Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I DEFINING THE CONTEXTS OF THINKING ABOUT THE POLIS
- PART II RETHINKING THE CONTEXTS. THE POLIS AS AN ENTITY: A CRITIQUE
- PART III BEYOND THE POLIS: THE POLIS AS PART OF A SYSTÈME-MONDE
- 6 The polis as a unit of analysis: poleis and koinôniai
- 7 Poleis and space
- 8 Poleis and polities
- 9 Poleis and time
- 10 Towards new master narratives of Greek history?
- References
- Index
9 - Poleis and time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I DEFINING THE CONTEXTS OF THINKING ABOUT THE POLIS
- PART II RETHINKING THE CONTEXTS. THE POLIS AS AN ENTITY: A CRITIQUE
- PART III BEYOND THE POLIS: THE POLIS AS PART OF A SYSTÈME-MONDE
- 6 The polis as a unit of analysis: poleis and koinôniai
- 7 Poleis and space
- 8 Poleis and polities
- 9 Poleis and time
- 10 Towards new master narratives of Greek history?
- References
- Index
Summary
The aim of this chapter is to provide a temporal framework for the study of Greek history; it will serve as an accompaniment to the analytical and spatial frameworks that have been presented in previous chapters. We have seen how Eurocentrism has shaped the construction of the temporalities within which Greek history has been studied in the last two centuries. Chapter 5 aimed to show that the temporality that juxtaposes antiquity and modernity, or sees antiquity only through the prism of the emergence of modernity, is deeply problematic and misleading. In what follows, I explore a variety of different temporal frameworks for the study of Greek history.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF EUROCENTRIST TEMPORALITIES
The construction of Greek history as a field within a Eurocentric perspective had a double effect. On the one hand, the incorporation of Greek history within a Eurocentric metanarrative necessitated the construction of Greek history as an entity with beginning, acme and end; it needed a homogenised national narrative; on the other hand, Greek history existed as an entity only from the perspective of how it functioned as a stage in the evolution of the West.
I will deal with this second issue first. We can call this perspective the tunnel vision of time. It is the idea that there is a sort of linear trajectory in history, which moves ultimately to modernity.
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- Information
- Unthinking the Greek PolisAncient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism, pp. 203 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007