In the Jaws of CAWS: A Response

This response engages the contributions to this volume as an exercise in world-building, taking its invitation to forget classics as a directive for confronting the field’s past and contemporary investments in the following: the space-time of “proper” versus “improper” scholarship, the accumulation of prestige within and for the traditional humanities, disciplinary false-consciousness and cognitive self-delusion. The promise of critical ancient world studies for speeding beyond fixations on the historically contingent practice of philology and towards a more encompassing appraisal of “undone science” is examined, as is the volume’s innovation in transferring epistemic authority and affective independence to minoritised practitioners.