Το Κέντρο Ερεύνης της Ελληνικής και Λατινικής Γραμματείας της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών, στο πλαίσιο του μηνιαίου σεμιναρίου του (Freedom & Unfreedom in the Ancient World), διοργανώνει τη διαδικτυακή διάλεξη του Mirko Canevaro (Professor of Greek History, University of Edinburgh) με θέμα «Recognition and Imbalances of Power: Honour Relations and Slaves’ Claims vis-à-vis Their Masters» την προσεχή Πέμπτη, 10 Μαρτίου, 5.00-7.00 μμ
Περίληψη
της διάλεξης: This talk is concerned with the
problem of whether slaves have ‘honour’ – whether they are, that is, implicated
in reciprocal relations of mutual respect and recognition, and can develop
through these an autonomous subjectivity. It tackles this issue from the
vantage point of much recent work in moral and political philosophy, as well as
in social psychology – by Charles Taylor, Stephen Darwall, Kwame Anthony Appiah
and particularly Axel Honneth – about value, dignity and recognition, and it
does so by turning to what is perhaps the least promising kind of social
relation, if we are looking for reciprocally empowering honour dynamics; yet at
the same time to what is arguably the most fundamental kind of relation for slaves,
foundational of their very status and identity as slaves: the relation with
their masters. We have plenty of evidence that day-to-day relations between
masters and slaves within the household were in fact explicitly conceptualised
by the masters in terms of timê (see e.g. Klees; Fisher),
particularly in texts such as Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, Plato’s Laws,
Aristotle’s Politics and Ps.-Aristotle’s Oeconomica. But can
these dynamics of timê amount to actual relations based on mutual
recognition, enabling agency, if they are instrumental to the preservation of
the most extreme and brutal power relations? Or do they rather limit agency and
worsen the subjugation of the slaves, tricked into concentrating their efforts
towards carrying out their masters’ wishes? These issues have emerged,
contentiously, also in modern work on recognition: the fundamental problem of
the role of recognition dynamics in societies characterised by strongly
asymmetrical power structures – of whether they are empowering or disempowering
– is for instance in stark focus in the work of Louis Althusser, who coined the
category of ‘ideological recognition’. Ideological recognition describes
recognition dynamics that are structured in such a way as not to advance the
cause of the oppressed; they rather incentivise them to buy into the existing
ideological order, therefore carrying out tamely their role in the existing
relations of production. The working thesis of this talk, developed and tested
through engagement with literary (New Comedy), epigraphical (lead tablets and
inscriptions) and historiographical (Diodorus Siculus) sources, is that as soon
as a master uses honour, philotimia and the associated dynamics as
motivational forces to influence the behaviour of a slave, he subjects himself
to a normative order which is abstracted from his arbitrary will, which exists per
se, and which can be exploited by the slave to make demands, or to develop a
conscience not just of being oppressed, but of being wronged.
Για να λάβετε τον σύνδεσμο συμμετοχής (Zoom), παρακαλώ συμπληρώστε τη φόρμα: https://cutt.ly/LPuDgLY ή επικοινωνήστε με τη διοργανώτρια,
Έφη Παπαδόδημα (epapadodima@academyofathens.gr)
Ιστοσελίδα
Σεμιναρίου: http://www.academyofathens.gr/el/research/centers/greeklatin/seminar
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