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The origin lies at a place of inevitable loss, the point where the truth of things corresponded to

a truthful discourse, the site of a fleeting articulation that discourse has obscured and finally
lost. Michel Foucault, Nietzche-Geneology-History

There is a long lasting concern on the issue of origins in the development of Western
civilization. In the introduction of The Archaeology of Knowledge Michel Foucault writes:
History has altered its position in relation to the document: it has taken as its primary task,
not the interpretation of the document, nor the attempt to decide whether it is telling the truth
or what is its expressive value, but to work on it from within and to develop it: history now
organizes the document, divides it up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in level. (6)
Foucault places the document as a central tool of a historians task in trying to interpret reality.
Historys canonical task has been to historicize; it functions as the storage space of past
archives, and records the newsfeeds of the present, to preserve them for future use. This image
of history does not foster creativity, but instead, it succumbs to a viewpoint of seeing history as
a place of dead material. This archaeological style of history has certain consequences, as
Foucault mentions, among which, the notion of discontinuity in historical practices, and the
perseverance of a general history rather than a total history. The total history which had been
the dominant mode to regard history is that the civilizations that are studied in each era are
distinct of the totality of human history (what he calls the face of a period).

However, the link between origin and authenticity involves more than studying the archives of
an era. It also involves the authenticity of this very image of history, and how accurate or biased
the models of representation are. As the quote in the beginning of my paper taken from
Foucaults essay suggests, for the cultural production of knowledge, one has to be careful with
such misconceptions of truthful interpretations of historical events.
Foucaults understanding of what the science of history ought to be is a revolutionary
one:
History must be detached from the image that satisfied it for so long [] that of an age-old
collective consciousness that made use of material documents to refresh its memory; history is

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the work expended on material documentation that exists, in every time and place, in every
society, either in a spontaneous or in a consciously organized form,(13) he says.
The "image" of history Foucault is concerned to complicate is one in which the historian's
claims about the past are authenticated (literally "made true") by finding the origin or first
moment of the historical development in question. This depends on ignoring the role that this
image of history plays in "inventing" the first moment. In other words, it depends on ignoring
the epistemological force of historiography, and treating history as an ontologically secured
archive of past events.

The traditional approach of seeing the development of Western history, hence, is blamed on
prioritizing and legitimizing the document, the saved archive as an absolute truth, and trying to
figure out what preceded it, where its ontology lies. One could say that Foucault blames the
traditional obsession with origins to tradition itself:
It is as if it was particularly difficult, in the history in which men retrace their own ideas and
their own knowledge, to formulate a general theory of discontinuity, of series, of limits, unities,
specific orders, and differentiated autonomies and dependences. As if, in that field where we
had become used to seeking origins, to pushing back further and further the line of
antecedents, to reconstituting traditions, to following evolutive curves, to projecting
teleologies[]or to be more precise, as if we found it difficult to construct a theory, to draw
general conclusions*+ as if we were afraid to conceive of the Other in the time of our own
thought. (12)

He goes on to analyze the notion of tradition in the first chapter in The Archaeology of
Knowledge, tradition enables us to isolate the new against a background of permanence, and
to transfer its merit to originality, to genius, to the decisions proper to individuals; there are the
notions of development and evolution. (12)
Here I am tempted to paraphrase de Certeaus claim that death obsesses the West and say
that tradition is the one aspect that has been infiltrated in human consciousness so much to
affect the way one sees historical development as linked to some kind of divine order. To be

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more explicit, it is a dominant implication that privileges originality and order, as if what
appeared first is essentially God-made, pure, and devoid of any human interference. Thus,
tracking back to the origins of things there is a prevalent expectation that the scripted
recordings have an undisputable truth,

*+because this search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external
world of accident and succession .This search is directed to "that which was already there," the
image of a primordial truth fully adequate to its nature. (Nietzsche- Genealogy- History)

The search for truth which goes all the way back to philosophy, is evident in drama with
Aristotle and his guide on the ideal model of tragedy. The beginning of Greek drama contains a
similar fascination with order (beginning, middle, end) and the natural progression of things.
Tradition does precisely this: it shapes the core of Western culture by pledging allegiance to the
accuracy of historical origins (for example, it was documented then, there is an archive,
therefore, there is an objective truth to it as Barthes notes in The Reality Effect), instead of
challenging the accuracy and truthfulness of these origins.

According to Foucault, history should not be a division, but development (devenir), not
interplay of relations, but an internal dynamic; not a system, but the hard work of
freedomwhat is being bewailed is the development (devenir) that was to provide the
sovereignty of the consciousness with a safer, less exposed shelter than myths, kinship systems,
languages etc.(13) Foucault attacks the traditional way that history has been looked as, that is,
as a network of systems of events following each other, preceding each other etc. Thus, there
shall not be a distinct separation of time and space in historical analysis, but instead, there
should be freedom to explore how time and space affects our understanding of the nun-the
now, as Aristotle would say.

De Certeau is also skeptical of the Western historical lineage that begins with differentiation
between the present and the past. A modern historiographic approach to historical analysis

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should see present and past intelligibilities as standing next to each other and not in separation
from each other, he says. This is mostly because, as the graphe part of the word suggests,
writing replaces the traditional representations that gave authority to the present with a
representative labor that places both absence and production in the same area. Thus, the
scripted discourse is being valued as a historical artifact, as a monument, as Foucault says. The
written documentation of an event that gains historical legitimacy survives through the years.
The role of the historiographer is to locate and interpret the particular social and cultural
constructs of an epoch and see history as a continuous process that never stops developing. To
conceive Otherness in history as not a distinct part, but as a part of our own thought, (12)
Foucault says.

What is interesting in this prototypical understanding of history is that the earliest surviving
texts in Western culture involve the encounter of the Western subject with the Other (Persians,
Suppliant Maidens). What seems so striking about Persians is that it stages the important way
in which even the first moment of Attic tragedy, or "Western" theater, is tied to a nonEuropean context that displaces the origin in both time (Greece, thus, ties Europe to histories
that precede it) and in space (Greece, thus, tied to languages and cultures that are elsewhere,
barbaros). To complicate matters more, the Other is seen through the emerging Western
subject. Aeschylus gives voice to the Other: what are the ethical ramifications of such a
portrayal? More importantly, what is the task of a scholar teaching a text that its roots lie on
the portrayal of the battle of two different civilizations? The historical Western Subject and the
ahistorical (in Hegels term) barbaric Other: how are we to make sense of the genealogy of
these two distinct and at the same time co-dependent civilizations?

The task of a scholar is to appreciate the uniqueness of cultural ideologies in ancient Greece.
That means that we need to know the conventions of time and space in ancient Greece, both
inside and outside of the world of the play. For example, one shall know as Agamben has said
quoting Puch about the cyclical nature of time that is characteristic in ancient Greece. The
Greek views history as a process of constant becoming; in the case of Persians such claim has

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certain consequences: what does it mean for the Other to be formed (voiced) by the constantly
becoming-unstable Subject? And what kind of knowledge is given legitimacy in the case of
Persians? Edward Said has already said that this play is an early manifestation of Western
colonization; it has the power of representing the Other as dangerous. Aeschyluss Persians is a
great example that illustrates the political interests underlying the authentic representation
of the non Euro-American subject. Foucault in his essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History reminds
us that what is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their
origin; it is the dissension of other things . It is disparity.

The task of a scholar is to bring into surface such tensions that underlie in the questions of
origins in past and present intelligibilities. An appropriate metaphor that comes to mind as I am
writing this is an essay by Elinor Fuchs I was introduced to last semester about treating the
world of a play as a planet: in order to be studied we need to look closely not only at the play
itself but the circumstances it was written under, the time it takes place etc. A scholar,
therefore, shall be aware of the acquired rationalizations of the world of the play and be able to
challenge preconceived understandings of a text. The task of a scholar when working, for
example, on an ancient Greek play is twofold: first, to know the historical events in ancient
Greece at the time as recorded by the historians of the time (Thucidides, Herodotus), the
cultural conventions in language and religion (a major part in Aeschyluss tragedies especially)
that have been recorded. This first part in a way resembles the work of an archaeologist
excavating the treasures of the past. Second, critical analysis should be employed to the nature
of the sources (who were they written by, are there any contradictory evidence to
supplement/contradict the material). The biggest challenge for historographic analysis is to
appropriate past rationalizes within the present.

As Agamben says, every culture is first and foremost a particular experience of time, and no
new culture is possible without an alteration in this experience. (91) We cannot change the
world without altering our conception of the temporal and spatial conventions. In the world of
ancient Greek tragedy we are presented with the Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end

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dramaturgically, but we are constantly reminded that the historical space surrounding the play
is an endless space of dynamic possibilities. The unfolding of history is a representation of
consciousness as Foucault says, and human consciousness shifts: from the cyclical
understanding of time in ancient Greek plays, we move to a Christian-linear understanding of
time.

Aristotle says in his Poetics that action should be such as to saturate the spectator with feelings
of compassion, aiming at a catharctic effect. The historiographic approach of a scholar should
be one where we see the world of ancient Greece in todays society. The mimetic component
that Aristotle values so much is relevant here because it aims to arise the emotions of pity and
fear that are necessary for empathy and identification in order to conceptualize the past within
our present understanding.
For instance, how, as future pedagogues are we to teach Persians or Medea without
oversimplifying the subject matter of the text, but also still teaching the value and importance
of the play today, thousands of years after its initial performance? How are we to introduce
these cultural artifacts of the past as texts (saved documents) without missing on the lyric and
dramatic resonance of the pieces?
Most undergrads come in to class with the preconception that what is historically written, what
is documented is devoid of any narrative quality. What Roland Barthes calls as reality effect is
this descriptive and objective mode of historical writing that the science of history is
associated with. The biggest challenge for an educator, therefore, is to try and subvert this
misconception, and provide to students excessive scholarship that illustrates different
viewpoints on, lets say, whether Persians is indeed the first surviving play, or what are the
opposing claims of such an argument. I would argue that this is the biggest challenge for an
educator, that is, to try and open up the horizons of freshmen students who are used to
perceiving reality within the dominant teleological historical conventions. Especially for a
theater undergrad student the stakes are particularly high, because often enough as an actor
he is trained to become the character and therefore, there is the underlying preoccupation with

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appearing realistic onstage. However, as an actor the theater undergrad has another
advantage: the trained actor can use his imagination to go to imaginary places, and that is
beneficial as he can be more open to different modes of thinking.
An example of an alternative way of thinking about preconceived knowledge is this: in the book
The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy, Gerald F. Else talks about the usage of the word
dramatic in Greek tragedy. He discusses the different ways of how this word has been used by
theorists to signify the expression of strong emotions, the action onstage etc. This is similar to
what I am proposing about providing the students with multiple modes of thinking and let them
interpret the material in their own way. Appropriating our current knowledge to what we are
constantly exposed to opens up the realm of what is there, without abiding to any principles of
truthfulness and materiality.
The study of historiography encapsulates an alternative and less orthodox thinking of history, as
something constantly evolving, with the past merging into the present; where the distinct
temporal intelligibilities are not distinct, but instead, they blend in each other. Within an
academic institution we shall allow for expressive creativity without abiding to the prevalent
modes of thinking. The concern with questions of originality/authenticity in historical analysis
exists mostly due to our need to appropriate a certain reality to our own needs. Certainly the
Western history has sustained its dominance due to the long-term politics of emancipating the
Other; the prevalence of the dominant Western subject is as connected to the traditional study
of history (with the distinct intelligibilities of past/present) as is the ancient Greek Subject a
celebratory first example of Western superiority in juxtaposition with the (at the time)
unwritten (Persian) Other.

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Sources
Aeschylus. Persians
Agamben, Giorgio. Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience
Certeau, Michel De. The Writing of History
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge
Michel Foucault's "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"