Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Humanities Institute, University at Buffalo, and the Stanley Seeger Fellowship at Princeton’s Hellenic Studies, for offering me time and a rich intellectual environment to pursue my research. At Princeton I profited a great deal from access to modern Greek materials and from my stimulating encounters with Brooke Holmes, Christian Wildberg, and Froma Zeitlin, all of whom made time out of their busy schedules to share their insights with me. My gratitude to all the other fellows, whose daily conversations were sustaining at critical moments of the project. In particular, I would like to mention Anastasia Panagiotopoulou for her friendship and wise input over coffee in her lovely Sparta balcony; Mogens Pelt generously forwarded to me any sources he found relevant; and Gerassimos Moschonas spent many an evening devoted to intellectual exchange. Above all, the graciousness and guidance of Dimitris Gondicas made my stay at Princeton as fruitful as it could be. The Julian Park Publication Fund, University at Buffalo, has generously supported the indexing fees for this publication. The final version of the book has profited tremendously from the comments of anonymous reviewers. Vassilis Lambropoulos, whose work on tragedy and modern culture remains pivotal for me, expressed his support for the book despite his theoretical disagreements. My colleagues at University at Buffalo’s comparative literature department have supported me in various ways. Indeed, the very scope of this project could not be pursued but in a comparative and interdisciplinary environment . Ewa Ziarek has read and commented on an early version of chapter 1, xii and found time to teach me how to garden. Rodolphe Gasché’s erudition is behind several bibliographical sources, and I remember fondly our carpooling with Plato. Jorge Gracia’s support of junior faculty is exemplary. The Tuesdays with Joan Copjec modeled for me what it means to be a firmly convinced yet always open thinker. Many others have opened venues for my thought as well as provided actual opportunities for its expression. The journal Epoché provided me with a forum to present portions of chapter 2 and a slightly modified version of chapter 5. Intertexts has published a shorter version of chapter 6. More personally, I would like to acknowledge Claudia Baracchi, whose philosophical subtlety and quiet but powerful eloquence remain an inspiration. Sara Brill, Sean Kirkland, Danielle Layne, and a host of other colleagues in the Ancient Philosophy Society have contributed in explicit and implicit ways to my thinking. Tim Dean, Margarita Vargas, and Alejandro Vallega believed in my work; their friendship and support proved critical at the darkest hours. Dennis Schmidt and Andrew Kenyon have done more for my own belief in this manuscript than they will ever know. I have not enough words to thank them. Christine Irizarry offered her translation skills for a tricky Hölderlin passage. Jeff Di Leo saw the potential of the project immediately, and my editor at Nebraska, Kristen Elias Rowley, has been a paragon of responsiveness and patience. Though this book has led me to take unexpected turns away from my earlier graduate training, the rigorous thinking of my mentor, Eva Geulen, remains paradigmatic for me—her seminars on the end of art still ring fresh in my ear, and this topic constitutes a major concern of the present study. None of this would have been possible without my students: whether in graduate seminars or in supervising individual projects, it was their curiosity and questioning that has held me to the strictest possible standards. Their remarks, enthusiasm, and involvement have been demanding and rewarding at once. This book has been in many ways an academic exercise of detouring from what is strictly academic in scholarship—namely, a neutral reporting, a dispassionate theoretical synthesis that disavows the author’s convictions. It has had to struggle with its own overstatements and understatements. In this struggle—at times encouraging me and other times checking me—two people have led me out of the labyrinth: Jason Winfree, who reminded me of the importance of the moderns, and Scott Hubbard, who, most of anyone I know, understands the indispensability of the ancients. Their courage has Acknowledgments xiii never compromised their brilliance. In their different ways, they both showed me that a philosophy that only interprets the world is a poor excuse for that name. Finally, Edward Batchelder deserves infinite thanks for everything he has done and infinite apologies for all that...