Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts

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Markus Winkler in collaboration with

Maria Boletsi, Jens Herlth, Christian Moser, Julian Reidy, Melanie Rohner

Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts

Vol. I: From the Enlightenment

to the Turn of the Twentieth Century

S C H R I F T E N Z U R W E L T L I T E R A T U R B A N D 7

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Schriften zur Weltliteratur Studies on World Literature

Herausgegeben von Dieter Lamping

in Zusammenarbeit mit Immacolata Amodeo,

David Damrosch, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis und Markus Winkler

Band 7

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in collaboration with Maria Boletsi, Jens Herlth, Christian Moser, Julian Reidy, and Melanie Rohner

Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts

Vol. I: From the Enlightenment to the Turn of the Twentieth Century

J. B. Metzler Verlag

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The publication of this book was realized with the financial support of the University of Geneva and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

Die Autorinnen und Autoren

Markus Winkler (Leiter des Projektes) ist Professor für Neuere deutsche und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Genf.

Maria Boletsi (Co-Leiterin des Projektes) ist Stiftungsprofessorin für Neugriechische Studien (Lehrstuhl Marilena Laskaridis) an der Universität Amsterdam und Assistenzprofessorin für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universiteit Leiden.

Jens Herlth ist Professor für Slavistik an der Universität Fribourg.

Christian Moser ist Professor für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Bonn.

Julian Reidy ist Privatdozent an der Universität Bern und Lehrbeauftragter für Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Genf.

Melanie Rohner ist im Rahmen des vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds geförderten Projektes

“‘Barbarism’: History of a Fundamental European Concept” Postdoktorandin an der Universität Genf.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

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J. B. Metzler ist ein Imprint der eingetragenen Gesellschaft Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE und ist ein Teil von Springer Nature

www.metzlerverlag.de info@metzlerverlag.de

Einbandgestaltung: Finken & Bumiller, Stuttgart (Foto: Finken & Bumiller) Satz: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde

J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart

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Acknowledgements . . . IX

1. Theoretical and Methodological Introduction . . . 1

Markus Winkler 1.1. Preliminary Remarks . . . . 1

1.1.1. Towards the Critical History and Aesthetic Exploration of a Fashionable Slogan and Enemy-Concept . . . 1

1.1.2. A Genealogical Approach . . . 4

1.2. Genealogical Premises . . . . 10

1.2.1. From bárbaros as Language- and Affect-Related Onomatopoetic Word to barbarismus as Rhetorical Term . . . . 10

1.2.2. The Mythopoetic ‘Invention of the Barbarian’ . . . 14

1.2.3. The Conceptualization of Barbarism . . . 19

1.2.3.1. The Emergence of the Ethnocentric Enemy- and Identity-Concept . . . 19

1.2.3.2. Scholarly Approaches to the Concept and Their Shortcomings . . . 23

1.2.4. The Aesthetic Exploration of Barbarism . . . . 32

1.3. Structure and Content of Volume I . . . . 38

2. Eighteenth Century . . . 45

2.1. The Concept of Barbarism in Eighteenth-Century Theories of Culture and Sociogenesis . . . 45

Christian Moser 2.1.1. Concept-Historical Prerequisites. The Temporalization of the Concept of the Barbarian and the Construction of a Relationship between Savagery and Barbarism . . . . 45

2.1.1.1. The Changing Meaning of Barbarian in the Eighteenth Century—as Illustrated by Dictionary Entries . . . . 45

2.1.1.2. Savagery in Relation to Barbarism: Antiquity and the Middle Ages . . . . 48

2.1.1.3. Savagery in Relation to Barbarism: the Early Modern Period . . . . 53

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VI Contents

2.1.2. Montesquieu to Ferguson: Barbarism as a Stage of Cultural and Social Evolution . . . 61 2.1.2.1. Preliminary Remarks . . . 61 2.1.2.2. Montesquieu: Barbarism as an Intermediate Social Force^{. .} 64 2.1.2.3. Turgot: Barbarism as an Engine of Social Progress . . . 73 2.1.2.4. Rousseau: Barbarian Idylls . . . 80 2.1.2.5. Adam Smith: Barbarian Economies of Predation and Gifts 93 2.1.2.6. Adam Ferguson: Barbarism as Social Gambling . . . 103 2.1.2.7. Barbarian Origins of Language and of Contractuality:

Smith and Rousseau . . . 114 2.1.2.8. Barbarian Art: Herder and Goethe . . . 128 2.1.2.9. Conclusion and Prospect: Anthropology; Philosophy of

History . . . 134 2.2. Case Study: Schiller’s Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) . . . 145

Christian Moser

2.3. Bemoaning the Loss of ‘Vernunft’ and ‘Tugend’: On the Semantics of Barbarism in Salomon Gessner’s Der Tod Abels (The Death of Abel, 1758) and Maler Müller’s Adams erstes Erwachen und seelige Nächte (Adam’s First Awakening and Blissful Nights, 1777) . . . 166 Julian Reidy

3. Nineteenth Century . . . 189 3.1. The Relationship between Idyll and Barbarism in Schiller’s

Wilhelm Tell (William Tell, 1804) . . . 189 Melanie Rohner

3.2. “These are the mysteries of the barbarians, my dear”: The Concept of Barbarism in Polish Romanticism (Zygmunt Krasiński, Adam

Mickiewicz) . . . 198 Jens Herlth

3.2.1. Introduction . . . 198 3.2.2. The Imagined Barbarian: Zygmunt Krasiński’s Letters to

Henry Reeve . . . 203 3.2.3. Krasiński’s Irydion: A Half-Barbarian’s Journey from Rome to

“the land of graves and crosses” . . . 212 3.2.4. “Let us not disdain the barbarians”: Adam Mickiewicz and the

Re-Evaluation of Barbarism . . . 220 3.2.5. Conclusion . . . 234

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3.3. Interfering Semantics of Barbarism and Race in Flaubert’s

Salammbô (1862) . . . 236

Markus Winkler 3.3.1. Why Write a Historical Novel on a Remote War of Barbarians against Barbarians? . . . 236

3.3.2. ‘Barbarism’ and ‘Race’ in the Historiographical Tradition of the Mercenaries’ War . . . 238

3.3.3. The Narrative Staging of ‘Barbarism’ and ‘Race’ in Flaubert’s Novel . . . 244

3.3.4. The Contribution of Flaubert’s Novel to the History of ‘Barbarism’ and ‘Race’ . . . 255

3.4. Nietzsche’s Concept of Barbarism: From Rhetoric to Genealogy . . . . 258

Markus Winkler 3.4.1. Preliminary Remarks . . . 258

3.4.2. Variations on the Opposition of Barbarism and ‘Culture’ (Bildung)259

3.4.3. The Ambivalence of the Genealogical Approach to the Concept of Barbarism . . . 270

4. On the Threshold of the Twentieth Century: History, Crisis, and Intersecting Figures of Barbarians in C. P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians” (“Περιμένοντας τους βαρβάρους,” 1898/1904) . . . 285 Maria Boletsi 4.1. Introduction . . . 285

4.2. Between History, Myth, and Allegory: The Barbarians As Symbols^.292

4.3. The Intertextual Nexus of Cavafy’s Barbarians . . . 296

4.3.1. Cavafy and Gibbon on Progress . . . 296

4.3.2. Cavafy’s and Renan’s Barbarians . . . 303

4.3.3. The Barbarian in Decadent Literature and in the Intellectual Climate of the Late Nineteenth Century . . . 310

4.3.4. “Waiting for the Barbarians” As an Anti-Decadent Poem . . . . 321

4.4. Barbarians, Crisis, and Historical Time . . . 328

References . . . 335

About the authors . . . 364

Index . . . 367

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Acknowledgements

The present study is part of a collaborative international research project funded from 2013 to 2017 by the Swiss National Science Foundation (FNS). The project was initiated and led by Markus Winkler (University of Geneva). Co-applicant for its funding was Jens Herlth (University of Fribourg). We are very grateful to the FNS for its generous support, which included the three-year employment of a postdoctoral and a doctoral researcher.

This first volume of the study and the preparatory meetings of the international research team were also realized with the financial support of the Netherlands Or- ganization for Scientific Research (NWO). The NWO co-funded the research project through an “Internationalisation in the Humanities” grant (2013–2016) obtained by Maria Boletsi (University of Leiden). Additional funds were provided by the Uni- versity of Bonn/Chair for Comparative Literature as well as by the University of Geneva’s Comparative Literature Program.

We are grateful to the student research assistants at the University of Geneva who over the past years have conducted extensive bibliographical research on the topic of the present study. They are Céline Bischofberger, Guillaume Broillet, Jasmin Gut, César Jaquier, Laura Scharff, and Jeanne Wagner. Céline Bischofberger and Jasmin Gut also carefully copy-edited several chapters of the present volume, and Guillaume Broillet performed the laborious final copy-editing of the volume’s entire manuscript. In addition, Margaret Kehoe, Daniele Leo, Jil Runia, and Lukas Hermann helped with the copy-editing of selected chapters.

Finally, we extend our thanks to the publisher J. B. Metzler and in particular to Oliver Schütze, as well as to Dieter Lamping, the main editor of the “Studies on World Literature” series.

Parts of chapters 2.1 and 2.2 were originally written in German and then translated into English with the assistance of Alex Skinner. Chapters 2.1.2.7 and 2.1.2.8 draw on material published in Moser 2018a and 2018b.

As for chapters 3.1 and 3.3, they were originally written in German as well and then translated into English with the assistance of Katherine Sotejeff-Wilson.

Geneva, spring 2018 M. W.

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1. Theoretical and Methodological Introduction

Markus Winkler

1.1. Preliminary Remarks

1.1.1. Towards the Critical History and Aesthetic Exploration of a Fashionable Slogan and Enemy-Concept

In the current political rhetoric shared by a large number of Western politicians, political scientists, journalists, and essayists, the lexeme barbar- is being used as a fashionable slogan to designate and denounce crimes against humanity, in particular those committed by Islamist fundamentalists.¹ The lexeme functions here as a concept enabling those who use it to apprehend, verbalize, and objectify the heavily mediatized experience of terror and horror related to those crimes. In France, this use of the concept is supported by its presence in the current Code pénal (paragraph 222–1), which speaks of “acts of barbarity”—“actes de barbarie”—as a particular category of crimes.²

The Code pénal provides no further definition or illustration of the “acts of barbarity” as a category of crimes. In this legislative context, like in today’s political rhetoric, the lexeme barbar- is being used as a self-evident concept that fits incomprehensible, heinous acts whose perpetrators, to whom it is applied as well, are to be considered as excluded from the civil society and even from the human species. We may infer that inversely, the concept plays an important role in defining that very society and species; it turns out to be a counter-concept of national, but mostly of European and—ever since Europe colonized overseas territories—Western identity.

Given that it goes back to the ancient Greek adjective and noun bárbaros and its ethnocentric coding in the fifth century BC, we may even surmise that it is a basic or founding concept, a European and Western Grundbegriff. However, it has not yet been acknowledged as such. Accordingly, there is still no comprehensive conceptual history of barbarism ranging from classical Antiquity to the present day, despite the extensive and firm groundwork laid by scholars in classics.³ In the major encyclope-

1 See the examples quoted below, in section 1.2.3.1 of this Introduction.

2 Extended reference included in the Works Cited list, with a link to the English translation.

The current wording, adopted in 1992 and valid since 1994, goes back to paragraph 303 of the 1810 original version of the Code pénal: “Seront punis comme coupables d’assassinat, tous malfaiteurs, quelle que soit leur dénomination, qui, pour l’exécution de leurs crimes, emploient des tortures ou commettent des actes de barbarie.” (“Criminals who, for the per- petration of their crimes, have inflicted torture or committed acts of barbarism, will be punished for murder, regardless of their denomination,” my translation, M. W.) In both versions of the code, there is no further definition of the term actes de barbarie.

3 See, e. g., Jüthner 1923; Bacon 1961; Dauge 1981; Hall 1989; Opelt and Speyer 2001; Mitchell 2007. Droit (2007) is rather a large essay than a comprehensive scholarly investigation in the concept’s history.

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2 Markus Winkler

dias of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) published over the past decades, the concept does not even receive the status of headword.⁴

By outlining the history of the concept from the eighteenth century to the present, our study will contribute to remedying this dearth of research. In doing so, it will methodologically differ from conceptual history as it has been practiced in philosophy and historiography since the 1960’s. Within these founding disciplines of recent Begriffsgeschichte, conceptual history focuses almost exclusively on non-fictional and non-poetic texts, and while its proponents admit that there are no concepts without words, they consider that concepts can to a large extent be abstracted from the words representing them, since these words are variable over time and (linguistic) space (Jannidis 2008, 61; Dutt 2011, 42).⁵ Neither this abstraction nor the focus on non-fictional and non-poetic texts suit the concept of barbarism.⁶ As we will explain in more detail below, this concept was already at its Greek beginnings shaped by mythopoetic tragedy no less than by historiography and ethnography (and, later, rhetoric and philosophy). And throughout its history, it has always remained bound to the onomatopoetic lexeme barbar-. Given this lexeme’s striking presence in all European languages, barbarism proves to be not only a key concept, but also a keyword of European and Western identity formation (Borst 1988).⁷ This in turn entails that the etymology and the conceptual history of barbarism remain inextricably intertwined.⁸

One of the reasons for this remarkable intertwinement no doubt is the fact that the meaning of bárbaros and its derivatives is primarily linguistic and that the sound of the word made of the reduplicated syllable bar cannot be separated from its meaning: at its beginnings, bárbaros is an onomatopoetic word evoking unintelligible

4 See Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (8 vols., 1972–97), where barbarism is only marginally dealt with in the articles on “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus” and on “Zivilisation, Kultur”; the heading is also missing in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (13 vols., 1971–2007) and Ästhetische Grundbegriffe (7 vols., 2000–2005). As for the Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik (12 vols., 1992–2015), its article on “Barbarismus” is by definition limited to the rhetorical derivative of the concept. The article by Michel 1988 concerns only the French history of the concept from 1680 to 1830.—For a comprehensive list and detailed evaluation of the major institutions, journals, and encyclopedias of conceptual history, see Müller and Schmieder 2016, chapter VI.

5 Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, an encyclopedia considered by Gumbrecht as epistemologically obsolete (“ein ‘nachgeborene[s]’ Vorhaben” [Gumbrecht 2006, 26]), practices a more cau- tious approach by listing for each heading the words that represent it in Greek, Latin, and the main modern European languages, and by including, at least in some of its articles, sources that pertain to literature, the visual arts, and music. It is all the more regrettable that this encyclopedia does not include an article on the barbarian.

6 This unsuitability might be one of the reasons why the concept has not received the status of a headword in the major encyclopedias of conceptual history.

7 This status of the slogan in European and Western culture does not exclude its adoption in languages other than European, e. g., modern Arabic.

8 The case of English brave, French brave, German brav provides no counter-argument (Wartburg 1948 = Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, vol. 1, 248–50; Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. ‘brave’; Knobloch 1986). While Wartburg upholds the etymological link be- tween the Latin barbarus and the French brave, Knobloch questions it concerning German brav and proposes another etymology.

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language. Thus in Homer’s Iliad (2, 867), the Carians, (Κᾶρες [Cáres]), a tribe in south-western Asia Minor allied with the Trojans, are characterized as “uncouth of speech” (βαρβαρόφωνοι [barbaróphonoi]),⁹ because their language is incomprehensible to the Achaeans. Poetic language, since the Greek beginnings of bárbaros, draws on this word’s onomatopoetic structure and meaning, as do ancient and modern rhetoric. And so do the modern literary, poetic, and artistic contributions to the knowledge of barbarism and to the search for barbarism—“cognizione della barbarie”

and “la barbarie perseguita,” to quote Juan Rigoli and Carlo Caruso (1998, 12): on the one hand, literature is part and parcel of an attempt to use the concept of the barbarian for the purpose of scholarly knowledge, an attempt that it shares with historiography, ethnography, and anthropology. On the other hand, literature may pursue the barbarian as a force of cultural regeneration. This pursuit aims at realizing the barbarian through poetic language and form.

Observations on bárbaros as an onomatopoetic word shall therefore be the start- ing-point of our attempt to list the premises of the present study (1.2.1). The mythopoetic use of the word is the second point (1.2.2). While onomatopoeia accounts for the concept’s making and deepest layer of meaning, mythopoeia accounts for the—as Edith Hall (1989) has labeled it—“invention” of the barbarian as a politically, culturally, and ethnically threatening persona. Its subsequent reinventions presuppose a third layer of meaning, namely the conceptualization itself (1.2.3), which to some extent involves the abstraction from or hiding of onomatopoeia and mythopoeia; this holds true even for prominent critical explorations of the concept such as Koselleck’s (1989) important and influential attempt to subsume the concept under the category of the “asymmetric counter-concepts.” Onomatopoeia and mythopoeia indeed stand in the way of conceptual history’s traditional methodology. In onomatopoeia, sound and meaning are inextricably intertwined; conceptual history on the contrary abstracts concepts from the words and word-sounds that represent them as well as from the myths that underlie them.

Against this backdrop of the concept’s semantic genealogy, literature’s and the arts’ involvement in the modern history of barbarism—an involvement that the present study will highlight, as mentioned above—may itself be described as genealogical: literature and the arts may indeed aim at reenacting the hidden implications and dynamics of the concept, its provenance and emergence. This staging of barbarism, which takes place in the autonomous ‘literary field’ (Bourdieu), bears witness to a fourth semantic layer, which may be labelled as aesthetic in the modern sense of the term (1.2.4). Its manifestations oscillate between an aesthetic of barbarism and a ‘barbarian’ aesthetic, between knowledge of and search for barbarism (see above).

Finally, in the concluding section 3 of this Introduction, we will provide an overview of the present volume’s structure and content.

Defining the genealogical premises of our study is thus tantamount to outlining the hidden or forgotten or even repressed semantic layers as well as the critical and aesthetic exploration of a concept currently used as a fashionable rhetorical

9 English translation by A. T. Murray (1924), quoted after the Perseus online edition.—On this passage, see Werner 1983, 583.

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slogan—a ‘catchword’ (“Schlagwort”) meant to hit and to hurt, as Arno Borst has emphasized (1988, 19).

1.1.2. A Genealogical Approach

Before we turn to our premises, we must explain why we qualify them as genealogical and in what sense we use the term genealogy.¹⁰ Any application of this term in cultural criticism has to take into account its well-known use by Nietzsche, Fou- cault, and their successors to designate a way of “unmasking” (Hoy 2008) and de-legitimizing established and cherished values, concepts or practices by questioning their founding historical narratives. Thus in Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogy as a philosophical form of historical research, “a genre of historical-philosophical writing with a critical intention” (Saar 2008, 312), opposes the ‘Platonic’ modalities of traditional historical writing insofar as the latter is (supposedly) informed by the search for pure origins, continuous developments (themselves based on tradition), and recognizable ends of historical processes (Foucault 2015 [1971]).¹¹ Genealogy aims at undoing these ontological and teleological implications and the metahistori- cal point of view that they presuppose by exposing the heterogeneity and shockingly low provenance (Herkunft) of those values, concepts, and practices as well as the contingency of their emergence (Entstehung).¹² This form of genealogy indeed claims that historical events are considered to be nothing but the manifestations of instable power relations: “The forces operating in history are not controlled by destiny or regulative mechanisms, but respond to haphazard conflicts. [...] they always appear through the singular randomness of events” (1984, 88).¹³ Thus Foucault, following Nietzsche, points out that whenever genealogy deals with historical periods considered as highly civilized, “it is with the suspicion—not vindictive but joyous—of finding a barbarous confusion” (1984, 89; translation modified, M. W.).¹⁴ Obviously, this sort of ‘genealogical’ critique of the way we look at established values, concepts, and practices (such as the asymmetric opposition of civilization and barbarism in the passage just quoted) is of considerable interest to the present study, also with regard to our attempt to revise the methodological shortcomings of traditional conceptual history.¹⁵ We nevertheless depart from it in two major respects:

10 A theoretical reflection on the implications of the term genealogy is missing in Droit 2007, despite the title of his monograph: Généalogie des barbares. See also below, section 1.2.3.2 of this Introduction.

11 On Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche’s genealogies, see Saar 2008; Koopman 2008; Müller and Schmieder 2016, 575–86.

12 See Foucault’s (2015 [1971], vol. 2, 1282–86) analysis of Nietzsche’s genealogical keywords Herkunft and Entstehung as counter-concepts of Ursprung “origin.” See also below, sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.3 of the chapter on Nietzsche.

13 “Les forces qui sont en jeu dans l’histoire n’obéissent ni à une destination ni à une mécan- ique, mais bien au hasard de la lutte. [...] Elles apparaissent toujours dans l’aléa singulier de l’événement” (2015 [1971], vol. 2, 1294). Foucault refers here to Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral II, § 12.

14 “c’est avec le soupçon, non pas rancunier mais joyeux, d’un grouillement barbare et inavou- able” (2015 [1971], vol. 2, 1295).

15 See below, section 1.2.3.2 of this Introduction.

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Firstly, when Foucault and his recent successors present genealogy as a ‘meth- od’¹⁶ of historical research or as radically historicist “critique” (Bevir 2008, 265), they leave out the fact that their use of the term genealogy is metaphorical.¹⁷ In its dominant, non-metaphorical use, as documented by major language dictionaries, genealogy means “[a]n account of one’s descent from an ancestor or ancestors, by enumeration of the intermediate persons” (Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. ‘genealogy’), that is, a family pedigree. Linking the present generation to its predecessors and tracing the lineage back to its origin (in the ideal case), genealogical accounts tend to be legitimizing narratives, as witnessed by ancient mythological models such as Hesiod’s Theogonia or the Genesis (Heinrich 1982).¹⁸ A closer look at the mythological model-genealogies however reveals that the mythical legitimization of the present through a founding narrative of the present’s past origin may also tend to de-legitimize this origin by narrating e. g., how one generation revolted against the preceding generation, as is the case in Hesiod. Thus genealogies may also be narratives of emancipation through rupture with the past. Emil Angehrn describes this ambivalence of the genealogical narrative as follows:

Genealogical accounts of past origins not only link the present to its founding past, but also lead the present out of its past: The dialectic of origins consists in both founding and liberating the present. Those who trace back their lineage, but also those who emancipate themselves from their lineage, may both find their proper selves. Knowing from where one comes as well as knowing from what one has freed oneself are ways of finding one’s own identity. (1996, 311; my translation, M. W.)¹⁹

In their use of the term genealogy, Nietzsche and Foucault obviously emphasize and even absolutize this emancipatory moment of rupture insofar as their uncovering of the hidden “barbarous confusion” in the present’s past aims at ending the past’s authority over the present and its values, concepts, and practices. However, this use of the term to designate a method of ‘unmasking’ the low provenance and contingent emergence of presently cherished values, concepts, and practices may well revert to the genealogical narrative’s legitimizing function as well. Thus in Nietzsche, who was not the first to apply figures of genealogy to philosophical thought (Weigel 2006, 27;

Willer and Vedder 2013), the genealogical conjectures on the ‘barbarian’ provenance

16 “méthode” (Foucault 2004, 121).

17 Saar hints at the fact that Nietzsche’s use of the term genealogy is metaphorical, but that it has become in the meantime “a central philosophical topos”—“ein zentraler philosophis- cher Topos” (2007, 11; my translation, M. W.).

18 Accordingly, genealogies served during the Ancien régime to prove aristocratic descent (Weigel 2006, 24).

19 “Die genealogische Herkunftsgeschichte ist nicht nur Rückführung auf das gründende Er- ste, sondern auch Herausführung aus ihm: Die Dialektik des Ursprungs ist die von Be- gründung und Befreiung. Nicht nur wer sich seiner Herkunft versichert, sondern auch wer sich von ihr emanzipiert, kann sich selber finden: Nicht nur wissen, woher man kommt, sondern auch, wovon man sich frei gemacht hat und wohin man geht, ist ein Modus der Identitätsgewinnung.”

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of aristocratic societies lead to a vindication of barbarism as powerful wholeness capable of generating ‘higher’ forms of human and social life.²⁰

Reflecting on the metaphorical status of the philosophical use of the term gene- alogy therefore makes us realize that this use conveys a semantic complexity that opposes conceptual simplification. In contexts other than those of genealogies in the non-metaphorical sense, the term indeed becomes part of an ‘absolute’ metaphor (as opposed to metaphor as a rhetorical figure of speech). Absolute metaphors are, to quote Hans Blumenberg, “foundational elements of philosophical language,

‘translations’ that resist being converted back into authenticity and logicality” (2010, 3);²¹ they have a “conceptually irredeemable expressive function” (3),²² which consists in ‘guiding’ and ‘framing’ concept-based and theory-oriented research and as such undergoes historical change.²³ We hold that thinking the history of presently cherished values, concepts, and practices in terms of genealogy proceeds from an

‘absolute’ metaphor in the Blumenbergian sense and that this metaphor may unfold a de-legitimizing or legitimizing dynamic.

As we have already hypothesized, literary and artistic ‘genealogies’ of barbarism may betray an analogous ambivalence: they may either vindicate barbarism or un- cover it or do both. And as will become clear throughout the present study, our own premises are to a large extent based on those literary and artistic genealogies. How- ever, using the term genealogy to metaphorically qualify these premises will prevent us from simply reproducing the interference of legitimization and de-legitimization—an interference traces of which are to be found not only in Nietzsche, but also in Foucault (the above-quoted passage, in which he characterizes the genealogical uncovering of the “barbarous confusion” as joyful, is but one example).²⁴

This means, secondly, that we try to make the above-mentioned interference instrumental by drawing on the metaphor’s de-legitimizing as well as its legitimizing dynamic. On the one hand, we qualify our premises metaphorically as genealogical because they are intended to de-legitimize the current fashionable use of the lexeme barbar- by pointing to the contingency of the lexeme’s emergence and of its successive meanings. This tendency of the metaphor is obviously close to Fou-

20 See Nietzsche: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 257–259 and Zur Genealogie der Moral I, § 11.

These and other passages will be discussed below, in chapter 3.4.

21 “Grundbestände der philosophischen Sprache [...], ‘Übertragungen’, die sich nicht ins Ei- gentliche, in die Logizität zurückholen lassen” (1960, 9).

22 “begrifflich nicht ablösbare[] Aussagefunktion” (1960, 9).

23 On the pragmatic function of absolute metaphors, see Blumenberg 1960, 11, 59 (English:

2010, 5, 52); on ‘absolute’ metaphors as “leading metaphorical representation” (“meta- phorische Leitvorstellungen”), see 1960, 9–11, 17, 19, 20, 23–24, 69; 2010, 3–5, 10, 13, 14, 17–18, 62–63, and 2001, 193: “Metaphern sind [...] Leitfossilien einer archaischen Schicht des Prozesses der theoretischen Neugierde” (“[M]etaphors are fossils that indicate an ar- chaic stratum of the trial of theoretical curiosity,” 1997, 82); on the ‘framing’ function of metaphors, see Busse 2012, 300–01, and on the genealogical tree as absolute metaphor in Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, see Weigel 2006, 27.

24 Hence from our point of view, it does not go without saying that genealogy is an unam- biguously critical form of historiography (“eindeutig kritische Geschichtsschreibung”; Saar 2007, 10).

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cault’s definition of genealogy as critical “history of the present” (1995, 31),²⁵ and, as such, it has affinities with the ideology critique of the Frankfurt school as well (Hoy 2008, 280–84). On the other hand, the very definition and objectification of those meanings as semantic layers, namely onomatopoeia, mythopoeia, conceptualization, and aesthetic reflection, resorts to mental functions, or, to quote Ernst Cassirer, “symbolic forms.” These are “forms of human culture” (1944, 279) and as such the supra-historical, non-contingent, founding, and legitimizing ‘conditions of possibility’ of those layers, namely of the structural characteristics of each of them and of the—metaphorically speaking—genealogical link between them. To be sure, the lexeme’s concrete meanings emerge contingently at various stages of its history, but as forms, they are—metaphorically speaking—interrelated and non-contingent, insofar as they are autonomous “configurations towards being,” that is, ways not of copying, but of constituting reality (1953, 107).²⁶ Our resorting to them as constitutive, legitimizing factors in turn legitimizes our attempt to systematize the ways in which the word barbarian becomes significant.

Hence these mental functions or symbolic forms determine neither the concrete successive meanings of the lexeme barbar- nor the historical moments of their emergence: as symbolic form, myth e. g., does not account for the fact that the (Per- sian) barbarian was ‘invented’ in the fifth century BC.²⁷ This historical moment and the referential meanings of the ‘invention’ are contingent, as is—to quote another example—today’s fashionable recycling of the enemy-concept of the barbarian to designate Islamist fundamentalists. Thus our systematization does not involve—as Foucault in his reading of Nietzsche’s genealogies suggests—any metaphysical-teleological attempt to define the ‘essence,’ ‘origin’ or ‘end’ of barbarism as a keyword and key-concept of Western identity-formation; we will on the contrary warn against such attempts.²⁸ But our systematization also opposes the tendency to essentialize the discontinuity and coincidence that Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s (at times dog- matic) formulations often betray, e. g., Foucault’s already quoted insistence on the all-pervading “haphazard conflicts” and the former’s claim that there is necessarily a world of difference between the cause of a thing’s emergence and its final usefulness (Zur Genealogie der Moral II, § 12).²⁹ The conceptual history of barbarism speaks against this claim: as we will see throughout the present study, this history is characterized by the interplay of discontinuity and continuity, the latter being in part at-

25 “histoire du présent” (2015 [1975], vol. 2, 292).

26 “Prägungen zum Sein” (1988, 43).

27 See below, section 1.2.2 of this Introduction.

28 On Koselleck’s homage to Carl Schmitt’s notion of the enemy-concept, see below, section 1.2.3.2 of this Introduction.

29 “[...] vielmehr giebt es für alle Art Historie gar keinen wichtigeren Satz als jenen, [....] dass nämlich die Ursache der Entstehung eines Dings und dessen schliessliche Nützlichkeit, dessen thatsächliche Verwendung und Einordnung in ein System von Zwecken toto coelo auseinander liegen” (1980-KSA, vol. 5, 313). (“[...] on the contrary, there is no more important proposition for every sort of history than that, [...] namely that the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo separate [...],” 2006, 51). See section 3.4.3 of the chapter on Nietzsche in the present volume.

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tributable to the “symbolic forms” that are at stake and in part to the onomatopoetic provenance of the lexeme barbar-. The conceptual history of barbarism is not just a series of ‘interpretations’ that violently replace each other. On the contrary, the subsequent ‘interpretations’ have not replaced the violence inherent in the very word barbarian—a violence that, as we will see, stems from the lexeme’s onomatopoetic beginnings and pervades its mythopoetic as well as its conceptual use. Uncovering and de-legitimizing this (often repressed) continuity is one of the critical tasks of our genealogical approach to the conceptual history of barbarism. But the de-legitimizing effort is bound to the legitimizing a priori of the forms of meaning that become manifest in the concept’s history.

As a metaphorically induced figure of thought used to qualify a specific approach to history (conceptual and other), critical genealogy thus unfolds a dynamic that is not only “radical[ly] historicist,” as Mark Bevir claims in his reading of Nietzsche and Foucault (2008, 273), but also critical-phenomenological (in the Cassirerian sense of the word, 1988, 9–11; 1987, 18).³⁰ It is telling that the proponents of a radically historicist concept of genealogy themselves use a key formula of transcendental (in Cassirer’s words: phenomenological) criticism when they point out that genealogical research deals with the “conditions of possibility” of presently cherished values, concepts, and practices (Bevir 2008, 272; Koopman 2008, 347). Using this formula contradicts the putative radical historicism insofar as it refers to the non-historical, a priori forms of culture, that is, to the forms by means of which perceptions and the affects they are related to become significant and communicable; speaking of a

‘historical a priori,’ as Foucault does in his earlier works,³¹ is rhetorically provocative, but epistemologically misleading.³²

Accordingly, we question the opposition that in an article inspired by Kant’s

“Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” (“An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”), Foucault establishes between “transcendental” criticism on the one hand and “archaeological” and “genealogical” on the other. Whereas the former, he claims, deals with “the search for formal structures with universal value,” the latter is “a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying” (1984, 46)³³—an investigation which Foucault, again provocatively and misleadingly, labels as “historical ontology of ourselves” (45). As we have tried to show, this alternative is invalid, as is Foucault’s claim that only genealogy as he defines it will enable us to

30 The critical phenomenology of symbolic forms is an expansion of Kantian and neo-Kantian transcendental criticism. On the compatibility of genealogy and phenomenology, see Hoy 2008, 289–94.

31 “a priori historique” (2015 [1966], vol. 1, 1211–12 = Les mots et les choses, I, 5, 7; 2015 [1969], vol. 2, 135–41 = L’ Archéologie du savoir, III, 5)

32 See also Cassirer’s critique of Durkheim’s use of the notion of ‘a priori’ (1987, 230–31; 1955, 192–93).

33 This article was first published in English in the Foucault Reader (1984, 32–50), where it is presented as “based on an unpublished French manuscript by Michel Foucault” (iv) and

“[t]ranslated by Catherine Porter” (32). On its French version, first published in Foucault’s Dits et écrits (1994), see the explanations in 2015, vol. 2, 1650–54 (notes on “Qu’est-ce que les lumières ?”).

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“separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think” (46). To Foucault’s simplistic alternative, we oppose a ‘genealogical’ approach which is simultaneously historical and (in the Cassirerian sense) phenomenological. As such, it draws not only on the conflictual interplay of legitimization and de-legitimization that characterizes mythological genealogies (see above), but also on the structural hallmark of the figural representations of genealogies (mythological and other), namely the no less conflictual interplay of systematic classification and historical derivation.³⁴

To conclude this section of the present Introduction, we should emphasize that our attempt to do justice to the epistemic value of genealogy as ‘absolute’ metaphor and to make its ambivalence instrumental is a key element of our methodological departure not only from Foucault’s notion of genealogy, but also from the methodology of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), as it has been practiced over the past decades. Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht has pertinently pointed out that one of the shortcomings of the philosophical practice of Begriffsgeschichte, as it materialized in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, was Joachim Ritter’s, the editor’s, refusal to include metaphorology (2006, 15–17). Yet metaphorology serves conceptual history insofar as it deals with the pre- or non-conceptual substratum of concepts:

[M]etaphorology seeks to burrow down to the substructure of thought, the under- ground, the nutrient solution of systematic crystallizations; but it also aims to show with what ‘courage’ the mind preempts itself in its images, and how its history is pro- jected in the courage of its conjectures. (Blumenberg 2010, 5)³⁵

Blumenberg’s methodological reflection obviously is relevant not only to concepts as objects of historical analysis, but also to the conceptual-theoretical framework of the analysis itself. Thus our heuristic choice to metaphorically qualify our approach to the conceptual history of barbarism as genealogical draws on the sub- or pre-conceptual dynamics unfolding from genealogical narratives and their figural representations. This choice however cannot—and need not—contribute to the solution of another important and to this day unresolved theoretical problem of Begriffs- geschichte, namely the relation between conceptual history and social or otherwise extra-conceptual, pragmatic history (Sachgeschichte).³⁶

As for the exclusion of metaphorology from philosophical conceptual history, one may very well assume that this is concomitant with the latter’s lack of sustained interest in literature’s and the arts’ contribution to and exploration of that history—a lack that also informs the research in the history of political concepts, as it materialized in

34 See Weigel 2006, 36, who characterizes the structure of genealogical patterns as ‘the interplay of synchronic classification and diachronic derivation’—“das Zusammenspiel und den Widerstreit zwischen synchroner Klassifikation (mit dem Effekt der Bildung von Ein- heiten) und diachroner Ableitung (als Projektion in die Dimension der Zeit).”

35 “Metaphorologie sucht an die Substruktur des Denkens heranzukommen, an den Un- tergrund, die Nährlösung der systematischen Kristallisationen, aber sie will auch faßbar machen, mit welchem ‘Mut’ sich der Geist in seinen Bildern selbst voraus ist und wie sich im Mut zur Vermutung seine Geschichte entwirft” (1960, 11).

36 See below, section 1.2.3.2 of this Introduction.

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Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. From a retrospective point of view, it thus proves to be part of the methodological shortcomings of Begriffsgeschichte in general.

1.2. Genealogical Premises

1.2.1. From bárbaros as Language- and Affect-Related Onomatopoetic Word to barbarismus as Rhetorical Term

While there seems to be no consensus about a possible oriental (Akkadian and/or Sumerian) origin of the Greek adjective and noun bárbaros, etymologists agree on its status as an onomatopoetic word the type of which is well represented in Indo-Euro- pean languages, as witnessed by the Sanskrit barbar “stammer” and the Latin balbus

“stammering” (Frisk 1960, 219–20; Chantraine 1986, 165; Beekes 2009, vol. 1, 201).³⁷ To determine the significance that the onomatopoetic form and meaning of bárbaros has for the history of the concept of barbarism, we first must define the term ono- matopoeia itself.

Onomatopoeia is, as the interplay of the term’s two components (ὄνομα [ónoma]

“name” or “word,” and ποιέω [poiéo] “make”) indicates, a form of word-making. As for the specific meaning of the term, scholars in general consider it as “a relation between signifier and signified in which the signifier is motivated, in part, by its sound” (Bredin 1996, 561). By analyzing the possible forms of this relation, Hugh Bredin arrives at distinguishing between three different types of onomatopoeia. The first, namely “direct onomatopoeia,” is constituted by the resemblance of a word’s sound and “the sound that it names” (558). A word of this type thus fulfills two cri- teria: its denotation “is a class of sounds; and [...] the sound of the word resembles a member of the class” (558), as in the English hiss, the German zischen, and the French siffler. The difference between these three verbs indicates however that even

“direct onomatopoeia” is only partly motivated. Bredin goes on to claim that without convention, that is, conventional denotation, a directly onomatopoetic word could not even be experienced as onomatopoetic (558).

The second type, namely “associative onomatopoeia,” “occurs whenever the sound of a word resembles a sound associated with whatever it is that the word denotes”

(560). An example is the bird name cuckoo, the acoustic resemblance being here to the song that the bird produces and not the bird itself (560). According to Bredin, barbarian also belongs to this second type: “A famous historical example is barbar- ian, whose root, the Greek word bárbaroi, was devised as a name for non-Greeks because their strange languages sounded to Greek ears like the stuttered syllables

‘ba-ba’” (560). We will discuss this typification further down.

As for the third type, namely “exemplary onomatopoeia,” it rests according to Bredin not on denotation, but on connotative instantiation, as for example in nimble:

“The word sound nimble does not sound like anything that can be denoted by the word, and it cannot resemble the idea connoted by it, since sounds and concepts cannot ‘sound alike’; concepts have no sound. Instead, the word sound instantiates 37 Chantraine and Beekes reject the hypothesis, still upheld by Frisk, of an oriental origin of

bárbaros.

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or exemplifies nimbleness, since it is itself a nimble sound” (564). Bredin’s choice of literary examples (Pope, Keats, Joyce et al.) to illustrate this connotative relationship is convincing insofar as these examples highlight the affective values of the words being used. Yet by stating that “the connotation of a word is the concept instantiated by all the members of the class” (558), that is, by denotation, Bredin does not take into account these very values; his notion of connotation thus proves to be inade- quate. Like J. St. Mill, whom he quotes on this occasion, he assimilates connotation to what we would rather designate as intension, namely the sum of the object-related, distinctive semantic attributes contained in a concept, its extension being the range of objects to which it is applied or has been applied.

This rather cognitivist assimilation might explain why Bredin attributes the word barbarian only to the second type, namely associative onomatopoeia. Etymological research however suggests that bárbaros (as adjective) was first related directly to a linguistic sound experience: Beekes for example defines the word as “an onomatopoeic reduplicative formation, which originally referred to the language of the for- eigner” (2009, vol. 1, 201). Hall stresses that “[o]riginally it was simply an adjective representing the sound of incomprehensible speech” (1989, 4). It seems that the semantic attributes “‘foreign(er), non-Greek,’ also adj. ‘uncivilized, raw’” (Beekes 2009, vol. 1, 201) were associated with this primary linguistic experience and meaning and not vice versa, as Bredin’s typification suggests. Accordingly, we may surmise that as an onomatopoetic word rendering the experience of incomprehensible, foreign speech, as well as incomprehensible animal sounds (Jüthner 1923, 1–2, 7, 128, n. 30;

Opelt and Speyer, 818),³⁸ bárbaros had already at its origins affective values linked to the expressive and conative (appealing) function of language rather than to the representational; as we will see, onomatopoeia is even akin to mythopoeia in that it opposes the net distinction between signifier and signified.³⁹ We will therefore avoid the term connotation to designate these values because it suggests that they are secondary.

The expressive and the appealing functions of onomatopoeia have been neglected by current definitions (e. g., Brogan 1993; Matthews 2007, s. v. ‘onomatopoeia’; Glück 2016, 480–81). Yet they are already hinted at in Quintilian’s definition to which all modern definitions remain indebted, as Bredin himself acknowledges (556). Quin- tilian, who counts onomatopoeia among the tropes (while admitting that it might also be considered as a figure of speech, cp. Inst. 8.6.31–32 with 9.1.3–5), translates the Greek term with “fictio nominis” and observes: “Et sunt plurima ita posita ab iis qui sermonem primi fecerunt, aptantes adfectibus vocem” (Inst. 8.6.31). Harold Edgeworth Butler translates as follows: “It is true that many words were created in this way by the original founders of the language, who adapted them to suit the sensation which they expressed” (1920–22).⁴⁰ This translation is misleading insofar as in the Latin original, the word (vox) is adapted not to sensations, but to affects (af-

38 One instance is to be found in Herodotus 2.57. This passage however suggests that ‘barbarian’ language was compared to animal sounds, the reference to the latter therefore being secondary.

40 English translation quoted after the Perseus online edition.

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fectus), that is, to states of mind or body attached to sensations (sense impressions), as Helmut Rahn emphasizes in his German translation by choosing the compound

“Gefühlseindrücke” (1988, vol. 2, 231). Quintilian thus hints at the creative—‘poetic’

and ‘fictional’—power of onomatopoeia and at the affective value that it expresses and conveys. In the sentence quoted above, he even relates it to the very origin of language.

In his article, Bredin observes that “we want language to be onomatopoeic” (560), and he claims that onomatopoeia is a “linguistic universal” (569). To better under- stand this attractiveness and significance of onomatopoeia, we may resort to Ernst Cassirer, who in his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen underscores that it indeed represents a fundamental quality of all language, namely the constitutive layer of affect and emotional stimulation to which language remains bound: “[A]ll meaning is rooted in the stratum of affectivity and sensory stimulation and is referred back to it over and over again” (1957, 109; translation modified, M. W.).⁴¹ According to Cassirer, all language rests on this sub-conceptual, affect-related expressive function as its primary layer of meaning (“primary expressive experience,” 110);⁴² in language development, the “representative function” (109–110),⁴³ a term that Cassirer bor- rows from Karl Bühler, occurs later and only gradually prevails. Onomatopoeia thus is rooted in this primary function of language:

All the phenomena that we call onomatopoeia belong to this sphere, for in the genu- ine onomatopoeic formations of language we are dealing far less with the direct imi- tation of objectively given phenomena than with a phonetic and linguistic formation which still remains wholly within the purely physiognomic world view. Here the sound attempts, as it were, to capture the immediate face of things and with it their true essence. Even where living language has long since learned to use the word as a pure vehicle of thought it never wholly relinquishes this connection. And it is above all the poetic language which persistently strives back toward this original physiognomic ex- pression, in which it seeks to plunge as in a primordial source and eternal fountain of youth. (110; translation modified, M. W.)⁴⁴

We may infer from these observations that as onomatopoetic words, bárbaros and its derivatives not only mean incomprehensible foreign language, but also express 41 “Alles Sinnhafte wurzelt [...] in der Schicht des Affekts und der sinnlichen Erregung und

wird immer wieder auf sie zurückbezogen” (1954, 128).

42 “primäre[s] Ausdruckserlebnis” (128).

43 “Darstellungsfunktion” (128).

44 “Alles, was man als Onomatopöie zu bezeichnen pflegt, gehört in diesen Kreis: denn in den eigentlich-onomatopöetischen Bildungen der Sprache handelt es sich, weit weniger als um direkte ‘Nachahmung’ objektiv-gegebener Phänomene, um eine Laut- und Sprach- bildung, die noch ganz im Banne der rein ‘physiognomischen’ Weltansicht steht. Der Laut unternimmt hier gleichsam den Versuch, das unmittelbare ‘Gesicht’ der Dinge und mit die- sem ihr wahres Wesen einzufangen. Die lebendige Sprache gibt, auch wo sie längst gelernt hat, das Wort als reines Vehikel des ‘Gedankens’ zu brauchen, diese Verflechtung nirgends auf. Vor allem ist es die dichterische Sprache, die immer wieder in diesen Grund des ‘physiognomischen’ Ausdrucks zurückstrebt und in ihn, als ihren Urquell und ihren ständigen Jungbrunnen, eintaucht” (128–29).

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feelings associated with incomprehension, namely rejection and aversion or, occa- sionally, curiosity and even fascination. To be sure, scholars consider as open the question whether in Homer’s characterization of the Carians as barbaróphonoi the word is already being used pejoratively.⁴⁵ The ancient rhetorical term barbarismós/

barbarismus however reflects the association of the use of foreign language with in- appropriate and amiss language: already in ancient Greek the term means both (Ar- istot. Poet. 1458a), and in Quintilian, who provides a very detailed and differentiated description and evaluation of the various kinds of barbarismus, the term refers to aesthetically and morally offensive incorrectness of speech (the Latin words for this being foeditas and vitium, Inst. 1.5.1.). It is revealing that he presents as the first kind of such incorrectness the insertion of foreign words into Latin speech (Quintilian mentions here among others African, Spanish, and Gaulish, Inst. 1.5.8). Quintilian admits though that the bad qualities of linguistic barbarism may exceptionally turn out to be excellent qualities (virtutes) when consciously used by poets as figures of speech (Inst. 1.5.1. and 1.5.57).⁴⁶ There is indeed a certain degree of ambivalence in Quintilian’s assessment of linguistic barbarism: what is offensive may turn out to be attractive. Quintilian’s admission of barbarism as poetic licence, that is, barbarism as an exceptional and isolated deviation from the norm of the aptum, may in modern poetry and art even become an aesthetic and cultural value attached to revolutionary ideals of cultural and social renewal.⁴⁷

A scene from Une tempête, Aimé Césaire’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tem- pest, enacts from a postcolonial point of view this link between the ancient rhetorical notion of barbarism and the modern vindication of barbarism as well as the under- lying affective value of the onomatopoetic French word barbare. When Caliban, the

‘negro slave’—“esclave nègre” (1969, 7), is first called in by his master Prospero, he enters the scene by pronouncing the word “Uhuru,” a Swahili word for freedom that is of course unknown to Prospero, the Eurocentric humanist and colonizer:

CALIBAN : Uhuru !

PROSPERO : Qu’est-ce que tu dis ? CALIBAN : Je dis Uhuru !

PROSPERO : Encore une remontée de ton langage barbare. Je t’ai déjà dit que je n’aime pas ça. D’ailleurs, tu pourrais être poli, un bonjour ne te tuerait pas !

45 See above, the passage from the Iliad quoted in section 1.1.1 of this Introduction. On this passage, see Losemann 2015; Jüthner 1923, 3–4; Werner 1983, 583; Boletsi 2013, 69. Con- trary to Werner, Boletsi argues that the depiction of the Carians as barbarophones is de- preciative and insinuates their inferiority. According to Jüthner, the reason for Homer’s singling out of the Carians as linguistic barbarians (whereas the Trojans are not qualified as such) is the fact that the Greeks had exchanges (hostile or friendly) with these people; on the contrary, Homer’s knowledge of the Trojans was based only on myth. Therefore, Homer does not establish any ethnic differences between Greeks and Trojans.

46 For a brief history of the rhetorical notion of barbarism, see Erlebach 1992. See also Jüth- ner 1923, 43. On onomatopoeia as barbarism, see Ueding and Steinbrink 2011, 227: “Bei Wortneuschöpfungen wird die Onomatopöie als Barbarismus aufgefaßt.” (“Onomatopoeia is considered as barbarism when it is neologistical,” my translation, M. W.).

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CALIBAN: Ah ! J’oubliais ... Bonjour. Mais un bonjour autant que possible de guêpes, de crapauds, de pustules de fiente. Puisse le jour d’aujourd’hui hâter de dix ans le jour où les oiseaux du ciel et les bêtes de la terre se rassasieront de ta charogne ! (24)

CALIBAN: Uhuru!

PROSPERO: What did you say?

CALIBAN: I said, Uhuru!

PROSPERO: Mumbling your barbaric language again! I’ve already told you, I don’t like it.

You could be polite, at least; a simple “hello” wouldn’t kill you.

CALIBAN: Oh, I forgot ... But make that as froggy, waspish, pustular and dung-filled “hello” as possible. May today hasten by a decade the day when all the birds of the sky and beasts of the earth will feast upon your corpse! (1999, 11; translation modified, M. W.) The African word which Caliban uses as an aggressive onomatopoetic battle-cry is rejected by Prospero as an offensive barbarism in the rhetorical sense of the word.

Moreover, Uhuru as well as barbare convey the affective value attached to their sound qualities. But instead of replacing his ‘barbarian’ language with politesse-formulas, as suggested by Prospero, the oppressed slave Caliban elaborates on it, as does—on the level of the dramatic form (in the external communication system)—the poet himself, who transforms the slave’s barbarian “curse,” adapted from Shakespeare (The Tempest 1.2.324–27, 324–47, 366–68), into revolutionary verbal violence. Bar- barism in the rhetorical sense of the term, namely the introduction of foreign words and taboo swearwords into the ‘metropolitan’ language of the master and colonizer, is ‘appropriated’ and even vindicated to create a hybrid text, a veritable barbarolex- is.⁴⁸ Thus Césaire not only reminds us of the hidden semantic layers of the lexeme barbar-, namely its linguistic origins and its colonialist backdrop—which also goes back to its Greek origins (Jüthner 1923, 11; Hall 1989, 50)—, but he also uses its ambiguity ‘contrapuntally’ to question its function as a European identity concept.⁴⁹ And he highlights the link between the ancient rhetorical notion of barbarism or barbarolexis and the modern postcolonial notion of textual hybridity.

1.2.2. The Mythopoetic ‘Invention of the Barbarian’

In the scene just quoted from Césaire’s play, Prospero qualifies not only Caliban’s language, but also his very personality as barbarian. After apostrophizing him as an ugly monkey (“singe [...] si laid !” 1969, 24), he adds:

48 Barbarolexis is a term used by the fifth century Latin grammarian Consentius to designate the lexical form of linguistic barbarism. See Lausberg 2008, §§ 476–78. On ‘abrogation’ and

‘appropriation’ of the colonizer’s language in post-colonial writing, see Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2002, chapter 2.

49 On ‘contrapuntal’ reading and writing, a key concept of postcolonial criticism, see Said 1993, 59–62.

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Puisque tu manies si bien l’invective, tu pourrais au moins me bénir de t’avoir appris à parler. Un barbare ! Une bête brute que j’ai éduquée, formée, que j’ai tirée de l’animalité qui l’engangue⁵⁰ encore de toute part ! (25)

Since you’re so fond of invective, you could at least thank me for having taught you to speak at all. You, a barbarian...a dumb animal, a beast I educated, trained, dragged up from the bestiality that still clings to you. (11; translation modified, M. W.)

The synecdochic use of the word meaning unintelligible or offensive language to designate the person speaking this language provides the linguistic basis for the most striking semantic aspect of the passage, namely the definition of the ethnically different and enslaved “barbarian” as an animal-like, subhuman brute. Césaire satirizes this Eurocentric and even racist use of barbare which continues to inform today’s rhetorical use of the concept. To assess the significance of this use, we have to turn to its historical beginnings, namely the Greek mythopoetic ‘invention’ of the barbarian as dramatic persona and as category “encompassing the entire genus of non-Greeks”

(Hall 1989, 10).⁵¹

In her seminal study, Edith Hall has shown that the oldest extant Greek tragedy, namely Aeschylus’ Persae of 472 BC, “is the first fully fledged testimony to one of the most important of the Greeks’ ideological inventions and one of the most influential in western thought, the culturally other, the anti-Greek, the barbarian” (1989, 70).

Hall goes on to explain that, while referring primarily to the Persian invaders, the barbarian as category soon came to mean all non-Greeks because the Persian empire

“covered so many of the foreign peoples with whom the Greeks had contact” (11).

Denoting all non-Greeks, it “was to reflect and bolster the Greeks’ sense of their own superiority” (11), as witnessed by the topical opposition of Hellenes and barbarians.

It is only in relation to this function that the heterogeneous referents of the word (e. g., Persian and Scythian) and their respective semantic features (e. g., ‘oriental’

luxuriousness and nomadic wildness) become compatible (Winkler 2009, 31–32).

In tragedy however, the ethnocentric asymmetric opposition of Hellenes and barbarians remains bound to the mythopoetic construction of the barbarian as tragic persona. Thus in Persae, the catastrophic defeat of the Persian army at Salamis and Xerxes’ own downfall are staged as a confirmation of the rule, emerging from the mythological tradition, “that excessive prosperity and satiety lead first to hubris and then to destruction” (Hall 1989, 70). The destruction is a punishment inflicted by the gods, as the ghost of Darius powerfully underscores in his final rhesis (Pers. 800–28).

Persae may therefore serve as an example of the way the mythopoetic shaping of an outstanding contemporary historical event tends to prevent a historical analysis of this event or to deprive it of its historicity (Barthes 1970, 225). The event turns out to be the repetition and affirmation of an event or events situated in an indefinite

50 The verb enganguer is derived from the noun gangue, which refers to an enveloping sub- stance.

51 As for the specifically modern missionary impetus, also present in Prospero’s words, to educate and humanize the barbarian, see our remarks on Goethe below, section 1.2.4 of this Introduction.