In this chapter, the ties between the nation, racial identity, and the role of classicism are traced as an identity marker. Alt-right – or identitarian – movements and the nation are coterminous in their racialization, an association that their redeployment of antiquity reifies. Analysis of the nation, Whiteness, and antiquity draws examples from the West, particularly the United States, in terms of the wayward identitarian movements that have been proliferating. Although the nation controls the apparatus of the state, identitarian movements benefit from new means of communication, namely, the Internet, and social media. I imagine a way out of the paradox of identitarianism through alternative uses of classicism. This way out is also an end of nation, as opposed to Fukuyama’s end of history, which depends on the strength of nations and states.

This chapter provides an accessible overview of the wide, diverse and ever-expanding field of classical reception studies. It begins with an overview of the word ‘reception’ and its origins in philosophical hermeneutics, and surveys a series of critiques that have been made of the word’s usefulness. Then the chapter makes three claims. First, allusions to antiquity have frequently occurred within a broader matrix of challenge and contestation, and so the critical analysis of classical reception should pay attention to voices that challenge the values accorded to classical literature, as well as those who embrace them. Second, a focus on the history of education can help us see classical allusion as a social challenge rather than simply a submission to prevailing literary or cultural norms. Third, the study of reception is at its most vital as a mode of communication outside classics, whether to the public, to students or to scholars in other fields. Ultimately, reception studies make up a vital part of the future of classical scholarship, and yet questions remain about whether the word ‘reception’ best communicates the subject’s intellectual range and ambition.