Medea the Refugee, Review of Politics (summer 2020)

This paper examines the construction of the identity of the foreigner in Euripides’ Medea and the modern immigrant, refugee, or asylum-seeker. I argue that this identity is not static but in constant flux. The foreigner is the object of desire – of exotic and even erotic fantasy – at the same time as representing great danger both to the physical citizen body as well as the body of culture itself. At the darker end of the spectrum, the constructions of the refugee become a great source of anxiety – they are ‘barbarian’ – ‘cruel’, ‘deceitful’, and always ready to take advantage of the ‘good citizen’ to stage new acts of evil and to enact new spectacles of terror. When they are not plotting destruction they are victims – voiceless and powerless, powerless against even their own barbaric ways. In both Euripides’ text and in the modern political theatre, both constructions require control and are used to justify the enactment of regimes of power. Just as the refugee’s identity is constructed, so is that of authority and the state, often portraying themselves as defensive subjects, non-violent, and acting only to protect those within. The paper concludes noting the very real risks that these constructions carry by fuelling the volatile politics of race and breeding new generations of discontent.

History of Political Thought, 2015

This article explores the political implications of Euripides’ Medea. Drawing on Aristotle’s and Nietzsche’s readings of Euripidean tragedy, I will show that Euripides’ play brings to the attention of its audience that the Greek democratic ideal of persuasion can also be used by a foreign woman in her demand for justice. Thus, Euripides at once advocates the civic ideals of the Athenian polis and points to its injustices, in particular with regard to women and ‘barbarian’ foreigners. But at the same time, Euripides emphasizes that Medea’s politics of violent revenge demonstrates not only the error in her judgment (hamartia) but also the deeply wounded moral psychology of the oppressed and marginalised people. The article finally examines the contributions of Euripides’ tragic storytelling to political theory and democratic citizenship with particular reference to the concepts of justice, hospitality, compassion and ‘enlarged mentality’.

The Body Speaketh: Interrogating Cultural Constructions of the Body, 2017

The seclusion of women from the Athenian stage was an extension of the Greek ideology of gender in which the woman was often defined by the rhetoric of absence. Euripides’ plays, however, consistently seek an alternative signifying system that could articulate women’s experiences. His Corinthian women support Medea with an ode, rejecting male literary traditions. Apollo had not given the gift of song to women, they protest, for if he had, women would have “found themes for poems/ And countered with our epics against men”, showing that “time is old, and in his store of tales/ Men figure no less famous/ Or infamous than women” (426-430). This remarkable critique of phallogocentrism is also an impassioned plea for the woman to inscribe herself in language, to ‘write’ herself into symbolic discourse. While recent research on gender in Euripides has pointed out how Euripidean drama often disrupts traditional gender roles, there has been no substantial study of the ‘absent presence’ of women’s bodies in these narratives. My paper shall examine the deconstruction of the Greek ideology of presence through a close reading of Euripides’ Medea.

Medea was produced in 431 BC as part of a tetralogy which also contained Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyr-play Th eristae (' Reapers '). Euripides won the third prize, which is suggestive of his lesser popularity during his own lifetime. Nonetheless, ever since antiquity, Medea has remained a highly infl uential play, while there is concrete evidence for the reception of Philoctetes in later literary criticism and of Dictys in fourth-century iconography. 1 As with most Euripidean tetralogies , the three tragedies belong to diff erent myths (unlike Aeschylean tetralogies , whose tragedies derive from successive phases of the same legend). Th is chapter sets out to explore certain common underlying themes, which, despite the plot diff erences, pervade the plays of this tetralogy . I shall argue that the tragedies are conceptually interrelated by means of the key notions of exile and otherness and shall investigate the manner in which these ideas are embedded within their contemporary sociopolitical and cultural context.

2020

Although students and scholars alike know well that ancient Greece was immensely misogynist and patriarchal, nevertheless, there have been numerous attempts to retrieve voices from the classical world at least empathetic to the plight of women. Frequently these attempts turned out to be abject failures. However, many continue to peruse the Greek literary tradition, and archaeological remains for non-misogynist voices. Euripides, at least within reasonably recent history, is for many just such a voice. Medea is one of the first feminist characters in Western literature, which involves the recognition of a significant cultural shift. Euripides'<i> Medea</i> indeed questions contemporary beliefs and standards in ancient Greek society, substantially those of the heroic masculine ethic. Still, it did so at the expense of women, not in their support. Through this paper, I would like to show the depiction of the women situation in ancient Greek and how Medea, as a female pr...

Eminently an Athenian institution, Greek ancient theatre addressed fifth century B.C. social and political issues by resorting to mythical figures. More than a show, it stood for a way of reuniting Athenians around representations of Greek society and of the confrontation between the social categories and ethnic groups that were brought face to face within the settings of a prolonged war. With the Peloponnesian conflict opposing the Athenians to other Greek cities, identity – be it ethnic or of gender – was continuously questioned. Both in tragedy and comedy, the individual underwent a series of transformations which forced him or her to continuously reaffirm and prove his or her identity. Analysing a series of Euripidian tragedies we note that as opposed to reality where only men went to war, women were represented as the primary perpetrators of violence and murder, in a context of treachery and occult practices. Such is the case of Medea, the Barbarian princess who, upon Jason’s infidelity and her imminent marriage dissolution, decides to murder her own children in order to take revenge on her faulty husband. Her position is not unlike that of the Greek princess Iphigenia who finds herself alone in a barbarian land in Tauris and is forced to sacrifice her own people, i.e. the Greek captured in the barbarian lands, to the goddess Artemis. These two examples allow us to address the issues of self-agency and of the construction of individual identity. While in both cases a woman is considered to be vulnerable if she is living among strangers with no husband and no friends and thus she needs to resort to violence to reassert her identity, Euripides seems to rank these women on the basis of ethnic criteria. While Medea is a Barbarian who kills her own children, Iphigenia is a Greek princess with high-valued function and status that explain her killings. By cross-examining these examples with the historical context of the Peloponnesian war, this paper will try to re-evaluate the representation of gender identity in the ancient Greek theatrical speech in the light of the intersection of ethnic, geographic and social standing criteria. Key words : identity, gender, ethnicity, geography, social standing, Greek theatre, Euripides, Medea, Iphigenia

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International Journal of Applied Educational Research (Online), 2024

In Greek tragedy, murder is one of the most common forms of transgression. Parents and their offspring kill each other, as violence is turned towards indiscriminate victims. Yet, crimes committed by men and those committed by women appear to have different origins. Analysing a series of Euripidian tragedies that display murder among members of the same family, one remarks that men seem to act primarily upon a divine command/demand, while women act without any human or divine assistance. Indeed, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter at Artemis’ demand; Heracles kills his entire family under the influence of Lysa, send by Hera; Orestes kills his mother, following Apollo’s oracle and his sister’s Electra encouragements. On the contrary, Medea slaughters her own children in order to take revenge of her husband Jason, and Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon to avenge the death of Iphigenia and the arrival of Cassandra. Both wives appeal to their victims through a seductive speech and behaviour. Such a polarisation seems to indicate that, in tragedy, violence is shaped on the basis of the antagonist construction of the masculine and feminine genders: while men appear to be more receptive to the gods’ demands and to act violently only under their agency, women’s violence seems to have internal and independent origins. Yet Agave’s example, who kills her son while in a delirious state induced by Dionysos, combines the two aforementioned patterns. Although “The Bacchae” can be considered a tragedy of disorder and inversion, it also gives us a clue of the importance of criteria such as at ethnic identity in the expression of violence. By cross-examining these examples with the historical context of the Peloponnesian war, this paper will try to re-evaluate the discursive construction of violence in the light of the intersection of gender and ethnic discriminations. Keywords: divine agency, Greek tragedy, ethnicity, gender.

Conflict and Competition: Agon in Western Greece: Selected Essays from the 2019 Symposium on the Heritage of Western Greece, 2020

In this paper we attempt a tentative answer to the following question: in Trojan Women, is Euripides criticizing a certain degeneration of agonism ― something we could label as “‘asymmetric conflict”’? Why this question? Trojan Women are well known as a powerful tragic play, which puts on stage the condition of the enslaved (and barbaric, to a Greek eye) women of Troy. Interpretations and academic studies of Trojan Women are more than abundant, given the undoubtable value of the play. Our tentative attempt does not gain inspiration by secondary literature about the play, but from a problem that we face nowadays and that seems to be displayed in this classical tragedy.