Despite being overjoyed at receiving a “university Oscar” for her career, yesterday, the Navarrese Hellenist Ana Iriarte Goñi was also overcome with sadness. With one eye on the other side of the Atlantic, on Donald Trump’s victory to become president of the United States again, the new honorary doctorate from the University of Oviedo confessed: “It is a very sad day for the progress of women in the West. The monster won. This shows that we have to be prepared and that the demands are not over.” Iriarte, who is a retired professor of Ancient History at the University of the Basque Country and was a pioneer in research on women in classical Greece, joined the council of wise men of the Asturian academic institution with these words. A council made up of 76 members, of which only three are women.
“We have a debt with the academics that we will have to pay off over time,” acknowledged the rector, Ignacio Villaverde, minutes before the ceremony, which took place in the Auditorium of the Historical Building. Together with her godmother, Professor Rosa María Cid, Ana Iriarte Goñi said she felt “impressed and honored” for having been worthy of the highest distinction granted by the University of Oviedo. “My only merit is having been an attentive student in France and a dedicated teacher in Spain,” she said in reference to her training at the Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris. Professor Iriarte said more: “I can only accept this supreme distinction, this ‘university Oscar’, as a product of a time and a collective effort. That is, I can only accept it on behalf of a broad cast of specialists convinced of the heritage.” that the history of women, secularly neglected by the conventional historical narrative, would contribute.
Ignacio Villaverde imposes the honorary doctor’s cap on Ana Iriarte. |
Fortunately, Ana Iriarte highlighted, the belief that the study of the female sphere of Antiquity is something “ideological, partial or subjective” has changed. But, in his opinion, “in a somewhat abrupt and arbitrary way if we consider, for example, the requirement that research projects dedicate space to the gender issue.” “On the one hand – he added – we must recognize that such pressure honors the new cultural policy. On the other, we should warn that this pressure leads to a certain intrusion in the specialty, which, consciously or unconsciously, unravels much of what has already been established by force. of ignoring theoretical principles established in any of the aspects of gender history”.
The researcher also warned during her speech that democracy “is being strained in recent years by the denigration of public affairs and the praise of raging individualism, which hurts us every day from toxic tribunes and filthy media.” Even so, Iriarte believes in democracy, which “has demonstrated its ability to reinvent itself and survive.” “In the face of doomsaying networks that call it a posthumous system, democracy is strengthened with organizations that, just a few decades ago, were unimaginable,” such as the ministries and departments of Equality. The new honorary doctor closed her extensive speech by referring to women in Afghanistan. “We notice that women’s speech has been the object of prohibition in the Taliban public space, surprising us that the Hellenic ironies about silence as the best feminine attribute have become tragically historical in the Near East. We can do nothing, except educate, that , well thought out, it is a lot. This is at least the conviction that always encouraged my career,” he concluded.
Public attending the investiture ceremony. | Irma Collin
Attending his investiture ceremony were, among other authorities, Susana Reboreda, vice-rector of University Extension of the University; Manoli Igartua, vice-rector of the Álava Campus of the University of the Basque Country; Cristina González Morán, general director of the University of the Government of Asturias, and María Jesús Álvarez, director of the Asturian Women’s Institute. The Asturian professor Rosa María Cid was in charge of highlighting the figure of Iriarte, who highlighted that the Navarrese professor “has ample merit to be distinguished with an honorary doctorate, being the most prominent Hellenist of the current Spanish university, which always promoted studies on the “women and gender in ancient Greece from a feminist commitment”. Cid revealed that Iriarte Goñi’s close relationship with the University of Oviedo began to take shape in March 1992 and since then “collaboration has been a constant.”
The rector, for his part, pointed out that Professor Iriarte “shakes and moves consciences, invites us to reflect and discover what behind the mask of appearance hides that great theatrical work that is life and teaches us to live it with dignity.” Villaverde thanked Iriarte for her role in giving voice: “She has torn women from the clutches of muteness and has seen in them the weavers of enigmas.”
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