Undoing Time: Breaking Gender Binarism in Classics Teaching

Introduction

Rome and Greece are the most influential ancient societies in Europe and those parts of the world that have been colonized by European countries. That fact implies that their culture pervades almost every corner of the planet, and we can easily find references to Greek and Latin cultures. Furthermore, the ideas transmitted by Greek and Latin literature, as well as the aesthetics, have been fundamental to the development of the major political, philosophical, religious and artistic movements and trends. However, these ancient societies play little part in this influence, at least in strict terms. The Renaissance and the Baroque, or the Enlightenment, or present-day cinema, all of them mostly construct an idea of Rome and an idea of Greece. The Greek and Latin cultures are consistently reinvented, readapted, and rebuilt in the imagination of posterior societies as part of a process of cultural production. There is, of course, precise, and scientific information about their societies. Disciplines such as Classics, Archaeology and History have indeed been busy describing the ancient world according to sources. Our interest is, however, rooted in the cultural influence, which is less inclined to facts from the ancients but prefers to blend the past with the present. That only explains the frequent anachronisms, many times criticized by experts, which pervade the cultural production of Europe and the Westernized societies.

These reinterpretations often entail the transposition of certain societal elements, institutions, and mechanisms to these ancient societies. Much like the culturally influential film Shrek (2001), in which contemporary culture parodically blends with the world of fairy tales, the most stereotypical and transmitted visions of ancient societies propose a mixture of the old and the new at times difficult to ascertain. Crucial institutions are probably the most intertwined in these narratives of the ancient world. The same way the ancients have determined the evolution of concepts like the family, as well as politics and religion, posterior interpretations have juxtaposed these evolved elements in their depiction of the ancient world. The notion of gender was, of course, among them.

In the following pages, the researchers will examine gender as a technology in ancient societies and the modern world before the Enlightenment and nineteenth century positivism. This is not the main aim in this work, but the necessary first step towards achieving a comprehensive understanding of the importance of the discipline of Classics and how it is taught. Moreover, the researchers will approach the teaching of Classics according to the categories of gender as established in the first part and from the point of view of queer pedagogies. The goal of this text is proposing ways of decolonizing Classics in terms of gender, materialized in teaching methodologies.