Hearts of Freedom: Stories of Southeast Asian Refugees. Peter Duschinsky, Colleen Lundy, Michael J. Molloy, Allan Moscovitch, and Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe. Foreword by Joe Clark. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025. Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, no. 20.
Northrop Frye observed that Canadian sensibility is less perplexed by “Who am I?” than by “Where is here?” (The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination). Hearts of Freedom resonates with this insight, as the refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be, showing a nation aspiring to generosity, inclusion, and humanitarian engagement.
Hearts of Freedom is both a book and a wider public history initiative dedicated to preserving the voices of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees who arrived in Canada between 1975 and 1997. Drawing on 173 oral history interviews, the final one conducted with former Prime Minister Joe Clark, the editors have created an invaluable archive of lived experience that complements existing institutional accounts of the Indochinese resettlement program. Whereas earlier works such as Michael Molloy and Peter Duschinsky’s Running on Empty(2017) traced the diplomatic and bureaucratic machinery of resettlement, this volume turns deliberately to the refugees themselves; it foregrounds their voices and memories as the central historical evidence.
The book is organized thematically and by national origin, with chapters devoted to the experiences of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees. Early sections recount the violence, persecution, and dislocation that prompted flight—civil war, invasions, genocide, and perilous journeys by land and sea. Many of the interviewees tell their stories of being refugees through temporary camps in Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, before tracing their arrival in Canada. The narratives detail first impressions of climate, language, and cultural difference, alongside encounters with both the generosity of sponsors and the challenges of prejudice. The editors preserve the cadence of testimony, allowing survivors’ voices to remain central, while photographs, maps, and timelines situate these stories in their historical and geographic contexts.
The central contribution of Hearts of Freedom is to the social history of immigration and refugee settlement in Canada. The oral histories reveal not only personal trauma and resilience but also the crucial role of private citizens and community organizations in facilitating integration. Frequent mentions of “church ladies” highlight how ordinary Canadians, particularly women in faith communities, provided everyday care and advocacy that were essential to the refugees’ resettlement and sense of welcome. Readers are reminded of the transformative significance of Canada’s private sponsorship program, recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees with the 1986 Nansen Medal. These accounts reveal the program’s practical challenges and occasional failures; they also show its capacity to foster belonging and to reshape Canadian multiculturalism in the late twentieth century.
The volume’s strength lies in its breadth of testimony and the affective immediacy of the narratives. The stories convey in intimate detail what was at stake for families who risked everything to flee; they also reveal how newcomers encountered both welcome and exclusion in their new country. If there is a limitation, it lies in the difficulty of sustaining analytical coherence across such a wide range of experiences; the oral history format necessarily fragments, and at times readers may wish for more interpretive synthesis. Yet this very openness is also a virtue; it resists the tendency to impose a single, homogenizing narrative on a diverse refugee population.
For historians, Hearts of Freedom is indispensable as both a research source and a teaching text; it exemplifies the methodological rigour and interpretive nuance that oral history can bring to the study of migration. By centring refugee memory, the book extends the historiography of Canadian immigration beyond policy and institution centred narratives; it shows how first‑person testimony captures the lived experience of liminality, displacement, and adaptation, revealing social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of migration that conventional archival sources often overlook. For scholars of migration and liminal studies, the collection offers a model for integrating oral history with broader historical, sociopolitical, and cultural analysis, demonstrating how voices at the margins convey both individual agency and structural forces. For policymakers and community practitioners, it provides hard earned lessons about the critical importance of listening to those most affected by refugee regimes; the book shows how human experiences can shape program design, foster empathetic engagement, and deepen understanding of the complex dynamics of resettlement.
Crucially, Hearts of Freedom also prompts reflection on Canada itself. The resettlement of people from Southeast Asia was never only about those who arrived; it was also about those who received them. The unprecedented scale of private sponsorship, the debates in Parliament, and the work of immigration officials who designed and implemented new programs were matched by the readiness of thousands of Canadians to open their homes. Together, these efforts marked a political moment in which the country tested its aspirations as a humanitarian actor on the world stage. As the book notes, “[i]n Canada, we can live with and celebrate fluid identities” (p. 75). The refugees’ narratives reveal not only their own journeys but also who Canadians wanted to be; they show a nation striving toward generosity, inclusion, and global responsibility. It is this dual legacy; of refugees remaking their lives and of Canadians aspiring to embody their highest ideals; that gives Hearts of Freedom its enduring political and historical resonance.
This essay reflects on François Hartog’s Chronos: The West Confronts Time and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume to examine how contemporary experience is structured by the density and intensity of the immediate; it considers how algorithms and data operate as instruments of presentism, shaping perception, attention, and ethical judgment, while also exploring the volumetric, spatial, and political dimensions of time that persist as gaps and openings for reflection, action, and the possibility of the event. In practice, this means that even in a world dominated by algorithmic notifications, taking a moment to focus on one’s breath can disrupt the cycle of immediacy, creating space for reflection and ethical choice. This small act of resistance becomes a political statement in an age of temporal commodification
Time no longer flows linearly but weighs, stretches, and bends. François Hartog’s concept of presentism captures this phenomenon with precision: the present thickens into an all-consuming immediacy, while the past is relegated to archives and the future collapses into anticipation and calculation. The now devours perception, enfolds thought, and dictates the very possibility of cognition. Each breath, pause, or glance becomes saturated with urgency, bending attention toward the immediate and away from slow, reflective human thought.
Data and algorithms amplify this temporal pressure. Data provides the raw substrate, capturing traces of action, movement, and behaviour, while algorithms translate these traces into legible, manipulable units. Dashboards, predictive models, and streams of metrics condense the world into fragments of the now, folding them into recursive feedback loops. Algorithms, in this sense, are the teeth of a temporal monster: they bite into the raw presence of data, structuring and presenting the present as both comprehensible and overwhelming. Immediacy thickens, intensifies, and hollows out slow time, leaving human rhythms—the time of the breath—fragmented and compromised. The phenomenology of data is enacted through algorithmic mediation; it is only through algorithms that data becomes perceptible, shaping attention, memory, and perception itself.
📸 by me📸 by me
The seduction of this system is both perceptual and political. Predictive algorithms, real-time analytics, and constant monitoring promise mastery, optimization, and control. Yet their scale, complexity, and opacity render such mastery provisional. Governments, corporations, and institutions deploy these tools to regulate behaviour, anticipate risk, and shape populations. The temporal density of the present becomes a political instrument, codifying attention, compressing reflection, and normalizing immediacy. Here, density refers to the accumulation of temporal moments, the layered presence of events, while intensity captures the pressure and urgency that these moments exert on perception and cognition; algorithms manipulate both, structuring the present to maximize immediacy while hollowing out slow, reflective time. Data flows through algorithms, structuring perception while reinforcing power, embedding the devouring present into everyday experience. This is more than capitalism; it is the monetization of time itself, a system where every moment, every breath, every micro-attention is reduced to a measurable increment, stripped of meaning except as a unit to be processed and consumed. Beyond the standing reserve of things, this is a standing reserve of the present, where experience, reflection, and ethical possibility are harvested, quantified, and compressed, leaving only the illusion of control.
To inhabit this mediated present requires rhythm, attention, and awareness lest you get lost in the Heraclitean torrent of the now. Notice the cadence of notifications, alerts, and feeds—the pulse of algorithmic time pressing on thought. Feel the compression of attention into micro-increments, the folding of past traces, projected futures, and quantified nows into each gesture. Presentism is enacted in every swipe, every calculated anticipation. Yet spaces remain for reflection, ethical judgment, and bodily presence. Awareness of the structures governing perception allows one to inhabit the present without surrendering entirely, tracing micro-rhythms and perceiving folds, gaps, and intensities that slip beyond measurement, beyond data, beyond algorithms.
The body measures temporal density through breath, heartbeat, and subtle gestures—rhythms that defy calculation. A pause, a deep inhalation, or a moment of stillness expands the present and slows its intensity. Pranayama, an ancient yogic breathing practice, can be seen not just as a spiritual exercise but as a way to experience time itself—a ‘phenomenology of time’ that reveals its texture and rhythm; it transforms breath into a form of knowledge, where rhythm and pause disclose temporality as irreducible to data and uncapturable by the algorithm. In this sense it resonates with Hannah Arendt’s description of the “gap” between past and future, that interval where thinking becomes possible, and with Christine Ross’s exploration of the temporal event in contemporary art, wherein moments can rupture habitual patterns and open new possibilities for perception and action. By grounding the abstract concept of time in bodily experience, pranayama reveals how lived time—thick, slow, and attentive—resists the urgency imposed by data and algorithms. This somatic approach aligns with Arendt’s notion of the ‘gap’ between past and future, where ethical thinking becomes possible. Perceptual vigilance, ethical attention, and recognition of temporal folds become acts of resistance, ways of dwelling in a dense, intense now without being consumed by it.
On the Calculation of Volume offers a frame for this intensity. Each fragment of the present is volumetric, measurable yet interconnected, dense yet permeable. The now is a field of relational magnitudes, where every action, data trace, and algorithmic operation contributes to a totality in flux. Time’s volumetric density, akin to matter in space-time, exerts pressure on perception and ethics, accumulating yet remaining fluid.
Drawing on Sloterdijk’s philosophy of ‘spheres and foam,’ the present can be imagined as a bubble within a larger, porous network. Each bubble is a bounded yet interconnected space—individual yet inseparable from its surroundings, much like cells in a living organism. Algorithms carve into these spheres, structuring, intensifying, and documenting them, but the foam’s porosity ensures that no total mastery is possible. These spheres are inhabited spaces of reflection, political judgment, and ethical action; their relationality allows for rupture, contingency, and the emergence of events beyond calculation. In this sense, each volumetric present is both mediated and immediate, enclosed yet open, a site where density and intensity, pressure and accumulation, coexist and interact.
Breath, pause, perception—the present unfolds in thickness, intensity, and relationality. Yet within this density remain gaps, spaces of suspension, as Arendt reminds us, where attention and judgment can surface, where ethical and political choice can intervene. These gaps resist full capture by metrics, algorithms, or the teeth of the temporal monster. Christine Ross’s reflections on the possibility of the event extend this insight: even within a heavily mediated, algorithmically quantified present, occurrences can emerge that exceed calculation, rupture expectation, and open new temporal trajectories. The devouring now is not total with the space of Augmented Reality, for example; within its folds persist spaces for surprise, reflection, and action. One inhabits it not in mastery but in careful attentiveness, navigating between density and openness, intensity and gap, algorithmic imposition and the possibility of the event. Data flows through these structures, producing both pressure and opportunity.
Time presses, bites, enfolds, and in its volumetric density, in its temporality, there is room to dwell, act, and breathe. Hartog’s analysis illuminates the contemporary condition: data and algorithms codify, structure, and circulate the devouring present, giving it density, rhythm, and shape, while promising comprehension that is always provisional, only now. The political stakes are immediate; these instruments organize populations, regulate attention, shape behaviour, and mediate social norms, from predictive policing to real-time financial analytics. To dwell in this Age is to inhabit a temporal field that is both structured and wild, dense yet ephemeral, bounded yet permeable; density accumulates moments, intensity exerts pressure on perception and action. The teeth of the temporal monster bite, constrain, and create the illusion of control, yet within these imprints remain spaces to perceive, attend, act, and judge. The present is not a point to control but a dynamic, ethically charged field to inhabit. By navigating its intensity and density, we resist the illusion of total comprehension and reclaim time as a space for reflection, action, and freedom. It becomes a series of inhabited spheres, measurable, mediated, and experienced, where data and algorithms document, structure, and intensify pressure without exhausting the lived, political, or ethical possibilities of the moment.
See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, 1961. "The gap between past and future, which is the space of thinking, is the space in which freedom can be experienced."
See Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life, 2013 - English translation."With a concept of practice based on a broad anthropological foundation, we finally have the right instrument to overcome the gap, supposedly unbridgeable by methodological means, between biological and cultural phenomena of immunity–that is, between natural processes on the one hand and actions on the other." I will note his thinking is dense. It took me 2.5 years to finish his three part Magnus Opus: Spheres and I don't think I have even scratched the surface of it.
James Joyce’s Ulyssestransformed modern literature by distilling the immensity of lived experience into the span of a single day. June 16, 1904, becomes in Joyce’s hands a universe unto itself: a temporal container vast enough to hold myth, politics, history, desire, and the smallest gestures of the everyday. The novel’s radical gesture was not merely narrative compression but the demonstration that the totality of modernity, its anxieties, its fragmentations, its pleasures, could be staged within the ordinary hours of a single date. Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume undertakes a similarly ambitious project, though refracted through a contemporary sensibility that is both ecological and philosophical. In Balle’s work, November 18 is not only the date around which Tara Selter’s consciousness circles but also an emblem of how time itself can collapse, repeat, and be lived otherwise.
The significance of November 18, especially in its Danish context, underscores that this is no arbitrary choice. It suggests a historical memory and collective atmosphere imprinted onto the present. Yet in Balle’s rendering, the repetition of this day becomes less about history as event and more about the possibility of inhabiting duration differently. Where Joyce excavates the myths and archetypes lying beneath the surface of modern Dublin, Balle turns to the structures of temporality itself, showing how repetition might create not stasis but a heightened awareness of interconnection. November 18 becomes an aperture through which the density of life (ethical, social, ecological) can be perceived.
As I noted in my other article about these books, the temporal compression of November 18 finds a parallel in the sestertius of Antoninus Pius that Tara Selter contemplates. The coin, depicting Annona with the modius, grain, cornucopia, and ship’s prow, condenses the Roman system of provision into a single, graspable unit, where the measurement of grain enforces both nourishment and governance. The modius standardizes abundance, making it calculable, equitable, and socially legible. In reflecting on this coin, Tara apprehends the ethical and material stakes of measurement, just as the recurring day crystallizes human experience into a disciplined, perceptible unit of time. Measurement, whether of grain or hours, becomes an ethical practice, an engagement with responsibility and the limits inherent in sustaining life, much like the gathering, interpreting, and distributing of data and algorithms, where each unit carries moral weight, shaping outcomes with both insight and consequence.
The resonance with Walter Benjamin’s notion of history as constellations of fragments is strikingly evident in Balle’s work. Perhaps its because his work has been on my mind lately but Benjamin posits that history is not a continuous progression but a montage of moments, objects, and dates that can illuminate the totality of a system when apprehended with insight; each fragment, each artefact, carries the potential to reveal the hidden structures of power, social relation, and human intention. In Balle, both the sestertius and November 18 function precisely as such fragments. The coin, with its depiction of Annona and the modius, condenses the economic, administrative, and symbolic machinery of the Roman Empire into a single tangible unit; November 18 compresses the ethical, temporal, and ecological stakes of modern existence into a recurring day. Together, they operate as microcosms, each having its own aura, carrying within it a dense network of dependencies, obligations, and consequences, where the material, social, and natural orders intersect.
Yet Balle’s use of repetition diverges from Benjamin’s messianic impulse toward redemption. The recurrence of November 18 is not a promise of liberation or fulfilment but a careful interrogation of limits and attentiveness. The reader, following Tara Selter’s consciousness, is invited to inhabit a temporal loop that foregrounds responsibility, patience, and the ethical weight of observation. Each repetition becomes its own sphere or container: an opportunity to measure, to account, to confront scarcity and abundance alike, compelling a sustained focus that parallels the meticulous attention the Roman administration had to give to the distribution of grain. In this sense, Balle transforms Benjamin’s fragmentary flash into a disciplined experience: repetition illuminates the structures and stakes of life not by producing transcendence but by demanding care, precision, and a continuous negotiation with both the natural and social orders. The coin and the day together suggest that understanding the whole is inseparable from attention to the smallest units (whether of grain, of time, or of ethical action) and that these units carry their own weight as sites of reflection, responsibility, and moral reckoning.
In this respect, I was reminded of Byung-Chul Han’s reflections on the exhaustion produced by late-modern temporality and how this provides a counterpoint to Balle’s literary experiment. I find his work to be quite challenging but worthwhile. Han diagnoses contemporary life as dominated by relentless acceleration, the ceaseless expansion of tasks, information, and digital stimuli, and the consequent erosion of coherent narrative or ethical orientation; meaning is dispersed across a multitude of fleeting flows, leaving the individual fatigued, overstimulated, and disoriented. Balle, by contrast, deliberately inverts this condition. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 is not a day among many but a temporal loop, a durational container in which events repeat and attention must be sustained. The temporal compression forces a confrontation with the minutiae of existence and the limits of endurance, compelling both protagonist and reader to recover subtle distinctions, relational patterns, and ethical nuances that are ordinarily lost in the acceleration of ordinary life.
Where Han describes exhaustion as the product of constant motion and dispersal, Balle depicts a different form of fatigue: the strain of repetition, the psychological and ethical labour of inhabiting a single day over and over, attending to the consequences of each gesture, thought, and measurement. Yet this repetition is paradoxically generative rather than purely oppressive. By arresting time, Balle opens space for new modes of perception: the attentiveness to measurement, to the ethical distribution of resources, to the interplay of human action and ecological consequence becomes possible precisely because the temporal horizon is constrained. The fatigue here is not a loss of agency but a crucible for intensified awareness, a disciplined encounter with the ethical, temporal, and material stakes of ordinary life. The volume of it all. Through this temporal inversion, Balle stages a critique of modernity’s over-acceleration, showing that slowing, repeating, and attending can reveal dimensions of experience that rapidity conceals, and that the act of returning, calculating, and noticing can itself become a mode of ethical and perceptual renewal, much like meditation or the disciplined rhythm of pranayama cultivates awareness, patience, and a conscious engagement with the flow of breath and time.
The concept of vast, interconnected phenomena that defy easy comprehension resonates with Balle’s text in profound ways. These are occurrences whose scale and duration extend beyond the grasp of typical human understanding—events like climate change or global environmental shifts. In On the Calculation of Volume, November 18 serves as a miniature version of such an overwhelming phenomenon. Though it appears as a single day, its repetition gives it a temporal and ethical magnitude that challenges simple linear understanding. Each recurrence builds upon the previous one, adding layers of consequence and action, creating a sense of accumulating significance that mirrors how large-scale ecological changes unfold over time. Just as these crises stretch across generations and ecosystems, the repeated presence of November 18 compels the reader to engage with time and consequence in new, complex ways.
The hyperobject-like nature of November 18 compels Tara Selter (and, by extension, us, the readers) to inhabit temporality differently. One must attend simultaneously to the immediate, tangible realities of action and measurement and to the broader, often imperceptible consequences that unfold across the infinite loop of the day. This dual awareness mirrors the ecological imperative imposed by climate change: human agency operates within systems whose scale is difficult to grasp, yet it remains consequential. Tara’s recognition that she can “overuse” objects, whether by drinking too much coffee at her usual café until supplies run low or finding something missing from the grocery shelf, further emphasizes how small, individual actions reverberate through larger systems. In these moments, she becomes acutely aware of the fragility and limitations inherent in the cycles of consumption, a reflection of the broader, often invisible systems that govern availability and scarcity.
Balle dramatizes this tension in literary form, using repetition to make perceptible the otherwise invisible structures of responsibility, scarcity, and ethical consequence. In doing so, the novel cultivates a sensibility or an affect attuned to both temporal and ecological depth, encouraging readers to recognize that living responsibly entails not only action but careful, sustained attention to the interplay between the measurable and the immeasurable. In this light, Balle’s work offers a subtle critique of the prevailing data-driven narrative, suggesting that while the rise of algorithms and metrics promises clarity, it often oversimplifies the complexities of human experience. The novel’s focus on repetition and attention to the limits of measurement reminds us that not everything can be quantified, and that some truths, especially those that lie in the realms of ethics, ecology, and human relationships, elude the grasp of data.
Taken together, the coin, the day, and the novel itself function as material arguments about how humans orient themselves in worlds of overwhelming density. Joyce taught us that one day could be all days, that the everyday was vast enough to hold mythic significance. Balle takes up this challenge for our contemporary condition, showing how repetition, stasis, and recursion can equally serve as apertures onto the totality of our lives. November 18 becomes a new “Bloomsday,” not for Dublin but for the precarious world we now inhabit: a world where administration, ethics, ecology, and philosophy converge upon the smallest units of experience, compelling us to ask not only how to live through time but how to live in time differently.
Sestertius (Coin) Portraying Emperor Antoninus Pius from the Art Institute of Chicago
I have just finished reading the first two English-translated volumes of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume. In these volumes, the protagonist, Tara Selter, reflects on a single object whose significance extends far beyond its material form: a sestertius of Antoninus Pius showing Annona enthroned, holding grain and a cornucopia, with a modiusand a ship’s prow at her side. Though small and utilitarian, the coin, embodies a dense convergence of administration, ethics, and philosophy. It is not merely a medium of exchange; it functions as a material argument, condensing political, social, and theological reasoning into a tangible and accessible object. This object is a totem used by the author to explore the larger theme of how measurement structures human understanding and moral responsibility, showing that quantification (like that of the temporal unit of the “day” of November 18), is never purely technical but always entwined with ethical, political, and social dimensions.
Through her reflection on the coin, Tara confronts the central concern of the book: how measurement, here represented by the modius, structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. The image of Annona transforms a technical act into a reflection on governance, obligation, and the translation of natural abundance into regulated, distributable form. In the books, Tara becomes Annona. The coin demonstrates that quantification is never purely instrumental; it is simultaneously practical, ethical, and theological. By situating Tara’s encounter within the intellectual and administrative context of imperial Rome, Balle foregrounds a broader meditation on the nature of measurement, its consequences, and its moral significance.
The protagonist encounters not merely an ancient coin but a compressed meditation on the very nature of measure. The sestertius of Antoninus Pius depicting Annona, holding grain and cornucopia, with the modius and a ship’s prow beside her, is never treated as incidental ornament. It functions as a text in its own right, a statement in bronze that carries the weight of theology, administration, and mathematics all at once.
The choice of a sestertius is deliberate. This denomination offered a broad metal disc suitable for allegorical images and political messaging; it was more than a medium of exchange, it was a medium of thought. The Annona type of Antoninus Pius, struck in the 150s, is precisely the kind of object that the protagonist seizes upon: an artefact whose apparent banality conceals a dense weave of symbolism, administrative practice, and philosophical resonance. The coin passes hand to hand, but it also passes idea to idea, translating the act of provision into a language of images.
On its surface, the sestertius stages a double drama. The obverse presents the emperor’s portrait, a carefully chiselled symbol of enduring authority and serenity untouched by war. The reverse depicts Annona, the embodiment of Rome’s sustenance, ensuring that grain reaches the populace. The protagonist recognises that this duality conveys a compact theology of rule in which sovereign power and the material well-being of the people are inseparable; governance is not merely the issuing of decrees but the assurance that bread will reach citizens. Holding the coin is to grasp a microcosm of the empire’s bargain, where loyalty and obedience are repaid with sustenance and order.
This reflection opens into the larger meditation of the narrative. If Annona represents provisioning and the modius is her attribute, then measurement emerges as the hinge of both empire and ecology. The protagonist sees that imperial authority is exercised not only through images, ships, and laws but above all through measure; translating abundance into equitable portions parallels her own understanding that the sustainability of her world depends upon attention to limits and careful accounting of resources. The coin crystallizes a deeper truth: authority, provision, and action, whether imperial or personal, are inseparably bound to measurement and consequence.
The modius occupies a complex space at the intersection of the practical and the symbolic. In everyday Roman life, it was a standardized container for grain, essential to ensuring that the cura annonae, the administration of the city’s food supply, functioned effectively. The emperor was responsible for guaranteeing that each measure distributed to the populace was neither deficient nor excessive, yet on the sestertius, the modius assumes significance beyond the utilitarian; it signifies the translation of nature’s unbounded fertility into a quantity that is comprehensible and governable by human standards. The coin communicates that grain, harvested across distant provinces and transported across the Mediterranean, is made intelligible, distributable, and ultimately just through precise measurement.
Measurement carries a moral and symbolic weight. By resting her hand upon the modius, Annona conveys that volume is not a simple numerical abstraction; abundance must be managed, scarcity moderated, and the gifts of the earth integrated into the social order. The bronze of the coin makes this promise tangible and enduring, circulating among citizens as a reminder that imperial authority extends not only to law and territory but also to the sustenance of life itself. In this way, the act of measuring, ordinarily performed in granaries, is elevated on the coin to a gesture that combines technical exactitude with moral and quasi-theological significance; it prepares the protagonist to reflect on measurement as an act of justice and obligation.
The protagonist comes to understand that the act of measuring is central to the ethical and conceptual framework of the text. The calculation of volume is inseparable from questions of justice and responsibility; every measure carries consequences for the distribution of resources. The modius on the Antoninus Pius sestertius becomes a concrete representation of this principle, demonstrating that the management of abundance requires precision and accountability. The protagonist recognises that excesses of nature can be translated into ordered, comprehensible, and equitable forms only through careful calculation.
She observes that measurement enacts a moral and social contract; to quantify is to mediate between potential chaos and structured provision, between natural plenitude and human need. The modius functions as both a mathematical device and a symbol of responsibility, revealing that human comprehension and moral stewardship are inseparable, and that the act of measurement becomes a disciplined, quasi-theological exercise through which the natural and social orders are harmonized.
Annona is not merely a figure on a coin; she serves as a conceptual lens through which the protagonist understands the relationship between nature, measurement, and human obligation. Unlike Ceres, who embodies growth and fertility, Annona translates the boundless potential of the harvest into a regulated, measurable form that sustains society. Her posture, the placement of the modius, and the presence of the cornucopia and ship’s prow signify governance, order, and provision rather than mere abundance. She mediates between the natural world and human society, demonstrating that volume, when measured, becomes both a material and ethical instrument.
The protagonist notes that mediation operates across scales; from individual granaries to the imperial logistics network, Annona embodies the principle that measurement structures relations between humans and nature. The sestertius communicates that abundance must be mediated through calculation, that provision requires oversight, and that human responsibility is embedded in the act of measurement. Annona thus emerges as a symbol of the theological and moral dimensions of measurement; to quantify is to act within a framework of obligation and care, to convert natural plenitude into ethical order, and to recognise that human intervention is necessary to transform potential into practical sustenance.
Her encounter with the Annona sestertius crystallises the central argument: measurement is never purely technical but always imbued with ethical and quasi-theological significance. Volume is both a mathematical and moral category; it governs physical substances and social relations alike. The modius becomes a point of reflection, showing that quantifying is inseparable from human responsibility and oversight.
Through this encounter, she interprets measurement as a disciplined engagement with the world. To set grain into a modius is to convert potential into ordered provision; to calculate volume is to exercise judgment that mediates between abundance and scarcity. The sestertius demonstrates that the logic of measure extends beyond granaries into broader moral and civic understanding, where precision, accountability, and stewardship are intertwined. It embodies the convergence of human comprehension, ethical responsibility, and governance, making abstract principles tangible and situating the protagonist within a system where mathematics, obligation, and moral reflection are inseparable. Tara’s choice and agency are rife with meaning.
The Annona sestertius, seen through Balle’s lens, encapsulates the text’s exploration of how measurement structures both human understanding and moral responsibility. Calculation is never neutral or purely technical; it is a deliberate act through which abundance is rendered comprehensible, ordered, and ethically distributed. The coin, combining imperial portraiture with symbolic imagery, reveals the intersection of human governance, natural plenitude, and moral obligation. Volume functions as a medium in which mathematics, ethics, and theology converge. Measurement becomes a mode of care; an affect: it is simultaneously practical, moral, and a form of stewardship that binds the natural and social orders. The protagonist’s reflection affirms the central thesis: the theology of measurement, articulated through the modius and Annona, demonstrates that human calculation is a conduit for order, justice, and the harmonization of nature and society.
Further reading: These two books are both valuable resources for understanding how Roman imagery communicates political, ethical, and symbolic meanings, making them especially useful for the analysis of the Annona sestertius in this essay and the book. - Paul Zanker – The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus - Richard Brilliant – Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Roman Art
You’re probably surprised to find us so inhospitable,” said the man, “but hospitality isn’t a custom here, and we don’t need any visitors.”
-The Castle, Franz Kafka
In my reading of Emily Wilson’s Iliad, xenia emerges as both sacred hospitality and a fraught instrument of power, inviting a reconsideration of the conflict’s origins beyond the conventional narrative. Traditionally, Paris’s taking of Helen is cast as a flagrant breach of xenia, the guest-host relationship foundational to Homeric ethics. Yet, attentive engagement with the text suggests that the arrogance of Menelaus and Agamemnon—expressed in their language and actions—may have already fractured this code, perhaps even before Helen’s departure, whether voluntary or otherwise.
Xenia (Greek: ξενία [kse'ni.a]) is an ancient Greek concept of hospitality. It is almost always translated as 'guest-friendship' or 'ritualized friendship'. Xenia was an institutionalised relationship grounded in reciprocity, gift exchange, and moral obligation. Rooted in the word xenos (stranger) it encompassed both material support and normative rights, linking guest and host through mutual respect.
This fracturing of xenia recalls the complex relationship between hospitality and power explored by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida*, who questioned the possibility of unconditional hospitality within the constraints of sovereignty and law. Derrida observed that hospitality is never purely generous but always mediated by conditions like borders, identities, and political authority. This insight resonates with the Iliad’s depiction of xenia, where the sacred duty to welcome the stranger exists alongside a real impulse to control and exclude. In this sense, the breach attributed to Paris appears less as an isolated offense and more as a symptom of a broader failure within the Greek leadership to practise genuine hospitality. Menelaus and Agamemnon’s arrogance acts not as a safeguard of order but as an instrument of domination, complicating the moral certainty of the Greek cause.
* Jacques Derrida’s reflections on hospitality remain crucial amid ongoing refugee crises. He highlights a fundamental tension: the moral duty to welcome strangers conflicts with the need to maintain borders that protect the home. Hospitality requires laws to distinguish guests from threats, making it both an act of openness and controlled closure. This balance is never fully resolvable but must always guide ethical and political responses to displacement and migration. More on Derrida at wikipedia.
From a philosophical perspective, this ambiguity aligns with Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, which he considered essential to justice and effective governance. Neither Menelaus nor Agamemnon demonstrates this prudence. Their pride blinds them to the reciprocal duties that sustain social cohesion. Their focus on honour manifests as domination and retribution rather than balanced justice. This dynamic parallels Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the fragility of the public realm, where the collapse of mutual respect and responsibility leads to violence and alienation. The outbreak of war can therefore be seen as a tragic consequence of leadership that fails to embody virtues necessary for upholding xenia and, more broadly, the polis.
Furthermore, the question of Helen’s agency brings to mind Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of the objectification of women in patriarchal societies. Helen’s portrayal as property rather than an autonomous subject reveals the limits of the ethical frameworks governing hospitality and honour. The violation of xenia in her case transcends guest-host betrayal and exposes gendered power relations that deny subjectivity. This complexity demands that we reconsider the roots of conflict in the Iliad as arising not only from personal transgressions but also from systemic injustice.
The Iliad presents Menelaus and Agamemnon as figures whose sense of entitlement verges on hubris. In Greek, Agamemnon’s epithet ἀρήϊος (arēios), “warlike” or “proud,” hints at his overbearing nature. His treatment of others, especially the lesser-ranked warriors, reveals a man for whom honour is inseparable from domination. Menelaus’s own conduct is marked by possessiveness and wrath, notably when he appeals to the Greeks to avenge his personal loss of Helen, framing the conflict in terms of his honour as a husband and king.
Noting the ritual sacrifices the Greeks must perform before setting sail for Troy, one perceives a subtle but telling indication that the gods’ favour is not assured, hinting at underlying tensions and possible guilt among the Greeks themselves. The necessity of these sacrifices suggests divine displeasure, an implicit acknowledgement that the Greeks may not be wholly innocent. This ritual moment opens a space for questioning the moral clarity of the Greeks’ cause, inviting reflection on whether their hubris and aggressive ambitions have already sown the seeds of conflict.
Philosophically, this recalls the ancient understanding that human actions are always subject to divine judgment, and that wars—even those framed as righteous—are rarely free from moral ambiguity. The Iliad thus offers a profound meditation on the limits of human pride and the consequences of violating sacred social bonds. The sacrifices foreshadow not only the calamities to come but also the possibility that the Greeks’ own arrogance and sense of entitlement have fractured the ethical foundation of their expedition, making the ensuing war less a response to a single violation and more a symptom of systemic breakdown.
This interpretation complicates the traditional victim-aggressor narrative by suggesting that the Greek leadership’s behaviour, including their claim to honour through domination, may have destabilized the delicate balance of xenia even before Helen’s departure. It invites us to see the war as the tragic outcome of a fractured social order where divine, ethical, and human considerations intersect, challenging the simplicity of blame and exposing the complex origins of violence in the poem.
This arrogance, I argue, destabilizes the very foundation of xenia. The sacred mutual respect between host and guest, governed by θεοί (theoi)—the gods who enforce these bonds—is undermined by the rulers’ domineering attitudes. If xenia depends on reciprocity and restraint, Menelaus and Agamemnon’s behaviour signals a breakdown of these conditions. Such a rupture may have made Helen’s departure inevitable or at least understandable, not simply as a consequence of Paris’s transgression but as a reaction to an oppressive and fractious social order.
The idea that xenia hinges on mutual respect and divine sanction highlights how fragile the social order truly is when those entrusted with upholding it act out of self-interest. The gods, as guardians of these sacred bonds, serve not only as enforcers but as reminders that human pride must be tempered by humility and justice. When Menelaus and Agamemnon assert their authority through domination rather than reciprocity, they risk not only alienating their allies but inviting divine disfavor—a peril that reverberates throughout the epic.
This breach extends beyond mere political or military strategy; it exposes the ethical limits of power within the heroic code. The rupture in xenia thus becomes a mirror reflecting deeper societal fractures, where honour is too often conflated with control and possession. The resulting tensions illuminate how fragile the ties of loyalty and hospitality are, especially when compounded by the weight of personal grievance and patriarchal dominance. In this context, Helen’s fate is less an isolated episode of betrayal and more a symptom of systemic failure—a consequence of a social fabric strained by arrogance and fractured hospitality.
Helen herself, positioned within a patriarchal framework, is rendered almost as οἰκέτις (oiketis), a household servant or property, thereby calling into question her agency. Whether she left of her own accord or was taken forcibly, the conditions shaping her departure emerge from a broader failure of xenia rooted in the arrogance and self-interest of those who claim to uphold it.
This reading aligns with Homeric philosophy wherein justice is intimately tied to εὐνομία (eunomia), good order, sustained by ethical relationships like xenia. The war’s eruption, then, is a tragic manifestation of the consequences when pride and power override these obligations.
Moreover, this interpretation resonates with contemporary political realities. Modern states often project ideals of openness while practicing exclusion and control, reflecting an ancient tension between hospitality’s ideal and its political reality. The Iliad exposes this tension, showing how claims to honour and order frequently mask mechanisms of exclusion.
This tension between the ideal and the practice of hospitality has long been a site of political and ethical anxiety. In ancient epic, as in modern geopolitics, the stranger often serves as both a test of virtue and a projection surface for anxiety about sovereignty, belonging, and threat. The Greek concept of xenia is not simply about generosity; it is also about the maintenance of status and the regulation of hierarchy. The guest must be treated with honour, yes, but also must not upset the established order of the host. In this way, hospitality reveals itself not as a neutral ethical good, but as a framework for establishing power relations under the guise of moral obligation.
Michel Foucault’s observations on the diffuse and disciplinary nature of power help clarify this reading. The host’s role, much like the sovereign’s, is not merely to offer welcome but to determine the terms on which that welcome occurs. This determination is political: it draws boundaries between who belongs and who must remain other. Within this framework, Menelaus and Agamemnon’s failure is not only in their pride, but in their assumption that their authority grants them a monopoly on the ethical terms of xenia. They weaponise hospitality, transforming it from a sacred obligation into a system of entitlement that reinforces their dominance.
Seen in this light, Paris’s violation may not represent the origin of the war so much as its pretext. The true breakdown lies in the way hospitality has already been co-opted by the Greeks as a form of political control. The gods’ demands for sacrifice before the expedition to Troy can thus be read not merely as a call for piety, but as a divine rebuke. The Greek cause, built on the claim of avenging a breach in hospitality, is already compromised by internal contradictions. What they claim to defend, they have already hollowed out.
This reading also aligns with the insights of thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, who argued that the ethical relation begins with the face of the Other, and that true hospitality requires openness to the stranger as stranger—not as subject to assimilation or control. In The Iliad, however, the stranger is always already caught in a web of possessive claims and reciprocal expectations. Paris, Helen, even Achilles—all are at some point positioned as both insider and outsider, welcomed and rejected, honoured and dishonoured. The poem’s structure is shaped by this unresolved dialectic between inclusion and exclusion, belonging and alienation.
If hospitality in Homeric terms is sacred, it is also perilous. It binds hosts and guests in fragile interdependence that can all too easily be ruptured by pride, possession, or fear. The violence of The Iliad may be read as the inevitable result of this fragility—an unraveling of social bonds that, once broken, cannot be easily repaired. The cost of such rupture is not only war but the loss of the ethical world that hospitality once promised to sustain.
Finally, in my reading of Wilson’s Iliad, the figures of Menelaus and Agamemnon come to embody the complexity of power’s role in the erosion of social bonds. Their arrogance does not simply mirror individual failings but signals a deeper, systemic disintegration of ethical obligations. Their conduct may well precede and provoke the chain of events so often attributed solely to Paris’s violation of xenia. What appears on the surface as a narrative of reactive justice begins, under closer scrutiny, to reveal itself as a story already compromised by pride, coercion, and a hollowing out of the very traditions the Greeks claim to defend. Agamemnon’s treatment of Achilles, his disregard for prophetic restraint, and his readiness to sacrifice his daughter are not incidental; they are emblematic of a sovereign power that mistakes command for moral authority. Menelaus likewise presents the war as a recovery of honour, but one suspects his sense of loss is tied more to control and possession than to any substantive ethical breach.
This reading of the Iliad, shaped by Wilson’s precision and restraint, destabilises the traditional victim-aggressor dichotomy that frames much of the epic’s reception. It offers a vision of conflict rooted not in a singular act of betrayal but in the slow corrosion of ethical responsibilities, especially those embedded in the sacred institution of xenia. What begins as a dispute over one woman’s departure unfolds into a meditation on the failure of reciprocity, the ease with which honour becomes entitlement, and hospitality’s transformation into a rationale for domination. Menelaus and Agamemnon are not merely victims seeking redress; they are active participants in the erosion of the very social order they claim to avenge.
This interpretation reveals the poem’s striking relevance to contemporary political conditions. The fragility of the social fabric, especially where hospitality is concerned, becomes a central issue. In my reading, the Iliad not only portrays the collapse of communal bonds but also warns of the consequences when the ethical obligation to honour the stranger is replaced by suspicion, conditional acceptance, or outright hostility. The ancient practice of xenia bears troubling parallels to modern systems of immigration, asylum, and border control. Like Menelaus and Agamemnon, modern states often claim to offer welcome while practising exclusion. Refugees and displaced people today frequently occupy a liminal state—neither fully included nor entirely excluded—shaped by policies that control their presence, voice, and movement. In many ways, they remain guests whose welcome is provisional and contingent upon submission to a host who can withdraw hospitality at any moment.
This liminal state is not unlike the condition of Helen in the poem. In my reading, Helen is not simply the cause of war but a figure caught between belonging and alienation, between desire and blame. She is both central and marginal, visible yet voiceless, possessed but never possessing. Her situation evokes the structural position of those today who, though ostensibly “welcomed,” are treated as liabilities rather than members of a moral community. The Iliad, understood this way, is not only a meditation on ancient war but a tragic account of what happens when traditions of welcome are degraded into mechanisms of control.
Emily Anhalt’s Enragedis instructive in this regard. Her study of rage in Homeric epic reveals how deeply anger is connected to the experience of dishonour within a failing moral order. This rage is not limited to Achilles alone but reflects a broader social anger born from betrayal by systems that promise dignity yet deliver subjugation. In my reading of Wilson’s translation, such rage, muted in Helen, contained within the Greek ranks, and projected outward onto Troy, emerges as a symptom of ethical collapse. Rage becomes the residue of violated hospitality, of traditions that are claimed but no longer upheld.
Thus, The Iliad, far from being merely a chronicle of ancient heroism, becomes in this reading a study of political and moral fragility. Its significance lies not in the repetition of heroic forms but in exposing how power, when separated from ethical responsibility, corrodes the very institutions that define civilisation. Hospitality, when stripped of its mutual obligations, stops being a virtue and instead becomes a display of dominance. In such a context, conflict is not accidental but inevitable. My reading of Wilson’s translation, attentive to these tensions, suggests that the poem endures because it grasps something fundamental about the conditions under which communities either thrive or collapse. Ultimately, the tragedy is not only that war occurs but that it follows logically from the betrayal of the values one claims to defend.
Helmet from the Etruscan Museum Rome – Villa Giulia 📸 by meExekias Amphora, Achilles and Ajax Engaged in a Game, Greek Pottery from the Vatican Museum 📸 by me
