Reinventing the barbarian

Since the publication of François Hartog’s Le Miroir d’Hérodote, Edith Hall’s Inventing the Barbarian, and a flurry of subsequent works, there has been a marked backlash against the Barbarian in classical scholarship. The theme of Greek–Barbarian polarity has been seen as a narrowly Athenian phenomenon, irrelevant to other regional contexts. Scholars have increasingly presented evidence of contact with, or borrowings from, non-Greek cultures, on the assumption that these are incompatible with the rhetoric of polarity. This article questions some of the central assumptions of this scholarly trend, exploring possible explanations for it, and proposes that the Barbarian still should have currency.