| Title | “A Lie about Origin” |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Plato’s Archive Fever |
| Contributor | Karen Bassi (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0446.1.07 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-before-and-the-after-critical-asynchrony-now/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Karen Bassi |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2025-01-29 |
| Long abstract | In Book 3 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues for what he calls "a lie about origin" (γενναῖον ψεῦδος, 414b-d). According to this lie, classes of citizens in Kallipolis were originally fashioned under the earth and differentiated by a hierarchy of metals (gold, silver, iron and brass, 414e-415c). In this paper, I read Socrates’ “lie about origin” in light of Derrida’s reading of Freud in Archive Fever, focused on the intersection of archaeology, epistemology and eschatology. Anticipating the archê of archaeology by anachronism, the myth of the metallic men questions first of all the predictive capability of origin stories. Subject to hesitation but repeated from generation to generation, Socrates’ “lie about origin” also reflects on the recent global crisis. In a pandemic whose beginning and end are unknowable and unpredictable, when the passing of time is measured in death’s approach (à venir), and when we are living in a so-called “post-truth” world, the “lie about origin” examines the conditions under which the past justifies a future (l’avenir). In Derrida’s phrase, it tests the “truth of delusion” (AF 86). |
| Page range | pp. 113–133 |
| Print length | 21 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
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Karen Bassi is Research Professor Emerita of Classics and Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Acting Like Men, Drama and Nostalgia in Ancient Greece (1998) and Traces of the Past: Classics between History and Archaeology (2016). She co-edited When Worlds Elide: Classics, Politics, Culture with Peter Euben (2010). She is now working on a book titled Imitating the Dead: Facing Death in Ancient Greek Tragedy and Philosophy.