Abstract:

In this paper, I discuss the notion of “repatriation” of antiquities that have been illicitly excavated and exported, against the backdrop of Greece’s attempts to achieve their return. Taking the British Museum Caryatid as my primary case study, I survey recent Greek theatre plays and children’s storybooks in order to examine how the stolen statue is invariably portrayed as the nation’s missing “daughter” or “sister”, suffering in solitary exile and eagerly awaiting “her” return. Based on this discussion, I proceed to claim that the repatriation narrative serves as a means to reconfirm Greece’s whiteness, and the Greek nation’s rightful place as part of the West. Employing the methodological tools of coloniality and crypto-coloniality, as well as the parallel modern example of Egypt, I argue that it is through such attempts at partial representation that political communities in the periphery of the West imagine themselves into being.

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