donna, as always, excellent analysis. as someone who just started reading your stuff in the last year and appreciates it, have you engaged thoroughly anywhere i can see with the platform that your brother runs and its nurturing of AI/fascist aesthetics, and/or the way more recently the company he runs is sharply veering toward collaboration with the actual right wing candidate for president? i recognize this comes as a 'gotcha' but as far as i can be honest it isn't, it just must feel a real internal tension for you (and one you may be able to exert pressure, such as it is).
Three years ago, I was approached by a well-known (in Europe) publisher who asked if I was interested in writing a kind of “instant book” about the debate surrounding Classics, far-right appropriation, and the so-called Cancel Culture in the US. They told me they wanted the perspective of a (relatively) young (I was 37 at the time) female Classics professor with some international experience. I remember being scared to death at the time because I felt like I was entering a campo minato—a minefield—where the risk of jeopardizing my credibility and career, in a context prone to constant misunderstandings, was immense.
In the end, I accepted. Despite the enormous risks, I suspected that if I didn’t seize the opportunity, soon enough the usual white middle-aged male colleagues—who had far fewer concerns about objectivity—would weigh in on the topic. And indeed, that's exactly what happened.
To make a long story short: I published my book, where I aimed to neutrally explain to a European audience the gravity of far-right appropriation, not just in the US but globally. I highlighted how, especially after Trump’s election, a part of the academic community felt a renewed urgency to find a way of "being a good Classicist under a bad emperor," to quote one of your must-read pieces in Eidolon (which I quoted frequently, to be honest, since there’s nothing comparable in the Europe-born context).
The book was published, and I toured schools, universities, bookstores, radio stations, and TV shows. I met countless people, most of whom were kind and engaged. The real issue, however, is that there's a hardcore group—even among progressives and leftists—who, stirred up by the media (left-leaning too!), have completely lost sight of the cultural appropriation of antiquity by the far-right (not only in the US). Instead, they’ve swallowed the narrative that “woke” American Classicists are self-hating and jeopardizing the very existence of a discipline already in decline. The enemy, for them, isn’t the far-right, but the so-called Cancel Culture, which they see as "a threat to everything beautiful and noble—like the Classics".
In short, the conversation about the need to make the discipline more inclusive has been widely lost in translation as it crossed the Atlantic. More books have since come out—written by middle-aged white men, full professors (to this day, mine remains the only one written by a woman, and I'm far from a powerhouse in the field)—in which they explain to the public how Americans are victims of wokism, DEI policies, Cancel Culture and other perceived absurdities. They argue that the debate on Classics as a field and discipline is merely a product of that "suicidal woke culture." And these are people politically aligned with the left. So are their readers.
I don’t know whether AI will mark the end of cultural appropriation, but the damage it has already done—particularly in constructing a narrative that Europe has largely misunderstood—remains vast.
I was inspired by your interview on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. I think it was from you I learned about the strange connections between the alt-right, incels, the "red pill" phenomenon, and the classics.
The classics?!
I knew about the debates about how the humanities had been corrupted by "social justice", "identity politics", and "cultural Marxism" (these things hadn't gelled into the appropriated term "woke" yet as an object of hate).
But this?
I was astonished and intrigued.
Subsequently, I started following Eidolon and others working to widen the understanding of classics and the period they emerged from.
I was saddened when Eidolon closed down, and I have to say your post depresses me more.
Perhaps it is time for autonomous AI now. Couldn't take us to a worse place perhaps than where we are headed now.
Reading this I was struck by the fact that I haven't bought your book yet! Why haven't I done that! Anyway, going to buy a copy of your book now.
donna, as always, excellent analysis. as someone who just started reading your stuff in the last year and appreciates it, have you engaged thoroughly anywhere i can see with the platform that your brother runs and its nurturing of AI/fascist aesthetics, and/or the way more recently the company he runs is sharply veering toward collaboration with the actual right wing candidate for president? i recognize this comes as a 'gotcha' but as far as i can be honest it isn't, it just must feel a real internal tension for you (and one you may be able to exert pressure, such as it is).
Three years ago, I was approached by a well-known (in Europe) publisher who asked if I was interested in writing a kind of “instant book” about the debate surrounding Classics, far-right appropriation, and the so-called Cancel Culture in the US. They told me they wanted the perspective of a (relatively) young (I was 37 at the time) female Classics professor with some international experience. I remember being scared to death at the time because I felt like I was entering a campo minato—a minefield—where the risk of jeopardizing my credibility and career, in a context prone to constant misunderstandings, was immense.
In the end, I accepted. Despite the enormous risks, I suspected that if I didn’t seize the opportunity, soon enough the usual white middle-aged male colleagues—who had far fewer concerns about objectivity—would weigh in on the topic. And indeed, that's exactly what happened.
To make a long story short: I published my book, where I aimed to neutrally explain to a European audience the gravity of far-right appropriation, not just in the US but globally. I highlighted how, especially after Trump’s election, a part of the academic community felt a renewed urgency to find a way of "being a good Classicist under a bad emperor," to quote one of your must-read pieces in Eidolon (which I quoted frequently, to be honest, since there’s nothing comparable in the Europe-born context).
The book was published, and I toured schools, universities, bookstores, radio stations, and TV shows. I met countless people, most of whom were kind and engaged. The real issue, however, is that there's a hardcore group—even among progressives and leftists—who, stirred up by the media (left-leaning too!), have completely lost sight of the cultural appropriation of antiquity by the far-right (not only in the US). Instead, they’ve swallowed the narrative that “woke” American Classicists are self-hating and jeopardizing the very existence of a discipline already in decline. The enemy, for them, isn’t the far-right, but the so-called Cancel Culture, which they see as "a threat to everything beautiful and noble—like the Classics".
In short, the conversation about the need to make the discipline more inclusive has been widely lost in translation as it crossed the Atlantic. More books have since come out—written by middle-aged white men, full professors (to this day, mine remains the only one written by a woman, and I'm far from a powerhouse in the field)—in which they explain to the public how Americans are victims of wokism, DEI policies, Cancel Culture and other perceived absurdities. They argue that the debate on Classics as a field and discipline is merely a product of that "suicidal woke culture." And these are people politically aligned with the left. So are their readers.
I don’t know whether AI will mark the end of cultural appropriation, but the damage it has already done—particularly in constructing a narrative that Europe has largely misunderstood—remains vast.
Donna
I was inspired by your interview on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams. I think it was from you I learned about the strange connections between the alt-right, incels, the "red pill" phenomenon, and the classics.
The classics?!
I knew about the debates about how the humanities had been corrupted by "social justice", "identity politics", and "cultural Marxism" (these things hadn't gelled into the appropriated term "woke" yet as an object of hate).
But this?
I was astonished and intrigued.
Subsequently, I started following Eidolon and others working to widen the understanding of classics and the period they emerged from.
I was saddened when Eidolon closed down, and I have to say your post depresses me more.
Perhaps it is time for autonomous AI now. Couldn't take us to a worse place perhaps than where we are headed now.
Please tell me “no”