Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity

by Sarah F. Derbew

How should articulations of blackness from the fifth century BCE to the twenty-first century be properly read and interpreted? This important and timely new book is the first concerted treatment of black skin color in the Greek literature and visual culture of antiquity. In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Sarah Derbew dexterously disentangles the complex and varied ways in which blackness has been co-produced by ancient authors and artists; their readers, audiences, and viewers; and contemporary scholars. Exploring the precarious hold that race has on skin coloration, the author uncovers the many silences, suppressions, and misappropriations of blackness within modern studies of Greek antiquity. Shaped by performance studies and critical race theory alike, her book maps out an authoritative archaeology of blackness that reappraises its significance. It offers a committedly anti-racist approach to depictions of black people while rejecting simplistic conflations or explanations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2022

Reviews

[D. Haddad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh nuances to Classics studies:

Everyone who studies and teaches about ancient Greece and Mediterranean culture should read this. While grad students and scholars may get the most out of it, I do think it's written clearly on complex ideas, while examining various types of ancient evidence in careful ways. So college students and anyone interested in learning about ancient Greco-Roman history and literature will appreciate this book, too. I love how the author explores both literary and archaeological/artistic evidence with fascinating insights and details explored, and demonstrates how Americans' racial history, slavery, and ideology does not neatly map onto ancient peoples' understandings of skin color, yet our modern forms of racism have affected how we discuss, learn, and think about race in the pre-modern world.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity Derbew explores documentation around black representation in Ancient Grecian works. Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity by Sarah F. Derbew was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press (ISBN:9781108495288) and retails for $25.99. The book features an exploration of the topic of race, specifically blackness, in ancient Greece through the framework of Critical Race Theory in order to gain a deeper understanding of ancient and modern interpretations of race and the roles it played in society. She further explores how the concepts and understandings of blackness in Greece influence modern day practices and understandings in a variety of different subjects.
Derbew thoroughly explores her own positionality in her research as well as the historical positionality of the topic. She explains how the historical implications of different terms effect what words she uses and the thought process and research that she utilizes throughout the book. This exploration is necessary in helping the reader to be able to better comprehend the terminology used throughout the books and prevents misconceptions or misunderstandings around topics that could be contested.
She begins her explorations focusing on the modern terminology around janiform cups being derogative towards the darker skinned individual on them, which she feels gives a disservice to the historical meaning of the cups as well as their usage. This derogatory terminology also has implications in how we view these items and how we view ancient Greek ideologies around blackness equating it to modern interpretations of blackness. She also explore the position of Nubia in modern museums and how frequently Nubia is incorporated into other exhibits or placed as a subordinate and how due to this it is not held in value. She examines this through a critical racial lens exploring how part of this is because of the “blackness” of the Nubians and how it allows for a conflation of “white” success and power over the proverbial “other”.
Next she explore the presence of blackness in literature from the period. While Derbew explains there is little explicit statement of race in Greek Literature of the period she explore the way in which the inherent idea of race is intwined throughout theatrical performances of the pieces as well as how this implies that race was not viewed in the same way as it is viewed today. Through this she discusses occasions where the norm of having black skin represent men and white skin representing woman is broken and the possible reasons and implications of this as well as its interaction with class. She also explore the way in which Greek writers of antiquity were hesitant to define people based on the color of their skins and instead focused on a variety of intersectional identities when discussing groups of people, though the naming of the groups (such as the Aithiopian’s) typically stemmed from skin color. Overall she condemns the generalization that frequently happens around objects from the Mediterranean portraying blackness, and hopes to have them further analyzed in a framework that takes into account and disregards modern day interpretations of not only blackness, but race and a singular phenotype of the Grecians as a whole.
Throughout the book Derbew provided good background information and used a variety of different sources and theories to further her point. She wove modern day and historical information and literature together seamlessly to create a larger picture of interpretation of race. She broke her argument down by focusing on a different representation of race in each chapter, beginning with an exploration of the janiform cups in the first chapter and in the next three examining three distinct stories from Greek antiquity that explore or have implications about race. This structuring made her argument easy to follow and provided a clear path for her points to connect to form a large picture. I especially appreciated the way in which she explained how a more modern context effects the way that we are able to understand the concept of race and blackness. She details not only how the modern context influences our view but how the specific contextualization and terminology used around objects and literature can encourage the reader or the viewer to interpret them in a specific way, a way which currently tends to look poorly on races outside of the majority.
Though did incorporate examples throughout her argument in a way that was conducive to understanding at times it seems as though she gets lost in the artifact and has a tangential argument or exploration that she implements. This distracted from her overall thesis and at times made the book a little difficult to follow. In her exploration specifically around the janiform cups Derbew pulled many examples but explores the same concept on all of them where as she could have instead explored other similar objects that added new elements to her exploration. A final critique of Derbew’s work was in some of her connections to modern day pieces seemed arbitrary and at times it felt as though she was forcing them in with little to no connection.
Despite this Derbew frames the idea of blackness in Greek Antiquity in an accessible way with many examples that allow for further exploration of the topic. She accomplishes her thesis and pushes the reader to examine not only the modern day understanding of blackness in Greek antiquity but also challenges the reader to better understand and question the context in which they receive information about Greek antiquity.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first published review!

https://crossworks.holycross.edu/necj...