Paper abstracts

Exploring Mid-Byzantine genres – the rhetoric of dissidence

Jovana Anđelković, Simon Fraser University

Close reading of Byzantine histories uncovers a world of symbolic, metaphorical and intertextual meanings, one in which ancient Greek or Roman heroes step in to preform various contemporary roles. More often than not, understanding of these multilayered literary systems depends on the reading of the text as a whole. Beyond an internal conceptual logic, every single history belongs to an external scheme, to a tradition that describes the Empire or the World from its beginnings. Letters, on the other hand, carry a sense of immediacy. Due to the nature of surviving manuscripts, we rarely know what the logic behind the collective efforts of one author was (if it was indeed his logic or effort that stimulated the process). That mostly prevents us from finding an internal reasoning that would “decode” a message of the creator. However, a tradition of letter collections exists throughout Byzantine history and it grows significantly from 10^th century onwards. The very fact that there was a large enough audience for letter collections of certain officials, clerics and intellectuals even outside their immediate communities, seems rather intriguing. By tracing the thematic and textual regularities, this paper intends to look at 10^th and 11^th century collections as a distinctive genre, one that functions as recognisable entity and relies on the systemic nature of a specific literary tradition.

A survey of 10^th and 11^th century letter collections that includes 50 authors (if all ancient canonical writers are factored in) reveals a very frequent peculiarity: issue of exile. Even if it is not the case of an actual banishment from the community (for an example, Theodore Daphnopates was just “retired” from his function), an epistolary lamentation over some kind of political exclusion is very apparent in letter collections (Nicholas Mystikos, Leo Choirosphaktes, Leo of Synada, Ioannes Mauropous, etc.). These troubles were usually described in very similar, strongly emotional language. Overly passionate vocabulary, this paper would argue, is not an elegant topos that simply belongs to epistolary genre, but a recognition of a larger Greco-Roman social practice that perceives those politically active individuals whose collections survived, as outspoken critics. Exile epistolary literature receives a new impetus from the late-republican and late antique periods. It has been argued (Whitmarsh, 2005) that it is a form used to articulate the relationship between self and polis in terms more appropriate for world-empire of the Roman principate. After Vespasian’s and Domitian’s banishment of all philosophers, exile became a certain symbol of the free-speaking thinker. Staying along these interpretational and societal lines, it seems relevant to ask why mid-Byzantine letter collections hold a motive of exile in their author’s biographies and/or their epistolary testimonies. Finally, manuscript traditions seem to speak more about the need and wants of the audiences – since stories of one ambassador’s, administartor’s or metropolitan’s hardships survive in multiple manuscripts far away from their home (Pathmos, Athos, or in Slavic translations throughout the Balkans), it is not only the author who worries about preserving his work.

Ritual Geographies and Ceremonial Time: The Book of Ceremonies as a Blueprint for Political Action

Tiffany VanWinkoop, Simon Fraser University

Recent scholarship has re-examined political ideology and praxis in the Byzantine Empire, proposing that an emperor’s legitimacy was derived from the assent of the people and that consequently the emperor could be removed if popular expectations of virtuous rule were not satisfied. My paper explores the ways in which the ritualized ceremonial calendar may have facilitated a political dialogue between the emperor and his subjects through the example of Michael V’s (c. 1015-1042) failed attempt to sideline Empress Zoe. While imperial ceremonial changed over time, the information contained in the Book of Ceremonies(c. 957) suggests that Michael may have had strategic reasons to time his power play on the week following Easter. In this paper I argue that Michael may have logically utilized ceremonies as a means for the consolidation of his power by way of political alliances and through the ceremonially based propagation of a new imperial image. His power grab would have occurred at the end of Easter celebrations and the start of the new chariot-racing season. This would have provided a logical opportunity to expend the perceived social capital he had accrued during the season’s religious ceremonies and, consequently, present an appealing image of sole rule to the Constantinopolitan public in the Hippodrome. By examining the ritualized protocols presented in the Book of Ceremonies, one can envision the underlying political dialogue which permeated the Byzantine experience, challenging a reductionist view which separates secular political agency from ritual. By setting Michael’s power play on a time and space defined by the Book of Ceremonies, one can see how ceremonies may have served as pivotal moments of political decision-making, bringing an aspiring sole emperor and his future subjects closer. Although Michael ultimately failed, his posited attempt at “dialogue” with the city’s population challenges scholarship to consider the role of ceremonies in the generation of political consensus.

Ioannes III Batatzes’s Italian Venture: Byzantine Imperial Revival in Mediterranean Diplomacy

Aleksandar Jovanović, Simon Fraser University

Three Greek letters by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen to the Eastern Roman emperor Ioannes III Batatzes, dating from the year 1250, cast light on the Laskarid involvement in Italian politics outside of the Balkan Peninsula, the traditional sphere of Byzantine influence. In two of the letters, the Holy Roman Emperor informs his son-in-law and ally Ioannes III about the war he is waging against the papal forces in Italy; in the third, Frederick II openly appeals to his Byzantine counterpart not to engage in unionist negotiations with the Holy See. Examining the content of these three letters, I suggest, helps us to redefine the role that the Laskarid polity played in the wider Mediterranean world of the mid-13th century. In this paper, I focus on the Italian case in order to illustrate that the Laskarid Roman Empire was an active political agent that sought to influence the politics of polities well outside its assumed political sphere of interest.

The Italian example allows us to understand that the Byzantine Empire of Ioannes III Batatzes and his successors had enough vigor and resilience from the 1240s to the 1280s to project an image of itself as a dominant power invested in determining international affairs throughout Christendom. By reading Frederick II’s letters to Ioannes III vis-à-vis the papal records regarding the Byzantine Empire, as well as the epistolary output of Byzantine secular and ecclesiastic officials to such places as Italy and Cyprus, I further contextualize the relations between the two emperors in order to improve our understanding of Mediterranean diplomacy and the prominent position the Byzantine Empire maintained in this part of the world after 1204. Ultimately, focusing specifically on Ioannes III Batatzes’s venture in Italy allows us to recognize a continuity in Byzantine imperialist endeavours to shape the Apennine affairs from Manuel I Komnenos’s Italian campaign of 1155–1156 until Michael VIII Palaiologos’s endorsement of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282.

Donning Effeminacy to Challenge Imperial Rule: the Gendered Politics of Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus

Alexander Grammatikos, Langara College

Picking up upon one of the conferences key themes – “Adults in the Room” – I examine Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus, a play in which the titular character acts decidedly un-adultlike in his role as Assyria’s leader, much to the dismay of his attendants and followers. For readers and audiences of Byron’s play, Sardanapalus both entices and frustrates. On the one hand, the Assyrian king’s desire to overcome the dictates of imperial politics and maintain peaceful rule—he tells his Greek lover Myrrha, “I cannot go on multiplying empires” (I.ii.550)— renders him a sympathetic, even admirable character. On the other hand, his excessive revelling and unfaithfulness to his wife expose his pacifist philosophy for what it really is: more selfish impulse than commitment to the greater good of his community.

A major sticking point for many of the characters in the play is Sardanapalus’s gender and how it affects his ability to rule: specifically, while his society demands a hyper-masculinized ruler willing to perpetuate the cycle of violence which ensures Assyria’s continued survival and expansion, Byron portrays an effeminate Sardanapalus who favours luxurious banquets in place of imperial politics. For those working in Sardanapalus’s administration, it is their leader’s gender which makes him an ineffective ruler, one incapable of making the kinds of decisions that are vital for the survival of the empire. In this presentation, I discuss Sardanapalus’s examination of how prominently gender figures in societal assessments of leadership, both in the past and present. More, my paper examines how femininity might be said to question and challenge masculine discourses of empire, if it can be said to do so at all.

Army commanders as managers of demotic power in Byzantium: Debate, persuasion, and politics among the genos stratiotikon

Dimitris Krallis, Simon Fraser University

The protean polymath, historian, and courtier, Michael Psellos, coined an expression, which to this day influences, to a degree, readings of the Byzantine eleventh century. In discussing the crisis that engulfed the polity of the Medieval Romans in his time he noted that much of it was down to the competition between the genos politikon and the genos stratiotikon. Two factions, one military and one civilian were imagined as competitors, their struggle for power causing the stress that nearly broke the Roman polity in the era before the Crusades. In this paper I look at the army, what we could indeed describe as a military family – a genos stratiotikon – and examine the ways in which it was eminently political in its operations. Specifically, I focus on army commanders and examine the attributes valued in them as leaders of men. In doing so I suggest that oratorical skill, an ability govern men, convincing them on the rightness of a course of action and leading them in the field – much like a politician operating in civilian contexts – were all skills and virtues deemed essential for military leaders. I therefore suggest that in examining the world inhabited by the genos stratiotikon, we are in effect entering a profoundly political and discursive space, that needs to be studied carefully if we are better to understand the nature of politics in the Medieval Roman polity. 

Tactical Urbanism and Grassroots Initiatives in Byzantine Athens

Fotini Kondyli, University of Virginia

Inspired by the naissance of several grassroots urban initiatives and people’s  increased participation in the revival of Greek cities during the recent economic crisis, I discuss how cities function as key stages of political action by exploring urban developments in relation to cities’ political and socio- economic structures. To offer a more diachronic perspective on the dynamics between social processes, political action, and spatial form, I turn my attention to Byzantine cities.

The biographies of Byzantine cities available in scholarship are often written from an elite perspective in which cities are understood primarily as the product of imperial will and elite activity. In such narratives, the role of ordinary people in city making is rarely considered.  Using Middle Byzantine Athens as an example and relying mainly on the excavation results on the Athenian Agora, I examine small-scale acts of urban transformation that participated in place making practices and the formation of a collective identity. Furthermore, I consider how such experiences informed ordinary people’s networks of social and political interaction and their political agency in Byzantine cities. These informal, non-monumental and even temporary changes to the Byzantine built environment resonate with citizen interventions in modern cities which, while aiming at improving the quality of urban living, they also have political dimensions.

At the crossroads between economic theory and policy proposal: Gustav’s Cassel evolving formulation of Purchasing Power Parity Theory in the context political debate of the 1920’s

José Bruno Fevereiro, Open University

This paper reviews the main aspects underlying the development and the evolution of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory of Foreign Exchange Rates by Swedish economist Gustav Cassel. Initially advanced by him during the First World War, in general terms, PPP theory advocates that movements in exchange rates between two countries are determined by the relation between domestic and foreign commodity prices. At a time of high levels of inflation and of volatility in exchange rates, the formulation of PPP theory elevated Cassel’s name to world fame, whose influence in the international debate could only be rivalled by that of John Maynard Keynes. The early 1920’s would see Cassel take part of several expert panels and commission of the League of Nations, while it tried to develop a framework of international policy coordination and re-establishment of the Gold Standard. In this latter stage, Cassel’s use of PPP theory changed considerably. Rather than being perceived as a positive theory of exchange rate determination, PPP theory assumed a normative role in the context of the debate of the return to the Gold Standard, where PPP indexes should be used as a benchmark for establishment of new gold parities  (and, thus, fixing foreign exchange rates at a new level).  In this process, Cassel had to introduce several auxiliary hypotheses to his formulation of the theory. This paper aims to review this transformation through Lakatos framework of Methodology of Scientific Research Program (MSRP). The analysis through the lens of MSRP enables one to better understand the rise and eventual decline of importance held by PPP theory in the academic and policy debates of the 1920’s. I argue that while the introduction of these adjustments made his formulation of the theory logically more consistent, it also insulated the core theoretical propositions from falsification, without increasing the empirical content of the theory. As such, it represented a degenerative ‘problem shift’.

Spolia, Imagination and Economic Texts

Costis Repapis, Goldsmiths, University of London

This paper will attempt to form a connection across three disparate fields. First it will argue that Fridrich Schlegel (1772-1829) had a consistent and modern view on the importance of the fragment in understanding contemporary reality. This view defines the romantic perspective, and imbues the objects or text it glorifies with a meaning that is suggestive rather than definite. From these tentative remarks the presentation will move to the Arch of Constantine in Rome, build during (or before?) the 4th century AD, and will discuss both the use of spolia as fragments that display their association with their past, and as promises that these will become a basis for some new symbolism pregnant of an imagined future. From this application of Schlegel’s remarks onto the history of viewing the arch, I move to Keynes’ General Theory, in order to see how a text, like an architectural object, can display references as spolia of a past and of a future at the same time. Through its explicitly disjoined message, the General Theory steeps the reader in the context that these references bring with them, and they take as given in order to construct an understanding of the text. This process, by refocusing the attention from the fragmentary text and its incomplete meaning back to the reader and the interpretive tools they bring with them or/and ‘discover’ in an implied form in the text allows the reader to imagine new spaces of meaning and build new understandings in their quest to decode contemporary economic reality.

Liberalism in the era of pandemia

George N. Politis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Is the lockdown a liberal or illiberal political measure?  What are the political conclusions that we can draw by comparing different state approaches to the coronavirus? During the first weeks following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, postmodern intellectuals proclaimed the end of capitalism, globalization and liberalism. The same people today support that the pandemia signalfies the limits of capitalism; it forms the tombstone of capitalism, globalization and liberalism altogether. In my presentation, I will argue that many of the popular and popularized arguments regarding liberalism and capitalism in the era of pandemia are the sheer product of ignorance and confusion about the precise meaning of the terms.

Locke’s and Rawls’ social contract theories: state of nature, original position and the veil of ignorance

Dimitra Vagena, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

This presentation will compare John Locke’s and John Rawls’ social contract theories. Firstly, it is explained how Locke uses the idea of property in order to describe how the social contract leads from the state of nature to political societies. Then, it is described how Rawls builds on the idea of justice to build his social contract, using the veil of ignorance to explain the transition from the original state to a fair society. The comparison between the two theories is based on examining how Locke’s state of nature and Rawls’ original position differ from one another and how the emphasis on the idea of property and the idea of justice, in each case, lead to different social contracts. Finally, it is demonstrated that the veil of ignorance makes Rawls’ method a totally new point of view of social contract theory and, therefore, to his perspective of political liberalism.

What makes politics possible? An inquiry into the ontological foundations of the political

Panagiotis Vezyrgiannis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

That human beings transcend their animal physis is revealed by their having of politics. Being political is to belong to a polis. A polis is not a spatial entity but first and foremost an understanding of what it means to be a part of it, i.e. an understanding of the totality of the subtle meanings that comprise it. In my talk I will make an attempt to describe the ontology of the human being on the basis of which it can exist with others, relate to others and exercise politics. The analysis will base itself on the fundamental existential structure of Βeing-with as an a priori necessity for any form of relationship. Afterwards I will explain how modern ideas of the self and society undermine political harmony and in effect the role of politics in our lives. That will drive us to the conclusion that the modern viewpoint, one which is still celebrated by many, should be thought through in a serious manner.

The goal of the talk is to uncover a primordial way of understanding political behavior. To be a person means to be a nexus in a network of foundationally relevant relationships.

Debunking popular myths about fascism

Myron Zacharakis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

In the modern era, we still live in the shadow of World War II and its results for the humanity. The fear of war crimes and in particular the Holocaust, remains still fresh in our memory. Therefore, the concept of fascism exists in our minds as a “taboo word” and it is one of the most used and –one could say- abused words of our political vocabulary. Today almost every political tendency tries to manipulate this particular term, in order to give a stigma in its ideological opponents. So it is a unique advantage for a politician, to manage to accuse others for a political behavior that seems to remind of fascist dictators. The problem is that this usually manipulates and limits the academic research of fascism too, suggesting some “myths” that it is tough to be doubted. In this paper, we will try to debunk some of those “myths”.

D. Hume and J.J. Rousseau on Private Property

Vassiliki Baka, University of the Peloponnese

This presentation aims to analyze the concept of property according to Hume and Rousseau, focusing on their views on private property, its origins, its practice within a social contract and its relevance to the principles of equality, freedom and justice. More specifically, in Hume’s account, society underlies property which is indissolubly connected with justice (A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739-40). Similarly, Rousseau considers property to be under the protection of the social contract, with man’s consent (The Social Contract, 1762). Nevertheless, Rousseau’s work includes both a severe criticism of private property as the principal reason of inequality (Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1754) and an acknowledgment of private property as the most important of all citizens' rights (Discourse on Political Economy, 1755). In the end, and through Rousseau’s seemingly contradictory observations, the two philosophers inferred that private property, in certain conditions, could protect individual liberty.