Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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598
International
Journalof theClassicalTradition/ Spring2003
BlackAthena:the Sequel(Part1)
MartinBemal, BlackAthenaWritesBack,ed. David Chioni Moore (Durham,N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2001),XVI+ 550 pp.
This book is a belated attempt to breathe new life into MartinBemal's moribund
BlackAthena(BA).' Two more volumes are promised: DebatingBlackAthena(DBA),a
collection of essays by scholarswho have received Bernal'simprimatur,
and BA III:The
his
that
Evidence.2
In
Bernal
states
the
volume
introduction,
(BAWB)
Linguistic
present
is a "directresponse" to BlackAthenaRevisited(BAR),a collection of essays about BA
edited by my colleague Guy Rogers and myself.3 In fact, it offers both more and less.
BAWBconsists of reviews and commentary,linked togetherby brief introductions,on
someof the essays in BAR.4Added to these are Bernal'sresponse to an articleby Josine
Blok, and brief reviews of the "recentbroadening scholarship"of SarahMorris,Walter
Burkert,and MartinWest.5 The last chapter of BAWBis a review of my book Not Out
of Africa(NOA).6 There is also a brief epilogue. In it, Bernal insists that the field of
Classical Studies has not yet reformed, and laments the apparent demise of Marxist
treatmentsof history. At the head of the epilogue is a quotationfrom Max Planck:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light but ratherbecause its opponents die and a new
generationgrows up that is familiarwith it. (p. 397)
How this quotation could be applied to BA is unclear,since his theories about ancient
history can hardly be characterizedas "scientifictruth."But at least it indicates that
Bemal has little hope that the present generation of scholars will be able to "see the
1. BAI: TheFabrication
NJ:RutgersUniversityPress,1987);
(NewBrunswick,
ofAncientGreece
and Documentary
BA II:TheArchaeological
Evidence(New Brunswick,NJ:RutgersUniversity
Press,1991).
2. In 1987Bernalplannedto callBAIII:"SolvingtheRiddleof theSphinxandotherStudiesin
(BAI:63).
Egypto-Greek
Mythology"
BAR(ChapelHill:Universityof NorthCarolinaPress,1996).
3. BAWB:1;
4. Bernalsays thathe did not respondto JohnColemanbecause"virtuallyall the pointshe
he leavesLoringBraceet al. and
makeshave beenraisedby otherreviewers"(BAWB:18);
FrankSnowdento ShomarkaKeitain DBA;commenton KathrynBardis not neededbecause "herpopularpiece does not mentionme [sic]",or on EgyptologistFrankYurco
becausehe disagreeswith him only on technicalmattersof chronology.He does not concritics."
siderMarioLiveraniandRichardJenkynsto be "substantial
5. J. Blok,"Proofand Persuasionin BlackAthena:theCaseof K. O. Mueller,"in:BlackAthena:
andtheOriginsof
S. P. Morris,Daedalus
TenYearsAfter= Talanta
28/29 (1996/97):173-208;
Dieorientalisierende
in dergriechische
Greek
Art(Princeton1992);W. Burkert,
Epoche
Religion
und Literatur,Sitzungsberichteder Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften,
WinterVerlag,1984).
Klasse,Jahrg.1984,Bericht1 (Heidelberg:
Philosophisch-Historische
M. L. West, TheEastFaceof Helicon:WestAsiaticElementsin GreekPoetryandMyth (Oxford:
ClarendonPress,1997).
6.
History(NewYork:BasicBooks,1997).
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Review
Articles
599
light," and that he regards the scholars who disagree with him not as colleagues, but
as "opponents."What ever happened to the notion that scholarshipwas a cooperative
venture, dependent upon persuasion based on discussions of documentation and evidence?
But BAWBis not addressed to these old-fashioned academics. Bernal does not
expect any of his readers to have read BAR,or to be familiarwith the BARcontributors' other writings or to know any of them personally, because if they did, they
would realize that he was characterizingBAR and its authors as tendentiously and
unfairly as the nineteenth-centuryscholarswhose work he discusses in BA:
Some of the contributorsto BARattackthe general projectfor purely scholarly reasons, others from a mixture of scholarly and what I perceiveto be
right-wingpoliticalmotives.(p. 1, italics mine)
BAR,he claims, is "largely made up of previously published reviews," "contributed
with little alterationand with virtuallyno consideration
to therepliesto them I published
at the time" (p. 1). What can Bernal be talking about? About half of the material in
BARis new. I took Bernal'scomments into considerationwhen I revised the review of
BA, StolenLegacyand some other books that I wrote for TheNew Republicto serve as an
introductionto BAR.Edith Hall's chapter "Whenis a Myth Not a Myth?"is a revised
version of an article (which was not a "review")published in Arethusa.John Baines
reviewed BA II in The New YorkTimes,but his chapter in BAR (in his own words)
covers "differentground" (BAR:48). Robert Palter's chapter on science was revised
only slightly for publication in BAR, but Palter added a concluding summary that
responds to Bernal'scomments (BAR:256). John Colemanwrote about BA in Archaeology, but his chapter takes Bernal'scomments into considerationand adds new material. Only two chapters in the book consist of reviews reprinted without much revision: Emily Vermeule'sreview "TheWorldTurnedUpside Down" (from TheNew York
Reviewof Books)and LawrenceTritle'sreview "BlackAthena:Vision or Dream of Greek
Origins"(from LiverpoolClassicalMonthly).Loring Brace's"Clinesand Clusters versus
'Race"'and KathrynBard's "AncientEgyptiansand the Issue of Race"were reprinted
with only minor revisions, but neither was a review of BA. And none of these chapters
nor any of the other essays had previously appeared in a right-wingjournal.
Why does Bernal claim that his critics had political motives and insist that they
had not paid sufficient attention to his responses to their writings? His questions are
more revealing than his answers. He seems to think that his criticswould approachthe
evidence in the same way that he has himself, that is, for a political purpose, and to
achieve a particularend. He assumes that we are not interested in discussion, because
he himself in practice is not really interested in discussion, however much in theoryhe
subscribes to the importance of debate.7 Seeing oneself through Bernal's eyes is a
curious experience. As Socrates says after he heard his accusers' speeches: "I soon
forgot who I was, so persuasively did they speak" (P1.,Apol. 17a). If I were really the
kind of scholar he supposes me to be, one might easily suppose that my writings were
7.
"The scholarlypurpose of Solvingthe Riddleof the Sphinx[the original title of BA III]is the
same as that of the other two volumes: to open up new areasof researchto women and men
withfarbetterqualifications
thanI have"(BAI:73).
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600
International
Tradition
Journal
oftheClassical
/Spring2003
9.
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Review
Articles
601
even wrong, he hopes that will give the impression that everything he or she has said
or written is to be distrusted. The technique allows him to debate his criticsnot on the
majortheories of BA (which they have long since systematicallyrefuted), but what is
for him a stronger ground, interpretationof specific details about which he has a
chance of being right, even if they have little or no importance in the debate as a
whole. As a result, the individual sections of BAWBtake the form of a series of specific
comments on specific statements,phrases or words. Almost always, these are cited in
partial quotation or are taken out of the context of the critic's original argument, so
that the readerhas only a partialsense of the largerargumentthat the criticwas trying
to make.
This procedure often makes Bernal's argument hard to follow, and even more
difficult to evaluate, unless one is prepared to read the whole of the critique that
Bernal is attacking seriatim.An example: in NOA (p. 253) I described Democritus fr.
B156 DK mallonto den e to medeneinai ("aught is no more real than naught") as a
"simple concept of nothingness,"because the statement is relatively straightforward.
Bernalclaims that I was saying something disrespectfulabout Democritus'mind:
No one has previously suggested that Demokritos was simple-minded; the
trouble his statement has caused later commentatorsstrongly indicates the
difficulty and subtlety of his thinking here. (p. 391)
This digression diverts the reader'sattentionfrom the main point that Bernalis trying
to make, which was that Greek atomoshas a direct connection to the name of the
Egyptian sun-god Atum (whose name is actually itm). The etymology (which was
originally suggested by G. G. M. James in StolenLegacy)is of course absurd; atomos
comes from the Indo-Europeanroots ne- "un"+ tem-"cut.13
But Bernaldoes not hesitate to use such tendentious critiquesas "evidence"of his
opponents' weaknesses, inaccuracies,and "sloppiness,"or to make their comments
seem more disputatious and unpleasant than they were. Lawrence Tritle "continues
with passionate hyperbole"(p. 61), Emily Vermeule "is shocked" (p. 87), Jasanoffand
Nussbaum are "scornful"(p. 126). Bernalhas no qualms about resortingto ad hominem
attack: "Why did Vermeule make so many mistakes?" (p. 85); "Lefkowitz's claim
reveals not merely a profound ignorance of the Mediterraneanin the Bronze Age but
also the strength of her desire to give Greeks (or at least peoples of the Aegean) a
greater dynamism than Southwest Asians or Egyptians" (p. 378);14Jasanoff and
Nussbaum are "Indo-Europeanistswith no knowledge of Ancient Egyptian and little
interest in, or understandingof, language contact"(p. 13);"[Lefkowitz]does not know
much about linguistics and she has virtually no understanding of language contact,
which is the relevant field when looking at the relations between Ancient Egyptian
and Greek" (p. 381). Bernaldoes not say exactly how language contact theory could
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602
International
Tradition
/ Spring2003
Journal
oftheClassical
verify his etymologies (or refute conventional ones). In fact, it is hard to see how
language contact theory could help his argument,since any theory he proposes would
need to be supported by referenceto historicalexamples.15But Bernalseems prepared
to make use of any argument or authoritythat supports his particularclaims, even if it
means accepting ideas that he is elsewhere eager to reject.He criticizes Jasanoffand
Nussbaum for accepting "the conventional wisdom of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries"(p. 126)but scolds me for my "defianceof nineteenthand twentieth century
classical scholarship"on a point of translationfrom the Greek (p. 380). Similarly,he is
critical of my use of explanatory analogies to the history of the English language (p.
382), even though he himself often relies on analogies from Chinese and Japanese.
The back cover blurb claims that in BAWB"Bernalprovides additional documentation to back up his thesis..." This documentationconsists of some new etymologies,
which are set out in his commentaryon Jasanoffand Nussbaum. Bernalsuggests that
Egyptianntr (Greeknitron= natron)provides an etymology for Greekanthos,"flower."16
Even though flowers and the dry sodium carbonate salts used in the desiccation of
mummies might seem to have little in common, Bernalclaims that the derivation has
an "excellent"fit, since ntr can mean creativepower (p. 129).17The constructionof this
etymology requires considerable sleight-of-hand. Bernal claims that the r in ntr is
"unstable"in the case of anthos,though he fails to explain why the r came through
unscathed in the recognized Greek derivative, nitron.Bernal goes on from there to
suggest that other words ending in -nthos(which have conventionallybeen thought to
derive from some lost Aegean language) ultimately derive from Egyptian.
Another new etymology, even more important for his central thesis, concerns
Athena, but confutes the title 'Black'Athena, since it connects the Parthenon with
Egyptian pr thn, "the house of crystal,"which by association might be supposed to
have some connection with her epithet glaukopis,"blue-eyed."Bernal readily admits
that the idea of Athena's blue eyes does not accord well with her supposed African
origin, "but it strengthens my overall case and that of the preferred title, African
Athena"(159-160).Unfortunately for the reader, Bernal fails to explain exactly how
Athena's blue eyes support his theories. If Athena's appearancecould be thought to
reflect (for example) Berberorigins, how does that fit in with Bernal'sEgyptian etymology for her name (supposedly from Ht Neit, "house of Neith")? But here, as elsewhere in BAWB,Bernal is concerned with making particular arguments, not with
constructinga coherenthypothesis.
Apparently Bernalis like one of those condemned men who are willing (as Plato
has Socrates put it) "to do anything and say anything in order to avoid paying the
penalty" (Apol.38d3). The only juries such defendants are likely to persuade are those
who want to believe in them, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. So Bemrnal
avoids offending the audience that has in the past responded enthusiastically to his
arguments.He separateshimself from what he calls "extremeAfrocentrism,"but he is
careful not to attack the basic premises of fundamental works like G. G. M. James'
andGenetic
15. SarahGreyThomasonand TerrenceKaufman,Language
Contact,Creolization,
214
California
of
Press,
1988),
(Berkeley:
Linguistics
University
16. PaceBernal,nitronis not what is now called niter (potassium nitrate,KNO3),but natron or
soda ash (sodium carbonate,Na2CO3).
see EugenStrouhal,
17. Ontheuse of natronin desiccation,
(Norman:
LifeoftheAncientEgyptians
Universityof OklahomaPress,1992),261-262.
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