Authors, Scholars and the Public in Greek America: Toward a Conversation

In view of a recent conversation about ways to enhance the public presence of Greek/American authors and scholars I share this preliminary outline of cultural trends, prospects and challenges associated with the question of visibility and resonance. This is a tentative mapping of course, that I hope will be expanding via your input.

This conversation will benefit from the insights of all – academics and non-academics, authors, artists, translators, and the public, Greeks and “non-Greeks,” students and non-students – who care about the cultural and political direction of Greek America. It values, it goes without saying, the perspectives of students and the youth.  

A host of questions drive this writing: How to join forces (sharing of ideas, collaborations across disciplinary, intellectual and artistic lines, etc.) to create a vibrant and politically responsible conversation about the present and future of Greek America. How to enhance the visibility of Greek American letters and arts, and its public resonance. To what end?

Please take the time to share a position, an idea, a proposal, a thought; to ask a question or two, offer experiences, register reservations, provide new angles of inquiry. 

• Media

Transnational media are increasingly receptive, and in fact inclined to promote the conversation on Greek America (Chronos, Dialogos Media, Greek News Agenda). They offer options in writing in English, and are open to new and critical ideas. 

Prospects: Explore the possibility with their editors about Special Issues dedicated to Greek America (“Issues in Greek America,” “Literary Voices in Greek America,” “Identities” etc.  

Challenges: A host of media are self-labelled or overdetermined as “leftist” and may not reach widely into Greek America.

Academics learning how to translate ideas for a wider audience.  

Popular media contributes to Greek American memory and circulate knowledge and ideas (The Pappas Post, for instance and its promotion and marketing of the documentary Pallikari). Popular media also publish editorials and position papers by scholars (The National Herald). 

Prospects: Scholars, authors and intellectuals may wish to place key essays in these venues.

Challenges: There is the question of the range of critical ideas that could be accommodated. What is more, these venues do not pay (or pay very little) for intellectual labor. 

National online venues in conversation with the youth (Got Greek), particularly on issues of leadership, shaping identities. A dream essay of mine, Humanities and Leadership in Geek America. 

Challenges: How receptive are these venues to new ideas; we would not know until we try. 

Local media produce and disseminate ideas and knowledge (oral histories for example) of local interest (for an example that uses multimedia see, Greek American Heritage Society of Philadelphia). 

Prospects: Scholars and authors contributing work to local cultural initiatives (magazines, blogs, oral history projects, etc.). 

Challenges: No material compensation for authors, translators and scholars. How to write for a diverse public, how to present complex, potentially ideologically loaded issues for public consideration. 

Note: Local venues (Chicago-based, The Greek Circle) and national literary initiatives (Voices of Hellenism) have ceased publication. In the academic front, the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora and Pella publishers have closed. 

Online media: There exist numerous social media venues and blogs. Authors may wish to serve as guests to relatively well-known blogs. 

Prospects: A collaborative blog that features views of Greek/American authors, artists, poets, scholars, etc. 

Challenges: Material compensation for this kind of labor for those who maintain the blog and the contributors.  

• Venues for Greek Studies Scholarship and other Writings

The Journal of Modern Greek Studies and the Journal of Modern Hellenism continue publishing scholarship on Greek America. The AHIF Policy Journal features essays and other items of interest. A new online venue, Ergon Greek/American Transnational Arts and Letters has been announced to promote the arts, scholarship and letters to both academic and non-academic audiences (forthcoming Fall 2017). 

• Scholars and the “Community”

There is a dearth of ethnographic work, and despite some valuable oral history projects and scholarship we have a long way to go before understanding the social experience of Greek Americans across class, gender, age, region, sexuality, etc.

Similarly, there is limited community-based scholarship that addresses issues that Greek Americans face; there is little theoretical work on how we build communication with the communities, how we collaborate or make interventions in a language that is understood by the community, how we enter in conversation to establish a common ground, how we negotiate hegemonic narratives (other than critiquing them).

Greek American studies per se do not present themselves as a valuable career option. Many accomplished scholars in Greek studies display no interest in it. Several scholars who have published magnificent work have moved away from this subject matter (there are numerous examples in Greece and Europe of this “brain drain”). 

All-in-all there are very few Greek Americanists in relation, say, to the number of scholars writing about modern Greece. 

Prospects: 

Scholars with a Greek/American focus continue making the case for the intellectual and critical relevance of Greek American studies to scholars outside the field.

Scholars in modern Greek studies contributing to Greek American studies on a part time basis (essays, position papers, articles, monographs). 

Scholars in established disciplines (history, film studies, cultural studies, sociology, ethnography, etc.) also tapping into transnational Greek/American topics that speak to their wider interest. 

Collaborations among scholars. How viable is this given overloaded work schedules, and with  institutions often privileging the lone author model.  

Initiatives from Greece

Greece-based scholars, journalists, and documentary makers have been exhibiting interest in Greek America. 

Prospects: Exciting cultural production, produce knowledge about “forgotten” or marginalized topics. 

Challenges: These cultural makers often frame their rhetorical angle to speak to a Greek not a Greek American audience. 

Limited Funding: Whenever it may exist, the ideology of the donors may mediate the meaning of the product. They may neglect scholarship or facts that are inconvenient to their agendas. 

Journalists and others who have received funds to document Greek America must produce work that justifies their funding. 

Authors, writers, poets, journalists, and translators

This is a great resource, authors, writers, poets, journalists, and translators who place their work in reputable venues “outside” Greek America. Novels, poetry, and translations building on Greek/American material earn national attention.

Prospects: Incorporate Greek America as a subject of reflection in venues within but also beyond “Greek America” whenever these cultural producers see it fit (intellectually, politically, literally, etc.). 

Have authors and scholars speak with each other, enter into a conversation.   

Challenges: Limited funding (a wider issue, see below).

Overall Challenges Regarding Intellectual Production

Limited Resources, including limited career opportunities for Greek Americanists both within and outside the academy. 

How we position ourselves to have our ideas reach and resonate with a wider audience. There is a vast divide between the dominant way Greek America understands its identity (mostly through the lens of personal struggle and success, a belief that informs the political prism through which Greek American interpret political issues) and scholars who focus on the ways in which history and social structure shape experience and ideology. There is evidence to suggest that a sector of the Greek American public lacks interest in the sociological understanding of the society. How true is this? 

Anti-intellectualism in American society. 

Greek Americans: Is there interest in reading scholarship, fiction, essays? Many Greek American write to produce popular history, ethnography, and fiction. But what is the overall intellectual engagement of Greek Americans and how is it expressed?  

How do we envision the Greek/American public? How does the public may enter into this conversation so that we avoid speaking amongst ourselves? What is the experience of scholars and authors who have been interfacing with the public?

What can we learn from other cultural and academic networks (Italian Americans, Asian Americans) about interconnections between communities, networks, knowledge, letters, and the arts?  

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Please consider contributing to this discussion. 

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Yiorgos Anagnostou

The National Herald, Donald Trump, Reince Priebus (A necessary conversation)

When Archibishop Iakovos marched along Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in support of the Civil Rights movement in Selma, Alabama, in 1965—an example of courageous civic leadership in which Greek America often takes pride—his public statement was “far more progressive than the majority of his flock.” Clergy and staff advised the archbishop against marching, fearing that it would compromise “the quest of marginalized Greeks for full acceptance as America” (8). Were the archbishop’s actions an anomaly? With Greek America deeply ingrained in the American fabric, where does it stand on civil rights now?

http://chronos.fairead.net/election16-anagnostou

Zeese Papanikolas offers his comments on the piece:

"A Greek immigrant who was knocked on the head by a brick thrown through the window of his candy store in the South Omaha, Nebraska, anti-Greek riots of 1909, and who finally awoke last November 12 to read the National Herald’s editorial congratulating Donald Trump on his election, might ask himself, “since when did Greeks in America become white?” But in fact in the 107 years since the South Omaha riots, Greeks in this country have become “white,” as have the Irish before them and there is no reason to expect that, if given half a chance, the Somalis, Syrians and Iraqis fleeing the chaos of their homelands will not become full participants in American life as other immigrant groups have before them. Greeks in this country no longer need to huddle behind the walls of Greek Town for protection, no longer need to bribe a cop to get justice or deliver a bottle of bootleg wine to a straw boss to get a job, or fawn over some ward heeler to get a hearing at City Hall. The editors of the National Herald, whose Greek-language sister has been publishing since 1915 in this country, should know this as well as anyone. Therefore the sudden about face of the National Herald on Donald Trump and its fawning congratulations to him on his election victory are both retrograde and servile."

... See more,

http://chronos.fairead.net/election16-papanikolas-comments

Being Greek Orthodox

What does it mean to be Christian in the new US political landscape? What does it mean to be Greek Orthodox? A perusal in the media and scholarship points to an emergent reflection on this all important question.

In this context, and anticipating further conversation, a story by author Harry Mark Petrakis about an instance of Greek Orthodox anti-racism is all relevant. I share my analysis:

http://www.newdiaspora.com/a-tale-of-color/ 

(in English)

http://www.newdiaspora.com/el/a-tale-of-color/ 

(στα ελληνικά)

Beyond Greek as Descent: What Giannis Antetokounmpo and Tom Hanks Have to Do with It?

I have recently completed a book chapter discussing the manner in which Greek/American documentaries define US Greek identity in the context of the Greek debt crisis (1). During my research I noticed that while many Greek Americans regularly defined Greek identity and belonging in terms of blood (descent/biology), the emphasis of these documentary-narratives on success as a trope to confront negative stereotypes led them to also include “non-Greek” celebrities who are affiliated with Greek culture as members of the Greek transnational (Greece/United States) community. In other words, the drive to connect Greek identity with recognizable star power brings about a dramatic shift in the definition of Greek from biology to culture.

Below I discuss how the idea of the Greeks as a biological community, a tenet of nationalism, was reinforced in the encounter of Greek immigrants with American modernity. I show how US social Darwinism in the early twentieth century forced Greek immigrants to prove their fitness to America by connecting biology and material prosperity.

I subsequently outline how this link–Greeks as a biological group that is capable of achieving socioeconomic success–became entrenched as a core element of contemporary Greek identity. Thus social Darwinism, a racist ideology, determined the conditions which immigrant newcomers and their offspring were accepted as Americans. It will not be far fetched to say that social Darwinism holds Greek America hostage. It incarcerates it by stifling alternative narratives of Greek identity beyond socioeconomic success. 

While the construction of Greek/American identity in the context of the crisis still holds on to the connection between Greek descent and material success, the inclusion of basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo and actor and Hollywood producer Tom Hanks as Greeks marks the emergence of a new conception of Greek identity, one based on culture, not biology.

Below I further develop these ideas in some detail and I provide examples, in a somewhat academic fashion:

In this particular historical moment, when the idea of Greek identity is maligned and in crisis, Greek America deploys, once again, two historically available intertwined topoi: the Greeks as a biological community of achievers whose socioeconomic status warrants its equal, if not privileged, inclusion to the polity. A genealogical reading of US Greek cultural history would illuminate how the contemporary narrative of Greek Americans as a biological community of self-reliant, entrepreneurial individuals who embody the ideal American and global citizenship [I discuss this point in my chapter] bears striking similarities with the construction of the Greek immigrants as citizens-to-be in early twentieth century. The writings of anthropologist Henry Pratt Fairchild in 1911 offer a useful starting point to reflect, albeit briefly, on the power of this enduring connection:

The business of the alien is to go into the mines, the foundries, the sewers, the stifling air of factories and workshops, out on the roads and railroads in the burning sun of summer, or the driving sleet and snow. If he proves himself a man, and rises above his station, and acquires wealth, and cleans himself up–very well, we receive him after a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him (2). 

The passage succinctly captures the expectations the United States sets for immigrants for national inclusion. First, the immigrant subject who is addressed here is male. Also, the historical context of this statement is key to understand that the nation that Fairchild refers to is racialized; national inclusion means inclusion to whiteness, which in turn confers citizenship rights. Fairchild articulates the nation’s social contact extended to newcomers: the not-quite-white immigrant male is promised inclusion to the privileges of whiteness—the political right to vote, and integration via access to white neighborhoods, intermarriage and participation in social networks of power­—in exchange of his contributions to the nation. The nation underwrites this unofficial contract for newcomers who aspire to achieve citizenship, gaining it through the performance of self-propelled success, which also applies across generations, becoming a matter of “ethnic succession” (3). This explains the endurance of the narrative of self-motivated material improvement among the immigrant offspring.

This contract intertwines biology, that is racial location, with socioeconomic status. Educated readers of Fairchild at the time would have readily recognized the underpinnings of social Darwinism in his position that immigrants as “racial groups” must possess the biological fitness to endure the demands of American industrialism, their ensuing social status in the struggle mirroring their place in the racial ordering of the polity. As Aihwa Ong notes, “the intertwining of race and economic performance has shaped the ways in which immigrant groups have attained status and dignity, within a national ideology that projects worthy citizens as inherently white” (4).

The idea of biology intersecting with self-propelled mobility offers the template for constructing the ideal American citizen-subject as self-reliant achiever. This paradigm constitutes the core of Greek America’s claim to deserving Americanness. The children and grandchildren of the immigrants whose acceptance was predicated on consenting to this idealization—and in the process displacing alternative ways of accessing citizenship—hold on to it consistently. They assert it repeatedly in public because of the privileges it confers. The gains have been historically specific. The narrative of the Greeks as biological heirs of classical Greece and embodiment of middle-class American values granted early twentieth century admittance to the polity. The so-called bootstraps idea, zealously embraced, has placed Greek Americans as a model ethnic group and in turn as exemplary representatives of American liberal multiculturalism in the 1980s and beyond (5). As my work “We Are All Diasporas Now” shows, the notion of a descent-based community of a professional Greek American class positions its members as ideal national, transnational and global citizens.

Yet this narrative of success, in its insatiable appropriation of star power, introduces a certain rupture in nationalist narratives of identity as it disrupts the coupling of biology and culture. In this capacity it rewrites the meaning of Greek identity. 

When for instance the trailer I Am One Greece (6) claims basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks and is the son of Nigerian immigrants in Greece, and one who was exceptionally granted Greek citizenship on the virtue of contributing to the Greek national team—it cancels biology as a criterion for Greek belonging. Similarly, Tom Hanks, the Hollywood actor, delivers this same function in another context when he asserts a Greek, in fact a hyper Greek, identity: “I feel a 110% Greek. … I am more Greek than a Greek is.” This reconfiguration is emerging and coexists awkwardly with biological notions of belonging. Without a blink of irony, for example, Antetokounmpo is featured in the same clip casting Greeks as a “family [with] the same blood running in [its] veins.” 

But the rupture opens the space for reimagining the “global nation” in cultural terms neutralizing biology as an explanatory force or criterion of belonging in the making of Greek identity. It simultaneously opens the space for new legislation in Greece regarding the naturalization of immigrants and their offspring, and for new policies regarding eligibility for Greek American scholarships based on Greek learning, not descent (7).

Works Cited

1 Yiorgos Anagnostou, “We Are All Diasporas Now: Greek America as Diaspora, Citizenship and Entrepreneurialism at a time of Crisis,” In Greece in Crisis: The Cultural Politics of Austerity, edited by Dimitris Tziovas (Tairus Publishers). Forthcoming

2 Henry Pratt Fairchild, Greek Immigration to the United States (New Haven, 1911), p. 237.

3 Aihwa Ong, Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America, p. 3.

4 Ibid., p. 11.

5 See Yiorgos Anagnostou, ‘Model Americans, Quintessential Greeks: Ethnic Success and Assimilation in Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 12:3 (2003), pp. 279–327 and “White Ethnicity: A Reappraisal,” Italian American Review 3:2 (2013), pp. 99–128.

6 I Am One Greece (http://onegreece.org/watch/, 2013)

7 Greek Americans have embraced Giannis Antetokounmpo as their own “fellow Greek” (National Hellenic Museum email). Communities organize Greek heritage nights in his honor when the Milwaukee Bucks play in town (“Greek community turns South Philly Blue and White for Giannis Antetokounmpo,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZJzpAZEtmE, 2015).

Τα Σύνορα της Ξενιτιάς (1997)

Η ξενιτιά, σαν ένας κεντρικός λόγος στην ελληνική κοινωνία, προσφέρεται για μια σειρά σκέψεων για τις συνιστάμενες της ζωής έξω από τα σύνορα. Ιδιαίτερα, μας προσκαλεί να συλλογιστούμε με ποιους όρους καταλαβαίνουμε την ξενιτιά και με ποιον τρόπο φανταζόμαστε τη σχέση ταυτότητας και τόπου.

Είμαστε εξοικειωμένοι, φυσικά, με την παραδοσιακή ερμηνεία της ξενιτιάς σαν ένα οδυνηρό ξερίζωμα. Αυτός ο καημός της ξενιτιάς έχει ανεξίτηλα αποτυπωθεί στη συλλογική λαϊκή συνείδηση με πρωταρχικούς φορείς τα δημοτικά τραγούδια και τη λαογραφία μας. Σε αυτόν τον λόγο καημού και θρήνου, κάποιος θα ήθελε να αναφερθεί και στην ταξική διάσταση που διαφοροποιεί τη βίωση της ξενιτιάς. Γιατί η ξενιτιά, σαν εμπειρία μιας καθημερινής ανάλωσης στον αγώνα για επιβίωση συσχετίζεται με την εργατική και μικρομεσαία τάξη. Η ξενιτιά βιώνεται διαφορετικά από τα άτομα της εύπορης τάξης, τα οποία βέβαια, συχνά, δεν μεταναστεύουν αλλά ταξιδεύουν. Ή από τους επαγγελματίες αστούς και τους κοσμοπολίτες μορφωμένους οι οποίοι ζουν έξω από την Ελλάδα με τελείως διαφορετικούς οικονομικούς όρους. Και αν αναφερθώ στους φοιτητές του εξωτερικού, οι οποίοι δεν αυτοσυντηρούνται αλλά στηρίζονται στα πλούτη των οικογενειών τους, η ξενιτιά αποδεικνύεται ένα προνόμιο, μια επένδυση που οδηγεί σε μια μάλλον αναπόφευκτη κοινωνική και οικονομική άνοδο.

Η κυρίαρχη λοιπόν προσέγγιση της ξενιτιάς ως βάσανου και καημού ραγίζει μόλις λάβουμε ύποψη μας τις ταξικές της αποχρώσεις. Αλλο πράγμα η ξενιτιά για αυτούς οι οποίοι έχουν τη δυνατότητα να πηγαινοέρχονται στην Ελλάδα όποτε τους καπνίσει, και άλλη υπόθεση για αυτούς οι οποίοι αδυνατούν να ταξιδεύουν λόγω βιοποριστικών αναγκών. Με το να εντοπίζω την ταξική διάσταση της ξενιτιάς δεν σημαίνει όμως ότι προτείνω έναν απλουστευτικό δυϊσμό που διαμοιράζει στέρηση και κακουχίες ανάλογα με το πάχος των τραπεζικών καταθέσεων του κάθε ξενιτεμένου. Αντίθετα, θα ήθελα να επαναπροσδιορίσω την ξενιτιά σαν ένα πολύπλοκο φαινόμενο το οποίο, ταυτόχρονα με τις δυσκολίες που συνεπάγεται, κυοφορεί και έναν δημιουργικό αγώνα για το κτίσιμο μιας ζωής κάπου αλλού, έξω από την Ελλάδα.

Υλικές και ψυχικές επενδύσεις σε σημαντικές σχέσεις, σε ένα επάγγελμα, σε μια επιστήμη, επανακαθορίζουν τη σχέση του μετανάστη τόσο με τον κοινωνικό του περίγυρο όσο και με την Ελλάδα. Οι άμεσοι κοινωνικοί χώροι του μετανάστη επενδύονται με νόημα ή γίνονται πεδία δράσης και δημιουργίας. Αυτά τα πεδία είναι ποικίλα και πολλές φορές ενσωματώνουν στρώματα της φιλοξενούσας κοινωνίας. Αυτού του είδους η εγγραφή του «ξένου» χώρου ως οικείου και ως κέντρου βαρύτητας καθημερινών δραστηριοτήτων ανατρέπει την αντίληψη της γενέθλιας γης ως κέντρου και τελεολογικού σταθμού επιστροφής. Αυτό άλλωστε μας επισημαίνει πειστικά και η Δήμητρα Σιδέρη στο μυθιστόρημά της Πατρίδες που καταγράφει την υιοθέτηση του «ξένου» μεταναστευτικού χώρου ως μόνιμου τόπου διαμονής. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο η έννοια της πατρίδας πολλαπλασιάζεται και ο μύθος που ενσωματώνει την επιστροφή σαν ένα αναπόσπαστο μέρος της διασπορικής εμπειρίας καταρρίπτεται.

Το να αυτοχαρακτηρίζεται κανείς Ελληνας (πρώτης, δεύτερης, τρίτης γενιάς) και να έχει μια πολλαπλή συνείδηση πατρίδων ανατρέπει την παραδοσιακή αντίληψη η οποία αντιμετωπίζει τη σχέση ταυτότητας και χώρου σαν μια φυσική και, θα έλεγε κανείς, ιερή οντότητα. Ανατρέπει επίσης και μια ορισμένη ανθρωπολογική οπτική της οποίας οι καταβολές θα μπορούσαν να εντοπισθούν στην πράξη του τεμαχισμού του γεωγραφικού άτλαντα σε ευδιάκριτες περιοχές οι οποίες σηματοδοτούν αντίστοιχες ομοιογενείς μονάδες κουλτούρας. Σύμφωνα με αυτή τη λογική, μια πολιτιστική ταυτότητα περιχαράζεται σε ένα γεωγραφικό (και στην περίπτωση του έθνους - κράτους σε ένα πολιτικογεωγραφικό) χώρο και είναι αυθεντική μόνο σε οργανική σχέση με τη συγκεκριμένη αυτόχθονη εδαφική πραγματικότητα. Δεν μας ξαφνιάζει λοιπόν το γεγονός ότι η μεταφορά της ρίζας και του δένδρου έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί πλουσιοπάροχα για να αποδώσουν αυτήν τη σχέση. Ή ότι ο θάνατος στα ξένα δεν μπορούσε παραδοσιακά να νοηθεί ανεξάρτητα από το εθνικό χώμα. Οπως εύστοχα εντοπίζει η Liisa Η. Malkki: «Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in death, too, native soils are important».

Είναι σημαντικό να τονίσω ότι ο λόγος που αποδίδει αυθεντικότητα στη γηγενή ταυτότητα είναι ριζικά ιεραρχικός. Παραθέτει μια δυαδική ασυμμετρική αντίληψη μεταξύ του αυτόχθονου και του ετερόχθονου. Το πρώτο αντιμετωπίζεται σαν γνήσιο και αληθινό, ενώ το δεύτερο υποβαθμίζεται σαν μπασταρδεμένο και ατελές. Είναι μέσα σε αυτό το πλαίσιο στο οποίο πρέπει να τοποθετήσουμε τα παράπονα πολλών Ελληνοαμερικανών ότι στον ελλαδικό χώρο ο αυτοχαρακτηρισμός τους ως Ελλήνων αντιμετωπίζεται με συγκατανευτικό, συχνά χλευαστικό ή ακόμη και απορριπτικό τρόπο.

http://www.tovima.gr/opinions/article/?aid=92463

From the archive – Greek Independence Day Celebration in Detroit Greektown – March 25, 1929

From the archive, of interest to historians of urban Greek America and U.S. Greek towns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtgGnmA77k

I thank Artemis Leontis for bringing this rare footage to my attention