‘This is a book about the lives of objects considered through a history of the ancient Mediterranean’ (p. 1). Such is the claim of the title, the cover and parts of the introduction. But this is a book about so much more. First, K.'s ‘objects’ are more diverse and multifaceted than we could possibly anticipate, ‘expanding, almost to the point of breakage, our ideas of what we might take material culture to mean in the first place’ (p. 21). Second, K.'s ‘history’ connects the ancient Mediterranean to contemporary approaches to it and the current academic and political climate. ‘“What you are doing is important/beautiful/interesting, but you are not a historian,” is a refrain I've heard deployed often (and of which I have been the recipient)’ (p. 161). K. treats disciplinary boundaries as paper thin, and the result is an interweaving of history with psychoanalysis, Biblical studies with critical race theory, Classics with personal reflection.
This book project was driven by the so-called ‘material turn’ in studies of the ancient world, a movement influenced by Continental philosophy and active in cultural studies of all kinds. K. is curious about this renewed fascination with the material culture of the ancient world, noting a focus on objects and processes as well as ‘the sensible world and our mechanisms for sensing it’ (p. 3). The material turn has under its umbrella the new materialisms with their interest in blurring boundaries and questioning hierarchies between people and things, but also studies of the emotions and affect. There is a material turn in contemporary theory – but, as Bill Brown notes in his 2004 volume Things, this is not the only time we have had a ‘thing about things’. Brown explores the cyclical modishness of ‘things’ as an academic and artistic subject, and K. too posits a long history of turning to the material. She notes that a material turn has been pinpointed in late antiquity, but argues that this is an ‘intensification in a longer-running … set of practices and recognitions’ (p. 27). In Ovid's Metamorphoses Pygmalion's statue comes to life in response to his touch. In the Gospel of Peter the stone rolls itself away, and a walking talking cross emerges. Material agency is palpable in stories from antiquity.
‘Psychoanalysis is also a history of objects. It is most definitively so in the object-relations school of psychoanalysis tracing back to Melanie Klein’ (p. 6). Psychoanalysis arguably drives this book more strongly than do the new materialisms. K. is interested in approaches that ‘move between and merge psychic and more literal objects (or: instantiations of materiality)’ (p. 13), and it is the focus on instantiations such as fantasy and imagination that really push the boundaries of materiality.
Interesting deployments of these approaches include the depiction of the psyche as ‘a site of ruin: an accumulation of remains’ in Chapter 2 (p. 42). The fall of Rome, Babylon, the Tower of Babel. The temporal aspect of this wide-ranging discussion is particularly compelling. A reading of Revelation reveals that Babylon is always already fallen; Pausanias’ Greece is depicted through its remains; and for the Gospel of Mark Jesus and the temple were both already always fallen. Ruin is not the end but the beginning, as sociopolitical entities rise from the ruins. Fantasy is explored through Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Book of Daniel, a foretelling of downfall that unfolds through materiality (a multi-material statue representing a sequence of kingdoms). Throughout her book K. is looking for and expressing subjective experience, and in this chapter she argues that ‘the city in ruins expressed in a dramatic way the subjective experience of degradation and breakdown in its people’ (p. 57). People themselves become ‘remains’, even ‘decaying part-objects’ (p. 61). Psychic processes are placed alongside physical ruins, to poignant effect.
Chapter 3 explores the ‘psychic and affective subtexts to epigraphic culture’ (p. 70). Here theories of psychology and materiality converge around the theme of memorialisation. Again there is an interest in political entities and their ascendency, as ‘in its attempts to sustain, mark, and/or narrate a life, memorialization often subtly registers the costs and calamities of political dominion’ (p. 68). Nebuchadnezzar's dream is followed up by another portent of downfall, when Balthasar of Chaldea sees a disembodied person hand-writing a message on the wall (p. 69). This uncanny story introduces a study of epigraphy and monumental inscriptions in the Roman imperial period, and through examples of epitaphs K. offers a strikingly embodied reading. This chapter highlights the frustration of epigraphic culture, in which neither human memory nor material commemoration endure: ‘stabs at permanence and legacy were overturned by the simple replacement of a name, and burial places were subject to dispossession’ (p. 73).
Psychoanalytical theory also intersects with feminist theories and postcolonial and critical race theories in this book. This prompts K. to pick apart the concept of the object even further, as ‘the animate – what counts as a life – is a socially derived distinction … And the objectification of human beings is a corollary to the ways certain lives are seen to matter more than others, or not at all. In other words, that people can become objects has everything to do with what in the larger social body counts as a life in the first place’ (p. 14). There is a persistent focus throughout the book on ethnic peoplehood and diasporic culture. In Chapter 4 (co-written with C. Daniel-Hughes) a reading of Tertullian of Carthage explores the ‘colonial disarray’ in Roman Africa (p. 106). Martyrological texts are read ‘against the grain’, the object of study being ‘the lost object of ethnic peoplehood’ (p. 85), and this is picked up in Chapter 5, which focuses on martyr stories as ‘staging scenes of cultural and colonial divestment’ (p. 109), using an expressly Derridean focus on language to explore ‘the fraught place of language within colonial experience’ (p. 109). In Chapter 4 we get another statement of stretching the notion of the material, with the authors ‘treating martyrs’ last words as material culture – that is, as culture that materializes through the voice and in the body’ (p. 85). As in Chapter 3 on epitaphs, we have a clearly embodied, somatic reading resonating with the material and sensory turn. Fantasy comes up again in this chapter, with Roman rule as ‘a fantastical project cultivated through material objects’ (p. 87), namely the paper of documents and the stone of statuary. This is Roman rule as it was worked out in the minds of subjects across the provinces.
Chapter 6 shifts gear, offering a perspective on ancient erotic life alternative to the model of penetration. As K. acknowledges, this is not a new departure, as the penetration model has by no means been uncontested. But what she adds to the discourse is, first, an insightful treatment of the second-century novel The Acts of Paul and Thecla and, second, glimpses of her own story intertwined with that of Thecla. Subjectivity comes to the fore on a personal level unfamiliar in most academic writing.
The book concludes with Chapter 7 ‘Darkening the Discipline’, in which personal subjective experience, contemporary academic life and ethics of race come together with powerful impact. The chapter opens with Sarah Bond and the ‘whitewashing’ of antiquity, the fantasy of white continuity. This is a hot topic, and the chapter continues in this vein, showing how ‘calls to ethics of race and ethnicity register a set of felt emergencies and potentialities’ (p. 154). K. addresses pressing issues such as the relevance of studies of the ancient world (and their future), the changed role of the college professor and ‘how the figures of “the public” and the “public intellectual” function in and as political fantasies of contemporary academic life’ (p. 155). As fantasies recur in this concluding chapter, so do objects, with some final words on teaching, casting students as ‘objects of our pedagogical designs’ (p. 164). K. does not shy away from the big questions: ‘What do we imagine we are teaching them, and why?’ (p. 164).
This book covers a lot of ground, and I have no doubt it will appeal to a diverse readership from across disciplines. It is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work that will hit home for many readers.
