Globalized Antiquity Uses and Perceptions of the Past in South Asia, Mesoamerica, and Europe

Inspired by postmodern and postcolonial critics of the dominant Western canons in the fields of historiography, philology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology, this book explores the meanings and uses of “antiquity” in three cultural areas and compares the genealogies of the representations of their remote past. It discusses the entanglement of European conceptions of antiquity and its colonial and postcolonial appropriation and transformations. By confronting three cultural areas and by diachronically exploring the functions of “antiquity,” the book provides cultural anthropology and postcolonial studies with historical foundations and implements the postulate of the local gaze at global phenomena for world history and globalization research. It both questions and diversifies the Eurocentric notion of “classics,” and thereby contributes to a productive debate on the use of the past in globalized societies.

Ute Schüren is a cultural anthropologist. Her main research areas are Mexico and Central America, where she has carried out extensive field work and archival studies. Daniel Marc Segesser is an adjunct professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Bern. Thomas Späth is a professor of ancient cultures and constructions of antiquity at the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bern. His research covers historical anthropology, gender studies, and historiography of antiquity.