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The articles collected in this volume share a very similar goal: to
decolonize our understanding of antiquity, thus allowing modernity
to converse with antiquity without constraining the latter to be
either the direct precedent or the thoroughly other of the former.
It is certainly true that the past is a foreign country. However,
history has repeatedly demonstrated that colonialism never
contributed to mutual understanding and constructive exchange of
ideas, and that such is the dialogue we should strive forthwith our
contemporaries as well as with our ancestors.
This book demonstrates that ancient Christian Gnosticism was an
ancient form of cultural criticism in a mythological garb. It
establishes that, much like modern forms of critical theory,
ancient Gnosticism was set on deconstructing mainstream discourses
and cultural premises. Strains of critical theory dealt with
include the Frankfurt School, queer theory, and poststructural
philosophy. The book documents how in both ancient Gnosticism and
modern critical theories issues that used to serve as premises for
discussion or as concepts relegated to the realms of the "natural"
and the "given" in their respective historical contexts, are
transformed into objects of contention. The main aim of this book
is to salvage the historical category of Gnosticism from its
present scholarly disavowal, if only because Gnosticism, when read
as a cultural, and not only a religious phenomenon, presents us an
ancient form of culture criticism which would be hard to parallel
until (post) modernity. While Hans Jonas remarked many years ago
that "something in Gnosticism knocks at the door of our Being and
of our twentieth-century Being in particular," by the 21st century
global world this something has already entered and lives with us.
We can thus still benefit from another perspective, even if it
comes from Mediterranean people who lived almost 2,000 years ago.
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