“Who are we?” A quest for Greek identity
Who are we? The geopolitics of Greek identity, published by Kerkyra Publications-economia Publishing in 2017, is a book by George Prevelakis, professor emeritus at Sorbonne, who has taught at Sciences Po, Johns Hopkins, Tufts and LSE and whose interests have ranged all the way from urban planning to geopolitics to the study of diasporas, tries to deliver a number of answers to the seminal question that has hunted Greece and Greeks: “Who are we?”.
As the translator of this book from its original Greek language version – J.C.B. Petropoulos, of the Harvard U. Center for Hellenic Studies introduces it, to study Who Greeks are strickes at the heart of European identity – peculiar Westerners, “truants” of the West, “constituent elements of the West and the property of humankind”.
To whom does Greek civilization belong?
One important first avenue explored by Prevelakis in his quest for Greek identity is to try and track to whom “Greek civilization” belongs – in all of its complexity and all of its facets. Since Greek civilization starts at the dawn of recorded history and that it has imbued millenia of international thought currents, this issue is of high significance.
