Zizek on the return of the Elgin marbles et sim: In 18oo Athens was a provincial peasant village with 1o,ooo inhabitants; it was not even the first capital of independent Greece. It was under pressure from Western powers (mostly Germany and England) that the capital was moved to Athens, where a series of neoclassical government buildings were constructed by Western architects; it was also the Westerners, fascinated by antiquity, who instilled in the Greeks a sense of continuity with ancient Greece. Modern Greece thus literally arose as the materialization of the Others fantasy, and, since the right of fantasy is the fundamental right, should we not draw from this the extremely non-PC conclusion not only that Germany and England should not return to Greece the ancient monuments they plundered, which are now displayed in the Pergamon Museum and the British Museum-the Greeks should even voluntarily offer to Germany and England whatever ancient monuments they still possess, since these monuments have value only for the Western ideological fantasy?
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 10:17:27 +0000
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