Tradition in the Frame

Abstract

Tall and proud, his black shirt and leather boots on, his bearded face turned toward the White Mountains, the proud Sfakian embodies fierce Greek masculinity. What happens when Cretan manhood embodies tradition is what Konstantinos Kalantzis explores in his first monograph. The book presents Sfakian performance of manhood as a central representation of Greek tradition. In doing so it unveils the region of Sfakia—a hiding place during the uprising against the Venetian and Ottoman rulers and under the German Occupation during World War II—and how Sfakian men stand as national symbols of Cretan nativism, resistance, and indigenous Greekness. Carefully documented through a rich ethnography, this work paints a fascinating portrait of how tradition is nested in images that manifest the past itself. Kalantzis’ overarching argument could be summarized as follows: The frame of tradition—where local stereotypes are imposed by the “centers to dominate their peripheries” —is a terrain where exoticism is co-imagined (here between Sfakians, Greek urbanites, and foreign tourists). Looking at visual representations of Sfakian rugged manhood the frame of nativism—and that indeed of photographs— reveals tradition and conflicted versions of the same. The book is structured as a triptych with the first part exploring the rugged, almost lunar landscape of the White Mountains (in western Crete), the Sfakian stereotype, and the national context in which this myth unfolds within the Greek nation-state. The second part focuses on power and imagination. This section unpacks the visual and political economies of traditional masculinity in Crete—notably through the lens of commercial photography and picturepostcards representing these men, but also through artworks, films, road signs, and clothing. It shows how these representations are embedded both in the personal and national spheres. In the last part, Kalantzis discusses the threats and tensions that modernity poses to tradition. This discussion examines visual “montages” where modern elements and material objects threaten an unadulterated version of Sfakian tradition. The book ends with considerations on tourism and austerity as forces feeding on tradition, threatening its very existence. Here temporality is key, since tradition is a moving force that can only be understood in particular historical contexts. The paradoxes of framing tradition come out of Kalantzis’ masterful theorization of very sophisticated ethnographic material. With concepts such as