982), and Hesse (1980). 35See Lakoff and Scherr (1984); see also Fleck ( 1935 ). 36Journals have started devoting special issues to the ethics of knowledge and the politics of truth: see Critical Inquiry (1985), Cultural Critique (1986), Diacritics (1984), and New German Critique (1986). 37Among the more radical approaches to interpretation, I note the following: Caputo (1987), Davidson (1984), Geertz (1973, 1983), Michaels (1977), Rosen (1987), and Warminski (1987). 380n the politics of professionalism, see Bledstein (1976), Fish ( 1983, 1985), Graff (1987), Mendelsohn, Weingart, and Whitley (1977), and Oleson and Voss (1979). 39The term comes from Habermas (1976) but acquires more weight in Blumenberg (1976). 40It must be noted that we are not in a position to know the directions the field might have taken or experimented with, if specialists like John Anton, Stavros Deli­ giorgis, Thomas Doulis, Dean Geanakopolos, Nikolaos Kalas, William Spanos, or Nanos Valaoritis had not been discouraged from participating-or if other eminent scholars and thinkers had been actively invited to contribute. 41Dominick LaCapra (1983, 1985) and Hayden White (1974, 1978, 1987) and a few other historians involved in discussions of method and narrative still express a minority view in an area preoccupied with a philological (i.e., literal and monumental) conception of the past. Sande Cohen ( 1986) is an excellent critique of the discipline. Interesting explorations from other fields include Attridge, Bennington, and Young (1987), Barthes (1967), Comparative Criticism (1982), Danto (1965), de Certeau (1986), Kermode (1966), Hillis Miller (1974), and Weimann (1984). 42Together with canonicity and institutionality, disciplinarity seems to be the third major problematic of the decade. It is worth comparing the interdisciplinary ideals of scientism some twenty years ago (Piaget 1973) with the departmental discontent of the 1970s (Franklin 1978) and the multidisciplinary explosion of today (Glyph Textual Studies 1986). 430n ideas of the Near Eastern orient, see Alloula (1986), Curl (1982), Iversen (1961), Nochlin (1983), Rodinson (1987), Said (1978), Turner (1978),and Wollen (1987). 440n minor discourses, see Cultural Critique (1987), Deleuze and Guattari (1986), and Lloyd (1987). 450n gender and the construction of sexual identity, see Armstrong ( 1987), Ben­ habib and Cornell (1987), Brod (1987), Caplan (1987), Connell (1987), de Lauretis ( 1987), and Farnham ( 1987)-and this list includes only books (A to F) published during a single year. 46Since I have discussed these possibilities at greater length elsewhere (Lambro­ poulos 1988: 31-43, 232-35), I have chosen not to include in this paper examples of the different ways in which empiricists and skepticists have dealt with comparable issues. The reader may findin that book specificmethodological suggestions pertaining to the skepticist project, as well as comparisons of its approaches with empiricist ones. In addition, many interesting examples may be found in the papers cited in note 32. 26 Vassilis Lambropoulos

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Ringer, Fritz K. 1969 The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Robinson, Lillian S. 1985 Treason our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon. In Showalter, 1985. pp. 105-122.

Rodinson, Maxime 1987 Europe and the Mystique of Islam [1980]. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Ronell, Avital 1986 Dictations: On Haunted Writing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Rorty, Richard 1982 Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism [ 1980). In his Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980, pp. 139-159. Min­ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 36 Vassilis Lambropoulos

Rosen, Charles 1980 Influence: Plagarism and Inspiration. Nineteenth-Century Music 4:87-100.

Rosen, Stanley 1987 Hermeneutics as Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rosmarin, Adena 1986 The Power of Genre. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Said, Edward 1978 Orientalism. New Yo rk: Pantheon.

Savidis, George 1985-86 The Burden of the Past and the Greek Poet. Grand Street 5(1): 164-190 and 5(2): 153-1 74.

Schmidt, Henry J. 1985 The Rhetoric of Survival: The Germanist in America from 1900 to 1925. In America and the Germans, edited by F. Trommler and J. McVeigh, pp. 204-2 16. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Showalter, Elaine, ed. 1985 The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory. New York: Pantheon.

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Spanos, William V. 1985-86 The Apollonian Investment of Modern Humanist Education: The Ex­ amples of Matthew Arnold, Irving Babbitt, and I. A. Richards. Cultural Critique 1:7-72 and 2:105-134.

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· 1 ·herborn, Goran 1980 The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. London: Verso. Modern Greek Studies 3 7

Thompson, John B. 1985 Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Tsianikas, Mihalis 1987

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SPECIAL ISSUES boundary 2 1984-85 The Institutions of Humanism. 12(3)-13(1) and 13(2-3).

Comparative Criticism 3 1982 Rhetoric and History.

Critical Exchange 21 and 22 1986-87 Theory and Strategy in the Third World. Barbara Harlow, guest editor.

Critical Inquiry 12(1) 1985 'Race,' Writing, and Difference. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., guest editor.

Critical Review 28 1986 The Fear of Judgement.

Cultural Critique 3 1986 American Representations of Vietnam. John Carlos Rowe, guest editor.

Cultural Critique 6 and 7 1987 The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd, guest editors.

Diacritics 14(2) 1984 Nuclear Criticism.

Glyph 7 1980 Genre.

Glyph Textual Studies 1 1986 Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature, Art. Samuel Weber, guest editor.

Humanities in Society 5(3-4) 1982 Foucault and Critical Theory: The Uses of Discourse Analysis. Mark Poster, guest editor. Modern Greek Studies 39

Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 10( 1-2) 1983 C. P. Cavafy. Margaret Alexiou, guest editor.

New German Critique 38 1986 The German-Jewish Controversy.

New Literary History 13 1981 Genre.

Poetics 10(2-3) 1981 Genre.

Praxis 5 1981 Art and Ideology.

Commentary

Margaret Alexiou

"Tilting at windmills" I welcome the invitation from the Editor of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies to write a brief rejoinder to Lambropoulos' tour de fo rce, 'Modern Greek Studies at the Cross-roads: the paradigm shift from empiricism to skepticism': the issues at stake in this debate are crucial, they concern us all, and they cannot simply be wished away. No-one will question Lambropoulos' starting-point, that after 20 years of the MGSA's existence, it is time for critical reassessment and honest self-examination. Nor can any serious person fail to acknowl­ edge the commitment of those scholars who have pioneered new approaches deriving from a wide range of structuralist and post­ structuralist perspectives, and whose research and publications have changed the direction of modern Greek studies irreversibly and for the better. If (s)he does, (s)he will be self-damned as resistant to the erosion of authority and power. Such is the measure of the impact which the "new wave" of criticism has had on the subject within a relatively short space of time. I for one, however, am disturbed (and I suspect that mine is not a lone voice) by the simplistic polarization that is developed throughout Lambropoulos' argument, mainly by means of arbitrary and super­ fluous name-calling, between philology, tradition, historicism, empir­ icism on the one hand, and theory, innovation, metaphysics and skep­ ticism on the other. We are told at the outset, and reminded later on, that the debate is about rights, not right and wrong. Yet tendentiously, Lambropoulos appropriates for the Skeptics (the "goodies") all the positive qualities of academic inquiry (open-mindedness; productivity; methodological rigor), while attributing to the Empiricists (the "bad­ dies") all the negative ones (personal, even private, confessions; bio­ graphical impressionism; repressive abuse of authority and power). One is reminded of similar tendencies among militant feminists; but I will not belabor the point, since no-one could accuse Lambropoulos, with his exclusive use of the masculin e pronoun , of that particular journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 7, 1989. 41 42 Margaret Alexiou excess. More to the point, we are told in peremptory tones that any attempt to steer a middle ground between these camps marks a failure of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity, and will be doomed as "hodge-podge" or "chutzpah" (although "bricolage" is apparently okay). If the debate is about rights, rather than right or wrong, then I claim some right to the middle ground. Not to satisfy my bourgeois liberal conscience, nor to reach an easy compromise (as Lenin said, a revolution is not a tea-party), but to ensure that a plurality of voices and a diversity of skills are carried over into the 21st century, and because I think I can justifiably claim to represent the "missing gen­ eration" noted by Lambropoulos between the Empiricists and Skeptics. To date, I have taken up a clear and consistent stance in favor of listening to, and promoting the research and careers of, those younger scholars who have challenged the establishment, sometimes at the risk of my own reputation and certainly at the cost of displeasing some seniores in the field. Doubtless that is an irrelevant historical-biograph­ ical detail, as is also my personal but profoundexperience of welcom­ ing post-structuralist approaches as a liberation from the ghost of an authoritarian Marxism, only to realize that the new totalitarianism of literary theory far exceeds the old one in its propensity to insult individuals, both living and dead. Can one seriously accuse Bowersock, Keeley, Papastavrou and Sherrard of ineffectual personal indulgence in their scholarship, ignoring their (very different) contributions to modern Greek studies and to other major fields, while failing to men­ tion the self-indulgence of such texts on the other side of the fence as Julia Kristeva's Stabat Mater, which juxtaposes a re-hash of Marina Warner's Alone of All Her Sex: The My th and Cult of the Virgi,n Mary ( 1977) with stream-of-consciousness effusions on the joys of giving birth to a healthy son? One could go to cite others (Cixous, Irigaray) as further examples of excessive indulgence, but I refrain from doing so: some forms of personalized expression are in; others are out. But I prefer to be specific. The real issues in this debate concern meaning, interpretation, communication and a sense of responsibility in transmitting particular skills to the next generation. No author can be separated arbitrarily from context; therefore philological and his­ torical knowledge is required in order to interpret texts. This does not need to take the form of idle speculation about authorial moti­ vation and intention; but it does mean, for me at least, recognising that literary texts (and other forms of artistic expression) are not merely produced and reproduced according to the inexorable laws of the violent clash of discourses, but that they also express and com­ municate human emotion. Of course literary canons are determined Commentary 43

by criteria other than those of pure merit, but it is future readers of all kinds, not only we clever academics, who will decide whether Seferis or Elytis or Cavafy or Karyotakis or Kornaros or Vizyenos are re­ membered. To re-read and re-interpret those texts, a variety of skills (including translation) will always be needed. To imply a hierarchy of skills, with theory at the top and translation at the bottom, is intellectual arrogance, while to try to pre-determine future canons by strategies of exclusion or rejection is tantamount to the worst kind of totalitar- 1amsm. I come now to the question of "History," castigated by Lambro­ poulos as the most empiricist of disciplines. Why single out John Haldon (on the basis of one editorial review article forBy zantine and Modern Greek Studies) for favorable mention, while skirting over the issues at stake: the well-known controversy about "old" history versus the many forms of "new" history? Haldon sees the need for theory and method, but his 669-page book Poikila Byzantina: Byzantine Prae­ torians opens with the statement: "This is an empirical study ...of a series of administrative and institutional developments central to the changing structure of a medieval society" ( 1984: 82), surely antiquated stuff according to Lambropoulos, who might find himself more at home with Karl Morrison's I am You: The Hermeneutics of Empathy? Historians, like anthropologists, have to deal with empirical data, and the more extravagant excesses of "new" history compel some of us to seek a middle ground. Finally, a philological note about "philology." The ancients used cptA.oA.oyiato mean "love of rational argument, discourse; love of learn­ ing; love of literature and letters," and it was not until the modern era that its meaning became narrowed towards that now prevalent. Rather than ban it altogether, why not encourage some to practise it according to the ancient sense?

HARVA RD UNIVERSITY

REFERENCE CITED

Haldon, John F. 1984 Poikila Byzantina, 3: Byzantine Praetorians, an administrative, institutional, and social survey of the Opsikion and tagmata, c. 580-900. Bonn: R. Habelt. Commentary Peter Bien

For the two camps he describes, Lambropoulos supplies three sets of rubrics: philology and theory, explication and interpretation, empir­ icism and skepticism. Of these, he favors the last. My own favorite is an additional set that he mentions in passing: integration and problem­ aticism. When I think of my training in the Graduate Faculties at Columbia in the late 1950s, I realize that it was empiricist in nature, devoted to explication and even to philology in the old sense (estab­ lishment of "correct" texts). But what all that masked- something I did not realize at the time-was a training to preserve some vestige of an integrated world in a problematic one. At Dartmouth, this trans­ lated into the interminable discussions we endured in departmental meetings regarding the nature of the English curriculum in general and of Freshman Composition in particular. For decades we prided ourselves on our use of Milton's Paradise Lost as the main text to teach writing (imagine!). Had not the same course originally employed the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton? Now we were nobly fightingto retain this Miltonic vestige, which, conveying Biblical material in poetry as grand as Shakespeare's, would make students appreciate that they were the inheritors of an integrated world-view that mixed Hellenism, Hebraism, the new science, Christianity (in its Protestant variety), and devotion to political freedom in precisely the right amounts. As for the overall curriculum, if we did not maintain the great tradition manifested through the giants of English literature, who else would defend students from the disintegrated world that threatened them on all sides? My training, in effect, and the world-view of my department (until the late 1960s and the early 1970s shocked us into modernity), was a 19th century one. This now strikes me as extremely strange, since the 20th century was already half elapsed before I entered grad­ uate school, and since-in philosophy, the religious avant garde, psy­ chology, anthropology, linguistics, etc. - the skepticism that Lambro­ poulos describes was hardly a recent phenomenon in the 1950s but had become orthodoxy long before. As for the general public, at least

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 7, 1989.

45 46 Peter Bien

in Europe, problematicism was seared into their consciousness by the first World War. So it is hardly a surprise to encounter a voice calling for a non­ empiricist, non-integrationist approach to modern Greek studies. The only surprise is that this call comes so late-indeed, on the eve of the 21st century! Regarding the cause of the delay, I do not think that Lambropoulos is right when he complains about the alleged power of the empiricist hegemony in our field. It is true that some charges of fadism have been slung at the "young Turks"; but I do not see any coordinated campaign by the old guard (which presumably includes myself) to silence them. Their delayed appearance is better explained, in my opinion, by (a) the general time-lag that seems to apply to everything in modern Greek vis-a-vis trends in western Europe (usu­ ally about 25-35 years), (b) the administrative convenience that has wedded most modern Greek programs in literature and language to existing departments of classics, and (c) the fact that until recently most of us who professed modern Greek were either retooled classicists or lit-crit types of a vintage guaranteeing that our training was of the same empiricist/integrationistvariety that I experienced at Columbia. If the skeptics were not vocal earlier, the reason is that they did not exist. Thus, far from agreeing with Lambropoulos about any power bloc entrenched in its position and refusing to budge, I would cite the rapidity and ease with which the theorists and problematicists­ once they appeared- have gained access to the journalof Modern Greek Studies, the Executive Committee of MGSA, and academic positions of importance. (I am speaking about the United States only.) Let me add, since we are now celebrating MGSA's 20th anni­ versary, that those of us who framed the Association's constitution were motivated by the wish that MGSA would never become either the projection of a single dominant personality or the province of a self-perpetuating clique. We wanted MGSA to reflect diverse views and diverse people. On the other hand, we hoped that diversity would never lead to schism; we projected an Association that would maintain its unity despite a multiplicity of disciplines and viewpoints. So far, these original aims have been realized- not an insignificant accom­ plishment. Accordingly, I am worried about Lambropoulos' assertion that the two paradigms he describes so well are incompatible. "No good will can fuse them," he maintains; "incompatible positions cannot be reconciled, antinominal arguments cannot be combined." That does not bode well for the future of MGSA. What I wish to suggest is that the two "incompatible positions" have several very basic points in common. Both, after all, are culturally conditioned. Furthermore, the skepticist position, being a reaction to the empiricist one, required the Commentary 4 7 latter as the prerequisite for its own existence. Each is part of a dia­ lectical progression that presumably will not cease. If we can rise above the assertions of incompatibility in order to see these areas of com­ monality in the supposedly irreconcilable antinomies, then we shall continue in MGSA to maintain our unity in diversity. In addition, we should realize that philosophically outmoded approaches may still be of practical value. Once we acknowledge the cultural conditioning of all criticism, it does not hurt to have the textual explications, influence studies, and philological emendations of the empiricists, all of which make a work of literature (even if it has become a work partially recreated by the critics) more accessible. I am encouraged by Lam­ bropoulos' awareness at the end of his piece that leaders of revolutions must take care not to metamorphose into police chiefs. In this case, will the counter-hegemonic paradigm become an entrenched ortho­ doxy defending modern Greek against the next species of unorthodox invader? I trust that it will not. But the problematicist faction should worry about this-because they already enjoy more empowerment in the American institutional environment than was ever possessed by their empiricist colleagues.

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Commentary David Holton

Modern Greek Studies: A My thical Crisis

The 20th anniversary of the MGSA is indeed an occasion for cele­ bration; out of the isolated and uncoordinated activities of a handful of researchers and teachers has grown an internationally respected learned society, a wealth of scholarly activity and publication, flour­ ishing university and college programs, and a worldwide network of institutional and personal contacts. None of this should be underes­ timated: indeed European neohellenists might look to the MGSA as a model and an inspiration fortheir own effortsto found a comparable association on this side of the Atlantic. It is therefore particularly regrettable that Lambropoulos should accompany his congratulations with a savage, and gratuitously insulting, attack on several of those very people who came together in 1967 to take the firststeps that led to the creation of the MGSA. This is not to say that we can be com­ placent about the state of our subject at the end of the 1980s: the shortcomings of many of the "standard" tools forresearch and teach­ ing and the vast gaps that remain to be filledare obvious to any critical observer. But Lambropoulos' paper presents a distorted account of the recent past, and a misguided view of the present and future needs of our discipline. In the brief space allotted to me I propose to chal­ lenge some of his assumptions and conclusions. Undoubtedly the last two decades or so have seen a substantial growth in modern Greek studies, in terms of university programs, research activity, publication (both in books and journals), and con­ fe rences and seminars where scholars can come together to exchange ideas. Credit for much of this must be given to an older generation of scholars, whose unsung and unstinting efforts at last began to pay off, paving the way for their younger successors. Lambropoulos falls into the trap of recognizing only one form ofcontribution to the field: that of initiating or cultivating a direction or approach which students discussed, followed or revised (I am paraphrasing the words which he uses in his attack on seven named "representatives of empiricism"). journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 7, 1989.

49 50 David Holton

Some of those he names have in fact made invaluable and lasting contributions to the field of modern Greek (and Byzantine) studies. Their contributions have taken many forms, including university teaching, the encouragement of younger scholars and the wider pro­ motion of the subject. To take one example, the late Stavros Papa­ stavrou taught modern Greek (and classics) at Cambridge for nearly 30 years. Among research students whose doctorates he supervised were Margaret Alexiou, Roderick Beaton, Nassos Vayenas and Alfred Vincent, all of them now established in university posts. All four bear witness in the published forms of their theses to the encouragement and support they received from him. Research, publication, and the initiation of new approaches are by no means the only yardsticks with which to judge an individual's contribution to scholarly endeavor. All these theses, ranging in subject matter from folk poetry to the Cretan Renaissance and Seferis, were completed in the 1970s, a decade in which, according to Lambropoulos, "almost nothing of importance or consequence ...happened in modern Greek studies." On the contrary, I would suggest that during the 1970s, and indeed from the end of the preceding decade, a great deal was hap­ pening in our field. The foundation of the MGSA is certainly one factor, but we should also note the establishment of periodicals like Mandatoforos, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Scandinavian Studies in Modern Greek, Folia Neohellenica, and Neo-Hellenika, enabling the growing number of younger scholars to find an outlet for their work. To dismiss all this as the exercise of "power strategies" by the old guard is at variance with the facts. If much of the published material could be characterized as empirical, this is merely because so much basic work still remained (and remains) to be done. The growth of the 1970s did, however, create a climate in which those who wished to experiment with newer critical approaches were able to do so. That they have done so, with some success, underlines the falsity of the argument that the exponents of empiricism were resistant to new ideas. Who supervised, examined and recommended for publication the theses of the "skepticists"? The "poverty" of empiricist research, in contrast with that of the skepticists, in the last two decades is another myth promulgated by Lambropoulos. His list of nine authors of "re­ cently completed Ph.D. theses" includes at least two who, to my certain knowledge, have not yet submitted theses, and one whose work is in the field of Byzantine studies. I could compile a corresponding list of Ph.D. theses, approved or nearing completion, on modern Greek literature which would not conform to the definition of skepticism. But what purpose is served by the compilation of lists? Different subjects require diffe rent approaches. While it is indeed right that Commentary 51

research students should be exposed to alternative methodologies, they must be free to choose whatever approach best suits them and their topic, provided that the resulting thesis demonstrates scholarly competence and a capacity for original thought. If the result is a diversity of "old" and "new" approaches, there is nothing wrong with that. At no point does Lambropoulos make clear his view of the "dis­ cipline" he is concerned with. On the one hand he explicitly selects most of his examples from literary studies; on the other he makes considerable play of the work of social anthropologists, set forth as a shining example to us all, while he has nothing but scorn forhist orians. Leaving aside the intellectual honesty of such crude comparisons, let us examine whether in fact Lambropoulos presents an accurate picture of his "area of expertise": literary studies. Almost all his specific ex­ amples are taken from studies of Greek poetry of the 19th and (mainly) the 20th centuries. Prose is very poorly represented (Papadiamantis and Vizyenos), despite the considerable attention which recent re­ search has given to the novel of the 20th century, and a growing interest in the re-evaluation of the prose-writing of the period im­ mediately after Independence. He completely ignores the late­ medieval and Renaissance periods, where major developments have taken place in recent years, both in fundamental text-based research (empirical, of course) and in some exciting newer approaches. It is noteworthy that a number of major scholars have been concerned with both post-Independence Greek literature and that of earlier per­ iods (Alexiou, Beaton, Kehayioglou, Saunier, Vitti, etc.). It is also misleading and inappropriate to concentrate exclusively on the Anglo­ American scene. Many of the scholars he mentions publish regularly in Greece (naturally enough), while a number of scholars based in Greece and other European countries contribute to Anglo-American journals. Our subject is necessarily international. (It could be argued, in passing, that the exclusive use of English by journals like Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, the journalof Modern Greek Studies, and Modern Greek Studies Ye arbook is no longer appropriate). I will not embark on a detailed consideration of the theoretical considerations raised by Lambropoulos' paper, which is premised on a false dichotomy of "empiricism" and "skepticism." Literary studies have gone through a period of evolution during the last few decades, and modern Greek is no exception. Structuralism, formalism, New Criticism, reader-response theory, etc. have all left their mark (where does Lambropoulos fitthem into his binary scheme?), but the antag­ onism which Lambropoulos diagnoses (fabricates?) in modern Greek studies would nowadays be viewed as quaint by practitioners in the 52 David Holton fields of French or German literary studies. Such a confrontation is not only illusory; it is likely to do our subject discredit in the outside world. We are too few to dissipate our energies on such chimaeras. By all means let us have debate and diversity. But let us not be dis­ tracted from the real tasks that face us by a sham dilemma. So where do we go from here? The plain factis that the inadequacy of our subject's contact with the much-maligned Anglo-Saxon empir­ icist tradition has left many gaps to be filled in fundamental knowledge about modern Greek literature and related disciplines. Those who have been attempting to fillthem in the last few decades deserve credit and thanks, not opprobrium for failingto avail themselves of oppor­ tunities for more self-indulgent critical pursuits. To use Lambropou­ los' own words: "New approaches should not by definition eliminate older methods." How true! Much remains to be done before our subject achieves full "respectability." We need better texts, dictionaries, grammars, critical biographies, commentaries, critical bibliographies, concordances, introductory works aimed specificallyat students, and­ yes! -translations. Can we expect any of these from the "skepticists"?

SELWYN COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE Commentary Alexander Nehamas

Beware of Mediators? In his well-known investigation of radical shifts in the course of the development of the natural sciences, Thomas Kuhn wrote that "par­ adigm changes ...cause scientists to see the world of their research­ engagement differently. In so faras their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a differentworld" (Kuhn 1970: 111). This most famousand most controversial statement in The Struc­ ture of Scientific Revolutions seems to me to constitute the essential background for Professor Lambropoulos' provocative essay. It clearly underlies, forexample , his central claim that "the empiricist and skep­ ticist paradigms are incompatible, and no good will can fuse them: incompatible positions cannot be reconciled, antinomial arguments cannot be combined." The problem with Kuhn's statement, as countless discussions have demonstrated, is that its literal sense is far from obvious: how strictly are we to take the idea that scientists and scholars with different methodological approaches respond to diffe rent "worlds"? What counts as a world in this context? Lambropoulos gives an uncompro­ mising answer to that question. He believes that the idea of different worlds consists in the factof logical incompatibility: "empiricism" and "skepticism," if conjoined, would produce a logical contradiction. It is true that if two positions are logically incompatible, they cannot be consistently maintained by a single person or school. But, first, it is not at all clear that this is the best interpretation of Kuhn's

· view. He himself has recently expressed his position by drawing a parallel between incompatible scientific theories and different lan­ guages. A single scientist, he believes, can operate both with Aristo­ telian and with Galilean physics even if it is not possible to state Ar­ istotle's views in Galileo's terms. But this, he has insisted, is a situation with which any bilingual language-user is familiar: I can say things in English which I cannot possibly say in Greek, and though I know very

journal of ModernGreek Studies, Volume 7, 1989.

53 54 Alexander N ehamas well both what "philotimo" means in Greek and what "fairness" means in English, I cannot translate either word (or most of the sentences in which it occurs) into the other language.1 This plausible account of the "incommensurability" of paradigms is more psychological than logical, more institutional than theoretical. It allows for the possibility that one and the same scholar can operate with more than one paradigm and that parts of each paradigm, as is patently the case with large parts of English and Greek, can in fact be translated into the terms of the other. I think the contrast between "empiricism" and "skepticism" in modern Greek studies can be more fruitfully construed historically and socially rather than logically. This preserves the conflicts between the two approaches, but it allows for the possibility that a single individual can in fact operate with both, and even reveals what I think is the case, namely, that at least some­ times the two must both be employed if accurate "scholarly" results are to be reached.2 To see that this is so it is important to note another view which supplies the background of Lambropoulos' essay. This view, clearly expressed by Jonathan Culler, is that

while the experience of literature may be an experience of interpreting works, in fact the interpretation of individual works is only tangentially related to the understanding of literature. To engage in the study of literature is not to produce yet another interpretation of King Learbut to advance one's understanding of the conventions and operations of an institution, a mode of discourse. (Culler 1981: 5)

Suppose we accept, as I do, Culler's positive description of literary studies at the end of this passage. If we do, however, we cannot accept Culler's (and Lambropoulos') exclusion of interpretation from the field. For the production of interpretations (either new or those al­ ready in existence) is an essential part of the "mode of discourse" literature constitutes. If we are willing to take such an institutional approach to literature, then the institution becomes our object of study. We cannot in this one case make an exception and on supposedly neutral, methodological grounds conclude that an individual part of the institution does not "really" belong to it. If we accept, as I do, Lambropoulos' view that criticism is not "parasitic" to literature, then part of his attack on "empiricism" begins to look like the attempt to justify "exclusion and canonicity" on account of which he criticizes "empiricism" (though of different texts and on different grounds). Lambropoulos is absolutely correct to insist that "skepticism" "exhibits an intense awareness of presupposition and method distin­ guished for its self-reflexive integrity." But precisely this kind of self- Commentary 55 reflexive awareness, which necessarily includes the awareness of one's history, shows that, whatever and however deep the disagreements, "skepticism" is the descendant of "empiricism" intellectually as well as institutionally. And though one's ancestors may often have to be fought against, such fighting (what Lambropoulos, following Harold Bloom, calls "agonistics") is, at the same time and inevitably, an ac­ knowledgment of one's descent. Furthermore, to acknowledge one's descent in intellectual matters is also, equally inevitably, to give new life to one's ancestors and to perpetuate their views. My main point so far has been that if we interpret the contrast between "empiricism" and "skepticism" in institutional rather than in logical terms, the opposition between them becomes less uncompro­ mising than Lambropoulos' picture supposes. And I argue that Lam­ bropopulos should interpret the contrast in institutional terms, since a main tenet of "skepticism" as he understands it and as he so mas­ terfully practices it is that literqture and criticism must in general be understood in this manner. 3 I do not want these comments to be taken as an effort to provide an intellectual mediation between "empiricism" and "skepticism". In this respect, we should truly beware of mediators. To say that the opposition between these two approaches is not so stark is not to claim that scholars of modern Greek should all use "the best" in both- such eclecticism often engages in the pursuit of a chimera and results in the capture of a centaur. It is, rather, to say that the two approaches are as a matter of fact intertwined in various ways (and hence more difficultto distinguish fromone another than we sometimes suppose). "Skepticists", for example, often engage in interpretation, whatever their methodological statements may imply. Gregory Jusdanis' mar­ velous study of the poetics of Cavafy, to cite just one instance, contains both striking novel readings of particular poems and interpretations consonant with the results of Edmund Keeley's "empiricist" methods (Jusdanis 1987; Keeley 1976).4 What we are witnessing in Modern Greek Studies, in my opinion, is the emergence of a new generation of scholars, whose approaches and interests are indeed often different from and sometimes incom­ patible with those of the people who created the fieldin the firstplace. Lambropoulos argues that the latter tended to publish more in in­ tellectual periodicals than in scholarly journals. This is at least partly true, but its explanation, in my opinion, is provided not so much by the inclinations inherent in those writers but rather by another insti­ tutional fa ct_ This is that when work on modern Greek began in the United States, there was no scholarly tradition behind it and no ac­ ademic abode for it. Those who initiated the field were obliged to 56 Alexander N ehamas

write for the periodicals they did (and I am not sure this is in itself a shortcoming) because academic journals were not likely to accept work on a topic which did not exist in the academy; by contrast, periodicals like Partisan Review or Encounter were not constrained by academic barriers and found it easy to accept work on modern Greece-pro­ vided, of course, that it did not have too many footnotes! Another point that needs to be made is that "skepticist" work has often and without good reason been met with derision and sus­ picion. This is as unjustified as it has been counterproductive. An­ cestors cannot always excuse the decadence of their descendants by vague appeals to the overall degeneracy of the times: if one's progeny is in fact decadent, this may be because the ancestors were already decadent themselves; if the ancestors were not decadent, then perhaps the decadence of the descendants is novelty seen through uncom­ prehending eyes. But for this to become obvious, as it must, we need on both sides a new tone and a new attitude toward the tension between these two approaches. "Skepticist" writings represent some of the best work currently being done in modern Greek studies; the debate gen­ erated by them is crucial to the health and vitality of the field; and "skepticist" work-at least, that is, work appropriate for publication in journals like Critical Inquiry or Substance-probably represents the direction which work in our field will necessarily take for some time to come. Rhetorical mediation is necessary even though it may only succeed in showing that intellectual mediation is often impossible, and that the generations of scholars, skepticists as well as empiricists, are, along with the generations of all human beings, not unlike the gen­ erations of leaves-even though, in the case of scholarly leaves, some are more worth turning than others.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVA NIA

NOTES

'Kuhn discusses this novel approach in his hitherto unpublished Shearman lec­ tures, delivered at University College London in the winter of 1988. 2The term "scholarly" is Lambropoulos'. I am suspicious of it. To argue that only now has lhe subjecl of modern Greek smdies become scholarly sounds co me very like the insoluble and-worse-interminable debate over whether a particular branch of the social or human sciences has or has not finally become "scientific." Let's not forget Commentary 57 that just the issue whether pre-Galilean physics, say, was or was not scientific is precisely the question Kuhn's work has shown to be an issue not really worth pursuing very far. 3See Lambropoulos 1988. 4For an example of a novel reading, see Jusdanis' sensitive interpretation (I use this "belles-lettres" adjective advisedly) of the unpublished The Enemies pp. 53-54, 151-153. For a case of a reading compatible with Keeley's, see the discussion of "Half an Hour" (Keeley 1976: 56 and jusdanis 1987: 16-17).

REFERENCES CITED

Culler, Jonathan 1981 The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Jusdanis, Gregory 1987 The Poetics of Cavafy: Textuality, Eroticism, History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Keeley, Edmund 1976 Cavafy's Alexandria. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kuhn, Thomas 1970 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lambropoulos, Vassilis 1988 Literature as National Institution: Studies in the Politics of Modern Greek Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Reply Vassilis Lambropoulos

I am grateful to Margaret Alexiou, Peter Bien, David Holton, and Alexander Nehamas for their judicious and instructive responses to my paper. I am also grateful to Ernestine Friedl, the editor of JMGS, for soliciting these responses. They have produced an informed and interesting discussion from which we have all, in our different ways, benefited. I, forone, fe el that I now have a better sense of the direction and character of my argument, and have become more sensitive to reactions it may provoke. I am also confidentthat the debate over the nature and future of the fieldwill not cease but will continue to develop and will become an integral part of our problematic. Thus, in the best spirit of this intellectual exchange, instead of responding to my com­ mentators individually, I shall use this opportunity to elaborate, in light of their rejoinders, on certain crucial points of my diagnosis. This piece, then, should be read as an afterword to my original paper. First, I am pleased to see that, for the most part, we are all in clear agreement. The consensus that has emerged includes the fol­ lowing points. Two major paradigms are presently claiming modern Greek, empiricism and skepticism. Their competition may strengthen, rather than damage, our common enterprise. The emergence of skep­ ticism marks a critical moment in the history of the field, as this paradigm has revised its agenda and influencedits course in a relatively short period of time. Although skepticism has met with "derision and suspicion," "charges of fadism" and disdain, it has produced important work of high scholarly quality. At the same time, it has acquired significant institutional eminence and power, to the extent that it has established itself as a force with which one has to reckon. (To these explicit points of agreement quite a few more could be added which are presupposed but not mentioned in the responses.) Such a wide range of consensus indicates that my commentators and I share the same basic understanding of the present situation. I am truly im­ pressed and encouraged to see how broad our starting point is. Some clarifications and explanations are now in order. journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 7, 1989.

59 60 Vassilis Lambropoulos

I begin with the question of scope. I want to repeat that my survey was limited to the scene in the United States and Canada. I fully realize the need for a more inclusive overview but that would require a longer treatment and not just a paper. Thus developments elsewhere, even in the rest of the English-speaking world, had to be excluded from consideration. In addition, specific papers which were discussed or mentioned were used only as representative examples of particular approaches, and not necessarily of the work of individual writers. I am not interested in individuals but in reputations, insti­ tutions, and discourses, and I am always sorry to see proper names taken for people rather than as signs. I also have difficulties with the generational (as opposed to the genealogical) view, which sees historical development as a succession of Hesiodian ages or as a Hegelian dialectic (and therefore seeks some synthesis- mediation or the middle ground). Accounts of "descent" or "dialectical progression" may explain stages of evolution (forthose who believe in it, of course) but not moments of rupture. They may explain, for example, Heidegger's debt to Nietzsche or Pound's to Browning, but not discontinuity, let alone revolt. (Punk came out of the middle class suburbia but did not exactly descent from it nor did it perpetuate its views.) In the case of modern Greek skepticism, I located the element of rupture in the systematic adoption of the schol­ arly mode. Although I emphatically stressed its importance, I thought I made it clear that, in my vocabulary, the term "scholarship" does not have an independent, self-evident value. I do not believe that scholarly writing is inherently superior to any other kind of writing. It is nothing more nor less than the currently acceptable mode of communication in American institutional sites of research. My point was that, if schol­ arly writing is today part of the rules of the academic game (if not its name), then to the extent that modern Greek happens to desire academic recognition, it ought to be prepared to play that particular game well. In games, there are no "goodies" and "badies,'' only good and bad players. For the greater part of its history, because of its belles-lettristic and historiographic practices, as well as its modernist and philhellenic sensibilities, the field did not distinguish itself in that area. This pov­ erty, in combination with the painful experience of the generation gap (i.e., the absence of successors to the pioneers), rather than the good will and open-mindedness of some members of the dominant community, should account for the rapid success of skepticism. If skepticism. despite national (and international) scorn and opposition, has been already accepted as a major force, this is, I submit, because its solid scholarly achievement made it unavoidable, indeed indispens- Reply 61 able forthe academic survival and respectability of modern Greek. The final choice seems to me simple: people who feel that scholarly ex­ cellence is not a prerequisite for academic recognition (or who have no desire for such recognition) should not pursue it, or even attack it; on the other hand, those who think that it is, should pursue it vigorously, while expressing, in the practice, any reservations they may have about it. One final (philological) note, for the record: I talked about skepticists, the practitioners of the skepticist paradigm, and not "Skeptics," the supporters of the philosophical school of Skep­ ticism. After these clarifications, let me come now to the two aspects of my position that seem to disturb my commentators most. One is that of the incompatibility of paradigms. I certainly did not want to see it in logical or pragmatist terms. On the contrary, my understanding of incompatibility is epistemological and institutional, and therefore po­ litical. For this reason, for example, I find that certain readings of Cavafy by Jusdanis and Keeley may be compatible but the institutional and other political implications of those readings, as we all well know, are not. Similarly, an insitutional account of incompatibility can ex­ plain why papers by Nehamas can be published in both Critical Inquiry and Grand Street, while essays by Keeley only in the latter. I too am forbroad , cooperative Rainbow Coalitions but sometimes, as the case of the Civil Rights movement shows, when differences are irrecon­ cilable, opposition, even conflict, is unavoidable (which does not mean desirable). Obviously, older skills or techniques that are deemed useful may survive in the practices of a new paradigm (placed, of course, in its own, new hierarchy): total novelty for its own sake is not the ideal here. On the other hand, accommodating the marginalized group is not enough. If my stark polarities remind one of the commitment of "militant feminists," I feel vindicated and honored: try to tell them (or any oppressed woman) that they ought to seek a middle ground in a patriarchal society! Nevertheless, my argument that empiricism and skepticism are institutionally and discursively incompatible, because their episte­ mologies, and consequently politics, cannot be combined, cannot co­ exist (on the institutional, not the personal level), seems to raise, in the minds of some people, the specter of "totalitarianism." First, let me repeat myself here and note that this threat from the skepticist side is probably less likely since it was precisely skepticism which raised questions of orthodoxy and resistance (to which empiricism had not until then exhibited any particular sensitivity). (Thus Alexiou's re­ sponse convincingly cancels its own worst fears: when a skepticist of her caliber can courageously and independently castigate her most 62 Vassilis Lambropoulos well-known ally in the field, she only proves that skepticism can be as critical of itself as of anybody else.) Second, let me say unequivocally that I resent the invidious claim that "the new totalitarianism of literary theory far exceeds the old one" (i.e., "authoritarian Marxism"). What next? Are we going to hear accusations about fellow-travelers and card-carrying skepticists? I too am against totalitarianism-but this is like being against shooting babies: in a frightfully banal sense, who isn't these days? I am afraid that most (western) protests against to­ talitarianism are defenses less of freedomand more of the free market. I tend to see calls for pluralism, diversity, and multiplicity (with their accompanying mistrust of protectionism) as sublimations of Inter­ national Monetary Fund economics in a period of post-colonial Third World unrest-as ideological strategies of containment and appro­ priation. Until we have a political critique of (as opposed to moral indignation at) totalitarianism, I prefer to be much more specific about oppression, persecution, and exploitation. Appropriation and exploitation, together with antagonism, struggle, and war, are dirty words which the ascetic imperative of the Protestant ethic and capital forbids, thus concealing its ulterior motive and ultimate criterion: interest. But I have already said in my paper that skepticism does post the question of interest. And although I do not have an easy answer, I am convinced we ought to face it. Why shouldn't people strive for more power? Why should they relinquish the power they have accumulated? Liberal bourgeois answers, like democracy, equality, or community, are terribly insufficient, as we discover in election after election. I can only propose here that, instead of the prevailing (Kantian) moralism of equality we urgently need a polemics of freedom and an ethics of power. There is a substantive part of my paper, one-fifth of it, which none of my commentators mention: the long bibliography of "Ref­ erences Cited." It meant to show two important things: first, how widely different from the horizon of empiricist knowledge the skep­ ticist universe really is. (As a friend used to say, when no explanation could mediate between two arguments, "we read totally different books.") The second point of the bibliography was to remind one that our amicable discussion is but a minor instance of a vehement national debate over the nature and future of both higher education and scientific inquiry, which has been raging during this decade. Not just the Humanities but Humanism itself, as it has developed over the last one (some people say three) hundred years, is being challenged. Ex­ amples abound of what everybody, fromthe Depar�ment of Education to the National Endowments and fromun iversities to the mass media, knows as the "Battle of the Books" of this century. When twenty years Reply 63 ago some of us started talking about the death of "literature," the "author," or "Man" himself, most colleagues thought it was just another esoteric academic fight: "tilting at windmills." Later developments have shown that they were fiddling while Rome was burning. Now that the crisis has erupted in public, affecting curricula, appointments, salaries, grants, publications, and reviews, who is really "tilting at windmills": those who are willing to see the debate for what it really is-a battle over the meaning and consequences of basic western values; or those who concoct the specter of totalitarianism and prepare to fightanother territorial war- this time for the middle ground? In the end, though, I must admit again that I am very pleased by this exchange. My sense is that, through open and bold discussions like ours, we all, and with us the field of modern Greek studies, participate actively and creatively in a much larger and fundamental (and often acrimonious) debate where the significance and purpose of our role and work forboth education and society will be dramatically devised and decided.

P.S. I am afraid I have nothing to discuss with David Holton. With the other three commentators, because we share the same basic understanding of the current situation in the field, I know I can have a productive exchange of ideas about the role and future of modern Greek studies. Our positions may differ but our problematic and diagnosis are quite similar. Thus the right conditions and dispositions exist (and have been explored on this occasion) foran open, thorough, and wide-ranging dialogue. This is not the case with Holton; his re­ sponse exemplifies empiricism at its most stultifying: dose-minded, old-fashioned, inflexible, intolerant. Holton is notinterested in mediation. He operates in an exclusive and insular mode of discourse. He made no effort to understand mine. I deal with reputations, he deals with individuals; I seek aca­ demic empowerment, he seeks tools for research and teaching; I see power strategies and a paradigm shift, he sees progress and evolution; I talk about paradigms, he talks about tradition; I discuss discourses and epistemology, he discusses approaches and methodology; finally, I stress the need for more comparativist, interdisciplinary, and the­ oretically informed work, while he stresses the need for grammars, bibliographies, and concordances (which, of course, nobody disputes). He does not disagree with me, he is only speaking a differentlanguage. This gap of understanding is exactly what I meant when I emphasized the incompatibility of skepticism and empiricism. Holton is unable to comprehend terms and principles alien to the paradigm within which 64 Vassilis Lambropoulos he operates. When we compare his response to the other three, we discern the fundamental problem: it is not just that he understands things differently from the rest of us-it is that he cannot see that our understanding is radically different from his. I admit I do not have the time to contradict his "fatts:" playing ' the game of "evidence" does not interest me. (It is true, for example, that three, not two, of the Ph.D. theses recommended in my paper have not been submitted as of this writing; but another two of those have been accepted for publication since I wrote the paper. I am still not sure what that proves and to whom.) After all, "facts" are by definition an empiricist domain and possession. Having sympathetic, hostile, or any other reactions to the "Battle of the Books" and the current debate about the Humanities and the University �s entirely understandable. Bolton's claim, though, that the confrontation is "mythical" and "illusory" is al armingly uninformed: from theNouvelle Critique furor of the 1960s in France to the structuralist controversy of the 1970s at Cambr_:idge (Bolton's home institution) to the canon wars of the 1980s in North ,America, the debate has been affecting all aspects of our profession. Holton is entitled to his faithful adher­ ence to (what he wishfullycalls the "Anglo-Saxon empiricist tradition" but amounts to nothing more than) 19th century German philology; but he cannot afford, as a responsible scholar, to be so utterly unaware of the central academic controversy of our time-a development with which the average reader of the New York or London Times is already familiar. Fortunately, such Victorian defenses of intellectual law and or­ der, which give empiricism a bad name, are rare these days in aca­ demia. What is even more encouraging is the increase of signals, from the more enlightened empiricist side, of a willingness to talk and debate. Although it is too early to evaluate the s,ignificance of such moves, they are probably already reducing the potential for conflicL and improving the possibility of new alliances, directions, and goals for modern Greek studies as it prepares for a larger role on campus and in the public sphere. January, 1989