Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> I consider the Greek's mythological system of gods on Olympus and
> their attendant tales as an archetypal squabbling family toward which
> Greek society constantly addressed their rituals, arts, literature,
> laws, ethics, and social relations. What that squabbling and sorted
> family of child molesters and murders provided in all of its
> articulations in the arts, ritual, law, social custom was primarily an
> enveloping unity (completely imaginary) and vast extension of the
> social unity that shared language and custom provides. In short the
> Olympus crew were the Greeks, made the idea of being a Greek possible,
> and provided the conceptual frame of collective identity as a people.
You cover a lot of territory. I want just to nibble at a few odd bits of it. The assumption that the Greeks _had_ any "collective identity as a people" is extremely tenuous. I am willing to listen to arguments to the contrary, but I myself doubt that "identity as a people" is a meaningful phrase before 19th century Europe -- and has ceased to be meaningful in the last century. And after a pause of some minutes, it occurs to me that it was only in the 19th century that "work of art" became a generally recognized category. Neither Rubens nor Handel nor Milton ever dreamt that they were creating "works of art." Do nationalism and "works of art" somehow go together as creations of the individualized social relations of capitalism? Just a stray thought.
If "Americans" actually had anything remotely like "collective identity as a people" there wouldn't be so much nonsense about pledges of allegiance and making flag burning unconstitutional. Americans with a "collective sense of identity as a people" would never have invented anything so bizarre as "unamerican activities." Guthrie wrote "This land is your land" not as a serious song but as a mockery of "God Bless America." He and his producer were utterly amazed that it became so popular.
Carrol