Explosive Literature: Christos Chrissopoulos's The Parthenon Bomber as an Act of Resistance to Monumentalization

Τhe idea of destroying the iconic national symbol of the Parthenon is scandalous—or even inconceivable. The Parthenon was monumentalized in the nineteenth century and, ever since, it has borne the traces of the acts that discursively and institutionally constructed it or destroyed it. Literature, as an agent of institutionalization and resistance, has both contributed to, and resisted, the cultural practice of monumentalization. The Parthenon Bomber (1996/2010), a novella by Christos Chrissopoulos, is inscribed in a lineage of Modern Greek literary texts resisting monumentalization. Chrissopoulos's novella, originally published in 1996 and revised in 2010, asks the question Can literature be explosive? and challenges literature's relationship to historicity and contingency. At a moment when Greece's connection to its classical past is being reconfigured under the impact of the Greek crisis and of national and international responses to it, the novella's significance in the present deserves renewed attention. By blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, The Parthenon Bomber performs an act of resistance to monumentalization in real life and introduces the possibility of a New Parthenon.