Classical Philology and Racism: A Historiographical Critique of Bernal's Black Athena and the Assumption That the Nineteenth-century Classical Philology Was Strongly Governed by Racism
In this paper I show that the nineteenth century classical philology was much less governed by racist values than Martin Bernal argued in his Black Athena (1987) and which many thereafter assume to have been the case. I criticize Bernal’s lack of evidence and examine a number of thinkers and texts...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Athens Institute for Education and Research
2019-07-01
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| Series: | Athens Journal of History |
| Online Access: | https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2019-5-3-1-Brobjer.pdf |
| Summary: | In this paper I show that the nineteenth century classical philology was much less governed by racist values than Martin Bernal argued in his Black Athena (1987) and which many thereafter assume to have been the case. I criticize Bernal’s lack of evidence and examine a number of thinkers and texts from the period c. 1850 to 1920, essentially randomly selected, who and which show few signs of being governed by racism when discussing Greek culture and civilization in comparison with Egyptian and other early civilizations. |
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| ISSN: | 2407-9677 |