Landscape Architecture Masters Thesis

Thanks for the Old, in with the New Greeks see themselves as the modern day spokespeople of their Ancient ancestors (Mackridge, 2008). To first understand how this national landscape successfully resonates with the Greek collective imagination it is important that we look at Greek national identity as a whole. In his essay ‘Cultural Difference as National Identity in Modern Greece’ Peter Mackridge (2008) places a lens over modern Greek national nuances and suggests that it is the nourishment of cultural difference as a nation, that defines a nation. As a people that draw from antiquity, classical Greece’s contribution to European and World civilisation provides a source of both national pride and uniqueness (Mackridge, 2008; Holdsworth, 2014).

The universality of ancient Greek civilisation has, however, threatened Greece’s sense of place within the modern world. Mackridge (2008) highlights the appropriation of ancient Greek civilisation by western discourses as a source of anxiety for Modern Greek national identities. Holdsworth (2014), however, claims this isn’t a recent phenomenon, citing the idealisation of ancient Greece by European intellectuals during the enlightenment as the beginning of this national identity theft. Fetishising Greek antiquity as an abstract ideology, European thinkers shaped and transplanted an image of ‘Greekness’ that trapped Modern Greek national identity formation in a tension between past and present. Coupling this with more recent European attempts to homogenize culture through the European Union, modern Greece has suffered somewhat of a national identity crises (Mackridge, 2008; Featherstone, 2006).

Mackridge (2008) proposes a two-tiered reaction to the threat of homogenisation by cultural appropriation; to firstly reclaim the cultural contribution of the Ancient Greeks as the property of Greece, and secondly to begin a national re-branding to establish a new modernised global identity. Citing the 2004 Greek Olympic games (which took place in Kallithea) as a global event that placed images of Greek