Σεμινάριο ΚΕΕΛΓ: "Recognition and Imbalances of Power: Honour Relations and Slaves’ Claims vis-à-vis Their Masters" (Mirko Canevaro, 10/3/2022)

 

Το Κέντρο Ερεύνης της Ελληνικής και Λατινικής Γραμματείας της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών, στο πλαίσιο του μηνιαίου σεμιναρίου του (Freedom & Unfreedom in the Ancient World), σας προσκαλεί στη διαδικτυακή διάλεξη:

Mirko Canevaro (Professor of Greek History, University of Edinburgh)

Recognition and Imbalances of Power: Honour Relations and Slaves’ Claims vis-à-vis Their Masters

Πέμπτη, 10 Μαρτίου, 5-7μμ

 

Περίληψη

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

 

 

Ημερομηνία: 
10/03/2022
Είδος Ανακοίνωσης: 
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