S5E13: Naoíse Mac Sweeney: Demythologizing The West

In this Global Irish conversation, we search for the true origins of Western Civilization with a most global of guests, Naoíse Mac Sweeney, author of The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives. 

Her father is from Cork City, her mother is Malaysian Chinese, she grew up in London, studied the Greek and Roman world, and is a professor of classical archaeology at the University of Vienna. And to make her even more global, her husband is from Malta, which we visited in our episode with Malta’s ambassador to Ireland, Giovanni Buttigeig.

She tells of how both Greek and Irish mythology pulled her into the ancient world, through the lure of the ancient Greek diaspora communities, her fascination with Troy, and her growing realization that “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is really a figment of our collective imagination.

In The West, our award-winning guest thoroughly debunks that figment through the stories of fourteen figures who each played a role in the creation of the Western idea—from Herodotus, a mixed-race migrant, to Phylis Wheatley, an enslaved African American who became a literary sensation. From these narratives, a more nuanced, expansive, and intriguing view of the West emerges.

Naoíse wraps up Irish Stew with the most unexpected “Seamus Plug” to date, which got your co-hosts thinking of approaching Dunnes Stores for sponsorship.

And we’ll happily endorse her comment early in the conversation, when she said, “part of the joy of following Irish Stew is to hear the origin stories of so many people in the diaspora.”

Links:

• The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives 
• Smithsonian Magazine:  “The Myth of the ‘Dark Ages’ Ignores How Classical Traditions Flourished Around the World,”  
• University of Vienna: Naoise Mac Sweeney
• Seamus Plug: Dunnes Strores, Helen James plates