Thread 24842306

Should we abolish the field of Classical Studies?

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300272734/the-white-pedestal/
>It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.
>Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.

these phd sois don't even cross my mind unless I see a twitter post on my 4chinz

>>24842306 (OP)
>>24842313
Short-sighted retard who's going to get exactly what he wants in exactly the way he doesn't want it when even more humanities programs get shuttered, as is becoming the trend.
>Noooooooo not like that, *I* should still be allowed to do classics

do they really need a whole book to say white supremacists identify with high white cultures and like statues?

Picrel is what the average nu-rightist's "appreciation" of western culture amounts to.
Not a single one of them can tell those gaudy nazi-era marble statues apart from the renaissance and classical works they're aping.

>>24842306 (OP)
The Classics going woke always surprised me.

>>24842336
you could say the same about bedroom marxists and their unfunny wordswordswords memes
every political ideology needs easily swayed foot soldiers, mass enlightenment is a myth

Classical, medieval, and theology departments (outside of explicitly religious / conservative schools) really hate their own discipline for some reason. Like the most comically progressive people at the Ivy schools aren't the gender studies or race studies grad students and faculty, but the people in the divinity schools.

>>24842306 (OP)
this retard should kys

>>24842306 (OP)
Abolish Twitter threads on /lit/ first you faggot

We should abolish literacy

I love classics and medieval studies and I've been teaching myself Latin for 2 years and Ancient Greek for 3. Is it even worth trying to go into academia or is it a lost cause? Is it all just millennial women and nbs or are there a few pipe smoking tweed suit clad professors left?

>>24842336
True. It's all aesthetics to them.

>>24842335
White supremacists don't even know who Sappho or Catullus were lmao

>>24842361
The Church had this problem in some seminaries in the late 1960s and in the 1970s.
They would ask priests if they agreed with Church morality on issues of sex and if they said they did.... they would not let them enter, saying they had "immature sexuality". They would also expel seminarians who prayed the rosary or who showed too much reverence for the eucharist (and I would like to remind you that for Catholics, the eucharist is Jesus).
And I don't think I need to explain the end result of this to the Church, given the million dollars lawsuits it is currently facing and the image issues it has now.

>>24842393
>few
Sure, but how'd few it is will only hit when its too late.

>>24842405
For this reason I'd honestly take libtard classics departments over right wing xitter classics depts

>>24842393
>are there a few pipe smoking tweed suit clad professors left?
Yes, there are plenty left. They are more of a subculture, but there are several serious academics at most private schools, especially liberal arts schools. Even ivy league schools--I met with a group like this in Princeton recently.

>>24842393
gotta align your research onto the current day ideological school or gl moving up. silence is violence nah mean nigga.

Non STEM college faculty are pretty much worthless at this point desu

>>24842393
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SWEyBoWeWY
Watch this

>>24842393
>Is it even worth trying to go into academia or is it a lost cause?
It feels like a lost cause at this point. Consider that there exist tomes of scholia for Homer's poems that are left untranslated, or that Aristotle's Metaphysics still lacks a decent critical edition. Everyone tends to just kind of glut the market with new translations there's 30 alternatives to, pop history books, or useless studies on how dogs are discussed in metaphors.

>Pharos
>medievalpoctumblr

Good god that shit is still around? It seems so out of touch and retarded looking back

>>24842475
For me it’s the fact that like 90% of patristic texts have no translation and no edition that’s not from like 1800

>>24842405
the entire point is that the link is simplistic and you don't need to know the ins and outs of it
advanced white society = white supremacists like it
it's no more complex than that and you don't need a book to explain it
all that being said if I was a white supremacist I'd attach myself to Victorian England over any ancient society

so this guy went from
>chuds r dumb and steal from da classics
to
>da classics were chuds

lol

>>24842306 (OP)
>>24842336
Both of these guys are indians larping as white btw

is it just me or did the left will nazism into existence? nobody was a nazi or wanted to be associated with nazism 10 years ago, but they shouted nazi so much people were like fuck it, let's go

>>24842306 (OP)
All cultures with a classic past disparage barbarians who do not have such an august and noble heritage such as they

see china, japan, persia as other such examples of (merited) bigotry towards non chinese/japanese/persians etc.

>>24842416
I find right wing xtter classics just plain dumb, I find libtard classists insidious.

>>24842725
schizo take: working as intended. the phds and their retarded students were just dominos in this decades long game for schwab et al.

>>24842324
I hate pletho so much its unreal

>>24842393
Classics grad student here. Most of my colleagues are studying dumb shit, like how Medusa is a rape victim and how the classics are mysogyistic. There are still some professors who are normal people, but I feel like this is going to change drastically once these guys start retiring. But they're also the same ones advising these grievence studies projects, so it's also kind of their fault, even if their research has nothing to do with it.
I would advise more right wing people to get into grad school, if it wasn't such a bad career choice. I think it would still possible to turn things around if there were enough people who opposse this nonsense going into academia, but I think it's kind of unrealistic to encourage people to go for this very competitive field with few job openings just to prevent it from being completely taken over by retards.

>>24842750
Its not schizo. Its 5D chess.

>>24842405
i'm pretty sure just knowing what words mean will tell you sappho was a dyke

>>24842334
>my hate-fetish should be subsidized by student debt
>no, of course it wouldn't be funded otherwise

>>24843831
even the phds are cattle to be prodded

>>24842313
>someone, or a very small group of someones, does a thing
>so we have to get rid of everything associated with it

Some people really do have resentment issues.

>>24842306 (OP)
No. I honestly have a theory that AI is gonna wreck the humanities in universities, so it will kinda abolish itself. The nice thing is that, once its left academia, it would probably be picked up by enthusiasts again, and gain a new energy/scholarship.

>>24842393
Real question, how do you recommend learning those languages? I've been tempted to use an AI, just out of curiosity to see if it works.

>>24842306 (OP)
I think the argument is more “these people don’t get that the classics were all about homolust and loving a diversity mural nation” and that’s why we need classics departments to write only about how diverse, multikulti but also evil and slave using, undemocratic etc they were.
>>24842313
> Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today
> they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.
Err I’ve never seen them argue the white nationalists are right and are deft at employing historical knowledge. /pol/ should frame this one.

>>24843849
That's highly debatable actually
Would be very unusual for Greeks for there to have been female pederasts on the island of Lesbos
And her poetry is so fragmentary that we don't know from which point of view it's speaking from most of the time
And even her ancient readers/medieval readers thought of her mostly as a lusty poet in general, rather than a peculiarly homoerotic one

>>24843914
To start, read a lot and study at least the basic grammar. For Latin, use LLPSI, for Greek, Athenaze, both can be found online for free.
I’ve tried out GPT and it’s okay with basic and intermediate Latin but misses a lot, and it’s total shit at ancient Greek. Probably better to go to /clg/ with any questions

>>24843758
Do you know if things are better in medieval studies? I would imagine it draws in more Christians but that’s just a guess really

>>24842306 (OP)
>expand to Historical Linguistics languages more broadly: Hittite, Sanskrit ect. ect.

Too many programs LARPing with translated texts. Scientific literature shouldn't be composed in Latin, but Ancient Greek. Then we might be colonizing the stars.

>>24842393
You have a head start. See how much you can test out of.

>>24843950
>the white nationalists

This is an apophantic nonsense coinage and deadass bolshevik pun. It shouldn't be repeated or dignified. 'Discourse' involving it is poisoned out of the gates.

>>24842571
>90% of patristic texts have no translation and no edition that’s not from like 1800
Fugg is this true?

>>24842306 (OP)
If some totalitarian dictator banned anyone from reading anything that wasn’t published before the year 400 I’d imagine the quality of the character of the society and the people in it would significantly improve.

>>24845103
that's the only ammo they have. they've been spamming it for a decade.

>>24842306 (OP)
I actually don't think they want to abolish the field but they definitely want to take it over and then claim that "actually, the real lesson we can learn from this is that white people are heckin bad."

>>24845108
Just go to any random text in Migne and there's a very good chance it has no translation. I mean this is the case even for quite a few of Chrysostom and Augustine's works so imagine the more obscure fathers.

>>24842313
Sounds like your average but more open attempt to neuter the western tradition and any resurgent will to power. Basically what all modern liberal/leftist anti-westernism and anti-white rhetoric comes down to. You see this every time some cuck justifies Europe being islamized because of imperialism/colonialism fucking those regions up in the first place.

>>24845150
Better entirely to build a time machine and ensure that Alexander doesn’t die young and builds a lasting empire.

If they could see the absolute state of the world today the Greeks and Romans would have already slaughtered every nigger, chink, and poo on earth. We are so soft compared to them. I hate the 21st century so much

>>24842306 (OP)
Just abolish women's studies and all domino's will fall back into place.

>>24845220
Wtf did we do

>>24845217
Bold of you to assume he could. The man who weeps because there were no more worlds to conquer isn't the type to be concerned with the bureaucracy, governance, and infrastructure needed to build a lasting empire.

>>24845267
You weep too if you had just spent 10 years with your men bringing down the biggest empire in the world, to just reach the limits of the world at the Himalayan foothills.

>>24845264
Contemporary china is mentally colonized by the same modern mind viruses that fucked the west over and destroyed their Sino traditional culture as well.

>>24845281
Then why are you getting mad at Chinese and not the whites and jews who invented this "mind viruses"

>>24843871
>Some people really do have resentment issues.
It's not resentment issues, it's a fucking plan. Don't you understand how it works yet? Trust me, they know exactly what they're doing. Everyone involved. Even the Twitter people. The thing you need to keep in mind at all times is that, to them, there are no bad means to reach a goal. Every single thing they say is a lie between their teeth. They just lie, lie, lie, every single thing they say is disingenuous, every point they raise is in bad faith. They just do this all the fucking time. They are not retards, they are perfectly aware that there's no direct link between Greco-Roman classicism and Nazis, but they will draw the line anyway, because that's something that gets in their way.

>>24843758
>ask classmates what they're researching
>male classmates are all researching fascinating, unique, or at least ambitious things
>woman: "Misogyny in Rome"
>woman: "Misogyny and Hamlet"
>woman: "The intersection of misogyny and periods in Hamlet"
>woman: "Women"
>woman: "Opinions about women having sex in Weimar newspapers"
>woman: "Women in the work of Robert Musil"
>woman: "Vagina"
>woman: "I have a vagina"
>woman: "I'm a woman btw. Vagina here"
>woman: "Sex and periods in gender"
>woman: "Woman perceptions of woman, ,vagina, cooters breasts woman period I'm on my period clitorises in the work of the band Oingo Boingo and Hamlet's Perception of Clitoris Vagina Gender Studies"
>woman: "Queering Gender in Medieval Manuscripts: Your period or MY period?"
>woman: "Misogyny, Periods, and You: Ernst Cassirer on Substance, Function, and My Gay Love Affair with Gender Studies"
>woman: "Women in 'Woman's Work': Gendering Gender in the Social Sciences"
>woman: "Prostitution and Gender in Antebellum Calcutta"
>woman: "Gender"
>woman: "Sex and gender studies"
>woman: "Tampons, pads, and ironclads: Stonewall Jackson and Freebleeding"
>woman: "Einstein contra Bergson: Who rapes me more by having existed?"

>>24843758
We live in probably the most rampantly anti-intellectual time of history. Talented people do not want to go into academia because they have, correctly, identified as being dogshit for their career prospects and earnings potential, so, if they pursue higher education, they tend to go into business or applied sciences instead and study academic subjects in only a hobbyist capacity - if they do so at all. So that leaves washouts, fuckups, and people with an agenda in academia, creating a self-sustaining problem, so, despite the importance of the liberal arts and critical thinking, the people in it and in charge of it are systematically the worst people to be involved with it.

I don't know how you'd reverse this trend short of re-instituting medieval grammar schools.

>>24845292
Lmao
>>24845056
My impression is that we are all on the same boat, but maybe it's a bit better over there.

>>24842306 (OP)
Why would people assume white nationalists don't know much about history?

>>24842306 (OP)
Is that the book Victor Davis Hanson was shitting on the other day?

>>24845341
Its academia. The very notion of white nationalism reeks of low-born culture. They can try as they may distance themselves from their elitist roots with all the performative queer black feminist crap but at the end of the day its still the descendants of institutions like Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard. Academia is the enemy of any self respecting European or white person.

>>24845349
Qrd? I am a fan of his work. Do tell.

>>24842306 (OP)
>>24842313
The fucking nerve when leftoids use ancient Rome and Greece to push negrophilia and gay propaganda. These people should be hanged.

>>24845321
You know that's not a bad idea.

>>24845360
It's as another anon mentioned: rightists think there are good and bad ends and means. Leftist think there are only good and bad ends: any means are acceptable so long as they result in a "good end." So, among other things, it is justifiable in leftist thought to be a hypocrite if it means "Kicking that damn dirty fascist Nixon, I mean Trump and his cronies out of popular discourse and suppressing everything they say and do!"

>>24845286
NTA But People with squinty eyes piss me for some reason.

>>24845375
I always wondered why the right doesn't adopt their tactics. I say we do.

>>24845375
>>24845388
Direction brain retardation

>>24845407
Not an argument. Thats been the standard since 1789. Got a problem with that? Go jump in your imaginary time machine back to the early Enlightenment. Stay there, preferably.

>>24845499
Machiavelli the Neo-Roman Italian nationalist was the champion of ruthless means to ideal ends you giga-nigger retard. Acting like the left has a monopoly on this or acting in bad faith reflects either profound retardation or meta-irony.

>>24845511
I'm afraid you're addressing the wrong post

>>24845511
And besides why is acting in bad faith bad anyways? You don't ever hear conservatives or reactionaries extoling the virtues of Shartre anyways.

>>24842707
Sorry, Pinesap is confirmed White. In fact, he's Whiter than the guy he worships (Nick Fuentes)

>>24843870
Especially them. Can't have free thinkers knowing natural law now

>>24842306 (OP)
White nationalists do actually do that with rome and Greece though.

>>24843950
>I think the argument is more “these people don’t get that the classics were all about homolust and loving a diversity mural nation” and that’s why we need classics departments to write only about how diverse, multikulti but also evil and slave using, undemocratic etc they were.

Bingo. It's de facto destruction brought about via barely disguised deliberate enshittification.

>>24842725
Creating your political opposition is not a novel idea

>>24842306 (OP)
Its irritating that that jew Loki is still shilling to conservative "nazi" trendriders. I'll be glad when that dumb trend is dead.

The parade of seig heiling Conservative Zionists has long become pathetic and annoying.

>>24842306 (OP)
The vast majority of classicists are left wing

>>24846583
Source that Loki is Jewish?

>>24845108
Stoicism is fairly popular, right?
The Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta was not translated either.

>>24845108
>>24842571
>>24842475
The fact that these texts have no translations just means anyone who's ambitious can translate one of them as their thesis and almost automatically become a sort of authority on it. It's a good thing for young energetic academics. A sign of decline that one bothered with them so far, maybe, but definitely an opportunity.

>>24842313
>local man suddenly discovers that the past wasn't a decolonizing space of color standing in opposition to narratives of whiteness
lmao, imagine the shock in year 3 of the PhD

>>24846638
anyone with more than 2000 xitter followers is
t. dissident right playbook

>>24843758
>I would advise more right wing people to get into grad school, if it wasn't such a bad career choice.
This is the real issue at the core of the entire debacle. Entering grad school/becoming a professor has been, probably irreparably, poisoned as a career option which means that right-wing men simply don't do it if they have half a brain, leaving only the kind of ideologically turbocommitted leftard who doesn't care about money or the inevitability of being sacked out of tenure when the next generation of grad students gets sick of waiting, to fill the spots.

Basically I think to fix this you'd have to not only reverse mass collegiate schooling but also remove the ability of women to attend, or at least to get jobs in academia. Nerd bitches simply overromanticize academia so hard that they'll probably reproduce this calamity all by themselves even if only like 7% of the population attend a university.

>>24846641
Ideally, but it's not happening.

>>24846654
Dismissing every right wing figure that gets an audience as Jewish is the most sure-fire way of becoming irrelevant

>>24843849
That's where you're wrong, reading Sappho as a lesbian as opposed to just a Lesbian is post-classical. The ancients thought she was just an erotomaniac who went for men and women equally (and the fragments more or less bear this out, those poems of hers that are clearly talking about a man are lovingly ignored by the usual suspects), entirely in line with their belief that women are the more lustful sex.

>>24846657
>Basically I think to fix this you'd have to not only reverse mass collegiate schooling but also remove the ability of women to attend
You know damn well anyone with a smidgen of power ain't gonna let that happen. I'd love to be wrong though.

>>24846657
To fix this you'd actually have to reverse the hostile takeover of universities by left wing activists. Fire most of the professors, completely slash DEI programs and make sure decolonial, women's studies and all that other nonsense departments are made extinct. Afterwards you'd have to convince right wing men that academia doesnt necessarily have to be a bunch of gay leftist shit, because at the time the popular idea isnt that this was a legitimate place for respectable, intelligent people to be in that was unfortunately taken over by a bunch of communists, but rather that being an "intellectual" is synonymous with being a dissident leftist sodomite. And then, of course, you need to make sure the people entering academia can have a good career and not have to wait an eternity for tenure.
But yeah it's not happening imo.

It’s really indicative of the bad faith of this board that a post about Barnes and Noble tier “history” slop by a peripheral associate professor at a college I’ve never heard of is somehow representative of an entire field of study. I’ve yet to see a single post in any of these trash culture war threads go and even cursorily browse through a bibliography of recently published monographs, that would be too deflating to the frisson of complaining about the most boring topic imaginable, American politics. I really despise the subhumans who flood this board with this shit, because you are playing into a manufactured fig leaf to do away with the classical university entirely.

>>24846711
Welcome to nu lit.

>>24842313
Seems like some fair and considered points in there. Also kek at the seething

hey op check this one out
>https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/pup-speaks-cynthia-miller-idriss-on-man-up
>What two things do most mass shooters, terrorists, or violent extremists have in common? Most of us know the first: they are almost always men or boys. But the second? They are also almost always virulent misogynists, homophobes or transphobes.
i would say that didn't age well but it was published in october! lmao

>>24846711
i can’t imagine how retarded you’d have to be to be part of a political ideology and movement that wants to destroy the university because of a temporary left wing intellectual fad. There was a time the university really was completely infiltrated by marxists, around the 1970s and before, a time that is long gone. A far weaker and more pathetic and ephemeral intellectual fad now grips a vanishingly small minority of the western intelligentsia and you think “right wingers” who need Grok to tell them where their own asshole is located are going to do a purge in favor of restoring some golden age of scholarship. I hate all of you.

>>24846726
nonsense. all the grievance studies shit came about in the 70s to expand hiring of minorities and bloat up universities with leftists. not to mention "the long march through the institutions" was a post-war boomer plan which they have executed on. yeah, there was always some marxoid doofus like paul sweezy around because prior to the 60s schools felt like they need one marxist guy since half of europe was dominated by a marxist empire, but leftism only became "systemic" after the 70s. as usual leftists live in a made up fantasy world to support their emotionally driven belief system.

>>24846726
You are seething so much at the prospect of closing a bunch of grievance studies departments that you replied to your own post, so maybe you actually like having these people around. No one is forcing you to be here, you can just leave.

>>24846682
>You know damn well anyone with a smidgen of power ain't gonna let that happen.
That's my point. It's unfixable in practice. You'd have to revert effectively the entirety of the political changes of the 20th century. I'd love to see that too, but it's not happening.

>>24846685
>And then, of course, you need to make sure the people entering academia can have a good career and not have to wait an eternity for tenure.
Shrimply not happening. If college professors had a salary that was competitive with e.g. IT professionals, in practice you'd just be giving more spending money to commies.

Also, firing most professors over their garbage ideology would make a joke of tenure. Nobody would trust it anymore, you'd only have it until the next time the other party wins the presidency off you.

the classics like literally need to be decolonized and if your interested in apolitical research you are literally a nazi

>>24846762
>black women are simply obese by nature
lmao, they've gone so far around that they're back at the beginning of the loop calling themselves subhuman

>>24842725
the boy who cried "wolf"

>>24846769
No it's worse. They just want to have some sort of a handicap, because then they can feel entitled to get compensations for their natural disadvantages and don't have to feel guilty for anything bad they do to white people, because of white privilege. It's just another small battle in their cultural war for dominance. They're just uppity, but now, when they get education, they can be uppity more sophisticatedly. Funnily enough, their real genetical handicaps are low intellect, and their testosterone/estrogen distribution amongs males and females, which causes black males to be more feminine and black females more masculine.

>>24846835
>now, when they get education, they can be uppity more sophisticatedly
Not sure I agree with this tb h
In theory maybe but in practice >>24846762 isn't a very sophisticated attempt

>>24842306 (OP)
Yeah, sure, whatever. I really don't care at this point.

>>24842393
>>24842450
>>24842475
>>24843758
I don't even know Latin or Greek. I'm almost 30. No bachelors. But I've spent my life reading and anyways excelled at school. How I wish I could be in academia. I really wish I had that opportunity. If I could spend my time reading and translating these old texts thatd be wonderful. I'm pretty interested in old english as well. But I'm American and don't have any money or opportunity.

>>24847198
>But I'm American and don't have any money or opportunity.
ridiculous cope. it's so easy to get a bachelor's for free in the united states and even then whatever isn't covered by grants and scholarships you can get guaranteed student loans with tax deductible interest. that's the real filter of college. if you can't figure out how to fund it, then you aren't smart enough to do it.

>>24847211
Thats not really what I meant

>sophisticated
european colonizer coded