The Invention of Racism in Classical AntiquityThere was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. |
From inside the book
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... literature in Greece and Rome from the fifth century B.C. till late antiquity . The book analyzes patterns of thinking , intellectual and emotional concepts as well as attitudes towards select specific peoples as encountered in Greek ...
... literature of the past five centuries , with special emphasis on Montaigne and Swift . " More broadly , this book is about how the European imagination has dealt with the groups which it habitually talks about killing , and never quite ...
... Literature ( Chicago and London , 1996 ) ; Brian Leigh Molyneaux , The Cultural Life of Images : Visual Representation in Archaeology ( London , 1997 ) , esp . B. Sparkes , " Some Greek Images of Others , " 130-158 ; Cohen ( ed ...
... literature . These views pertain to various dimensions and features of social life and culture : religion , occupa- tion , modes of life and conflict , and language . Emphasis and values may change over time , but we are always ...
... literature go together with imperialist behavior . It is not my claim that attitudes steer policy , drive conquest , or even determine the treatment of subject peoples , their integration , or suppression . Considering them may help in ...