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Alexander, God of War is a fictional retelling of the conquest of Ancient Macedonia led by Alexander the Great, foretold in retrospect by King Ptolemy of Aegypt – former royal page and retainer of Alexander – to a child and possible future ruler. The highly descriptive writing is something I prefer in readings as I often visualize what I read to facilitate understanding. More importantly, it displays several aspects of morality and cultural conflict that could be related back to our discussions in Unit 2 of Borderlands R1A. Two aspects of the story I want to delve into involves gentrification and feminicide.

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Gentrification as portrayed in “Alexander, God of War” with reference to “How To Kill A City” by Peter Moskowitz

Background

As per the title itself, the story was of a man who aimed to dominate the world he came to know. A very interesting aspect of the book was that apart from detailing the history of the conqueror, his retainers, and their success and failures in world conquest, it touches deep into the fringes of the society and culture in their homeland, the conquered states and the states that would potentially be conquered.

In the beginning, it tells of the composition and tacitly accepted culture of the royal court in the generation above Alexander’s and how he and his retainers came to restructure the court. What made the move necessary was because it included barbarians and mercenaries who were unforgivably violent and voracious; royal pages and servants, both boys and girls, were freely raped or killed for pleasure without punishment.

Further on, and for the most part of the story, it tells of conquered cities and nations and the repercussions to the local cultural scene with the drastic change in population from casualties from wars and its composition due to the huge influx of foreign citizens into the newly conquered state. Much of what was shown was when Ptolemy takes a break from his duties and wanders the city and observes the daily lives of the people.

In “How to Kill a City”, Moskowitz describes past experience and observation of gentrification of West Village, New York, and proceeds to discuss the reasons for it occurring and the steps taken by corporations and policymakers in order to make gentrification in states possible. Above all, Moskowitz makes it clear that this phenomenon is not possible without inequality occurring, and often, the situation opposes black people and people of insufficient wealth, since such socioeconomic groups are a detriment to the capitalistic/neoliberalism society and are a drain on taxes. Finally, Moskowitz suggests several solutions or steps towards solutions to ensuring that these unwanted dissolutions of communities do not continue to occur.

From my understanding, Moskowitz describes gentrification as an influx of a new socio-economic group to a well-established society due to a certain drastic event, for example, a natural disaster, technological boom, or economic fiasco. Over time, that new group of people comes to displace the original citizens of the location due to reasons including the vast increase in property value and dissolution of communities. From the conquests of cities and the restructuring of society in God of War, I see a manifestation of gentrification happening.

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Analysis

First, the case of Alexander ‘cleaning’ his court from including mercenaries and barbarians who resisted his disapproval of undue violence to palace subjects, or otherwise, bending those who were willing amongst them to his will. Here, the gentrifiers would Alexander and co, while the gentrified are the violent society and the culture of violence that was previously if not had policies allowing them, most definitely had the tacit approval of the previous ruler. However, in this situation, my application of the word gentrification will not have the same detrimental meaning as it does to the community as seen in Moskowitz’s. In this form, we see the removal of a culture that can be universally accepted as bad replaced with a better situation for all members of the royal palace, whether pages or servants. The barbarians and mercenaries are chased out or forced to change their ways into that which is acceptable by the new king. However, this positive light on gentrification takes a halt when the story progresses.

As more nations and empires fall into the Macedonian rule, conflict arises when different cultures meet, especially during post-war periods of re-establishing peace in invaded countries. The rejection of the people towards their invaders was made clear in Ptolemy’s retelling; after every war won, the phalanx does a parade around the city and the inhabitants usually throw vulgarities or tomatoes to express their denial of loss of sovereignty. Macedonian merchants come to do trade in these cities fail to obtain fair harvests on top of being robbed and at times killed. Conflicts between beliefs escalate and public denunciations of each other’s gods only led to civil unrest and further violence.

Thus, a rule of fear became a quick solution. Heavy policing was conducted for places with recorded crime rates and severe punishment befalls any unlucky to be caught. Deals were made with the local powers to facilitate the assimilation of new citizens. Over time, peace is achieved in the capital made of more Macedonians of Macedonia than the original people of the state. Lands of the dead for the ‘Graecus’ popped up, underdeveloped towns where a Macedonian could get killed by just accidentally entering it. These places are what contain the original people of the land who keep on refusing acceptance of the new king. They remain off the grid, unpoliced, but most definitely in poverty and desolation.

Reading Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City, and rereading God of War made me think that perhaps this could also be a form of gentrification, albeit a more violent manner. Instead of the financial capability of the citizens, it was the social policies that allowed for killing those who opposed the absorption of countries that propelled the gentrification of the conquered states. Most definitely, this is also another manifestation of corporations (the invaders) enforcing their power, whether military or financial, to provide the most benefit to themselves. For the past, it was to ensure that revolts did not occur, or were unsuccessful. For our time, the phenomenon is motivated by capitalism and neoliberalism.

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Slavery and Degradation of Women as a Form of Feminicide

Close read with “Coming to Grips With Feminicide” by Rosa Linda Fregoso

During the times of Alexander the Great, slaves, and servants are abundant and inseparable from the structure of society. They were a symbol of status and power of the aristocrats, with their number being representative of the wealth a man has. Orders were absolute, and slaves were to serve their owners’ needs without regard for their own preference, safety, nor chastity. Given their luck, they may have a lucky owner such as Ptolemy’s father who treats his slaves fairly, or they may have abusive masters who inflict corporeal punishments for any unsatisfactory work, behavior or for any reason whatsoever.

Ptolemy then sees the worst side of slavery upon being called to serve Prince Alexander at the time as a royal page. Symposiums of the royal court of Macedonia often ended with a feast, and things get bloody and awry once the wine spills. Both male and female servants were used to satisfy the court members’ lust and any form of refusal may result with a fruit knife slitting their throats: royal pages had to serve the guests too and were also exposed to such dangers.

Apart from running businesses and households, slaves were also crucial in wars. Males tended the armory, the horses, livestock for food, and ran mobile kitchens. Females were present for stress relief; they danced and pleased the army in all forms and manners and gave them respite from the blood and gore of the war while keeping them motivated for the whole campaign.

I intend to close read the situation of slavery and the degradation of women through the lens of “Coming to Grips with Feminicide” by Rosa Linda Fregoso. Fregoso talks about the targeted crimes against women in Mexico, which rose to a peak in the 1990s in Ciudad Juarez whereby there was an unusual and consistent increase of murders and disappearances of women and girls. Apart from that, Fregoso also talks of the creation of the term ‘feminicide’ which is used to define the aforementioned gendered violence and crime. Furthermore, it is explained that the situation escalated as a violent response from the perpetrators towards the women rights movements that sprung up as a result of feminicide. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of these activists to help save the lives of women, the highly patriarchal and machismo attitude of corrupt governments and institutions, especially those that were meant to protect the people, do little to make things become better.

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Analysis

The structure of the society of Macedonia is clear; the King reigns supreme, followed by the retainers, aristocrats and their mentors, then the civilians, with slaves as the dregs of society but is ironically the ones who ensure the daily of Macedonia’s citizens are run normally. Slaves are considered to be of lower origin, meaning they were descendants of former citizens that fell into poverty and debt and sold as a consequence or were perhaps captured citizens of razed cities with nothing from their past lives. As a result, they are likewise often treated as less than human. Hence, the abuse of slaves by their masters are sanctioned by the state and are always justified.

The reason why this is so is due to general acceptance of such treatment. Violence and mistreatment of slaves are so frequent such that it is normalized, and owners like Ptolemy’s father who treated slaves fairly are scarce. Such is what has happened with the violence of women in Mexico, whereby these acts of violence are merely grouped together as either collateral damage from narco-violence or simply a by-product of the machismo. Funny enough, there is also a level of status amongst the slaves, with prostitutes standing at the bottommost. Well, calling these unfairly treated women prostitutes is a misnomer, as they never get paid but are merely practically used as sex slaves of the army.

Ultimately, everything comes down to the designation of the value of a certain life or group of lives. It is only because the aristocrats and merchants wanted no part of the tiring and mundane daily works on top of cheap labor that they assign such labor to slaves. It is because they deem themselves above those work and that there exist others that should do the job in their place. I believe that this quantification of value towards life is one of the reasons governmental institutions of Mexico are corrupt, as instead of following moral values, they internalize maximum profit for themselves, which then provides an opportunity for gendered violence.

Extra:

One particular part that stood out to me was that throughout the whole story, there were barely any positive representation of women. The only female characters I remember being mentioned with names only amounted to about three people: Alexander’s mother, Petra, and Ptolemy’s two women in his life. Any other person that was female was either a palace servant being ridden by a court member, a slave in the army, a prostitute of a newly conquered city, or a crying mother holding her baby in her arms as she sends her husband and sons off for war. Perhaps, it was because the patriarchal culture was obsessively enforced that such a woeful time for women could have come to pass. Although our culture is not entirely free of it, I am glad that my sisters, mother, and female relatives did not have to go through such an extreme culture.