Modalities of Academic Writing and the Immigrant Scholar

There is the conventional language of social sciences, style and content striving to produce solid descriptions, a linear narrative to illustrate relations, establish causality, anchor conclusions; a piece of writing expected to produce the effect of an objective rendition of a social phenomenon.

There is a mode of theoretical language in the humanities (among several iterations) rich yet dense, illuminating yet sometimes difficult to access, (re)produced by academics with high cultural capital, demanding deep erudition, incredible dedication and toil, the making of foundations that take years to give shape, addressing a community of insiders, not rarely exhausting outsiders striving to grapple with its incredible analytical depths.

There is the language too of scholarship as reflexive narrative, guided by the ethos of translating difficult concepts into a language an educated person could understand. Translating given modalities of writing with the aspiration to assert something freshly. A language in which emotion and knowledge converge to produce flowing accounts crafted to move readers; to evoke complexity, acknowledge limits, identify potentialities.

Other modalities between and beyond abound––the above does not attempt a typology.

I imagine an immigrant junior scholar entering this field, the vast labor demanded, the exhausting navigation of the various writing modalities; the various translations (from one language to another, from one modality of writing to another) required, depending on departmental expectations and mandates. An experience indelibly imprinted in the soul and mind, an embodied companion throughout one’s academic journey.

I think about (and live) the project of making a choice––of aspiring to a particular choice––in the direction of crafting a voice within the structural pressures of limited resources, the realities of the academic market, other institutional demands, one’s politics of knowledge…

I often think of (and have been living through) this kind of an immigrant’s scholarly journey; in relation to the degrees of imported cultural and linguistic capital one embodies, the difference that the resources this person carries will make in negotiating all sorts of academic rites of passage in the new environment; how extraordinarily challenging this journey is, how fulfilling and rewarding, how fundamentally class-inflected this experience could be…

Yiorgos Anagnostou

September 26, 2024

Global Women and Hellenism Conference II

I have been following with great interest the recent Women and Hellenism conference, organized by the Australia-based Food for Thought Network (Ioannina, September 2-6, 2024). Though I wish I were attending in situ, I e-participated from afar, the United States, watching the selective vignettes featured online, in the social media and youtube.

The fact that I was only exposed to fragments from the proceedings disqualifies me from offering a comprehensive analysis of this gathering.

Still, due to the major importance of this initiative I feel compelled to share a few thoughts, necessarily tentative and partial, with the purpose of contributing, to the extent possible, to the public conversation (I anticipate) toward the understanding of this institution and its future directions.

• The conference was an exercise in polyphony, featuring a variety of points of view (voices), some venturing into questions on gender and identity in depth, others remaining on the surface, uttering platitudes. Theoretical sophistication and cliches co-existed.

• Democratic inclusion was a conscious concern of the gathering, creating an inclusive social space. I am interested in the range of this inclusion. Were contemporary working-class women an element in the polyphony and if so was there deliberation on how to address the challenges they face in the workplace as both women and wage laborers? (could working class women afford the trip to Greece and take time off from their work?) Was there a systemic analysis of the predicament of this demographic and how to institute change? [I saw several stories focusing on individual resilience, effort and work ethic in the overcoming class and patriarchal obstacles.] Were there discussions of issues of non-normative sexualities and their experiences in relation to patriarchal diasporic institutions? Were the voices of men who have been allies in women’s cause for empowerment heard? (women’s issues are a broader gender issue; and class among other social categories)

• The conference featured conflicting perspectives ranging from positions on radical feminism, calls for intersectional alliances with vulnerable populations (indigenous women) to nationalist identity narratives, and to claims about Greek exceptionalism among others. I have no sense whether (or to what extent) this produced an interactive and dialogic public sphere. For example, in an instance when a speaker (from a particular diaspora) celebrated democracy as the core of Greek identity, I wonder whether there were voices attesting that this ideal is often blatantly violated in some diasporas when it comes to representing the “community.”

• This brings us to the issue of meaningful and agonistic exchange and deliberation. In one panel I followed with interest there was no time left for the Q&A session. The speakers spoke but their (often important, and sometime radical) views were not subject to polyphonic exchange. How did members of the audience situate themselves in relation to feminism as a polyphonic phenomenon. [we know there are many feminisms.] In this instance there was no deliberation. Did the voice of a speaker advocating radical feminism make a difference on how members of the gathering understood the issue “women and social change,” and how will they be acting toward this goal in practice?

• A major purpose of the conference was to continue (spark, inspire, assert) the struggle for women’s empowerment, a noble investment for the public good. The quest for change organized the conference, an important call given the power of patriarchy to injure women, both emotionally and economically. The real and symbolic violence of patriarchy needs to be confronted in multiple fronts.

• The justifiable call for change makes this gathering a political community in the broadest sense of the term political, that is distribution of power, engagement with public issues such as gender equality. Regarding this all-important call for action, I am not clear whether the participants reflected on strategies and tactics to pursue change. Is it possible for a collective expressing ideologically irreconcilable perspectives to reach a consensus on this issue? The answer is no, which raises the issue of how the question of change is envisioned (and theorized) by this collective.

I understand the great challenge of sustaining a grass-roots collective operating under the conditions I outlined above. There is a host of potentialities and limits. Difficult decisions on how to frame the polyphony in a politically meaningful manner.

What i shared here––observations, thoughts and questions––is what I see as my constructive contribution to this conversation. The leaders of this initiative may wish to consider reflecting and theorizing the social phenomenon they are initiating and the social movement (?) they are keen to mobilizing.

The conference has been universally extolled by enchanted participants, who spoke about the thrill of participating in a collective experience injecting them with exhilarating energy. Even an e-participant could feel the vibe.

But we will benefit enormously, I believe, eventually moving beyond mere praise, and listen to the participants’ public reflections and analysis (their food for thought). In addition, as we anticipate the next iteration of this phenomenon and its future direction, community leaders may wish to consider entering into conversation with highly qualified scholars and activists working on issues of political communities, democratic pluralism, advocacy, and social change––this sort of polyphony is positioned to enrich the understanding of this important initiative for all of us.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

September 15-16, 2024

Academic Positionality (2008-2024) – A Personal Reflection

How come you never wrote a second book? a well-meaning friend asked me the other day. Years ago, I was confronted with the same question in a different context, at a crucial juncture in my professional life––it required convincing faculty otherwise, those interrogating the value of my academic trajectory. I have felt the sting of this question also in dark shades, implying lesser value for my work. Now and for different reasons, my friend’s question calls for an answer I decide to make public, a reflection about almost two decades of post-tenure life in a US public university. I do so to perhaps offer insights about a particular academic experience: operating within a relatively marginal scholarly field and how this positioning might shape the contours of a person asserting presence in the academy and beyond.

***

In 2008, around the time I completed my tenure book, I found myself at a crossroads, confronted by the inevitable question regarding the next step. Conventional academic wisdom was directing me toward a second manuscript, a prospect I was indeed contemplating. As a latecomer in the academy––PhD at the age of forty––I was told to carefully weigh on my career options. Yet certain circumstances were pulling me toward alternative paths, emerging mostly due to developments in Greek/American popular culture and issues confronting Greek American studies (GAS), an academic field to which I have devoted my academic life (2000–ongoing).

Several happenings in popular and academic culture were indeed pressing for notice. Hollywood's My Life in Ruins was released in 2009, adding one more item in my list of films I wanted to write about––the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding (MBFGW, 2002) already “begging” for GAS attention. I was also experiencing a strong impulse to reflect on the place of diaspora studies in relation to US modern Greek studies (2010). The ways concepts such as “diaspora” were understood by an earlier generation of GAS researchers needed, I felt, addressing too. It was ripe time to critically engage with GAS canonical scholarship and propose a revisionist angle in Greek American historiography––an interest lasting up to this day. What is more, the initial impact of the “Greek economic crisis” on the homeland-diaspora relations was around the corner.

The idea of taking up “small-scale” projects was alluring, particularly given my exhaustion from having just finished a demanding book, a work produced under immense pressure. This mode of writing would offer a momentary respite, I thought, and “buy time” for my new book idea to ripen. But instead, it turned into a purposeful, long term “nomadic” approach to academic and broadly public writing.

Article-writing was given critical purpose via my cultural studies interest in examining cultural texts and practices (film, documentary, literature, ethic parades, autobiography identity narratives, etc.) as components of broader discourses (nationalism, religion, race, diaspora)––this in the context of power relations. I saw publishing in this mode a strategy to place new Greek American texts drawing national attention in connection to relevant academic conversations, positioning in this manner GAS as an active player in the process. Situating MBFGW in connection to white ethnicity (2012), for example, placed my work in a journal exploring US multiculturalism.

When the Greek economic crisis descended upon us, the role of the diaspora, not only as an agent mobilizing in solidarity with Greece, but also as a site of branding global identity, was impossible to ignore (2021, 2022). Of major importance also was the centenary of the Ludlow Massacre (2014) which generated great interest among scholars, journalists and public intellectuals working on the history of the American working class. I published about the (re)making of Cretan/Greek/American labor organizer Louis Tikas in a documentary produced in Greece (2014) as well as his poetic evocation in David Mason’s verse-novel Ludlow (2016).

Additional anniversaries were pressing for GAS critical presence. The bicentenary of the Greek revolution led to an essay reframing US philhellenism (2022) and a book chapter shifting the focus from the nation to diasporic citizenship (2023). A year later, a strong desire to honor the centenary of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (2024) resulted in two articles and several newspaper articles in the Greek and diaspora media.

Earlier, a host of issues called for academic contributions: the MTV “Growing Up Greek” controversy (2017), for example, and the urgency to think about public humanities as a venue to explore the position of academics in relation to community discourses (2015). Of interest was the spectacularization of ethnicity and its connection with American sports, which called for examining heritage as commodity (2019). There were grass-roots initiatives to foster Greek American–African American solidarities, and then the Black Lives Matter movement and its implications for Greek America, which called for involvement (2020). Book reviews needed to be written, Helladic representations of the diaspora interrogated, popular representations of Greek American identity discussed, the post-mortem publications of deceased colleagues acknowledged (2015, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024). Personal motivation directed my experimentation with diaspora poetics in a hybrid form (2021).

Then, emerging conversations about neglected topics such as gender and sexuality (2021) pulled me to their orbit. I connected my writing about the intersection of gender, sexuality and food in the diaspora, the latter yet another gravely under-researched topic (2023). The initiative to place GAS in conversation with other diasporic studies––Italian American for instance––led to a collaboration and a co-edited volume (2022). A memorable experience in Australia resulted in writings about Greek American arts and US multiculturalism (forthcoming) and reflection on Greek Australia (2024). Greece’s strategic plan for the diaspora called for a position paper (2024), and the increasing interest in global Hellenism has generated a project in progress.

As the saying goes, one thing led to another… cascading to a frenetic academic courtship. The ebbs and flows of this route required the navigation of a terrain mostly uncharted for me. One, as you would expect, was writing about emerging and unfolding phenomena in the here and now not in a journalistic but scholarly fashion, a demanding––we all know––practice. Another was negotiating new disciplinary terrains outside “my expertise”––if I ever had any––public humanities, public diplomacy, sociology, life history, film and documentary studies; sexuality and foodways; Italian American studies.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries requires fluid versatility which is not only intellectual demanding––to the point of exhaustion––but also a venue exposing a scholar to vulnerability. The articles were written as interventions but sacrificed the depth that only the manuscript mode can dig. I was fortunate that the writing of the Contours of White Ethnicity had somewhat prepared me for this kind of “nomadic” scholarship. (Out of necessity, often, given the scarcity of research on a wide range of topic I needed to address in order to advance my work.)

The project of multicentered, border-crossing scholarship required an austere regime of reading and writing as well as tons of patience (and pleasures). The embodied memory still dripping from all this experience is the sense of being intellectually dwarfed anytime I entered a new terrain of inquiry and the scholarship animating it. There is also the fact that one does not get a ton of academic fellowships––and the privilege of spacious time for writing that comes with the package––on the virtue of articles alone. I was fortunate to enjoy research leaves granted by my public institution and two precious external Fellowships. Summers offered oases for sustained writing thousands of miles away from the (now demythologized) Ελληνικό καλοκαίρι.

It was nomadic but not directionless, random work. The overall strategy was a series of tactical critical engagements with newly circulated Greek American texts and practices and their placing in relation to broader questions about governmentality, nation-centric appropriations of the diaspora, nationalism from afar, revisionist historiography, public intellectuals, immigrant poetics, cultural hegemony and critique, identity branding, pedagogies of heritage transmission, intersections of GAS with Italian American studies.

The aim was to interrogate essentialized renderings of diaspora identity and explain the harmful political implications of these reductions. Also, to place GAS, demonstrating its value, into broader fields such as US “Mediterranean studies” or the discourse of “white ethnicity.” All along I was operating under the premise that this approach empowers the relevance of GAS in the US academy, a vital value for the institutional future of the field.

These were the potential gains motivating my work though I was well-aware that the absence of a critical mass of cultural-studies scholars in GAS risked the marginalization of this corpus (both in the US and Greece). In bleak moments I sought solace to the idea that I was at least creating a scholarly archive of a historical period––that of diasporized multiculturalism, the increasing authority of grassroots identity narratives, and an ideological investment in undermining their dominance.

This is the critical mode then that turned article-writing into my academic modus operandi. It was a practice performed in parallel with writing blogs and essays for the diaspora and Greek media (The National Herald, Neos Kosmos, TOBHMA, TA NEA, The Books’ Journal, as well as essays and editorials, both in Greek and English, in Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters, a labor of love). At the same time, I felt throughout the pull of a “diasporic drive,” to write for Greek audiences (Ο Πολίτης, Marginalia, Σύγχρονα Θέματα, chapters in edited volumes, essays in non-academic journals). [Perhaps it is time for scholars to ask academic credit for multilingual publishing––yet another laborious activity.]

In retrospect, I can now place––with relative certainty––this trajectory of nomadic scholarship in connection to the conditions defining GAS, then and now. Had the field enjoyed a critical mass of practitioners in diverse disciplines, I would have not felt the urgency for this tactical academic nomadism. Far from being a personal whim then, my academic route was a product of specific contingencies in a particular historical moment. [which explain my ongoing preoccupation with the advancement of Greek diaspora studies.]

Was all this worthwhile? There is no single answer to this question. Books, of course, bring more visibility and accolades, more invitations for talks and keynotes, more prospects for prestigious research leaves. Being at the core of the academy’s cultural capital are not disconnected from material gains. Most importantly, for me, they open opportunities for Fellowships granting invaluable time for uninterrupted writing.

Throughout all this I was conscious of the potential gains motivating my work, though I was well-aware that the absence of a critical mass of cultural studies scholars in GAS risks the marginalization of this corpus. Work is being done to expand the intellectual network fostering critical exchange among practitioners in the field.

But in the context of my own commitments and politics, the making of a corpus of writing that spoke to contemporary and emerging phenomena has been a profoundly meaningful experience. It represents the imprinting of systematic interventionist scholarship, a meaningful trade off overall for what was lost and compromised––I try to convince myself as I grapple with what should come next in the shrinking available time in the horizon …

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Acknowledgment: Dedicated with profound appreciation to all the colleagues, civic friends, and beloved friends who sustained me in the carving of my trajectory.

The Inaugural Global Women and Hellenism Conference Commences! Some thoughts

As an author with an interest in women's empowerment, I wish i were able to attend the Global Women and Hellenism conference. I will certainly be watching the proceedings online. On the occasion of the conference's commencement, several issues regarding diaspora women were following me today, powerfully. 

I am sharing for the sake of conversation, as I anticipate listening to the presenters and their framing of issues and personal experiences:

• Diaspora women authors, artists, and researchers (novelists, poetesses, academics). How their writings about issues connect with the concerns of the conference participants.

• Diaspora feminist women and their writings. How their feminisms matter in connection to the conference.

• How does knowledge about the histories, experiences and issues in the various diasporas matter (as explored, say, in Greek Australian and Greek American studies); the enduring gender segregation in diaspora organizations for example.

• Second and third generation working class women; their experiences within and outside middle class parishes.

• Women of alternative sexualities, their experiences within parishes and beyond. Working class and middle class LGBTQ women.

• Women in interracial marriages and their place in the "community."

• The Church and women

• Diaspora women of radical politics vis-a-vis the ethnic "community."

• Writings about the meanings of "Hellenism" in connection to globality, their significance in thinking about the major theme of the conference.

 

• Diaspora Greek women and their relations with Other stigmatized and exploited women.

I would welcome your sharing of the questions and thoughts you are bringing as this historical event commences.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Some basic thoughts about the practice of book reviewing

In addition to peer reviewing, book reviews are sites of major importance in knowledge production. In their best, they amplify the merits of published work, recognize their contributions and implications, identify blindspots and erroneous assumptions. In this case they require, like serious peer reviewing, considerable investment of labor (and deep knowledge). [there is an ethical dimension here, what is the volume of resources (time and energy) we owe to books requiring years to complete?] 

Unfortunately, book reviews carry little academic capital in the assessment of faculty "productivity", and for this or other reasons it is not rare that they are devalued by the academics themselves.

In the domain I work i also see a reticence for critical engagement with the material under review. As a genre, book reviews are becoming formulaic, almost predictable (a polite way to say boring), cautious not to probe "too deep," praising the merits and adding a few critical comments (often obvious) for "balance." One reason is that critique these days is seen by many authors who receive it as a personal attack and professional affront–with all the implications, we, seasoned in this kind of situations, can imagine.

Another may connect with the politics of knowledge and its material implications, the reluctance to enter into rigorous debate about methodology and interpretation may connect with the concern of displeasing certain powerful academic networks, with the reviewer facing the results (the wrath?) of their discontent. A highly mediated genre is further compromised. [obviously this is much more complex, requiring a broader discussion.]

Instead of welcoming book reviews as venues practicing critical reflection valuable for the profession, bringing attention to one's work, reflecting on its implications, pointing to weaknesses, contributing to reassessment and rethinking (and perhaps leading to a follow up article or book), many refrain from this route. An indispensable component of knowledge production is sacrificed, and we are all the lesser because of this loss.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

August 31, 2024

p.s. The issue is drawing broader attention, see https://snfphi.columbia.edu/events/what-has-become-of-critique-book-reviews-in-greece/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFBgMNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVdU6xdMmLOpB0QxMQFBUP_mg4B7VXA19iKzj5nhqXReUhO-kGxZXJl69Q_aem_c2x05EAw4Y0hAAAGrpnhjQ

Installment II: Engaging Greece’s Strategic Plan for the Diaspora: The Democratic Diaspora Public Sphere and the Diasporic Paradigm

To Whom it May Concern

Re. The Greek Government’s Updated Strategic Plan for the Diaspora

Installment II: Engaging Greece’s Strategic Plan for the Diaspora: The Democratic Diaspora Public Sphere and the Diasporic Paradigm

August 12, 2024

Earlier this summer, the Greek Department of Foreign Affairs made available in its website the government’s updated Strategic Plan (referred from now on as “Plan”), for the purpose of eliciting input from the interested public. The document is exclusively in Greek, and represents, as some commentators have noted, an improved, ambitious programmatic document of goals and policies to cultivate the relations between Greece, the historical homelands, and the various Greek diasporas.

The point of departure for this commentary is the following development: the publication of several responses engaging with the Plan in (a) the Greek and Greek Australian media; (b) an online independent think tank based in Greece; and (c) the Anglophone social media (facebook) (1). Offering critical assessment and fresh insights, this important public intervention––though admittedly small in volume (it is produced by a mere two authors)––leads me to frame this updated Plan in terms of what I call “diaspora public sphere.”

The Public Sphere: Some Definitions

A public sphere consists of cultural fields such as the media, cultural and educational institutions, the arts, citizen groups, and think tanks among other entities in civil society.

In the broadest, normative sense, a public sphere cultivates reasoned argument, debate, deliberation, critique, and exchange of ideas. Seen as an agent toward the realization of democratic ideals, it is inclusive, featuring diverse perspectives and oppositional arguments.

It follows that the diaspora public sphere entails all the aforementioned fields which make diaspora the object of reflection. This is a transnational field. It includes, for example, sites such as academic writings about the diaspora in Greece, the media in Greek Australia, historical societies in Greek Canada, library archival collections and online journals in Greek America.

Although I am not a sociologist of the public sphere, I draw insights from the relevant literature because of its value, I believe, for deliberating on the Plan. (2)

Institutional Players in the Diaspora Public Sphere

The fact that we discuss a governmental plan prompts us to consider the powerful institutional players operating in this sphere.

• A primary stakeholder of course is the Greek state, which has been a historical agent in seeking to regulate the meaning of the diaspora and harness its resources for geopolitical, economic, political and cultural interests.

• Supranational institutions such as the Greek Orthodox Church, which enjoys great power in some diasporas, are also involved. The Plan highlights, in fact privileges, the importance of this institution as an entity whose cohesiveness contributes to diaspora-historical homeland relations.

• The governments of the new home societies (United States, Australia, etc.) also operate in this field as key political agents, although they do not command much attention, if any, in the Plan. Yet their exercise of vast power must be recognized, given their capacity––via policies, laws, and makers of public opinion––to mediate the extent, scope, and mode of diasporic affiliations of citizens within their own territory. Let us not forget that in the majority, diasporic people enjoy the rights and responsibilities of being citizens in their new homes. Therefore, when the Greek state addresses the diaspora, it addresses citizens of other sovereign states.

• Diasporic cultural and educational institutions such as the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne & Victoria (Australia), and the Hellenic Heritage Foundation (Canada) among other major stakeholders.

• Also at work are international and transnational cultural institutions such as the Niarchos Foundation which fund educational projects in the diaspora.

It is of interest that the Plan broadly mentions two of those entities, explicitly or implicitly, when it makes references to the Immigrec Virtual Museum (https://immigrec.com/virtual-museum/) funded by the Niarchos Foundation, and the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Archives, connected with the Hellenic Studies Program at York University (https://hhf.ca/the-hhf-greek-canadian-archives/). This represents a modest step foe a state-driven public policy to recognize projects producing knowledge about diaspora history.

Before I develop the issue of cultural production from a diaspora perspective, let me share briefly some thoughts about the public sphere. They will helpfully guide the analysis.

Insights about the Public Sphere

Following Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, the contemporary public sphere is conceptualized as a series of overlapping fields (the political, the economic [business], the academic, the religious, non-governmental advocacy organizations, journalism, the arts, among others) with each of these fields competing “to impose its particular vision of the social world on society as a whole.”

In this terrain the distribution of power is uneven. Some entities within each field have at their disposal a great deal of resources and cultural capital to promote their vision. Thus, a great mass of commentators, “experts,” intellectuals, consultants, gatekeepers, and academics among other stakeholders may be gravitating (or implicitly coerced) toward promoting hegemonic narratives at the expense of the peripheral versions. In their support they stand to profit––economically, socially, ideologically. Powerful and well-coordinated networks of the “publicity machine” will carry the dominant visions far and wide into the social fabric, blanketing the public sphere while relegating alternatives to the margins.

This poses a grave threat in the effort to achieve the normative ideals of a democratic public sphere: inclusiveness, spaces of intellectual independence for expressing critique and views opposing hegemonic views of the world, proposing alternatives.

Hence the need for powerful institutions which are committed to a better working of the inclusive public sphere. Achieving this ideal requires that the power of the institution put in place binding rules prescribing (and enforcing to the extent possible) inclusivity in the fields shaping the public sphere.

Readers can see the relevance of these ideas in engaging the Plan, namely the role of an institution (or coalitions of institutions) committed in building a diverse diaspora public sphere. This, in a context when, sadly, at least in Greek America, certain hegemonies blatantly violate the principles of the democratic public sphere (as they extol, ironically, the democratic inclusiveness of their home, the United States).

The importance of Institutional Counter-Politics

The awareness that the diaspora public sphere operates within power relations underlines the importance of participating institutions which espouse alternative, non-hegemonic visions. In other words, major reforms cannot be achieved via the input of diaspora citizens, recommendations in websites, assessment reports and reflective essays alone. It is vital for institutions to flex their negotiating muscle, so to speak, and put pressure on the government in promoting diasporic interests.

But what will the principles guiding the diaspora claims in the negotiation be? The interests about the diaspora are multiple and often contradictory, given that their conceptions of Hellenism and diaspora vary, often radically. Who defines them and on what grounds?

The Plan and the Diasporic Paradigm

In the effort to tackle these questions we owe to attend the voice of those sectors of the diaspora who advocate their interests on the basis of historical and cultural *realities*. For some time now, diaspora Greeks, most audibly in Greek Australia, have been calling the Greek state (as well as diasporic organizations allied with government interests) to abandon their paternalistic attitude toward the diaspora. Instead, they demand recognition of each diaspora’s complexity, internal heterogeneity, historical and cultural specificity, cross-cultural negotiations, intercultural cross-fertilizations, syncretism. Their arts, music, scholarship, and journalism narrate these experiences and situations from a diasporic point of view. They ask to be seen as active agents in the production of a variety of Hellenisms––not the reproduction of Helladic Hellenism.

Rendering the alternative Hellenisms visible, leads to a “diasporic paradigm” (3) of identity representations, which counters competing narratives (advocated by the state and a host of diasporic organizations) whose narrow and simplistic representations of the diaspora stifle, and in fact insult, diasporic people. (See, for example, the portrayal of emigrating Greeks as migratory birds, not people forced to exit the country due to political persecution or dire poverty.) The diasporic paradigm seeks to emancipate the diasporic peoples from the regulatory power of those who are reducing them into a cultural caricature.

The diasporic paradigm then offers a non-negotiable starting point for any institution (or alliance of institutions) entering the deliberations seeking to undermine the Helladic assumptions of the Plan, and in doing so reform it.

Though I am not a policy strategist, I have been thinking for some time about the conditions leading to action and policies toward a new diaspora imaginary. (4) I share some thoughts bearing relevance, I believe, to our topic.

Historically, diasporas have been channeling vast financial resources, among others, toward Greece. The Plan, and its rhetoric of a two-way diaspora-Greece relationship, provides an opportune moment for the diaspora this time to ask the Greek state to balance this giving, and redirect resources in the service of the diaspora’s cultural vitality. This giving should not bind, as I will explain, those promoting the diasporic paradigm to conform to state (Helladic) narratives, compromising their self-determination.

Why should the state consent to this asking? It should, if it genuinely supports the future of diasporic Hellenisms. The state (and other powerful diasporic institutions sharing its reductive narrative) owes to accept and respect the “alterity” of the diasporas and their operation too as cultural centers of wide-ranging Hellenisms. In fact, it is presented with an opportunity to operate as an agent contributing to the making of a democratic diaspora public sphere.

The conversation about the Plan happens at a moment when the diaspora public spheres are either weak (particularly in Greek America where hegemonic narratives have relegated the diasporic paradigm at the margins) or are receding in scale. This, when diasporas in the United States, Australia and Canada are increasingly diversifying and individuals experience their identities privately, outside traditional institutions.

Given that the future of Hellenism is at stake, the question of the “next generation” inevitably enters the deliberations. We know very little about the second, third, and fourth generations, but some evidence suggests that the next generation seeks new identity narratives speaking to their own tastes, needs, styles, circumstances, and interests. It is noteworthy that the third generation exhibits a higher interest in the arts, humanities, and social science as professional careers than their second-generation peers who, prompted by the trying circumstances of their immigrant parents, opted for more lucrative and “stable” career paths.

I am taking a cue here from my Greek American students who crave for interesting narratives exploring bicultural identities, linkages with the historical homeland beyond idealized and touristic tropes, migrant psychology, differences between Greek Americans and Greeks in Greece; cross-cultural and interracial dating; cultural ambivalences among the second generation; food as heritage and culinary fusions; family and ethnic history; diasporic arts; and intergenerational connections, tensions, and conflicts.As a college student majoring in Art and Media studies put it, “I often think my art is a way to bridge my two cultures and countries. I have learned to record memory, eyes and heart and camera wide open.” (5)

Given the power of cultural expressions—music, song, storytelling, photography, dance, film, theater, journalism, scholarship—to engage human beings, the making of a culturally exciting public sphere which produces and widely disseminates compelling (innovative, experimental, syncretic) diaspora narratives in tune with our times and the audiences it addresses, presents itself as a vital frontier for the future of Hellenisms in the diasporas.

To reiterate this point, as an “effective negotiator” might do: the relationship between the diasporas and the Greek state has been shaped by immense unidirectional flows of monies––in the form of investments, philanthropy, gifts and donations, Greek studies summer study programs, diaspora tourism, remittances––from the diaspora to the homeland. It is only fair for the diasporas to ask for balancing this economic relationship, asking the state to reciprocate and function as a guardian of a democratic (that is inclusive) diaspora public sphere. This means allocating state funds toward the revitalization of this sphere for the reasons I explained above. An uncompromising demand would involve supporting also those who are interested in exploring and expressing the diasporic paradigm without fear of losing funding, being fired, or marginalized. In other, words, there should be no state clauses compromising a diaspora’s freedom of expression, its self-determination.

How to produce the new generation of highly qualified thinkers, artists, researchers, story tellers, journalists? To inspire and motivate the (bicultural and often cosmopolitan) next generation, there should be investment in superb educational structures; the availability of grants and other financial incentives to promising undergraduate and graduate students in the arts, the humanities and social sciences to also carry Greek and Greek diaspora topics in their careers in in the broader society––say being Australian journalists, but also contributing to Greek Australian media.

In other words, the Greek state would be contributing financially in the making of the next generation of musicians, authors, performers, storytellers, researchers, artists, filmmakers who will be enjoying freedom for artistic and academic self-determination to produce compelling narratives toward the narration about the diaspora’s ever-changing Hellenisms. Diasporas are dynamic, involving cultural becoming, they cannot possibly allow their stifling by static narratives.

If this diasporic agency does not work (perhaps it is bound not to work due to anticipated resistances?), then stakeholders who invest in the value of the diasporic paradigm may consider joining forces, forming alliances across geopolitical boundaries, and creating coalitions, to empower their presence in the public sphere. Such a stance will require considerable energy and resources given the complexity of the situation. But the stakes are exceedingly high to afford to miss the prospect of making a difference. A new center of cultural activism presents itself inviting engagement across the various diasporas and in the process transoceanic diaspora understanding.

Yiorgos Anagnostou  

Notes:

(1) See, • Καραμάρκος, Κώστας. 2024. «Το επικαιροποιημένο στρατηγικό σχέδιο του ΥΠΕΞ για τον Απόδημο Ελληνισμό». Εθνος, Αύγουστος 1.
https://www.ethnos.gr/.../toepikairopoihmenostrathgikosxe...
• Τριδήμα, Μαρία-Φιλιώ. 2024. «Στρατηγικό Σχέδιο του ΥΠΕΞ για τον Απόδημο Ελληνισμό: Μία ακόμη κριτική προσέγγιση». Αυγουστος 2. https://enainstitute.org/.../stratigiko-schedio-tou-ypex.../
• Karamarkos, Kostas. 2024. “A Critical Overview of the Updated Strategic Plan of Greece for its diaspora.” Neos Kosmos, August 12.

(2) Benson Rodney. 2009. “Shaping the Public Sphere: Habermas and Beyond.” American Sociology 40:175–97. DOI 10.1007/s12108-009-9071-4

(3) Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2024. “What does “Diaspora” stand for, in the Strategic Plan for the Diaspora?” Immigrations, Ethnicities, Racial Situations. August 11. https://immigrations-ethnicities-racial.blogspot.com/...

(4) Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2021. “A Paradigm Award, A Paradigm for Greek/American Cultural Policy.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. August 3. https://ergon.scienzine.com/.../greek-american-cultural...

(5) Vassiliou, Zoe. 2021. “Exceptional Statement.” In 2021 Virtual Awards Gala: Beyond a Scholarship. Panhellenic Scholarship Foundation.

About the Greek Government’s Updated Strategic Plan for the Diaspora

To Whom it May Concern

Re. The Greek Government’s Updated Strategic Plan for the Diaspora

Installment I: What does “Diaspora” stand for, in the Strategic Plan for the Diaspora?

August 11, 2024

Earlier this summer, the Greek Department of Foreign Affairs made available in its website the government’s updated Strategic Plan for the Diaspora (referred from now on as “Plan”), seeking to elicit input from the interested public.

The document is exclusively in Greek, and represents, as some commentators have noted, an improved, ambitious programmatic document of goals and policies compared to the original. The Plan’s vision is to cultivate mutual relations between Greece (the historical homeland), and the “Greek diaspora.”

The fact that the Plan represents a governmental vision for diaspora’ future makes it a high stakes cultural and political project. It is positioned to shape the cultural lives of millions of diasporic people. A wide-ranging deliberation therefore is in order.

In this commentary I will be bringing attention to a key term in the title of the Plan, that of “diaspora.” The Plan is obviously a governmental project, and as such it seeks to define, shape and regulate the meaning of the Greek diaspora. But what does diaspora mean in the first place? Who defines it, and who speaks on behalf of its interests? What are those interests, anyway?

It is well-known that there are different, contested understandings of the concept diaspora and the realities it denotes. Any meaningful engagement with the Plan then requires that we first pause, chart and reflect a few basic (in the interest of space) facts connected with diaspora realities, and how they shape the debate about the diaspora.

To begin, a diaspora is not just about relations with its historical homeland, as conventional thinking has it. A product of population scattering and its historical memory across generations, a diaspora is shaped via its encounters with other cultures; it is produced via cross-cultural entanglements (sometimes conflicts), and historical negotiations with the power and policies of the dominant group across generations.

Diasporas involve a process of becoming and the making of new institutions and identities in response to historical pressures, contingencies, and needs. Think of AHEPA, for example, an institution formed in connection to the white 100% Americanization movement, or the role of Australia’s immigration policy in the 1950s and 1960’s shaping the occupational trends for immigrants. American McCarthyism in the 1950s decimated the Greek American immigrant left, while the active Australian labor movement at the time intersected with the interests of working-class immigrants.

This context-specific making of a diaspora is the reason we speak of Greek diasporas in the plural, a constellation of diasporas with some cultural overlapping but also crossed with significant differences in experiences. This historical and cultural specificity, in turn, points to the markedly different experiences between the diasporic and Greek people.

A diaspora involves dual loyalties, complex political and cultural affiliations, love, nostalgia and collective mobilizations on behalf of the historical homeland. But also, ambivalences as well as critique of the society left behind and its government, often for its paternalistic attitudes toward the diaspora.

Diaspora people straddle two languages, two cultural geographies (the here and there), two interconnected but different temporal realities (the immigrant past and the diasporic present). A diaspora involves cultural transformations within the immigrant generation and, certainly, intergenerationally.

 
Diaspora identities are constituted in an intersectional manner, in connection to local, regional, national, transnational and cosmopolitan discourses and experiences. A diaspora entails a heterogeneous and therefore complex field. Affluent and poor people, men and women, straight and gay, urban and rural, first, second and third may differ markedly in the ways they experience diasporic lives and belonging.

All this should not be surprising. Artists, authors, academics, and cultural activists have been investing immensely in articulating and exploring these historical and cultural facts. Thanks to their labor, the realities of the diaspora have been compellingly narrated and widely disseminated, available for anyone who cares to learn.

But diasporic experiences and historical memory work at yet another, visceral level. Among diasporic people they often produce a deeply felt “structure of feeling,” the demand for the Greek state and the people in Greece to recognize the realities of being diasporic. Hence the call, most explicitly expressed in Greek Australia and Greek Canada, for a new “diasporic paradigm”: the acknowledgment of a diaspora’s historical and cultural specificity, its experiences, its internal heterogeneity, and its identity narratives; the challenges it faces and the creativity it infuses in its cultural production.

If the Greek state has historically construed Greece as the metropolitan center of which the “Greek diaspora” constitutes an organic extension; and if the simplified notion of a uniform “global Hellenism”––a transcendental ethnonational entity––erases alternative Hellenisms produced in the diasporas, the diasporic paradigm offers an alternative based on historical and cultural realities.

Though it is not uncommon for diaspora groups to reproduce the state paradigm, sectors of the diasporas have produced alternative versions of Hellenisms. Their hyphenated identities signal syncretic affiliations, their biculturalism, their cross-fertilization with a host of cultural systems, including cosmopolitanism. Artists, authors, journalists, photographers, documentary makers, academic have been giving form and expression to the complexity of diaspora’s Hellenisms. It is this experience and cultural production that authorizes diasporas to see themselves as centers of Hellenism, one among many in a network of centers, not peripheral or lesser to the so-called “metropolitan center.”

We can speak of incompatible paradigms between the Greek state’s conventional renderings of the diaspora and the diasporic paradigm. Whereas the state strips diaspora from a range of its complexities, producing an abstract commonality which it seeks to regulate, the diasporic paradigm anchors identities in historical and cultural realities, featuring multiplicity in identity, emancipating itself from narrow appropriations.

The public circulation of the Strategic Plan enters then a contested terrain regarding its key concept. But it refrains from acknowledging the tensions, incompatible interests, and conflicting cultural visions at work in this landscape. The Plan, one might claim in its defense, is not a place for this degree of elaboration. But the fact remains, a governmental document circulating in the absence of sustained conversation about the meaning of a subject holding major public importance. What does this say about diasporic institutions, and the transnational Greek public sphere? Given the magnitude of these issues why there has been no extensive public engagement, beyond a few valuable position papers? Silence, let us not forget, could serve as a mechanism of regulation.

What strategies could empower the diasporic paradigm? And, on what grounds negotiating parties can make a persuasive case to the state about the value of the diasporic paradigm? With so much at stake, what is the role of diasporic institutions in the struggle to chart diaspora’s routes for the future and courses of action?

I will soon (I hope, given a hectic work load) be returning for additional thoughts in the next installment.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Bibliography on Greek America (2023) [academic books, chapters, articles; essays, editorials]

An annual resource Ergon unfailingly brings to the community of Greek diaspora studies since 2017

https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/bibliographies/bibliography-on-greek-america-2023?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2cuOWjYA6uJF3uQpwLBPXRsYdbp-y4zllc15Ve1yHdar82Z3b8CHV83EU_aem_gF3FRsKfWxgLdgl7G0TCJw

Το διασπορικό φαινόμενο και τα ερμηνευτικά του πλαίσια στην Ελλάδα

Οι παρακάτω σκέψεις της Ολυμπίας Αντωνιάδου* για την Ελληνική λογοτεχνία της μετοικεσίας στο γαλλόφωνο χώρο του 20ου αιώνα προσφέρουν ένα αδιαπραγμάτευτο ερμηνευτικό πλαίσιο για τις ευρύτερες διασπορικές σπουδές:

“[Η] μεταναστευτική λογοτεχνία δεν μπορεί να χωρά «στο εθνοκεντρικό ερμηνευτικό σύστημα, επειδή λειτουργεί με τους δικούς της λογοτεχνικούς λόγους, θέτει καινούργιες ερωτήσεις που με καινούργιες μεθόδους οδηγούν σε καινοτομικές απαντήσεις» [77]. Οι συγγραφείς που μελετήσαμε δεν διαθέτουν μια ελληνικότητα που να προσανατολίζεται απλώς στις ελλαδικές πολιτισμικές νόρμες [78]. Στα σύγχρονα πλαίσια της παγκοσμιοποίησης και της πολυπολιτισμικότητας, η λογοτεχνία του εκπατρισμού μετατρέπεται σε μεικτή λογοτεχνία όπου ο συγγραφέας δεν μιλά πια μόνο για τις ρίζες του αλλά και για την ιστορία και τη ζωή των συμπατριωτών του στο εξωτερικό και φτάνει στο σημείο να συγχέει τους χώρους – πατρίδα και χώρα υποδοχής –, αναδεικνύοντας στοιχεία της δικής του κουλτούρας, συχνά ήδη μεικτής, τα οποία εισάγει στο ξένο λογοτεχνικό τοπίο.”

Συνομιλώντας με θεωρητικούς της διασποράς από τον χώρο των πολιτισμικών σπουδών, η Αντωνιάδου εξηγεί όρους όπως «συνοριακές περιοχές», «συνοροχώρα», «νέες εθνότητες», πολιτική της αναπαράστασης, «μεταχμιακός Ελληνισμός» μεταξύ άλλων, αποδεικνύοντας την χρησιμότητά τους στην κατανόηση της διασπορικής υποκειμενικότητας, ιστορικής εμπειρίας, και αναπαράστασης.

Η εργασία της Αντωνιάδου αποτελεί ένα παράδειγμα από μια σχετικά ευρεία γκάμα βιβλιογραφίας στα ελληνικά η οποία συνομιλεί με σύγχρονες θεωρητικές προσεγγίσεις. Τα περισσότερα από αυτά τα ερμηνευτικά πονήματα (και γνωρίζουμε τον τεράστιο μόχθο και χρόνο που απαιτεί η ενασχόληση με την θεωρία – και η μετάφρασή της στα ελληνικά) όμως έχουν περιθωριοποιηθεί στον ευρύτερο δημόσιο λόγο. Οι μεθοδολογίες του «εθνοκεντρικού ερμηνευτικού συστήματος», όπως παρατηρεί η συγγραφέας αδυνατούν να τα κατανοήσουν και να συνδιαλλαγούν μαζί τους.

Ως αποτέλεσμα, εννοιολογικά πρωτοπόρες εργασίες και έργα για την διασπορά είτε αμελούνται, είτε περιθωριοποιούνται. Είτε ακόμη χειραγωγούνται από εθνο-κεντρικές ερμηνείες. Μια παράπλευρη απώλεια είναι ότι δεν υπάρχει σοβαρή εκλαΐκευση αυτού του Λόγου και η ανάλογη μύηση του κοινού σε νέες έννοιες. Λογικό επακόλουθο, θα έλεγε κανείς όταν ο ερμηνευτικός κριτικός λόγος περί διασποράς δεν καλλιεργείται επαρκώς στην χώρα, αλλά και κάποιες φορές υπονομεύεται;

Απαιτείται λοιπόν μια ευρεία συζήτηση περί εννοιολόγησης της διασποράς ιδιαίτερα σε τούτη την ιστορική συγκυρία που το ενδιαφέρον για την αναπαράστασή της στην Ελλάδα αυξάνεται ραγδαία (για παράδειγμα το πρόσφατο οδοιπορικό στην ΕΡΤ, η νέα προσπάθεια δημιουργίας μουσείου Διασποράς στην χώρα, το κάλεσμα για την ενδυνάμωση των διασπορικών σπουδών στο ελληνικό πανεπιστήμιο, το ενδιαφέρον σημαντικών περιοδικών και του τύπου προς το θέμα) και η οποία συγκυρία απαιτεί νέα ερμηνευτικά εργαλεία για να αποδοθεί η πολυπλοκότητα του φαινομένου. Το ζητούμενο είναι η αποφυγή επιτέλους της περιχαράκωσής της διασποράς σε εθνικά στεγανά τα οποία την εγκλωβίζουν σε Ελλαδικά ιδεολογικά πλαίσια – και που τόσο στενο/χωρούν τους ανθρώπους που έχουν βιώσει το πολυφασματικό «διασπορικό δράμα»…

Θα υπάρξει συνέχεια…

Γ. Αναγνώστου
Ιούλιος 2024

* Ολυμπία Γ. Αντωνιάδου, «Λογοτεχνία, διασποροποίηση και συνοροχώρες: η περίπτωση της ελληνικής λογοτεχνίας της μετοικεσίας στο γαλλόφωνο χώρο του 20ου αιώνα». Στο Ταυτότητες στον ελληνικό κόσμο (από το 1204 έως σήμερα). Δ' Ευρωπαϊκό Συνέδριο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών, Πρακτικά. Επιμέλεια Κωνσταντίνος Α. Δημάδης, σσ. 713-30 Αθήνα: Ευρωπαϊκή Εταιρεία Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών, 2011. 

Για την θεσμική ενδυνάμωση των διασπορικών σπουδών (συνέντευξη στο ΕΝΑ)

Πώς ενδυναμώνεται η δημόσια σφαίρα και πώς προκαλείται αναστοχασμός από τις μελέτες για τη Διασπορά; Μπορεί να αποφευχθεί το «καλούπωμα» της Διασποράς στο συμβατικό πλαίσιο της νοσταλγίας και της επιτυχίας; Ποιο μπορεί να είναι το μέλλον των Διασπορικών Σπουδών και ποιο των Ελληνοαμερικανικών; Και πόσο «κοντά» είναι τα ελληνικά πανεπιστήμια στη δημιουργία πανεπιστημιακών Τμημάτων για τη μελέτη των ελληνοαμερικανικών τεχνών, της ελληνοαμερικανικής πολιτικής και κουλτούρας;

Δέστε, https://www.enainstitute.org/publication/%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%b1%cf%83%cf%80%ce%bf%cf%81%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%bf%ce%af-%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%ac%ce%bb%ce%bf%ce%b3%ce%bf%ce%b9-1-%cf%83%cf%85%ce%bd%ce%ad%ce%bd%cf%84%ce%b5%cf%85%ce%be%ce%b7-%ce%bc%ce%b5/

Γιώργος Αναγνώστου
Ιούνιος 2024

Writing for the Community (Ethos magazine, Spring 2024)–– Diasporic Labor: “Greek Melbourne” as a Center of Hellenism

“Diasporic” institutions require labor; we know this all too well. Organizing a Greek festival, running community educational programs, and participating in organizations all demand considerable energy and resources. Building, expanding, or sustaining institutions without continuous work is impossible. 

The labor is both physical and cultural. As a faculty member working in a Greek American academic unit—a Modern Greek Program—I am familiar with the demands of this kind of work. But nothing had prepared me for the scope and scale of labor needed to contribute to the cultural vitality of a diaspora until I visited Melbourne, Australia.

In Autumn 2023, I was invited as a Fellow at the University of Melbourne for a series of talks and seminars. Upon arrival, I was also embraced by the city’s Greek Community. New friends introduced me to the Greek aspects of Australia’s 2nd-most-visited city, offering tours of immigrant neighborhoods, and taking me to social events. They created opportunities for me to interact with cultural leaders, educators, authors, poets, and scholars. My six-week stay in the city was filled with delightful interactions.

Travel often opens ways for sojourners to see the world anew. My experience in Greek Melbourne was not an exception: it reconfigured how I think about diasporic identity. Prior to visiting, I primarily thought of diaspora as the scattering of people from their homeland and the subsequent connections with their ancestral origins and culture across generations. And also as experiences of cultural betweenness and mixing. But my encounter with Greek Melbourne added a new layer to my mental map of a diaspora.

It is not rare to hear or read in commentaries in the media the Greek Melbournian view of their παροικία (community) as a center of Hellenism. Not as a cultural periphery to Greece (the so-called “metropolitan center”), as some see it conventionally, but Greek Melbourne as a cultural center—one among many.

A diaspora as a center of Hellenism! I was intrigued. What was it that gave these Melbournians the right to this weighty claim? What makes a diasporic community a center?

The παροικία has a population of approximately 180,000 people, having the largest Greek-speaking population outside Greece. But demography and a high percentage of Greek speakers alone do not make for greatness. Something else validates this claim to distinction. As I gradually realized, it connects with the rich Greek cultural presence in the city.

A critical mass of individuals turns to the arts and learning to explore and express the community’s history and contemporary culture. It is a form of labor—we could call it cultural activism—that creates a multifaceted cultural landscape. It consists of staging plays, designing murals and installations with Greek Melbournian themes, exhibiting photography, organizing film festivals, creating venues for literature and poetry, and coordinating community-sponsored seminars hosting academics.

A community cannot boast itself as a cultural center without an understanding of itself. The official Community operates a forum called Greek History and Culture Seminars for the purpose of sharing academic research with the public. Greek Australian topics are numerous. It has financed research resulting to a book on its history. 

An illustration of investing in self-knowledge is the Community’s support in establishing a Senior Hellenic Lecturer in Global Diasporas at the University of Melbourne. This is the first time that an endowed academic position is dedicated to the study of the Greek diaspora.

Greek Melbourne utilizes the arts to honor its migrant past. An installation of five Greek-style columns in the suburb of Brunswick pays homage to domestic immigrant labor. Each column is “delineated by a cage of galvanized steel uprights and mesh. It is filled with recycled ‘kitchenalia’ toasters, kettles, saucepans,” some donated by immigrant families.

Cooking provides sustenance and contributes to the continuity of a culinary tradition. The utensils require continuous labor: washing, scraping, and maintaining to maximize their life span. The memorial makes tangible this mundane reality, emblematic of the immigrants’ struggle for survival.

But the immigrant past is not idealized. The play Byron’s Life, which I was fortunate to watch, exemplifies the “growing up Greek” genre. It dramatizes the dilemmas, ambivalences, and anxieties of a Melbourne-born Greek male who struggles to find a measure of balance between the Australian culture pulling him toward one direction and his “Old World” surroundings toward another.

A thriving center of Hellenism produces notable literature. Melbourne-born novelist Christos Tsiolkas has earned international acclaim. Poet π.O. is “a legendary figure in the Australian poetry scene” and “a chronicler of Melbourne and its culture and migrations.” In 1992, author and educator Helen Nickas founded Owl Publishing in Melbourne, a venue aiming “to nurture, study, translate and disseminate Greek-Australian literature.” The online magazine Kalliope X publishes Greek Australian and Greek poetry while supporting a variety of multicultural writings. The literary journal Antipodes, launched in 1974, is “the longest published, bilingual periodical circulating in Australia.”

Clearly, the claim of Greek Melbourne as a center connects with the emergence of the city as a center of Greek cultural production. It involves the support of the arts and scholarship enriching the understanding of the community’s history and culture. 

But diasporic institutions and identities cannot be taken for granted. Diasporas continuously negotiate new conditions, must respond to new challenges, and, in turn, may need to reinvent themselves anew. They require the involvement of the next generation. This condition engenders concern, even anxiety, about the cultural future.

A recurrent topic of conversation among Melbournians I spoke with during my visit was precisely this concern. Will there be a new generation of journalists, artists, scholars, and educators to keep documenting, reflecting, and interpreting the ever-changing diaspora? Who will be creating and curating the archives? Will there be a diasporic museum and a center of diaspora studies? What are the best practices for promoting bilingualism? There are no easy answers. Involving the next generation is certainly a necessity. However, as we know all too well, creating a robust cultural future for a diaspora requires yet another layer of demanding diaspora labor…

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Spring 2024

The Castle Gate Mine Disaster Centenary (1924-2024): A Tribute I

See here,

https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/articles/castle-gate-mine-disaster-centenary

Greek Immigrant women and the Castle Gate Mine Explosion (1924)–A Tribute II

The Politics of Life and Death: Working-Class Greek Immigrant Women and the Castle Gate Mine Disaster—A Tribute

Keywords: Early 20th c Greek immigrant working class in the United States; coalminers, mine disasters and impact on families; Greek working class women; industrial capitalism, death politics and biopolitics; Greek American historiography.

https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/articles/the-politics-of-life-and-death?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR31IsOcv52toKq5NaM2bPOZQrtoaU0k08pE8R0BnB2ull9jYvLAoOH3E-0_aem_AY2t2HzcbekPwvQRWmf368D4nSoabbh_esyH7eeMwmlGxGn1NfV0Okv6sa7AJkfExWZpRc_dN3d7PPQsCu8bUEk_

On the "Greek American Queer Narrative"–Seminar response

Response to Theodora Patrona’s (Aristotle University) talk, 

“Boy Meets Boy and Girl Meets Girl: Foregrounding the Greek American Queer Narrative” 

(SNFPHI, University Seminar in Modern Greek)  

by Yiorgos Anagnostou

I thank the University Seminar in Modern Greek, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI), and the Program in Hellenic Studies, for making this event possible. I express my appreciation to Dimitris Antoniou for inviting me and for including Ergon in the collaboration. The following is a somewhat revised version of my seminar response.

***

Today’s event creates a much-needed forum for critical peer review in Greek American and diaspora studies. I approach this meeting as a public workshop for a project in its early stages. I do realize the risks involved in making one’s early research public; however, I see it as my responsibility to offer critical commentary, which I view as constructive feedback.

The title of Dr. Patrona’s talk is “Boy Meets Boy and Girl Meets Girl: Foregrounding the Greek American Queer Narrative.” The phrasing “Girl Meets Girl and Boy Meets Boy” recalls a trope commonly used in the context of queering the genre of romantic comedy. It destabilizes the heterosexual norm “Boy Meets Girl,” directing attention to lesbian and gay sexual desires (1).

The title also connects Greek America with the category “queer.”

I appreciate the author’s interest in what she calls “queer Greek American subjectivities.” Dr. Patrona’s work highlights a corpus of four texts—two works of fiction and two memoirs (2)—and reflects on the subjectivities these texts narrate. She builds on recent conversations on this topic and offers further insights via a close reading of the texts. In the broadest terms, the research contributes to a subject about which we have scattered and scant knowledge.

The talk foregrounds the experiences of persons embodying non-normative sexualities in relation to several institutions, both “ethnic” and “non-ethnic”: the family, community, church, public school, and the medical establishment. In the 1970s, 1980s, and well into the 1900s, the power of these institutions sought to regulate and punish “uncomfortable desires” (3). Violence was inflicted upon non-normative bodies, harming the persons it sought to discipline. Normative institutions scarred and traumatized individuals, creating heavy “psychosocial burdens.”

Dr. Patrona’s analysis contributes to our understanding of the effects of oppressive social discourses on non-normative subjects and, in turn, how these subjects act upon domination to articulate opposition, seek healing, and fashion the Self in resistance to normative expectations. For the autobiographers, writing their story is an act of reclamation and liberation. The talk focuses on their personal negotiations with the immigrant and the broader world. These are life-defining personal projects involving agency in the making of and finding balances within multifaceted selves.

The angle of the analysis of all four texts zooms on the inner and social battles associated with the fashioning or reinventing eclectic selves. Here, we find ourselves in the domain of parental power—and more specifically dyadic relations like mother-son or father-daughter—trauma and agency. This is a theoretical and cultural domain that requires deep probing.

While the analysis focuses on oppressive institutions, I wonder about the function of liberatory social spaces in the making and performance of queer subjectivity. Where, specifically, do subjects opt to make their sexuality public, and what considerations play out in their decision? In Annie Liontas’s novel Let Me Explain You, for example, the character’s choosing of the social space for her “coming out” is purposeful, taking into consideration not only the needs of the Self but feelings about beloved others. It will be productive then to examine this process of performing sexuality within the texts under investigation. What social spaces are available and how do characters negotiate prohibiting settings?

It would be productive too, to extend the discussion and include the public spaces in real life where the authors find allies and create inclusive communities.

At this extra-textual level, it is the publishing industry that offers the space for the authors to engage with complex issues, such as family violence, cruelty, mental health, and uncomfortable sexual desires, which, one must note, the Greek American public sphere largely hides. We can benefit from a cartography of queer subjectivity and its negotiations in the public sphere.

In this respect, interconnecting the factual with the fictional might produce valuable insights. To what communities and social relations do the characters and the narrativized selves participate, and what does this tell us about the social geographies of the Greek American Queer Narrative?

To add yet another dimension on the question of queering the Greek American public sphere: Toward its conclusion, the talk mentions the pioneering work of Leah Fygetakis. This raises the question about how the four texts in the talk relate to the insights and questions posed by pioneers in the field of Greek American sexuality. In her essay “Leah with an “H” or How I am Jewish, But Not Really” (4) Fygetakis shares her longing for a US Greek lesbian community, which was not at the time available to her. She finds a sense of partial belonging in a community based on sexuality but not ethnicity.

In the context of second-wave feminism, Constance Callinicos participates in an intercultural and sexuality diverse gathering of women who subvert in private traditional gendered dictates in folk dancing. If the North American “politics of gay and lesbian liberation hinge on strategies of queer visibility” (5), it seems to me necessary to probe the question of “queering the Greek American Narrative” in connection to practices negotiating visibility in particular pasts. Where was the narrative articulated in the 1970s and in the 1990s? Where is it performed now? Have there been any changes in the power relations and institutional realities that mediate it? In other words, the diasporic narrative calls for historicization.

The corpus of the four texts in today’s talk renders queer subjectivities visible. What kind of cultural and political work does this visibility perform? From my perspective, this visibility interrogates the grand ethnic narrative of family cohesion and success. It demonstrates families failing their non-normative children; depression and violence lurk behind the veneer of the model Greek ethnicity. In naming these processes, the texts produce knowledge confronting the truth of foundational Greek American narratives. They expose the harm that revered institutions do by hiding or demonizing situations that cause individuals to bleed. If queering a narrative in the broadest sense means resisting essentialism (6), and if, indeed, it means identifying practices within a group that the group denies or rejects, then this corpus queers the ethnic or diasporic narrative.

But this is my reading. I would like to hear more from Dr. Patrona about what she calls “Greek American Queer Narrative,” the kind of political work it performs.

The focus on queer subjectivities produces hidden or suppressed truths. We may wish to think deeper about the politics of alternative truths. I have in mind the specificity of interventions that particular genres enable. Autobiography, for instance, produces knowledge that can be utilized as evidence to undermine grand ethnic narratives.

Along these lines, can we think of how queer literary and popular culture could undermine normative Greek America? This inquiry will benefit by exploring the work of authors with different politics of queerness offering different strategies of intervention. We could probe the broader transnational field: the fiction of Christos Tsiolkas, for example and his politics; the films of Anna Kokkinos; Zack Stratis’ film Could Be Worse! The poetry of Olga Broumas. I wonder about the place of David Sedaris in this conversation. What do we make of Gus Constantellis’s bold––“on your face”––Greek Brooklyn queer comedy? 

This returns us to the question of a queer public sphere. It is important to bring these Greek Australian, Greek American, Greek, and other texts into conversation to explore the range of context-specific strategies authors use to undermine diasporic normalizations. There is scholarship comparing Greek and Greek Australian queer films (7). The comparative approach will hopefully attract scholars globally, empowering diasporic queer studies.

I now turn my attention to theory. Dr. Patrona’s talk enters a field of knowledge notable for its political and theoretical sophistication. Terms such as “queer,” “lesbian,” “gay,” “homosexual,” “identity,” are not self-evident categories. They are debated rigorously, producing a nuanced understanding of the work these categories perform. This theoretical field has a genealogy and is vastly complex.

To identify some contours of this terrain: Queerness is a theoretical and political project deconstructing binaries and resisting essentialisms. It recognizes identities as fluid and unstable. A thread in this conversation, therefore, rejects identity-based renderings of sexuality as a practice reproducing essentialism. Some theorists find the term “queer” problematic for their projects. They use expansive definitions of the term “lesbian” to foreground the historical specificity of lesbians and lesbian culture, noting that this specificity is not acknowledged “by the categories ‘queer’ and ‘gay.’” Hence the uneasiness about lesbian specificity being obscured by “supposedly ‘gender neutral’ categories like ‘queer’” (8). Still, individuals involved in same-sex love in Greece reject the category “lesbian.” What is more, since the 1990s, we have witnessed a theoretical and cultural “shift from gay to queer” (9). Scholars theorize queerness as an embodied experience.

The talk today seems to employ the terms queer, lesbian, and gay interchangeably. Greek American analysis of queer material needs to situate it in relation to the academic field “queer studies.”

In closing, I wish to refer to another domain the talk enters. Dr. Patrona’s presentation refers to it as “ethnic,” though toward the conclusion, there is mention of a “transnational angle.” The reference to transnationalism inevitably introduces the domain “diaspora” in connection to queerness.

I introduce the term “diaspora” purposefully, because of the analytical possibilities it offers. Diaspora connotes geographic and cultural mobilities, inviting us to explore negotiations of sexuality in connection to time and place. There is rich scholarship on the intersections of queer and diaspora studies, guiding this key question: what is at stake in queering diaspora? Here, in the interest of time, I will only mention that interconnecting sexuality with histories of mobilities raises questions of how ideas of sexuality travel, and how they are shaped via border-crossing; how sexual non-normativity generates desires to emigrate, and how material and symbolic conditions at the new home shape articulations of sexuality in specific spaces. Based on my reading of Joanna Eleftheriou and Annie Liontas’s work, their accounts invite this kind of inquiry. One negotiates non-normativity differently in a village in Crete and Philadelphia, Cyprus and New York City.

I will stop here. I thank you once again for providing me with the opportunity to think about these issues and for participating. I’m looking forward to the conversation. Thank you.

February 28, 2024

Notes

1. Kelly Ann McWilliam, Girl Meets Girl: Lesbian Romantic Comedies and the Public Sphere. PhD Dissertation. University of Queensland, Australia, 2006).

2. The four texts are, Annie Liontas’s Let Me Explain You (2015), Angelo Surmelis’s young adult novel The Dangerous Art of Blending In (2018), Dean Kostos’s memoir The Boy Who Listened to Paintings (2019) and Joanna Eleftheriou’s This Way Back (2020).

3. Mandy Treagus, “Queering the Mainstream: The Slap and ‘Middle’ Australia.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 12.3 (2012), 1.

4. Leah Fygetakis M., “Leah with an ‘H’ or How I am Jewish, But Not Really. Women & Therapy 33, 3–4 (2010): 418–24.

5. Meg Wesling, “why queer diaspora?” Feminist Review 90 (2008), 40.

6. Mandy Treagus, “Queering the Mainstream,” 2.

7. Dimitris Papanikolaou, “New Queer Greece: Thinking Identity through Constantine Giannaris’s From the Edge of the City and Anna Kokkinos’s Head On.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 6.3 (2008): 183–96.

8. Kelly Ann McWilliam, Girl Meets Girl, 14.

9. Dimitris Papanikolaou, “New Queer Greece,” 183.

On the Causes of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (1924): Human Life, Science, Government, Industrial Capitalism, and the Law

“On 8 March 1924, in the second major mine disaster of the twentieth century in the Utah coal fields, 172 men lost their lives, including one worker who inadvertently inhaled deadly carbon monoxide during the rescue efforts. At 8:00 A.M. two violent explosions ripped through the Number Two Mine of the Utah Fuel Company, located at Castle Gate in the canyon north of present-day Helper and Price, in Carbon County.”

Janeen Arnold Costa, “Castle Gate Mine Disaster,” Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 (https://historytogo.utah.gov/castle-gate/)

***

This year’s honoring of the centenary of the Castle Gate disaster inevitably invites us to revisit the question regarding the causes of the deadly explosions. As a regional, national, and transnational––given that a large number of the victims were immigrants––tragedy, the calamity pressed mining experts, researchers, government entities, and mining-related institutes for an explanation, which, in turn, connects with the ethnical question of culpability. Who was responsible, and could this catastrophe have been avoided?

A part of my ongoing tribute to the disaster, this posting summarizes and reflects upon an important writing on the topic, Mark Aldrich’s “Preventing ‘The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine’: The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940.” (Technology and Culture, 36: 3 [Jul., 1995)]: 483–518). [Unless otherwise noted, all citations below are drawn from this article.]

An authoritative work based on a rich corpus of archival sources, “The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine” discusses the issue of mining safety at the time in connection to the three major agents involved and the power relations within which they operated––the US Bureau of Mines, coal mine operators, and lawmakers.

***

An urgent issue preoccupying the US Bureau of Mines early in the twentieth century was the development of technologies to reduce the risk of mine explosions producing human wreckage. In 1907 alone, by November, “200 men had been killed in ten major disasters” (483). There was more at stake than human suffering. The significant higher rate of fatalities compared to those in Britain from 1906 through 1910 made the country’s mining conditions “the wonder of the world mining community” (488), casting a blow on national pride. The following excerpt illustrates the degree of humiliation:

“Writing in 1903, the English Colliery Guardian excoriated the United States for a ‘general disregard for life that would never be tolerated here.’ Five years later the journal commented on Monongah: ‘There is one record to which our transatlantic cousins may lay claim without fear of emulation; for in the matter of safeguarding its workmen, the United States enjoys the unenviable reputation of being the most backward of the civilized nations’” (488).

The recuperation of the US mining industry’s reputation was part of the bureau’s vocabulary in the articulation of its mission. It deplored the destruction “of life and waste of resources” not only as ethically unacceptable but also as attributes “which now characterize and bring discredit upon American mining” (491).

The bureau, formed in 1910, advocated scientific knowledge as the means to prevent “the loss of life and waste of resources” in mining. It operated under the conviction that its research about technological improvements would enlighten coal managers and lawmakers who, its progressive vision assumed, would embrace it: the “bureau had no power of inspection or supervision, but was to cooperate with mining interests, providing them the technological support needed to reduce the ‘needless perils’ and other wastes of mining” (491).

Speaking to the Coal Mining Institute of America, the bureau’s engineer Herbert M. Wilson elaborated on the principles and role of the institution he served:

“‘That the Bureau will have no authority to enforce the adoption of its recommendations is not a matter of concern,’ [he] explained. It was even a virtue: ‘Such authority would jeopardize its chief purpose-the making of impartial investigations.’ In the Progressive vision, once ignorance was banished, good results were sure to follow, and Wilson concluded with a summary of the Progressive credo. ‘The largest influence [of the bureau] can only be through the acquisition and publication of impartial which should appeal to … the industry and to an intelligent public opinion,’ he claimed” (492).
But “[m]atters did not turn out to be quite this simple” (492).

***

All evidence regarding the causes of mine disasters in the first quarter of the twentieth century points to the unwillingness of major coal corporations to embrace the scientifically proven safety measures recommended by the bureau. In 1923, one year before the Castle Gate disaster, Dan Harrington, the bureau’s chief of health and safety, “had bluntly pointed out to the management,” that “Castle Gate used watering in haphazard fashion, and it was dusty and dry” (508). Dust and dry conditions were a lethal combination, and indeed, one structural cause of this disaster is attributed “to inadequate watering down of the coal dust from the previous shift’s operation” (Costa, https://historytogo.utah.gov/castle-gate/. On the inadequacy of the sprinkling water system at Castle Gate see also “Castle Gate Mine Explosion,” http://www.carbon-utgenweb.com/castlegatex.html.)

In its early years and more strongly since 1915, the Bureau was alerting coal operators about the ineffectiveness of watering as the means of controlling coal dust, which by 1911 mining experts had shown to be a major cause of explosions. The solution was application of rock dust, which, according to scientific experiments conducted by the bureau and in Europe, was proven to render coal dust nonexplosive (409).

Examples from mining realities boosted the bureau’s credibility. The case of the Old Ben mine in Illinois, which exploded in 1921, “offered tangible evidence about the capacity of rock dust”––which it management had applied since 1917––“as a major deterrent.” (514). A few operators had started utilizing this technique as early as 1915. And when the 1923 disaster hit Dawson mine in New Mexico, its coal managers privately acknowledged that “the sprinkling had been deficient” and “there was too much [coal] dust” causing the disaster on the site––the second in a decade––killing 120 miners. (520). But, despite this knowledge and Harrington’s alert, “with the coal market depressed,” the Castle Gate management “had done nothing” (508).

Cost was the major reason for the inaction of many coal companies resisting the implementation of the bureau’s recommendations. The economic calculus drove a politics of death in which large scale destruction of laboring bodies was deemed an acceptable risk:

“Economic incentives were probably more important than legal changes in encouraging the spread of rock dusting. Explosions could be extremely expensive, for they often destroyed the mine. Harrington estimated that the bill for Castle Gate came to considerably more than $1 million. Still, with explosions rare, operators could easily ignore their potential expense” (513).

The following narrative in reference to the post-Castle Gate corporate death politics illustrates the persistent rationale of minimizing operation costs at the expense of investing for the safety of miners:

“In 1932, the president of Jewel Ridge Coal, a Virginia operator, informed the bureau that the explosion of two other mines in that state during the past year ‘would not be sufficient reason for us to go to the expense … of rock dusting.’ Bureau engineers were frustrated by their inability to use publicity to pressure recalcitrant operators. In 1930, three explosions claimed the lives of twenty-three Utah miners, including five at the New Peerless mine. ‘It is unfortunate,’ Harrington remarked with uncharacteristic restraint, ‘that the public is not given the information which we have concerning the conditions in mines which are bound to lead … to occurrences like that at Peerless.’ Other bureau engineers were less diplomatic: ‘Every damn one of [the operators of mines that exploded] should be indicted for involuntary manslaughter,’ one of them growled. In spite of such laggards, rock dusting gradually spread until, at its prewar peak in 1937, 43 percent of all miners worked in mines” (515).

***

If industrial capitalism was responsible for prioritizing profit over human lives, the Law was also complicit. The comparison of how England and the United States diverged in implementing mine safety measures is telling. It boiled down to the question about the power of the sate flexing its muscle to regulate the power of coal operators. “In Britain, with safety a national matter, the companies’ power was diluted. In America, by contrast, regulation was the province of individual states where the operators constituted a powerful faction” (489fn.12). The difference was in the role of the State in placing safety first over corporate profits. While Britain “had required rock dusting in 1921” (510), United States law succumbed to management pressures to refrain from this legal requirement.

In 1924-25, the bureau, aided by the United Mine Workers of America, a union organization, built on the Castle Gate disaster as a catalyst for an aggressive campaign––“a good stiff fight” as Harrington put it––at the legal front of mine safety. It resulted to significant accomplishments as several states––Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Utah, Indiana, and Wyoming––passed rock-dusting laws. Utah’s was “the most strict,” in “direct response to Castle Gate … requiring rock dusting in all mines and specifying the required percentage of incombustible matter” (513).

“The Utah Fuel Company began an ambitious campaign to prevent explosions at Castle Gate after it cleaned up from the blast of 1924. Similarly, John Ryan of Mine Safety Appliances noted that right after the Mather (Pennsylvania) number 1 mine blew up in 1928, taking the lives of 195 men, his company received a rush order for rock-dusting machines … and three other nearby coal companies” (515).

“But some operators proved impervious to either expertise or experience” (515). The advancements were fought back by the lobbying power of corporations:

“The effects of most state laws were largely nullified, however, because they allowed companies to substitute watering for rock dusting. McAuliffe, president of Wyoming’s Union Pacific Coal, admitted that the Wyoming law was due entirely to the miners’ lobby, as the operators had ‘moved heaven and earth’ to prevent it. They were unsuccessful, but did manage to incorporate a provision allowing watering as an alternative, which the Chief Mining Engineer of the technological Branch of the US Geological Survey ‘termed “ridiculous’”” (513).

***

The Castle Gate disaster is one of many examples of lawmaking compromising its principles, even colluding with corporate interests in the context of industrial capitalism. The result was unspeakable horror for thousand of human beings. The bureau’s progressive vision for an enlightened mining industry neglected early on the function of power relations to regulate social and economic issues. Its commitment and vision, however, underlines the operation of two Americas at the time: one of a community fighting to safeguard fundamental rights for laborers; and another engaging in a death politics motivated by profit, refusing to address the needless peril––so costly––of the Coal Mine.

Yiorgos Anagnostou
March-May 2024