The discussion about the Indo-Europeans has never been pure and simple fiction. The question is, however, what relationship the scholarly pursuit of … - Stefan Arvidsson
" "The discussion about the Indo-Europeans has never been pure and simple fiction. The question is, however, what relationship the scholarly pursuit of knowledge has to mythical thinking and to its more universal relative, ideology—if we define ideology as a somewhat coherent system of ideas and norms that express a socially determined interest.(6)
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About Stefan Arvidsson
Stefan Arvidsson (born 1968) is a Swedish historian who is Professor of the History of Religions at Stockholm University and Professor in the Study of Religions at Linnaeus University.
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Additional quotes by Stefan Arvidsson
In Gimbutas's case I (Arvidsson) think that many readers of her work have sensed that there is another agenda behind her theoretical constructions, in addition to the clearly feminist agenda. This subtext probably is related to the fact that she was forced into exile by the Bolshevik troops who invaded her homeland, Lithuania, in 1944-45, moving across the Baltic and eastern Europe. There is something very "Cold War" about her theories and about the maps she draws of Indo-European invasions of eastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula. In any case, a connection can be observed between not idealizing, or even disapproving of, Indo-Europeans, and placing their homeland on Slavic ground (Arvidsson 2006, p.293).
The fundamental thesis of this study is that these prehistoric peoples have preoccupied people in modern times primarily because they were, to use the word of Claude Levi-Strauss, "good to think with," rather than because they were meaningful historical actors. The interest in the "Indo-Europeans," "Aryans" and their "others" (who have varied through history from Jews to savages, Orientals, aristocrats, priests, matriarchal peasants, warlike nomads, French liberals, and German nationalists), stemmed-and still stems-from a will to create alternatives to those identities that have been provided by tradition. The scholarship about the Indo-Europeans, their culture, and their religion has been an attempt to create new categories of thought, new identities, and thereby a future different from the one that seemed to be prescribed (Arvidsson 2006, p. xi)."
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Renfrew thus argues that Europe’s prehistory is not distinguished by warlike migrations or cultural-heroic elites. In the last few decades, the historiogra phy in which the Indo-Europeans are presented as conquerors has also been questioned by scholars in other geographical areas. In the Indian area, it is still mainly laymen who have opposed describing South Asia's prehistory as a struggle between white conquerors and peaceful, dark-skinned farmers.(298)
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