Chameleonic Paideia : immigrant experience and the "Acceptable Other" in Heliodorus' Aethiopica

Abstract

Heliodorus’ Aethiopica is a text that wrestles with cultural identity and performance in a world in which identity formation was rapidly changing and morphing in unexpected ways. The emergence of paideia as a form of “Greekness” that resisted this change became extremely important, and allowed those who were not “traditionally” Greek to assert their “Greekness”, and, thus, to become “Greek”. In Heliodorus’ novel, the “Other” characters seek to perform “Greekness” through their paideia, but equally to perform their “acceptable” difference as foreigners for the gratification and enjoyment of the Greek “Self”, too. This can be seen comparatively to chime with immigrant experience up to the modern day in the “West”, and thus a continuum of immigrant experience can be seen to reach from the distant past right up to the present day.