SUBJECT: GREEK NATIONALISTS HAD UNWITTINGLY FAILLEN INTO A TRAP
posted by Taralinga
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This had far-reaching ramifications in construction of the Greek nationa identity. In succumbing to the influence of Western thought,, Greek nationalists had unwittingly failen into a trap; "the ancestral holiness of the Greeks and the current polution of their Turkishness are mutually analogous in that both are western discourses that exclude Greece from the European structures of power" (Herzfeld 1887;108). In the valorization of ancient Greece, its present squalor was made all the more obvious, but to accept the situation and acknowledge
forein influence would be to admit a historical taint and discontinuity with classical Greece. One could not claime the past witout bringing to the for the disappointment of the present. This disappointment was a resuilt of what had made Greek society most 'IMPURE'-centurries of Turkish 9and even BYZANTINE0 rul, whose influence on Greece's 'CULTTURAL HERITAGE CONSTITUTES A DEEP-VEINEDINPERFECTION IN THE MARMORIAL hELLENIC IMAGE' HERZFELD 1987;20
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