ABSTRACT
Homer, Plato and Sophocles – to take three of the Greek authors most prominently discussed in this volume – are among the most canonical of authors; yet each of them can be seen as adopting, at certain points, the perspective of the margin, so as to observe more acutely the objects they represent as most central. Likewise, the margin as a privileged observation point appears as a recurring theme in the work of James Redfield. Thus in his study of the Iliad, he describes Achilles and the epic poet, whose perspective Achilles is allowed to share, as reaching their greatest insights from a position “outside culture” – even “outside the human world” (Redfield 1975 [1994], 221–22). In The Locrian Maidens, Redfield’s second major book, he identifies the Locrians, who occupied a marginal position in relation to the most powerful Greek states of the classical period, as having created a uniquely valuable alternative to the economic and cultural systems of those states. It may not be incidental, then, that Redfield himself has spoken with unusual authority from a position on the margins between disciplines and from a unique institutional location, the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. 1
