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Classical heritage and European identities
Introducing the Danish case
A large sign, carrying the blue and yellow insignia of the European Union (EU), greets visitors to the Athenian Acropolis, announcing in capital letters in Greek and English that “Europe starts here!” (Figure 1.1). The accompanying text spells out the long-term significance of the site for European identity (in the singular): “The Acropolis and its surrounding Archaeological Sites, the heart of Ancient Athens, is the place where the most essential aspects of the European identity emerged: Democracy, Philosophy, Theatre, Sciences, Arts.”1 The sign is a material manifestation of the fact that ancient Athens as a whole is the recipient of the European Heritage Label, instituted by the EU in 2013 and given to sites that are identified as having an intrinsic, symbolic value to European history.
The Acropolis sign, the heritage label that it represents, as well as the evocation of similar themes in the House of European History in Brussels are potent reminders of the continuous investment in classical (Greek and Roman) antiquity as a seemingly positive and harmonious foundation story in European history, in contrast to the dark and antagonistic heritage attributed to, for example, the Second World War or the Cold War. Official visits to Athens by Emmanuel Macron and Barack Obama in 2016 and 2017 respectively further demonstrate the level of this symbolic and political investment in Greece as the place where European and, by seemingly straightforward extension, Western civilisation began – a story that is also perpetuated in academic work (for example Meier 2011). In their public speeches in Athens, both the French and the US presidents construed Greece as the birthplace of Western democracy. Macron even linked the glory of Greece’s past with the future of Europe – a statement that carried both symbolic potency and urgency when seen in light of the many political crises that currently face the continent.2
The European (and, more broadly, Western) use of classical antiquity as a role model that is evident in both the Acropolis sign and the presidents’
Figure 1.1 Europe starts here! European Heritage Label at the entrance to the South Slope of the Athenian Acropolis, January 2018
Athenian speeches has origins going back to the Renaissance, when Italian humanists turned the rediscovery of ancient texts into a new culture and aesthetics (Baker 2015). Classicism, defined as applying models from classical antiquity in a prescriptive sense, developed from the Renaissance and especially over the course of the “long” nineteenth century from the French Revolution to the First World War into one of the most influential discourses through which notions of civilisation, nationhood, citizenship and identity were mirrored, constructed and prescribed. (Marchand 1996; Fögen and Warren 2016). In this period, European art, architecture, science, education and civic institutions consciously evoked the diverse heritages of Greek and Roman antiquity, developing a shared, symbolic language that connected the contemporary ambitions of individual nations and their institutions with the seemingly eternal glory and grandeur of the classical past (Silk et al. 2014; see Raabyemagle and Smidt 1998 for Danish examples). Models from classical antiquity – not least the ideology of Roman imperialism – became powerful instruments in the administration of European colonies around the world, legitimising practices such as slavery and racism (Goff 2005; Bradley 2010). During the first part of the twentieth century, the appropriation of classical antiquity for political means experienced yet another dark chapter, when the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany actively used classicising models in their propaganda (Nelis 2008; Arthurs 2012). Today, contemporary uses of classical antiquity range from the highly nationalist and racist agendas of right-wing parties such as Greece’s Golden Dawn (Hamilakis 2016) to the universalising and positive image of the “birthplace of Europe” as evoked by Macron, as well as the award of the European Heritage Label to the monuments of ancient Athens at large.
This book examines how different agents and institutions within the Danish nation state have situated themselves within this complex landscape of competing appropriations of classical antiquity from the eighteenth century to the present day. In particular, it focuses on the use of classical heritages to construct both European and national identities (in the plural) and especially on how Danes in this period have engaged with a sense of European commonality through their engagements with the classical past. Although Denmark was never geographically part of the ancient Greek or Roman world, it has a long tradition of employing classicism to provide models for contemporary society, citizenship culture and science. A precursor of this tradition goes back to the Edda of the thirteenth century, when the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) let the Norse gods be descendants of the Trojan kings (Stavnem 2011). Classicism intensified during the Renaissance and became firmly embedded in Danish national institutions from the late eighteenth century onwards. Its continued vitality is contingent on the dynamic adaptation of classical heritages, material as well as immaterial, into Danish cultural identities.
Like other Northern European countries situated beyond the Roman limes and even further away from the pinnacles of Mount Olympus, Denmark developed both a narrative and a habitus that linked itself with classical antiquity, not through some sense of spatial continuity but through its incorporation into an idea of a common European heritage in which Denmark was believed to have an important share. Even if this discourse is centuries old and has never been hegemonic, it continues to shape important aspects of how the Danish nation defines itself. For instance, as we were writing this book, Mette Bock, the current Danish Minister of Culture and Member of Parliament for the Liberal Alliance, declared in an interview with a major newspaper that Danes would benefit from reading more Plato (Kassebeer 2017).
Through its location between continental Europe and the other Nordic countries, Denmark can be seen as a liminal or transitional area that often finds itself split between European and Nordic identities, something that has been evident in Danish politics in the past 50 years, not least in the country’s ambiguous relationship with the EU (Miles and Wivel 2014; Hansen 2001, 2002). Denmark joined the EU (then the European Economic Community) in 1973, but on several occasions the country has rejected closer integration during referendums on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the European Monetary Union in 2000 and the so-called opt-outs in 2015. Furthermore, Denmark’s classical heritage (and by implication, its identity as a European country) has historically competed with Nordic or even entirely national notions of identity, often in complex ways.3 For example, the right-wing nationalist and EU-sceptic Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) has on several occasions defended the place of the classics in Danish education by referring to their role in introducing students more broadly to history and culture, in spite of their otherwise rigid emphasis on what is perceived as specifically Danish heritage, such as the Viking monuments at Jelling (Niklasson and Hølleland 2018).
The central argument of this book is that the continual employment and appropriation of classical heritages in the Danish context constitutes a significant case of an imagined geography, which places the birth of European identity within the culture-historical imaginary of classical antiquity. Through three case studies, we intend to demonstrate how this imagined geography has been embedded and even naturalised in distinctive ways within the educational and heritage sectors. The case studies explore three significant and interrelated arenas in which classical heritages are used to construct particular identities and to shape Danes as European citizens. In the following sections, we lay out the book’s theoretical framework, especially the intersection between classical reception studies and the emerging field of critical heritage studies, as well as the concept of imagined geography and how it is applied in our analysis of the relationship between identity, nationalism and classicism in Denmark. Finally, we turn to the empirical and methodological background for the three case studies.
Classicism as critical heritage
The book implements a critical historiographical perspective in line with recent work in classical reception that has stressed the dialectical relationship between past, present and future (Settis 2006; Martindale 2006; Hardwick and Stray 2008; Prettejohn 2012; Hanink 2017). It thus contributes to a large and growing body of scholarship at the intersection between Classical Studies (in which the study of postantique appropriations of classical antiquity has become increasingly common) and Heritage Studies (which among other things has explored more generally how people use the past to construct particular identities to shape present and future: Smith 2006; Harrison 2013; Macdonald 2013). This section provides a brief overview of some of the key developments in these fields in order to contextual-ise the book’s arguments within their broader theoretical setting.
The study of postantique uses of classical heritage is often carried out under the umbrella of classical reception, implying a passive process of transmission from classical antiquity to more recent periods. There is indeed a long tradition of undertaking studies on the rediscovery of classical antiquity by artists and architects, including in Danish scholarship, where, for example, the grand tour travels of Danish painters and sculptors have been traced in great detail (prominent examples include Nielsen 1990; Bendtsen 1993; Dietz 1999; Christiansen 2000; Fejfer et al. 2003; Nørskov 2008; Nielsen and Rathje 2010). Traditional studies have also investigated collecting practices and the formation of museum collections that forged a material link to the classical past that was not recoverable from the Danish soil (for instance, Krogh and Guldager Bilde 1997; Nørskov 2002; Rasmussen et al. 2000; Moltesen 2012). In the most recent wave of classical reception studies (Martindale 2007, 2013; Hardwick 2003), the scope of the discipline in terms of its material and approach has been substantially broadened. Charles Martindale has highlighted how reception denotes a dynamic and reciprocal process of understanding that “illuminates antiquity as much as modernity” (Martindale 2013, 171). Classical antiquity constantly mutates as we engage with it from our own historical and contextual place in time. In the continually developing process of reception, new and unexplored aspects of antiquity come into focus through the changing contexts of interpretation (Martindale 2013, 181). This more nuanced, critical approach to reception studies is increasingly incorporated into the study of classics. It has transformed the discipline from a positivistic and normative tradition that essentially confirms classical antiquity as a “world that had nurtured civilisations and whose achievements eclipsed anything accomplished by Western Europe until the Renaissance” (Vasunia and Stephens 2010, 3) towards a reflective, post-structural and hermeneutically informed practice that is conscious of its own temporal and cultural situatedness and influence.
Embedded in the above understanding of the reception and use of classical heritage is a notion of time as cyclical. In Salvatore Settis’s thoughtful and in-depth discussion of the complexity of the “classical” as concept and phenomenon (2006), he presents its many meanings and uses as well as underlining cultural preconditions. The concept of classicism as we understand it as synonymous with Greek and Roman culture was not established before the early nineteenth century, but it builds on a conceptualisation of memory and the past that is based on a dichotomy between ancient and modern that developed in the early Renaissance (Settis 2006, 56–99). The idea of rebirth that underpins the idea of classicism – expressed literally in the use of the term Renaissance to denote a historical period – implies death and then recovery, building on an organic idea of life as a model of historical thinking with a rhythmical process of deaths and rebirths. The word classical also implies ideas about values and ideals defining, on the one hand, “first class” and, on the other, a specific aesthetic that is harmonious, balanced and moderate (Settis 2006, 64–65). In this is implied an elitist, Western set of values that has in recent years been questioned. In reception studies, this has been defined as a “democratic turn,” drawing inspiration from postcolonial and feminist theory. The democratic turn entails three perspectives that have been fundamental to current reception studies (Hardwick and Stray 2008, 3). Firstly, it questions the notion of the inherent superiority and normative power of classical culture in the West (Joshel et al. 2001; Cuno 2008; Bilsel 2012); secondly, it investigates and challenges the traditional conceptualisation of classics as belonging exclusively to the elite; and, thirdly, it turns the attention towards how classics has been received and appropriated in much wider social contexts, including outside Europe (Hall 2008; McElduff 2006; Paul 2010, 2013). In this book, we use this scholarship to nuance and contextualise the sometimes narrow and one-dimensional Danish discussions of the value of classical heritage.
We also draw on insights from the emerging field of critical heritage studies in order to provide a broader view of classical antiquity as heritage. Sharon Macdonald defines heritage as places that can be visited; and classical heritage sites are traditionally perceived as places around the Mediterranean, (Macdonald 2013, 23). However, through imagined geography, this concept can be extended to a cognitive and imaginative sphere, as will be discussed below. The concept of critical heritage underscores not only its material aspects but also a critical approach to the inherent valuation that is at the core of sustaining something as heritage (Macdonald 2013, 18). The act of valuating aspects of the past, imbuing them with certain qualities, discursively establishes them as heritage. While the term heritage inherently comprises a central material aspect, the discursive operations inherent in selecting, preserving and perpetuating certain aspects of the past imbue it with an intangible aspect as well, as it becomes a way of understanding the world (Macdonald 2013, 18; Smith 2006, 43). These discursive operations are often implemented in the context of cultural and political institutions such as museums, academia, and the educational sector. Once something is established as “heritage,” it is open to a constant dialectic between cultural and political confirmation and contestation (Smith 2006, 82). This is due to the nature of heritage as always belonging to a specific location and group of people (Macdonald 2013; Smith 2006, 3). Heritage can “turn the past from something that is simply there, or has merely happened, into an arena from which selections can be made and values derived… turning the past into The Past” (Macdonald 2013, 18). In this view, heritage is a production of “The Past” in a given present (Harrison 2013, 32). Such normative views of an authorised heritage discourse have been very influential in the naturalisation of classical heritage in Denmark, as we will see in our case studies, and we will use scholarship from critical heritage studies to interpret the different ways in which different agents – both institutions and individuals – have shaped discourses of classicism in the Danish context.
Imagined geography
In order to grasp the role of classical heritage for identity building in an non-classical country, we have implemented the concept of imagined geography as an analytical tool. The concept provides a framework in which to read and interpret various uses and definitions of classical antiquity observed both in the Danish educational system and more broadly in the cultural heritage sector. We begin with a discussion of the concept of imagined geography, building on work by cultural studies scholar Edward Said and political scientist Benedict Anderson, and we discuss how it can be identified in particular key discourses that relate to classical heritage.
Imaginative geography – a close variant of the term – is used on several occasions in Said’s highly influential Orientalism (Said 1978), although Said refrains from defining the concept explicitly. Said uses “imaginative geography” to refer to a particular way of ascribing meaning to geography on the basis of cultural tropes and in terms of binary oppositions, for example the loaded antithesis of East and West. Such tropes contain numerous layers of ideological baggage and constitute ways of naturalising a particular world view based on factoids (Said 1978, 71). Through imaginative geography, European scholars and artists have for centuries described the Near East as undeveloped and eternally Other. Orientalism is an exploration of what Said calls the “essential motifs of European imaginative geography” (Said 1978, 57). He traces such motifs in a range of different contexts that in effect constitute a highly toxic form of geographical determinism, which has important implications in the present. Said’s work has been criticised for its focus on textual constructions of Orientalism, but it serves as a starting point for this discussion of the relationship between power and knowledge.
In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson’s equally influential study of the origins of nationalism in the late eighteenth century, the nation is characterised as “an imagined political community” (Anderson 2016, 6; on its influence on Danish historiography, see Mentz 2004). Anderson continues: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 2016, 6). The communities of the nation state are thus bound together through shared narratives, images and, indeed, myths. One particularly useful aspect of Anderson’s work in this context is the power with which the act of “imagining” is imbued: It is seemingly able to justify colossal sacrifices, notably in the service of state-sponsored violence. Although Anderson did not write his work from a postmodernist perspective, a pertinent influ...
