The occasion for the interview

The initial occasion for this interview was an online article published by KU Leuven, Belgium’s largest university, announcing that the annual inaugural lecture for the 2022 academic year would be delivered by the internationally renowned Maniot anthropologist C. Nadia Seremetakis (Konstantina-Nadia Seremetakis).

Studying Ms Seremetakis’s writings in that particular post closely, I felt the desire to introduce her more fully to the public of Laconia.

While I was trying to find her, I saw it announced the following year that she would be a guest of the same university as a visiting professor. Before I had even managed to meet her, another piece of news emerged about her career. This time it came from Poland, from the University of Kraków, where a school for postdoctoral researchers, organised by 11 European universities, was due to be launched. Ms Seremetakis had been invited there as well to deliver the inaugural lecture!

 

The height of the surprise

I will not hide the fact that there were many times when I hesitated. Reading and rereading her biography on her personal website, I found myself lost in the labyrinthine corridors of her long career abroad and, more recently, in Greece as well. I was overwhelmed by the thought: “How could I possibly sit across from her, and by what criteria could I interview her, when she might be speaking to me and I might not even understand what she was saying?”

Eventually, I decided to take the plunge and send her a tentative message saying that I would like to interview her. Not much time had passed before her reply arrived! She thanked me and included her mobile phone number!

My surprise reached its peak when she arrived for our first meeting and conversation. “Ms Seremetakis, thank you for agreeing to meet me,” I said.
“It is I who thank you,” she replied simply. As she spoke, it was clear that she knew how to make you feel at ease, like an ordinary fellow countrywoman.

 

— Would you tell me a little about Nadia Seremetakis as a young woman? I asked her. About school, your hobbies, and your relationship with Mani at that time?

— I went to school in Athens, but my inclination had already become apparent before I learned to write. I used to speak to my toys, sometimes in prose and sometimes in poetry, sometimes tenderly and sometimes sternly. (She laughs.) Perhaps a Maniot culture was revealing itself… In primary school, I distinguished myself in composition and language.

Secondary school, however, repelled me. Anything that hindered imagination, experimentation, poetics or aesthetics constricted me like a corset. It was the time of the junta. I finished school with relief and had already decided that I wanted to leave and discover other worlds.

 

Studies in New York

I left to study in New York. Liberation! I began with literary studies and foreign languages, continued with the social sciences and anthropology, and devoted my free time to dance and modern ballet—I was particularly drawn to the method of Erick Hawkins, husband of the legendary Martha Graham. Naturally, I was also working, initially at a Greek newspaper.

I continued my studies on scholarships and began writing poetry again. I had intended to carry out my compulsory fieldwork in Africa. I returned to Mani at the urging of one of my professors, and I was destined to inaugurate what he had envisioned at the time: the creation of an indigenous anthropology—that is, for people from a place who had studied abroad to return and study their own homeland.

 

—A difficult undertaking, of course.     

Yes, it was a difficult undertaking that took me several years to complete. The experience was remarkable. But the result was also judged to be significant.
I submitted the ethnography of Mani, entitled The Last Word, for possible publication to what was then the internationally leading publishing house in the humanities and cultural studies, The University of Chicago Press. I remember the conviction of friends and acquaintances who knew the field that submitting to such a press a study concerning an unknown corner of Greece, and by a young author at that, had no chance of being accepted. At the time, established academics with already recognised bodies of work were submitting their manuscripts there.

  

—How did you make that decision?

(She laughs.) Perhaps it was Maniot boldness. But also a conviction in the value of the work. Whatever the case, to the surprise of us all, the decision from the publishing house was unanimous, from the publisher and successive rounds of academic reviewers, who concluded that it was an original work, theoretically and methodologically accomplished. It was published to great acclaim. In such cases, the publishing house would even pay the author an advance in order to secure the book. A little later, The Last Word was also honoured with an award for its writing and, to this day, for 20 consecutive years, it has been taught at numerous universities around the world and has received thousands of citations, having become a landmark work in the humanities and cultural studies.

Of course, the way an academic work is published there bears no relation whatsoever to the way a book is published in Greece. There, it had to pass through a series of rigorous filters concerning whether it was original, whether it was theoretically and methodologically sound, the quality of its writing, and countless other criteria examined and assessed by dozens of experts and anonymous reviewers from relevant fields.

 

—And how was it received in Mani?

— One could hardly have expected an enthusiastic reception at first from a place where writing books largely consists of collecting and organising the region’s folkloric and historical material. Such material is important, but for an anthropologist it is only the foundation. In dialogue with it and with the local population, the anthropologist will co-create a scholarly study. You know well, after all, that our society more generally is drawn to easily digestible material—that is, to what it already knows and immediately understands. Knowledge, however, is produced only through the effort to understand what is different. That, after all, is the knowledge I myself gained from the treasure of Mani.

One thing the women in the villages of Mani taught me was that a book can be read in many ways. When I brought it to them, I wondered how they—especially the older women—would respond to its language. But they found dozens of ways to “read” it: they found their laments within it, their photographs, the cover, even its smell. Those who rejected it or simply placed it on the shelf were the half-educated.

 

—After this success, how did your career progress?

—My life was divided between university teaching abroad—in New York and, as you mentioned, in Belgium, Poland and elsewhere—and field research in various parts of the world: journeys I had always dreamed of, to Mexico, Ireland, Tunisia, Vienna, Croatia and other places, which resulted in the writing of further books. More recently, I also came to Greece.

 

—Yes, you also taught at the University of the Peloponnese in Kalamata. How did you find the experience after teaching at universities abroad?

—At best, I would say that we are speaking of a place that has not yet developed a university consciousness and that lacks even the most basic standards of academic ethics and integrity.
And as long as it is governed by the parochial mentality of avoiding or excluding “those who are better than us”, education in Greece more broadly has little hope.

 

— You have indeed written quite a few books!

Yes, and the second, The Senses Still, is particularly successful in the international academic world today. More specifically, the section referring to my memories and experiences in Messenian Mani has been republished as an honorary contribution in important volumes and has also been translated into various languages. In fact, I was informed today that a publishing house, in consultation with my foreign publisher, is issuing it in Turkish translation for distribution in neighbouring Turkey!

 

— I have seen books and articles of yours in both Greek and English.

— Yes, I almost always write my books and articles in two languages. Most of them were first written in English because my academic base was in New York, and I later rewrote them in Greek; today, they are all published by PEDIO.
There are, however, also some works, such as An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, which I initially wrote for my students when I came to Greece, but which was later requested by a publisher in England, so I subsequently wrote it in English as well.

All my books and articles can, after all, be viewed on my website: [https://seremetakis.com/](https://seremetakis.com/)

 

—I noticed that you have your own YouTube channel, featuring many highly interesting videos of your lectures, as well as public events that you designed and organised.