https://grafemas.net/blog/ Recent content in Notes on Γραφεμας Hugo -- gohugo.io en Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/race/said-hall/ Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/race/said-hall/ Edith Hall’s Inventing the Barbarian (1989) and Suzanne Saïd’s chapter “Greeks and Barbarians in Euripides' Tragedies: The End of Differences?” (1984) share the same object of study: the representation of non-Greek peoples in fifth-century Athenian tragedy. However, they significantly differ in their conclusions. Reading them together is a clarifying exercise in how racializing discourse operates in ancient texts. They disagreement is not about the evidence but about the modality of the discourse that the authors perceived. https://grafemas.net/blog/race/mccoskey/ Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/race/mccoskey/ This is an interesting book which primarily focuses on Hellenistic and Roman texts. It also detaches the concept of race from phenotypical appearance distancing itself from current usages of the concept. The two issues pose a clear problem. First, focusing on two imperial periods without looking at what preceded allows the writer to overlook the relationship between empire and forms of ethnic discrimination. Second, by detaching race from forms of discrimination based on perceptions of phenotypes, the book closes the door to the examination of other forms of identity building through contrast with others which do not use the social construct of race.