• Global Classics
• Shadi Bartsch

what does it mean to speak of “global Classics” in the “post-COVID era?” Reaching the post-COVID period may have eluded us, but the notion of a global Classics—Classics as it is received outside the West—has been a topic of serious interest in the field over the past decade, even in advance of the new opportunities for conferences and conversations across time zones made possible by Zoom and the virtual office.¹ Paradoxically enough, the question of how to read—and interpret—the texts of the Classical tradition in a globalized world arises just as the field is facing critique from within, as texts once standard in university curricula are condemned for their historical use in the service of empire, expansion, ideology, and propping up hierarchies of class, race, and gender. Can a globalized Classics help to redress this heritage in generating new and different readings beyond the confines of national boundaries, and in so doing demonstrate that these texts have the potential to engage with us—and others—in meaningful ways that need not repeat the interpretive limitations imposed on them over history?

Varying issues arise, of course, depending on how we define “globalized Classics.” At a 2019 conference on “Classics and Global Humanities” at the University of Ghana,² (non-globalized) Classics’ involvement in the ideologies of colonialism was openly acknowledged, but new frameworks were also suggested within which these texts could speak to topics relevant to the present, spurring readers to discuss such subjects as academic freedom and politics, race in the canon, citizenship and migration, globalization and education, [End Page 33] and more.³ As Erin Mee (2010: 314) puts it in her review essay of Classics in Post-colonial Worlds and Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora, “What better way to challenge colonialism (either before, during, or after the ‘official’ period of colonization) than by using the very tools that colonial powers used to justify their cultural superiority and therefore their dominance?”⁴ Other voices agree: Classics may be a canon, but it does not speak with one voice—possibly one of the very conditions that have let these texts negotiate and survive different historical eras. The depth and pliability of these texts belies their status as canonical; as Sarah Humphreys and Rudolf Wagner put it (2013: 2): “Even the most rigid system of discursive control and imposed orthodoxy never managed fully to silence the specific voices of these ‘classics.’ They retained their potential as a challenge to any given present.” Reinterpreting the Western canon, then, might spur a fruitful debate in an international context, as in Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie’s important volume Classics in Post-colonial Worlds (2007), which includes case studies from countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe as well as from India and Iraq. Here we see the see Classical texts being reoriented to speak to more national concerns. The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, the first edited collection to discuss the performance of Greek drama across the Americas, came out in 2015. Its essays focus on how engagements with the Classics at multiple levels have differed from each other—and from prior European engagements.

We might push still further: can global Classics be more global still? Of course. Recent work on global Classics has moved away from bringing a unitary canon into the discursive practices mentioned above to embracing instead a dynamic canon that emphasizes cultural multiplicity; one might consider Gregory Crane’s 2020 essay on “Greek, Latin, and a Global Dialogue among Civilizations” as one example of this turn.⁵ This multicultural perspective encourages students to distance themselves from assumptions born of their own traditions. On this view, a global Classics should orient itself, not towards the [End Page 34] question of how to teach Western texts across the globe, even in the service of current sociopolitical views, but rather should advance the coexistence of national or indigenous texts of historical value in their own cultures that will now be taught in a space free of hierarchical assumptions (so is the hope). Presumably, such a program would flatten the literary...

• 全球经典
• 沙迪巴奇

在“后COVID时代”谈论“全球经典”是什么意思？我们可能无法进入后 COVID 时期，但在过去十年中，即使在新机遇出现之前，全球经典的概念——西方以外的经典——一直是该领域的一个热门话题Zoom 和虚拟办公室使跨时区的会议和对话成为可能。¹矛盾的是，如何在全球化世界中阅读和解释古典传统文本的问题出现在该领域正面临来自内部的批评时，因为曾经是大学课程标准的文本因其在服务中的历史用途而受到谴责帝国、扩张、意识形态，并支持阶级、种族和性别的等级制度。全球化的经典能否帮助纠正这一传统，在国界之外产生新的和不同的阅读，并以此证明这些文本有可能以有意义的方式与我们和其他人互动，而无需重复解释历史上对他们施加的限制？

当然，取决于我们如何定义“全球化经典”，会出现不同的问题。在加纳大学举行的 2019 年“经典与全球人文”会议上，公开承认² （非全球化）经典与殖民主义意识形态的关系，但也提出了新的框架，这些文本可以在其中涉及相关主题到现在，促使读者讨论学术自由与政治、经典种族、公民身份与移民、全球化与教育、[End Page 33]等话题。³正如 Erin Mee (2010: 314) 在她的评论文章中所说的：后殖民世界的经典和黑色爱琴海的十字路口：俄狄浦斯、安提戈涅和非洲侨民的戏剧, “有什么比使用殖民列强用来证明其文化优势和统治地位的工具更好的方式来挑战殖民主义（在‘正式’殖民时期之前、之中或之后）？” ⁴其他声音也同意：经典可能是经典，但它不会以一种声音说话——这可能是让这些文本在不同历史时代协商和生存的条件之一。这些文本的深度和可塑性掩盖了它们作为规范的地位。正如莎拉·汉弗莱斯 (Sarah Humphreys) 和鲁道夫·瓦格纳 (Rudolf Wagner) 所说 (2013: 2)：“即使是最严格的话语控制系统和强加的正统观念，也无法完全压制这些‘经典’的特定声音。他们保留了自己的潜力，可以挑战任何给定的礼物。” 因此，重新解释西方经典可能会在国际背景下引发富有成果的辩论，例如 Lorna Hardwick 和 Carol Gillespie 的重要著作《后殖民世界经典》(2007)，其中包括来自南非和津巴布韦等国家以及印度和伊拉克的案例研究。在这里，我们看到古典文本被重新定位，以表达更多国家关注的问题。《美洲希腊戏剧牛津手册》于 2015 年出版，这是第一个讨论美洲希腊戏剧表演的编辑合集。它的文章侧重于在多个层面上与经典的接触是如何相互不同的——以及从之前的欧洲交往。

我们可能会更进一步：全球经典还能更全球化吗？当然。最近关于全球经典的工作已经从将单一的经典带入上述话语实践中，转而采用强调文化多样性的动态经典；人们可以将 Gregory Crane 2020 年关于“希腊语、拉丁语和不同文明之间的全球对话”的文章视为这一转变的一个例子。⁵这种多元文化视角鼓励学生远离源于他们自己传统的假设。在这个观点上，一个全球经典应该以自己为导向，而不是朝向[完第 34 页]如何在全球范围内教授西方文本的问题，即使是为当前的社会政治观点服务，而是应该促进具有历史价值的民族或本土文本在他们自己的文化中的共存，这些文本现在将在一个没有等级假设的空间中教授（希望也是如此）。据推测，这样的程序会使文学...