Greek Critical Inattention – The facts

Καλοτάξιδο! "A great journey" is how people in Greece wish a book well on the occasion of its publication. The wish recognizes the unpredictability surrounding the life of a newly published book.

The other day i received news that a Greek academic journal will be publishing a review of the 2021 Greek translation of my book "Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America" (2009).

It will be the first of its kind in Greece four years after its publication. Welcoming news!

Contous, i must say, had an uneven and curious journey.

It was accorded wide ranging attention and discussed broadly in several academic fields in the United States. It was reviewed by distinguished scholars in American whiteness, popular culture & folklore, and Italian American studies among others (see here). It is widely cited in the US, Canada, Europe, Greece, and Australia, gratifyingly by new generation scholars.

To βιβλίο συζήτηθηκε πολύπλευρα και κριτικά, όπως πρέπει για κάθε βιβλίο, αποκομίσαμε όλοι θέλω να πιστεύω, και σίγουρα εγώ προσωπικά, πολλαπλά οφέλη.

In contrast, its Greek translation (Nisos, Translation Pelagia Marketou) was utterly ignored (until now) by Greece or Europe-based scholars. (and not because of lack of publicity.)

Similarly, journals in Britain and (two) US Greek American journals (!) showed no interest in reviewing it.

[The original was reviewed in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies and the Athens Review of Books (Penelope Papailias). The translation was discussed in TO VHMA (Maria Kaliambou).]

Two national academic landscapes
Two dramatically different receptions...

Beyond Greek America as Village

Even a casual observer of Greek American self-representations cannot miss the persistent desire to define the group along three basic attributes:

(a) biological bonds (ancestry) and traditional ties

(b) uniformity

(c) timelessness

The narrative celebrates all three. It exalts the culture of the village since Greek independence and yearns to establish it as an attractive cultural template for Greek America today.

A 2025 editorial in The National Herald, entitled “Dancing with Yiayia and Pappou,” asserts this yearning passionately:

There could be no more clear-cut definition of Greek America as a U.S. Greek village. Drawing the boundaries of the group along the core criteria of ancestry and tradition, sharedness, and timelessness, it projects an ethnic future solely based on the past.

Greek villages were notorious for safeguarding their core values through mechanisms of shaming, punishing, or ostracizing those who dissented. The new was feared as a challenge to the status quo and had to be neutralized. It is not surprising then that the rendition of Greek America as ethnic village renders invisible those who represent alternative visions.

Some demographics which the village model excludes are the following:

• There is those with no Greek ancestry who cultivate serious Greek learning. They read and write about Greece (and Greek America), speak the language fluently, produce music, write poetry, do research, translate its writers and poets, value Greek modernity, and often teach it. The conventional meaning of “Philhellene” does not do justice to these persons who are immersed in Greek American institutional and social worlds which they shape. Sometimes they are married or in intimate partnerships with Greek people. They identify or feel Greek not through “blood” or customs, but engagement with Greek American modernity.

• The fact of course is that Greek America is immensely heterogeneous. There are those who identify as Greek without speaking the language. Not all Greek Americans practice Greek Orthodoxy. A sector keeps a distance from tradition––some are not seduced by folk dancing and customs. Others feel alienated as they have been subjected to the oppression and traumas that the US Greek village culture has inflicted on countless women and men, feminists, progressives, mavericks, intellectuals, non-heteronormative sexual identities. A deep resentment against immigrant patriarchy still persists.

• Instead of finding meaning in the confines of the ethnic village, a diverse Greek American demographic connects with Greek worlds via modernity––literature, the arts, books. Individuals participate and support networks of contemporary Greek American cultural expressions––film festivals, lectures on the immigrant working class, journals, art exhibits. The so-called timelessness of tradition (its meanings, expressions, and purposes change) feels inadequate in their desires to function as agents in participating and contributing toward new Greek American expressions of civic relevance.

Obviously, the nostalgic longing for Greek America as a cultural and temporal capsule functions as a mechanism of exclusion. But its implications go deeper. Finding solace to the reproduction of a narrow cultural core, it refrains from engaging with educational initiatives and cultural policy to address Greek America’s increasing heterogeneity. Its centripetal orientation reverts to "sameness," having nothing to say about new and emerging realities.

In contrast, individuals across the demographics I outlined above envision a dynamic Greek America of cultural becoming. We call this diverse field the Other Greek America. Theirs is a centripetal model which, alas, is sidelined by major institutions and centers of power.

We owe it to the richness of Greek America to render the Other Greek America visible. For the last five years or so, the online, open access journal Ergon: Greek American &Diaspora Arts and Letters has been taking several steps toward this direction. (1)

We will be expanding this project next by featuring perspectives which articulate the contours of Greek America beyond the controls of the ethnic village.

The project is entitled Voices of the Other Greek America.

Stay tuned. It commences on January 1, 2026.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Note

1. On heterogeneity, alternative visions, policy, and resistance to narrow definitions of Greek America see:

• “The Other Greek America—Editorial.” Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters. March 11, 2023. (https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/editorials/the-other-greek-america)

• “Greek America’s Diversity, After the Fact: What Comes Next?” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. August 29, 2022. (https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/greek-americas-diversity)

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

• “Greek American Youth: Multiplying Routes to Hellenism as Cultural Policy.” American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, 11 (Spring), 1–7, 2020.

A minute diasporic moment stretching to eternity and a reflection on bilingualism

There was a moment during a talk I recently gave in Astoria––a talk in Greek––when I veered off the script to only encounter a deep linguistic void that would draw me into its vortex, the kind many diasporic people would recognize (and a situation thay would empathize with). I could not come up with the word I needed to say, neither in Greek nor in English.

The legendary cultural reference to this situation has been gloriously captured in the film «Η Θεία από την Αμερική»:

«είμαστε βερι βερι..πως το λέτε εσείς εδώ, γιατί ξεχνάω πώς το λέμε εμείς εκεί, βερι χολοσκασμένες, καμ πληζ πληζ...».

Ι have no sense of how the audience––visitors from Greece and Greek Americans––each received this slip. But in retrospect, in the sound of thundering silence or perhaps awkward mumbling (I cannot remember which) it generated, it inadvertently made the point which was at the core of my talk: extend a call to the research community to explore the diasporic experience in the United States in itself, its histories, biculturalism and bilingualism.

In my case, such an exploration would have revealed a forty-year struggle with two languages, or more accurately two languages in four registers: vernacular English, theoretical English in the humanities, vernacular Greek, theoretical Greek in the humanities.

When I arrived in the United States, I had no grasp whatsoever of the theoretical register of either language (I could handle ok the language of civil engineering in Greek due to my degree on the subject); and only rudimentary skills in vernacular English. The journey of gains and losses while traversing this terrain of deep fault lines has shaped me profoundly––whatever was achieved was with blood, sweat, and tears.

From this angle, the moment of my slippage has nothing to do with failure or embarrassment, but with the revealing of the space where this struggle poignantly announces itself. The fact that it took me perhaps twice as much time to compose the talk in Greek that would have taken a native Greek speaker (and if it were in English, that it would have taken me twice the time than a native English speaker)…

This brings me to a pedagogical, epistemological, and critical issue, exploring the linguistic experiences of the second, the third, and the fourth generation.

Instead of preaching to them about the benefits of learning Greek, we will do good to closely attend to their own feelings, ambivalences, pleasures, hesitations, aspirations, and yes, silences connected with their own bilingual spaces (different age groups will require different strategies in this inquiry). This is to say to cultivate the practice, sensitively and skillfully, of the anthropologist entering into a dialogue with others leading to intersubjective understanding. This is a time and energy consuming approach requiring a great deal of resources. But if we are serious about building/preserving a linguistic community we cannot possibly rely on top-down standardized templates and ideologies removed from the every day realities of the students. The stream of our pedagogies and policies should navigate the linguistic journey through our deep understanding of the youngsters.

Yiorgos Anagnostou
November 11, 2025

Οι δικοί μας, οι άλλοι, η Χενιτιά

Ο πόνος και η αγωνία των ανθρώπων του τόπου μας που ξενιτεύτηκαν τότε.

Ο πόνος και η αγωνία των ξενιτεμένων από αλλού που έρχονται στον τόπο μας τώρα.

Το αφήγημα για το πρώτο θέμα συνεχίζει να απολαμβάνει ευρεία αποδοχή (αν αναπαράγει κοινούς τόπους και δεν θίγει επίμαχα θέματα). Θα επιβραβευόταν και ίσως βραβευόταν.

Φαντάζομαι ένα αφήγημα (μυθιστόρημα, διήγημα, τραγούδι) που θα έθετε σε συνομιλία το «εμείς τότε» κα οι «άλλοι τώρα» σε έναν ιστορικό διάλογο. Μέσω από μια ανθρωπιστική και συνάμα πολιτική ματιά.

Ποια θα ήταν η πρόσληψη μια τέτοιας απόδοσης στην τοπική κοινωνία, στη χώρα, στην διασπορά;

Για αρκετούς από εμάς εδώ στην Αμερική που έχουμε δεχθεί υποστήριξη από άλλους -κάποιες φορές στιγματισμένους- είναι αδύνατον να αφηγηθούμε την εμπειρία της ξενιτιάς χωρίς να αναγνωρίσουμε τους άλλους που θεωρούμε πλέον δικούς μας.

The surging interest in language preservation in the diasporas: The emerging landscape and the stakes involved

 

The local preservation of the Greek language at a global level has been elevated as a major political project supported by powerful institutions (the Greek state, the Greek Orthodox Church), communities, and universities. As a result, the interest in the “diaspora” or “omogeneia” (a misplaced term) intensifies among scholars working on the teaching of Greek as heritage language. This is a great development.

In this unfolding landscape, one observes several intersections as scholars working for years on diasporic education, sometimes in collaboration with colleagues in Greece, are joined by a new cohort of academics. The urgency to preserve the language is cast as of outmost importance in the service of Hellenism.

It is of interest to start reflecting on the various recent and forthcoming initiatives toward this purpose. In this relatively early stage, as a new cohort of colleagues enters the terrain, it is important to recognize that there is not a single but a variety of HellenismS. For those who follow the conversation, two paradigms, the so-called Helladic Hellenism and Diasporic Hellenism, represent two incommensurable narratives in understanding diasporic identity (work on this is forthcoming, but if you are interested there is an article on this topic by Dimitris Tziovas).

What we have seen recently in this process is two contradictory approaches.

First, there are meticulous studies attuned to diasporic realities; they attend to the ethical and political implications of bringing these realties into representation. One of their interests is to foreground diasporic understanding of Greek identities––not impose from above grand narratives. Diasporas are not exclusively framed in relation to Greece, but as historically and culturally specific negotiations with bilingualism and biculturalism in the new homeland. There is pedagogical interest in the intersection the cultural and civic dimensions that enter into the making of responsible diasporic ctitizens.

In contrast, one observes in the discourse a (renewed) embracing of ahistorical version of Hellenism––diaspora as Greece outside the borders; the Greek spirit; the metaphor of Greek immigrants as migratory birds; simplified renderings of diasporic connections with Greece––by academics; directly, or indirectly. This consent is rewarded in multiple ways by institutions promoting this ideology.

Form the point of view of scholars historicizing immigrant and diasporic expressions this is highly problematic. Frankly, disturbing. The “diaspora” of this ahistorical narrative into diasporic spaces obliterates their complexity, αποτελεί συμμόρφωση σε μια αντιεπιστημονική προσέγγιση.

For over two decades, our (necessary) interrogation of ahistorical narratives of diasporic identities has absorbed valuable energies, diverting us from creative projects. It is time to move forward based on the ethics of serious scholarship and the consciousness of what is at stake in its practice.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

13 November, 2025