Source: Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study In Greek Religion By Radcliffe G. Edmonds

“Take my heart and hurl its fragments to the moon, the trees, the beasts, in the air, the dark, the waters, so that nothing returns to me ever again.”

— Anna de Noailles, tr. by Jean Morris, from Poems; “Ariadne’s Lament,”

A pair of gold bracelets... snacelets. Roman, 1st century AD

from The Walters Art Museum

decolonial art history starter guide

really tired of seeing AH on the internet/tumblr talked about w the same extreme reverence for the classics that has dominated the field since its conception and has led to the proliferation of white supremacist ideals in this course of study i love very much so decided to channel that by collecting some of my favorite readings on decolonizing art history, with a particular focus on the ancient/classical world. note: this is by no means an extensive list, but rather a selection of pieces i found helpful when starting to explore decolonial art history - with this list i'm focusing more on broad issues than highly specific case studies

reflections on the painting and sculptures of the greeks. jj winckelmann: giving this one a preface as it is quite literally the least decolonial art historical text you can find but also the one that kicked off classical art history studies as we know it (winckelmann is largely seen as the father of art history). as such it is worth a read to understand what these arguments are based around - in more recent years this text has been used extensively to support the white supremacist idea that aryan art came from the great green past and that anything not pertaining to the greeks was ‘degenerate’

decolonization is not a metaphor. tuck and yang.

empty the museum, decolonize the curriculum, open theory. nicholas mirzeoff.

decolonizing art history. grant and price.

decolonization: we aren't going to save you. puawai cairns.

why we need to start seeing the classical world in color. sarah bond.

beyond classical art. caroline vout.

classics and the alt-right: historicizing visual rhetorics of white supremacy. heidi morse.

decolonizing greek archaeology: indigenous archaeologies, modernist archaeology and the post-colonial critique. yannis hamilakis.

how academics, egyptologists, and even melania trump benefit from colonialist cosplay. blouin, hanna, and bond. (i'd like to flag this one in particular with a nod to tumblr's obsession with maintaining a certain aesthetic linked to what you study).

Domestic by Catherine Opie - lesbian couples in their home environment across the United States

some of the short stories from this eve that im thinking abt still... someone read them and tell me ur thoughts thank u

monsters never leave you - carlie st. george . i thought the fairytale elements were woven together nicely 😌 you get undead siblings, tree mothers, chosen family, forgiveness vs love etc! good stuff

call them children - wenmimareba klobah collins the monster narrative continues. their descriptions are delightful, especially in the crafting of the setting, and the ending... obsessed

my country is a ghost - eugenia triantafyllou the longing after loss that imbues this.. feel like it captures a loss of family connection when you’re not in your homeland very well imo

open house on haunted hill - john wiswell another house that loves you! adore the concept of this one, though it’s not horror vibes, more cozy and amusing! though the last line ‘if anything is as patient as a parent, it’s a haunting’ so much potential Thematically there for something more sinister... please may someone write it!

Common Tree Boa - yellow Morph.  

PHOTO : Pete Oxford.

“The so-called ‘mystery cults’ were a handful of marginal Eastern Mediterranean cults which achieved popularity throughout the Roman empire and were distinguished as a unique religious phenomenon by the Belgian archaeologist and philologist Franz Cumont in his 1906 book Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. This modern label of ‘mystery cults’ has now long been used as a blanket designation to cover the cults held in honour of Mithra, Attis and Cybele, Isis and Osiris, Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Bacchus/ Dionysus, and the Samothracian Kabeiroi, among countless other minor and local groups who will never be remembered. Each of these cults (with perhaps the exception of Mithraism) revolved around the dramatic and ecstatic veneration of “dying-and-rising-gods,” a title formulated by the founding father of comparative religion, James G. Frazer, and subsequently developed by British and Scandinavian members of the Myth-and-Ritual School. These so-called “Cambridge Ritualists,” held to the notion that myths do not stand on their own, but are born out of ritual. This theory, of course, is heavily disputed; but the alternative view is equally enlightening: that myth and ritual evolve along parallel lines, without one developing strictly out from the other. The ‘Divine Bridegroom’ is similarly a name I use for these dying mystery gods. For the most part, the mystery religions were sanctuary based, taking place in a telestrion (initiation chambers), caves, or mountain groves, and their members were organized by a structure of hierarchical degrees of initiation. The “mysteries” themselves generally entailed dramatic experiences conveyed via esoteric initiation ceremonies that were reflections of annual agricultural and astrological cycles. Already the mainstream view of old-school ethnologists believed in the notion that the mysteries were survivals of ancient “rites of passage,” especially by Mircea Eliade and Angelo Brelich. Many believed that the origin of the mysteries should be sought in some stage of primitive agricultural development, and it is in illo tempore - into that mythic dream time - to which I wish to return throughout this book.”

— Dan Attrell -  Shamanism and the Mysteries: A Brief History of the Cult of Ecstasy

In contemporary (post-modern) horror, the threat is “not simply among us, but rather part of us, caused by us.” Institutions (like the church and the military) that were once successful in containing the monster and restoring order are at best ineffectual (there is often a lack of closure) and at worst responsible for the monstrous. Contemporary horror also tends to collapse the categories of normal bodies and monstrous bodies; it is said to dispense with the binary opposition of us and them, and to resist the portrayal of the monster as a completely alien Other, characteristic of such 1950s films as The Thing (from Another World) (1951), Them! (1954), and The Blob (1958). This tendency to give the monster a familiar face (the monster is not simply among us, but possibly is us) is tied, in postmodern horror, to the focus on the body as site of the monstrous.

–Lianne McLarty, “Beyond the Veil of the Flesh”: Cronenberg and the Disembodiment of Horror, from The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film

Thinking about how, to let the myth of Persephone fit the themes of the Metamorphoses, Ovid had to insert two rather unknown/unpopular side stories about  a river nymph turning into water/liquid in her own stream, and a nymph giving Demeter the news, and how this affects the myth

Like for one the Metamorphoses in essence is caught up with the gods’ violence against lesser beings, mostly nymphs, women and mortals in general, and deals with the utter helplessness and loss of control these beings experience when they are transformed, as punishment or to escape a worse fate or simply because their suffering becomes too great for any mortal to bear. And here’s Persephone, a goddess and a rather major one, who by all means experiences the same type and amount of suffering. Ovid literally calls her a goddess on par with the other gods, and reasons this is why the six-month rule comes about. Where do you take that myth? The outcome is set in stone, her cyclical seasons-bound fate is so integral to the ancient cosmos, and yet it falls flat in a story like the metamorphoses, where the Olympian gods are usually on the other side of the fence. But here we have these two nymphs, who both experienced the violence done to Persephone and either give it a voice or dissolve into nothing, have their body and being entirely taken away from them. 

So I really think Cyane and Arethusa are almost stand-ins for Persephone, where the the former gets the metamorphosis that symbolizes the pain and suffering that the abduction causes, as she literally dissolves into tears and cannot speak anymore when she manifests again, and Arethusa’s story of her own nearly successful abduction and subsequent exile/displacement give us Persephone’s side of the story, but in a less repetitive way than in the Homeric hymn. 

Studies for the Death of Antigone

Albert von Keller

c. 1907