Barbarism Without Barbarians

Abstract Behind the disappointment, as imagined in a well-known poem by Constantine Cavafy, that the barbarians have failed to arrive, is a civilization closing upon itself and unable to envision an exit from its crisis. This metaphor is for the unfulfilled desire to overcome, at last, the impasse of a form of life whose shared significations are collapsing without success in renewing themselves. Such a form, enslaved as it is to the monotonous and incontestable repetition of its own identity, and in which it is ruled out that faits accomplis might be called upon to justify themselves, is a social condition that ultimately verges on barbarism. It is this possibility—of barbarism “without barbarians”—that Cavafy's poem makes us consider. Whenever there is submission of the weakest to the intimidation of the strongest, and especially when the strong treat intimidation as a natural given that they need not justify, civilization gives way to barbarism. This lesson can be drawn from the dialogue in the History of the Peloponnesian War between the Athenians and the Melians, in its rereading by Cornelius Castoriadis: To the extent that the impulse to dominate others is unchecked and any effort to call the instituted into question disappears or is neutralized, we have a case of barbarism without barbarians.