2013 Special Issue of Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand) - Crossing Boundaries
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Entitled Crossing Boundaries: Greek Textual and Cultural Landscapes, this Special Issue of Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand) contains papers which discuss many issues in Greek Studies. The papers deal with ancient Greek and Byzantine philosophy, philology, the history of Greece and the Greek world, the history of the Greek Diaspora, and the teaching of the Greek language. They cover a considerable span of time and space, crossing the boundaries of various fields of research.
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ItemΠρωτόγονη ευαισθησία και νεωτερική διάνοια στο Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά του Νίκου Καζαντζάκη(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)Please note: This article is in Greek. Primitive sensibility and modernist mentality in N. Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek: This paper explores the recreation of mythic or primitive sensitivity and the dissociation of rational thought and subjective feeling in the dialogical novel of Nikos Kazantzakis, Alexis Zorbas. It contends that the novel dramatizes the contrast between mythic sensibility and mental civilized self-reflection, revealing not only aspects of the modernist understanding of subjectivity but also the kind of imaginative creation which the narrative enacts reflecting the poetics of the twentieth-century primitivism. Mythic sensibility manifests itself as a form of otherness which motivates the subject’s nostalgic and tedious journey of return to archaic origins relating to the collective unconscious of the race. Drawing upon Michael Bell’s study on Primitivism and the inferences of anthropological studies in the beginning of the 20th century, it explores animism, natural or cosmic piety and rituals as the most pervasive manifestations of primitive sensibility which are opposed to the civilized mentality of the novel. Alexis Zorbas’ life and ideas substantiate the primitive urge of the novel which challenges the modern skepticism of the character-author, thus evoking the ancient response to life which occupies the kernel of the novel. Accordingly it concludes that Kazantzakis’ novel is constructed as great allegory about the destiny of the civilized man of the twentieth century. Reflecting on and longing for the unsearchable and grandiose moments in the history of human civilization, the author is in quest of a spiritual and philosophical recreation of the human consciousness whereby soul and body, spirit and matter would reconcile recovering their lost unity.
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ItemΒυζαντινός Κόσμος και Εννοιολογική Ιστορία(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)Please note: This article is in Greek. The Byzantine World and Conceptual History: The article examines the idea of the Byzantine world through the methodologies of conceptual history and socio-history. A criticism of the positivist stand and its scientific segmentation offers the starting point and the analytical tools provided by the postmodern literature are briefly overviewed. The concept of the Byzantine Ego appears to be central in the related research because it permits to empathize with this Ego’s life-world. The notions of “power”, “meta-narration”, “normativity”, “post-structuralism”, “modernism” and others are central for this study if we wish to escape the narrowing positivist imperative and approach the Byzantine world with a fresh look. The cultural logic of the Byzantine world is seen through a processual approach that combines the ideas of critique, structure and, to some degree, postcolonialism with the purpose to understand alternatively the cultural entities that populated the Byzantine sphere.
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ItemAuto/biographical writing and Greek-Australian historiography(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)This paper outlines a methodology for 'auto/biographical' life-history writing and argues for its merits based on a particular case study. In the present context 'auto/ biographical life writing' refers to life writing that is produced collaboratively by the participants, the researchers and research subjects, who are respectively positioned as writers/editors and narrators. We will propose an account of the dialogical structure that informs this inter-subjective interaction as developed in our collaboration with one Greek-Australian political activist. In our collaboration with George Gotsis on his auto/biography we have been taking what we call an ontological approach, in the sense of addressing the conditions of being in a collaborative researcher–researched relationship. We present the main features of this approach and discuss its merits and connection with our Greek-Australian historiography more broadly.
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ItemBlending Greek with Aboriginal Australian cultural elements in artistic expression(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)This paper pursues another transnational course extending the paper I presented at the Eighth International Conference on Greek Research, where the influence of cultural aspects of Aboriginal Australians upon a variety of first generation Greek Australians’ artistic expression was examined. Exploring both direct and indirect influence of elements of Greek and Aboriginal Australian cultures evident in artistic works (including theatre arts, painting, photography, music and dance), my current research focuses on how this blending has transcended through the filter of second generation Australians of Greek and Koori parentage, as well as of Aborigines, Anglo-Australians and members of other immigrant groups, and how this has been transformed and exhibited by them, thus being “recreated” artistically.
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ItemFaces beyond the Greek café: the traditional diversity of Greek-Australian occupational pursuits, 1820s–2010(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)From the late nineteenth century until the closing decades of the twentieth century, Greeks played a large part in Australia’s food catering industry. They continued, nevertheless, to enter a wide variety of occupations. These included: agricultural and pastoral activities, mining, sea-related industries, itinerant work, secondary industries, public life, professional fields, and artistic and sporting avenues. Moreover, their contribution in some activities proved significant. This paper firmly challenges the entrenched, popular stereotype of Greek-Australians as being historically defined as essentially a collection of fish’n’chip shop owners and café and milk bar proprietors. Rather, their complex and broad involvement in Australia’s mainstream development over the last two hundred years is clearly revealed, acknowledged and celebrated.
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ItemNever to return: migration and old age in Venezis’s “The State of Virginia”(Flinders University Department of Language Studies - Modern Greek, 2013-06)This paper discusses Ilias Venezis’s short story “The State of Virginia” with special emphasis on the themes of migration and old age. Published in 1954, in the aftermath of WWII and the Greek Civil War, “The State of Virginia” captures the drama of an elderly woman victim of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, as she is migrating to Virginia, U.S.A. after thirty years of temporary residence in a refugee village in rural Attica. My analysis focuses on the protagonist’s reluctant migration as it emerges from the farewell scene between her and her life-long friend; their conversation on the irreversibility of their separation, the challenges facing elderly migrants, and the significance of native soil voices an insightful discourse on belonging and rootedness that transcends many socio-temporal limits.
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