Acknowledgments
Preface: Terms And Definitions
Introduction For the Time Being: Some Notes on the Manners of Modern Lives 3
Pt. I Reviewing Athens 21
1 Model Improbabilities: Athens at First Sight 23
2 Remembering and Remodeling: The Metaleptic Metropolis 64
Pt. II Another Modernity 99
3 Crossing the Threshold: Notes on Conflict at a Certain Greek Airport 101
4 Sovereignty and Its Discontents 122
5 "Everything Is Possible": Notes on the Greek Modern 139
Pt. III After the Colonels: Projects of Self-Definition and Self-Formation Since 1974 157
6 The Self Made: Developing a Postnational Character 159
7 The Works of Margharita Karapanou: Literature as a Technology of Self-Formation 184
8 Men Are Not Always What They Seem: From Sexual Modernization toward Sexual Modernity 213
Epilogue: After the Present 242
Notes 249
Bibliography 271
Index 289

Through a blend of lively detail and elegant narration, James Faubion immerses us in the cosmopolitan intellectual life of Athens, a centerless city of multiplicities and fragmentations, a city on the "margins of Europe" recovering from the repressive rule of a military junta. Drawing inspiration from Athens and its cultural elite, Faubion explores the meaning of modernity, finding it not in the singular character of "Western civilization" but instead in an increasingly diverse family of practices of reform.

James D. Faubion is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Rice University.