Proceedings of the 5th Biennial International Conference of Greek Studies, 2003
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This volume of the fifth Biennial Conference Proceedings contains 35 refereed articles in English and Greek text, including articles on:
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Item The Anglo-Australian Sweet Company: A Sweet Cypriot-Australian Success Story(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Ganzis, NicholasThe society from which Greek and Cypriot migrants came to Australia was not as homogeneous as might appear from a superficial consideration of their common heritage of faith, language and culture, and the multifaceted nature of Greek society was to manifest itself in Australia when conditions here enabled these differences to surface. Many pre-World War II migrants became involved in business activities, some of which developed into substantial commercial and industrial concerns. Communities were formed around these successful families, strengthened by regional organisations and the Greek Orthodox Community. One such family was the Loizou-Petrou family: George Loizou (later Lewis), who arrived in Adelaide in 1927, founded his own chocolate manufacturing and retailing company, which was to become the Anglo-Australian Sweet Company. He was joined by his nephew Harry Petrou (later Peters) in 1936, then by other members of their immediate family in 1948. The present paper studies the part played in South Australian business and social life by this extended Cypriot family in the context of Greek community formation, maintenance and fragmentation.Item Are Greeks Really the Poor Relations of the European Union? Evidence of the Standard of Living(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Close, David HenryGreek governments frequently emphasise that their goal is convergence in standard of living with the European Union average, and assume that they have far to go. This paper discuses the methods available to compare standards of living between the 15 member countries. They are: estimates of Gross Domestic Product at Purchasing Power Parity; average incomes in relation to average prices of everyday necessities; estimates of income inequality; subjective expressions of satisfaction with living conditions, and subjective assessments of improvement or deterioration in them; and ownership of certain goods, and of homes. Each measure is open to objection; but on most, Greece comes near the bottom of the EU scale. According to the other criteria of Human Development adopted by the United Nations, Greece rates high in health but low in educational level.Item Between Divine and Human Justice: A Reading of Papadiamantes's 'The Murderess'(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Vardoulakis, DimitrisPapadiamantes’s novella "The Murderess" has been read either as a moral tale exhibiting its author’s Orthodox beliefs, or as a critique of the gender positions and class structure of Greece at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite the seeming divergence, both approaches share a common foundation, namely that the author is conceived of as the bearer of the truth of the novella. Whereas the issue of truth in narration is presupposed, it remains unexamined. I argue that a conception of “truth” in "The Murderess" is to be gleaned, first, in a series of irresolvable tensions such as inside and outside, narrator and character, and even the very fact of Hadoula’s guilt, and, second, in the site of Hadoula’s death which takes place “between divine and human justice”. The ultimate purpose of this article is to offer the conditions of possible interpretations of "The Murderess" beyond the hold of either religion or sociology.Item Conference Photos(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) PhotosConference photos taken at the Fifth Biennial International Conference of Greek Studies, 2003.Item Empedocles to Darwin(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Roux, Suzanne RaymondeHow does the diverse variety of well adapted and apparently purposive creatures come about? Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace answered with their discovery of the theory of evolution by natural selection. More than two thousand years earlier, Greek philosophers had considered this question and in their speculations put forward many of the key concepts of central importance to this great scientific discovery. Empedocles (c490–460BCE) outlined a four stage system of evolution of living things. The system begins with the spontaneous generation of anatomical parts and ends by the chance combination of parts resulting in “whole-natured forms”.Item Ethnicity as an Organisational Concept in the Life of the Community(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Nicolacopoulos, Toula; Vassilacopoulos, GeorgeIn this paper we explore ethnicity as a basic organisational concept in the life of the Greek-Australian communities. We begin our discussion by outlining two conceptions of ethnicity that we call static and dynamic. We explain the ways in which these conceptions have respectively informed two types of community organisation that have been influential in the life of the communities. These are the Greek Orthodox Communities and the Greek workers leagues that have operated in Australian cities for most of the twentieth century. In our discussion we explain the strengths and limits of the concept of ethnicity for organisational purposes, through an analysis of its uses as the basis of members’ organisational unity.Item 'H Ποιητική τῆς Βαθειᾶς Εἰκόνας καί ἡ Γλώσσα τῆς Κένωσης στό ἐργο τοῦ Ἄθου Δημουλᾶ(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Karalis, VrasidasPlease note: This article is in Greek. This paper deals with the rather neglected poetry of Athos Dimoulas (1921-1985) and addresses two central dimensions of its poetics. First the invention of the “deep image” in order to depict the open nature of representational language and its culmination in the gradual self-signification of poetic text. Second, the existential reality of kenosis as poetic material and the way such complete and utter self-emptiness was expressed in the last phase of his artistic development. Dimoulas is one of the most important post-war poets of contemporary Greece who struggled with the idioms of the great predecessors of high modernism; namely C. P. Cavafy and Giorgos Seferis. Against their presence and under the “anxiety of influence”, Dimoulas and his generation tried to undermine the representational codes and the formal devices employed by high modernism in order to give mythopoetic coherence to the vicissitudes of history. Thus his poetry is crystallised around images in the making, fluid depictions of evanescent feelings which are articulated through a macroscopic self-presentation of their own creation and referential indexicality. By doing so, Dimoulas emptied his language from any kind of emotion, creating an idiom of absence and silence, based on geometric abstraction and almost Euclidian linearity. His poetry became the liminal form of expression in Greek beyond which language nullifi es itself as both form and articulation. This papers attempts to explaining such “negativity” as a structural principle of his poetry and contextualises its function within post-war poetics in Greece.Item Hippias of Elis(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) O'Grady, Patricia FrancesHippias of Elis cut an elegant figure as he strolled through the crowds at Olympia, dressed entirely in garments and accessories he had, himself, made. But there is more to Hippias than the man Plato portrays as vain in "Hippias Minor". Hippias was not only the exemplar of self-sufficiency but ranks among the most talented and versatile of the sophists. He lectured on poetry, grammar, history, politics, and archaeology, he was a chronographer, and a prolific writer. In this paper I will discuss Hippias’s work in geometry and the social contract he mentioned, and I will show that these two aspects of his work elevate him to another level. It will be seen that Hippias was more than an extremely rich and successful sophist, but that his work warrants his inclusion amongst the philosophers.Item Late Byzantine and post-Byzantine Vernacular Love Poetry: An Overview(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Panayotopoulou-Doulaveras, VickyThis paper examines love poetry from the late Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods as a distinct body of literature. To be precise, it provides a list of the known texts (which is certainly not complete) together with brief introductory notes on each and examples where necessary. A few of these texts (mainly distiches added by readers in manuscripts) are presented for the first time for discussion as part of this corpus. Furthermore, the paper looks at issues such as their treatment by previous scholars and possible reasons why the love poetry from this period is meagre. Overall, it aims to open up a discussion on possible new approaches to the topic.Item Learning Greek and Maintaining Greek Ethnic Identity. St George College, South Australia: Students' Perspectives(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Holeva, AlexandraThis paper presents the first findings of a thesis undertaken as part of the requirements for completing a research doctoral degree in Education at the University of Adelaide. It describes a research proposal regarding the perspectives of students, their parents and teachers about children from a Greek background who are taught Greek at school during their secondary education. The project has been submitted and approved by the Department of Education, Training and Employment in South Australia as well as the Ethics Committee of the University of Adelaide. The research commenced during Term 3 of 2002 and this paper presents the data for one of the schools involved — St. George College. This institution represents one of the biggest and most important components of the group of respondents, and not only because students choose to attend the school for the reason that the Greek language is offered as a subject. The main factor probably is also that students’ families are aware that the school is targeting the maintenance of Greek culture, Greek Orthodox Christianity and the ethos of the Greek family.Item Mammon and the Greek Oriental Muse. Rebetika as a Marketing Construct(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Gauntlett, StathisThis paper is a preliminary exploration of the role of the recording industry in the construction of rebetika as a genre of Greek song in response to evolving market opportunities and constraints. Preoccupied with less mundane issues, discussion of rebetika has hitherto neglected to consider the genre as commodity unless in order to demonise recording companies as corruptors of pristine tradition, or to wallow in minutiae of empirical discography. Today genre is a major organising principle of music business and, notwithstanding the danger of crediting the Greek industry with too much foresight and control, a detailed study of the political economy of rebetika is overdue. This skirmish with some of the main issues, using data from corporate archives, aims to advance such an undertaking.Item 'The Master Builder' from Folksong to Opera: The Adaptation of 'The Bridge of Arta' by Nikos Kazantzakis and Manolis Kalomiris(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Vincent, AlfredManolis Kalomiris’ opera The Master Builder, first performed in 1916, was adapted from Nikos Kazantzakis’ play of the same name. Kazantzakis based his work on the Greek folksong in which, in order to complete a bridge, a master builder is ordered by a spirit to sacrifice his wife. Kazantzakis’ protagonist is a Nietzschean hero, distracted by his love for his employer’s daughter, Smaragda. While the play has features of ancient Greek tragedy, Kazantzakis suggests a contemporary relevance; his builders describe themselves as “the cranes which bring [...] the black swallows of the Springtime of the Mind”. In his libretto, aided by three poet friends, Kalomiris developed the lyrical element, but otherwise kept close to Kazantzakis’ text. He removed some misogynistic expressions, and focused upon Smaragda’s heroic devotion. Although Kalomiris dedicated his work, significantly, to Eleftherios Venizelos, whom he called “the Master Builder of Greater Greece”, his opera, like Kazantzakis’ play, transcends boundaries of time, place and cultural background.Item Museums, World Heritage, and Interpretation -- the Case of the Parthenon Marbles(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Simpson, MoiraThe status of the Parthenon Marbles as objects of world heritage lies at the heart of arguments for their retention in the British Museum as part of one of the most significant universal museum collections in the world. This paper challenges the logic of this argument. After a brief description of the circumstances that enabled western museums to acquire their collections and led to the development of the “universal museum”, I will outline the efforts that have been made at national and international levels to protect cultural property, efforts which have curtailed the ability of museums to accumulate materials on the scale of previous periods in their history. I then discuss the reasons why, despite this, international cultural property protection measures do not resolve many of the debates surrounding ownership and repatriation of items in existing museum collections. I will then use the case of the Greek claim for the return to Athens of the Elgin collection of Parthenon Marbles, currently held in the British Museum, to examine the issues relating to the nature of universal museums and international responsibilities for the preservation and effective interpretation of items of world heritage value.Item O Άγγελος Σικελιανός και το Pομαντικό πρίσμα αντίληψής του για τον Yπερρεαλισμό(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Angelatos, DimitrisPlease note: This article is in Greek. The main focus of this paper is the exploration of Angelos Sikelianos’ involvement with Surrealism. Sikelianos’ profound familiarization with the theoretical framework of that movement on one hand and his perception of the artistic achievements of Surrealism on the other hand underline Sikelianos’ position between German Romanticism and the Freudian psychoanalysis. The overarching framework of Sikelianos’ approach constitutes his particular conception of Surrealism which is Romanticism.Item The Obscure Origins of True Contradictions(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Bastiras, DemetriosAdvances in modern logic have provided grounds for a review of Herakleitan fragments. Focusing on fragments that are indeed explicitly contradictory, we suggest that true contradictions play an important part in Herakleitos’ theories. It turns out that this analysis is much simpler than the traditional modern alternatives and more faithful to the ancient interpretations of the fragments. Significantly, we can better analyse Herakleitos’ theories ex post facto by using modern logical techniques. Herakleitos, nicknamed “The Obscure” for his style of writing (full of puns and hidden meanings) may thus be better understood as the first philosopher to believe in true contradictions. It seems that modern logic has found the key to unlock some of the Herakleitan riddles.Item On the Methodology of Greek-Australian Historiography(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Nicolacopoulos, Toula; Vassilacopoulos, GeorgeThis paper addresses some of the methodological issues that are raised by efforts to write the history of the Greek-Australian communities. In general Australian historiography tends to undervalue the national significance of Greek-Australian history. We attempt firstly to outline the conditions under which we might begin to redress this weakness. To this end we identify the role that the communities play in the development of white Australian national identity throughout the twentieth century by arguing that white Australia has assigned to the migrant communities the social position of what we call the “perpetual foreigner-within”. We then proceed to sketch some of the main features of two patterns of response to this assignment that have developed within the Greek-Australian communities of the twentieth century.Item A Page from the History of the Greek Presence in the Pacific Rim(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Kanarakis, GeorgeThe field of history in relation to the Greek Diaspora is one which is immensely rewarding for the researcher. It constitutes a treasure trove of lives and achievements of Greeks who have crossed the oceans to the Antipodes and, according to their ability and talent, made a contribution to their new homeland. For a very few of these, Australia has even been a stepping stone to further lands, where they shared their skills, their knowledge and the flame of Hellenism. This paper examines one such latter case which my research has uncovered, bringing to light the admirable life, achievements and contribution of a Hellene who spent almost half a century in the Pacific Rim, and in whose person merged the educator, industrialist, press man and diplomat.Item Pain and Pleasure in Plato's Physiology(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Couvalis, Spyridon George; Usher, Matthew LWe trace the development of Plato’s physiology of pleasure and pain from a rudimentary account in the "Gorgias" to a sophisticated account in the "Philebus". In the earlier account Plato treats pains as lacks and pleasures as replenishments. In the later account he treats pleasures and pains as in part object directed mental states. In particular, he treats pains as perceptions of disintegrated states which lack determinate being. We argue that Plato’s later account constitutes a considerable advance on previous theories of pain and on his own earlier theory. However, we point out that modern research has shown that Plato is wrong to identify pains with perceptions of disintegrated states. Nevertheless, we suggest that had Plato known about the results of modern research, he would have been able to say that pains are perceptions of threats of disintegration into the indeterminate.Item Philosophy Plays: A Neo-Socratic Way of Performing Public Philosophy(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Spence, Edward HThis paper provides an explanatory rationale within a theoretical framework for the Philosophy Plays project. The object of the Philosophy Plays is to introduce philosophy, and especially Western Philosophy, to the general public through philosophical presentations by professional philosophers incorporating drama. They have created a public domain for philosophy where relevant issues and topics of public interest and importance, such as love, immortality, happiness, friendship, religion, knowledge, trust, pets, morality and corruption, can be presented by professional philosophers and discussed in an open forum with members of the general public. The Philosophy Plays, like Platonic dialogues, seek to engage their audiences both intellectually (primarily through the philosophical talk) and emotionally (primarily through the drama). So like Plato’s dialogues, from which they draw their inspiration, the Philosophy Plays which combine dialectic (the philosophical talk) with rhetoric (the drama) seek to engage their public audiences in a realistic and shared lived experience thus rendering philosophy a practical and meaningful activity for all participants.Item A Proposal for a Study of the Seconded Teachers from Greece Program in Western Australia(Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek, 2005) Yiannakis, AngelaThis paper forms the basis of a proposal for a doctoral thesis that will focus on the improvement of the quality of the curriculum for teaching Greek as a second language under the Seconded Teachers from Greece program. Specifically, the paper proposes that a focus on the perspectives of the key stakeholders on the curriculum for teaching Greek as a second language is the key to understanding the problems encountered by the seconded teachers in Australia. While the study is specific to Western Australia, the paper outlines the broad history of the seconded teacher program in Australia and the developments over time. There follows a more detailed account of the history of the teaching of Greek in WA and the association between local efforts and the contributions of the Greek government appointees to various institutions. The perceived problems of the seconded teachers are outlined and the paper proposes that the perspectives of the key stakeholders be canvassed.