"Still Waiting for Barbarians after 9/11? Cavafy’s Reluctant Irony and The Language of The Future"

C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” has been restaged in works of literature, art, and music in several cultural contexts throughout the twentieth century. Since September 11, 2001, however, the topos of waiting for the barbarians seems to be haunting the Western cultural and political imaginary, through its recurrent figuration in various genres—newspaper articles, cultural theory, artworks, poetry, obituaries, internet blogs etc. As an allegory for addressing contemporary predicaments, a mode of critique of a decadent order, or a call for a new start and radical change, this topos responds to specific desires or anxieties amplified since 1989, and especially since 9/11. It may capture the fear for others or for the “unknown” after the purported rupture of 9/11, but also the longing for alternative communities and modes of living, also in the context of the current financial crisis. In this talk, I will revisit the particularities of Cavafy’s irony in this poem by unraveling the genealogies of the concept of “barbarism” the poem draws from. Zooming in on its contemporary “afterlives,” I will argue that the poem assumes a liminal function in the post-9/11 discursive landscape. As such, it negotiates alternative expressive modes, beyond the false security of metaphysical truths and essentialist oppositions, but also beyond (postmodern) cultural relativism.

Speaker: Maria Boletsi, Assistant professor, Department of Film and Comparative Literature, Leiden University (the Netherlands)