The Intervention

Abstract Capra and Graziosi outline their intervention: Settembrini helps them discuss the new nationalisms, as well as other forms of identity politics, and their impact on classical scholarship. Because Settembrini’s legacies were split between the nationalist revolutions of 1848 and the sexual revolutions of the 1970s, Capra and Graziosi begin by reuniting different aspects of his thought. Then, making use of Cassin on the dedicated comparative, Latour on postcritique, Haraway on care, and Sedgwick on reparative reading, they comment on their own situatedness and their trust in what remains of the past in the present. In response to Murnaghan’s question whether, when we study how antiquity was received, ‘reception gets sole credit for determining meaning, with no contribution from the ancient object being received’, they argue for the authentic presence of classical antiquity in our world—even in the case of an anachronistic fake like The Neoplatonists.