Although the subject of my last post--the special issue of Representations 92: "Redress" [Fall 2005; edited by Stephen Best and Saidiya Hartman] and The Redress Project--is not seemingly directly related to medieval studies [it has more to do with the subject of slavery, mainly in the early modern and modern periods], I believe it is actually quite relevant and important concerning our recent discussions on this blog about "why history matters" and whether or not early Anglo-Saxons might have been colonial-style racial oppresors [we know, of course, from the law codes, that early Anglo-Saxons possessed slaves--the larger question would be: how was it determined who would be a slave and how was that "class" of persons legally defined, regulated, constrained, etc.?]. I also believe that, for any medievalist who, like JJC, is interested in questions--theoretical, historical, and otherwise--that have to do with time, chronology, periodization, "untimeliness," and what might be called, following Vance Smith, "irregular histories," that some time spent looking at the scholarship of the Redress Project, comprised mainly of English, History, Law, Social Policy, and Human Rights scholars, is an absolute must. It relates, moreover, to the "hope" of Michael Uebel [expressed in a soon-to-be-published essay] that "critical medievalism . . . will recognize itself as particularly well suited to advance the terms by which temporality can be understood as a vital (cross)-disciplinary concern."Finally, in their Introduction, Best and Hartman are at pains to distinguish the work of their project from work on reparations or on remembering and working through trauma. Rather, they see their work [and the work of the other scholars involved with them] as:
the attempt to interrogate rigorously the kinds of political claims that can be mobilized on behalf of the slave (the stateless, the socially dead, and the disposable) in the political present. . . . we are concerned neither with "what happened then" nor with "what is owed because of what happened then," but rather with the contemporary predicament of freedom, with the melancholy recognition of forseeable futures still tethered to the past. . . . what is the story about the slave we ought to tell out of the present we ourselves inhabit--a present in which torture isn't really torture, a present in which persons have been stripped of rights heretofore deemed inalienable?
Since the contributors to the Redress Project see their subject as one that is mainly post-colonial [and therefore locates its incipit in the early modern period], I would ask, finally, how might medieval studies contribute to this Project? What, further, can medieval studies learn from this Project?
And thanks to Janet Thormann, who passed on to me the special issue of Representations that Best & Hartman edited.
Okay--there's this really cool free music service that mainly only teenagers know about [thank god I'm living with losts of teenagers this summer at my friend Amy's house], called Tiny Mix Tapes, which takes requests for mix tapes that have to have a certain interesting "theme," and then their volunteer "mixers" take it upon themselves to make the tape mix for you [it can take a little while--they provide the song list, then you download it via Limewire.com or another open music source]. Recent mix themes have included: "Songs for when you're tripping on Robitussin and your best friend's mother catches you dancing around with a towel on your head to the song Eat Y'self Fitter," "my embarrassing secret is that, at nearly sixteen years old, i've often felt that the only reason i am still alive is because it would be wrong to die before losing my virginity. well, it's gone now," "songs to knit to," "music to drown yourself to," "depressing songs to play at the porn store i work at, so customers forget they're horny and go home and quit bothering me," and my personal favorite, "holy shit, I just made out with my brother."
Just a little postcard from those of us in Blogville to say we hope those of you at the New Chaucer Society meeting in NYC are having as much fun as Patsy and Edina would have if they were there. Come to think of it, academic conferences could use a few more Patsys and Edinas. Just a thought.
Relative to our discussions of humanism and "being human," and also psychoanalysis, transference, and self-Other relationships, I have just read a review of what looks to be an extremely interesting book by the Nobel Prize-winning economist and social philosopher Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, and I also append here a link to the review of that book that recently appeared in Prospect: "Illusions of Identity" by Kenan Malik.Sen has been a vocal critic of "multiculturalism," but only when it is inflected in such a way that it assumes certain persons will act/think a certain way based upon the "group" to which they supposedly "belong." On this point, relative to social policy in Briatin, Sen has said, "We have a system in which Muslim organisations are in charge of all Muslims, Hindu organisations in charge of all Hindus, Jewish organisations in charge of all Jews and so on. . . . In downplaying political and social identities, as opposed to religious identities, the government has weakened civil society precisely when there is a great need to strengthen it." Sen, in other words, is wary of identity politics.
Here, also, is a link to an excerpt from Sen's book, published in Slate: "What Clash of Civilizations?" Here is a brief bit from that, that touches upon medieval history:
. . . . the frantic Western search for "the moderate Muslim" confounds moderation in political beliefs with moderateness of religious faith. A person can have strong religious faith—Islamic or any other—along with tolerant politics. Emperor Saladin, who fought valiantly for Islam in the Crusades in the 12th century, could offer, without any contradiction, an honored place in his Egyptian royal court to Maimonides as that distinguished Jewish philosopher fled an intolerant Europe. When, at the turn of the 16th century, the heretic Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori in Rome, the Great Mughal emperor Akbar (who was born a Muslim and died a Muslim) had just finished, in Agra, his large project of legally codifying minority rights, including religious freedom for all.
The point that needs particular attention is that while Akbar was free to pursue his liberal politics without ceasing to be a Muslim, that liberality was in no way ordained—nor of course prohibited—by Islam. Another Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, could deny minority rights and persecute non-Muslims without, for that reason, failing to be a Muslim, in exactly the same way that Akbar did not terminate being a Muslim because of his tolerantly pluralist politics.
The insistence, if only implicitly, on a choiceless singularity of human identity not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world much more flammable. The alternative to the divisiveness of one pre-eminent categorization is not any unreal claim that we are all much the same. Rather, the main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization.
Perhaps the worst impairment comes from the neglect—and denial—of the roles of reasoning and choice, which follow from the recognition of our plural identities. The illusion of unique identity is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that characterize the world in which we actually live. The descriptive weakness of choiceless singularity has the effect of momentously impoverishing the power and reach of our social and political reasoning. The illusion of destiny exacts a remarkably heavy price.
A new book just out by Walter Goffart is quite apropos, I think, to our recent discussion regarding whether or not the early Anglo-Saxons were apartheid-style racists. I append here the description of the book from the University of Pennsylvania website:
As some may [or may not] know, Philip Rieff died recently, just after publishing his massive tome, Sacred Order/Social Order, Volume I: My Life Among the Deathworks, in which he wrote one of my favorite recent lines: "True barbarism has never existed before. We are witnesses to the first true barbarians." My Life Among the Deathworks is a cranky, pessimistic work that aims to show that modernity is "morally ruinous, death-affirming rather than life-affirming, and represent[s] an unprecedented attempt to create a culture completely devoid of any concept of the sacred." I kind of agree with him.
This is Fleur le Chaton, kitten extraordinaire. Her eyes look that way because she just finished reading the recent articles in Harper's Magazine, "Imagine There's No Oil: Scenes From a Liberal Apocalypse," written by Bryant Urstadt about the Peak Oil movement, and "It's Not Easy Being Green: Are Weed-Killers Turning Frogs Into Hermaphrodites?" by William Souder. Forget about Israel and Hezbollah, global warming and the new ice age, Iraqi death squads, and whether or not early Anglo-Saxons were apartheid-style racists, because we all need to move, quickly, into "lifeboat" villages [self-sufficient "interim" communities established for the purposes of riding out the apocalypse that will happen after oil peaks, the economy crashes, suburbanites are cut off from their malls, industrial agriculture collapses, and wars break out over whatever resources are left, or so Fleur le Chaton tells me]. Whether or not medieval studies will have a role to play in the "lifeboats" is anyone's guess, but Fleur le Chaton is putting her money on positive psychology.
Yes, the title of this post is meant to be some-what provocative, but it is also the title of a recent article in the British online-zine, Life Style Extra [click on title of this post to go straight to the article itself], which is a somewhat breezy take on the more serious scholarly article, recently published:Mark G. Thomas, Michael P.H. Stumpf, and Heinrich Harke, "Evidence for an Apartheid-Like Social Structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England," Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2006 [online publication]
The Life Style Extra piece has been creating a bit of a stir on ANSAXNET [the Anglo-Saxon discussion list-serv, of which some of the readers here may be aware], where many are expressing dismay that, in the words of one discussant, "Not only does it misrepresent the Anglo-Saxon situation, it also threatens to cheapen the *real* experience of apartheid suffered by Africans, Indians, and people of mixed race in South Africa--and I find that "repulsive" indeed." Another discussant expressed doubt that such knowledge could be deduced from genetic research [guess what? you'd be amazed] and also wrote, "As for the use of the term apartheid, I too find it misused in this context (unless it is a technical term geneticists use). Perhaps the authors should have used something like 'disadvantaged' or 'deprived' ?" Another discussant wrote, and I quote at length in this case:
. . . . the term is not only repulsive it is foolish. Whoever the invading or invited or opportunistic Germanic tribes were, they were not interested in setting up racially sensitive administrations. They were users, conquerors, exploiters. If historical genetics tells us something solid, it tells us that they managed to occupy territory within which they maximized their own population. Now I don't know to what extent genetic markers can tell us how much or how well they assimilated "native" Britons or Celts. I wonder about the claims. Those Britons may not have been as Celtic as one might imagine, given the Roman emphasis on mixed populations drawn from various sources for their military and economic expertise, perhaps people who were largely Germanic already. After Boadica's defeat, perhaps "pure" Celts in fact melted away into the hinterlands. Just a thought.
Finally, one discussant raised what I think are some of the larger issues, and I quote here, again at length:
Mark Goldblatt's essay, "Can Humanists Talk to Post-Modernists?", in which he argues that, in the end, "There is . . . no final arbiter between the humanist and postmodernist positions," is just the kind of thing that makes my blood boil [and thanks to Emile B. for passing on the link]. Goldblatt's essay articulates, in fact, the exact supposed impasse out of which the BABEL Working Group, to a certain extent, was born. At this past May's International Congress on Medieval Studies held in Kalamazoo, Andrew Scheil, in his remarks at the "Is Beowulf Postmodern Yet" round-table session, posed the question of whether or not BABEL's humanist impulse was incompatible with its desire to situate a "new humanism" within a set of postmodernist discourses, and Prof. Scheil identified this incompatibility partly, I think, in what I will admit is a kind of fissure, or small hairline crack, between BABEL's wish to resuscitate a certain type of traditional humanist philosophizing and its commitment to schools of poststructural thought that have, to a certain extent, "undone" the most cherished tenets of traditional humanist thought. This subject was actually addressed at our first "Medieval to Modern Humanisms" roundtable session by Doryjane Birrer [a specialist in contemporary British literature and theory at the College of Charleston], who argued there that,
From a liberal humanist perspective, theory is monstrous, given that tenets such as the construction of human identity, the mythical quality of any idea of universal “human nature,” the contingency of meaning and provisionality of truth threaten to undermine the values seen as crucial to the maintenance of a humane—in fact, “truly” human—society. From a postmodern theory perspective, liberal humanism is monstrous for its complicity in so-called humane value systems that have led subjects (I hesitate to say “humans” or “humanity” in this context) to be dupes interpellated with the illusion of free will into, for example, oppressive social systems or ideological state apparatuses, to swipe briefly from Althusser.
At the same time, there has also been, in recent theoretical debates, what could almost be called a new "turn [or re-turn?] to humanism." Witness the symposium held by the editors of Critical Inquiry in 2003 to discuss the future of theory and literary/aesthetic studies more generally in the American university, as well as Edward Said's late writings, which Birrer also discussed:
Edward Said (in a series of lectures collected shortly before his death) argued for a more productive conception of humanism . . . . Drawing on Vico, Said described humanistic knowledge NOT as totalizing and transcendent—theory’s major charges against it—but as “radically incomplete, provisional, disputable, and arguable.” Said continues that humanism today must “take account” of that which it has repressed or deliberately ignored in its original White/Eurocentric patriarchal incarnation. Humanists, he argues, “must situate critique at the very heart of humanism, critique as a form of democratic freedom.”
Rhetoric calling for a more humane world was ubiquitous in [the participants of CI's symposium's] meditations on the future of theory, as were calls for a reevaluation of possibilities for human agency, reconsideration of what Homi Bhabha—who identified himself directly as a humanist—called “modes of personhood” or human identity, and increased attention to the “languages of cultural description and representation” as characteristic of humanistic discourse. Terry Eagleton in the same year (in After Theory) called for a belief in at least some absolute truths (“racism is evil” being one; “corporate greed is poisoning the planet” being another), and for more attention to such messy subjects for theory as morality. Bruno Latour’s statement for the symposium covered much the same ground, suggesting that theory’s own tendency toward absolute relativism and indeterminacy had undermined its grounds for political action—in which case, I would add, it might well be characterized as less than humane. And William Haney’s recent work in consciousness studies—in an intriguing argument whose complexity defies the truncated scope of a roundtable—outlines how “many of the principles of deconstructive postmodernism . . . do not necessarily contradict and in fact often complement the principles of humanism,” including helping to constitute a productive story of the unified, irreducible, and autonomous self.
There are some, like Goldblatt, who would argue that, whereas humanists are supposedly always trying, through "common sense" and "goodwill," to arrive at a judgement--aesthetic, moral, or otherwise--the postmodernist, by contrast, apparently celebrates [and affirms by not affirming] the logical contradictions and "unfalsifiability of everything" that make critical judgement impossible. But the definitions of "humanist" and "postmodernist" upon which Goldblatt's essay depends are so anemically and narrowly defined as to strangulate even the possibility of what I would argue [following Birrer and others] could be a very socially capacious and ethical postmodern humanism.
The question for me is that, whether it is certain postmodern discourses, or certain scientific discoveries, that call into question traditional humanist "verities," such as "the human," "free will," "the autonomous self," or whatever, both sets of discourses admit of both facts and perpetual uncertainties. The important question is not, "is humanism incompatible with postmodernism?" or even "is humanism incompatible with science?", but rather, how to safeguard the culture that makes this and other "human" debates possible? How, further, to safeguard and promote a free exchange of ideas that has at its foundation the very "human" desire for virtue? And yes, virtue is one of those humanist values that is rooted in a human self, yet always reaches beyond itself toward others, human and non-human, living and dead, past, present, and future.
"Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma."
Since September of last year (2005), the BABEL Working Group has been organizing sessions at various conferences around the topic of "Medieval to Modern Humanisms" and we have been asking scholars from both within and outside of medieval studies (and we are also seeking persons from outside the academy as well) to contribute to what we see as long-term (ten to twenty year plus) project aimed at formulating what might be called, for lack of a better term at present, a "new humanities." This fall, Christine Neufeld (Eastern Michigan Univ.) and I will be co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory (Winter 2007 issue) devoted to the early stages of this dialogue (initiated at two conferences in Sep. 2005 and May 2006, and to be continued in Oct. 2006 in Oxford, MS and in May 2007 at Kalamazoo). Because we wanted those participating to have as broad a base as possible for beginning to think about the topic, we indicated that anything that touched, in any way, upon "humanism," "the humanities," and "being human"--past and present--would be ideal, and other than that, there are no parameters for the discourse, although we did formulate some questions as "jumping off" points, such as:
The image at left is of the Rosetta Disk, one of the projects of the Long Now Foundation, which, in their own words,Given many of the conversations on this blog over the past couple of months regarding whether or not literary studies can have any kind of social impact, whether or not "history matters," how "humanity" is being redefined by the scientists [and what, therefore, should we in humanities disciplines *do* regarding that?], and Karl's and Emile B.'s exchanges on philosophies [medieval, Enlightenment, and otherwise] of "the human" versus "the animal" [and how that might ultimately impact how we formulate, say, human and other types of rights in the future], and finally, thinking again about that quotation from Maslow--that "if the human being is a choosing, deciding, seeking animal, then the question of making choices and decisions must inevitably be involved in any effort to define the human species. . . . The questions then come up: Who is the good chooser? . . . . And beyond that [we have the task] of raising the old axiological questions 'What is good? What is desirable? What should be desired?'"--I finally went to see the Al Gore documentary yesterday, "An Inconvenient Truth," and much like JJC's thoughts regarding extracurricular activities at the New Chaucer Society meeting in NYC went immediately to the fanciful image of a "Cruise of Death," with untenured faculty using tenured, more eminent scholars as flotation devices, I likewise began thinking about all of our recent dialogues in the context of the scientific *fact* that, within 50 years, most of Manhattan and San Francisco and Shanghai, as well as many other sites throughout the world, may very well be underwater, with a new ice age not very far behind.
Of course, I've thought about global warming *a lot* over the past ten or so years, and I've always found certain "doomsday" scenarios [whether involving the break-up of ice shelves in Anarctica or a "dirty" nuclear device exploding in NYC] useful for thinking through the question of the ultimate relevance of doing historical, aesthetic, and more generally philosophical research and writing. The possible impact of global warming is not a fanciful Nostradamus-type prediction, but predicated on "real science," and probably should not be dismissed too lightly. In fact, consider "The Future of Humanity Institute" recently established at Oxford University with millions of dollars already at its disposal and the British Parliament *already* calling upon its Director, philosophy prof. Nick Bostrum, to advise it on certain future-oriented issues [such as "human enhancement technologies"]. Nick Bostrum isn't interested in figuring out ways to extend the life of humans, as they exist now, or even the planet; his assumption is that the existence of *us* and the earth itself is already very near its end, and that is why he has developed his "transhumanism" movement [which, by god, Oxford is funding!], which believes, for one thing, that
"Just as we use rational means to improve the human condition and the external world, we can also use such means to improve ourselves, the human organism. In doing so, we are not limited to traditional humanistic methods, such as education and cultural development. We can also use technological means that will eventually enable us to move beyond what some would think of as 'human'."
Transhumanism envisions future societies, likely situated somewhere else other than earth, in which "regular" humans live alongside "posthumans":
"Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or they could be enhanced uploads, or they could be the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound augmentations to a biological human. The latter alternative would probably require either the redesign of the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or its radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, anti-aging therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable computers, and cognitive techniques."
One of the hallmarks of transhumanism is "singularity" [celebrating and further augmenting the absolute and untrammeled freedom of unique individuals] and also "extended life" [i.e. gee, wouldn't it be great if we could live forever?--Nick B. obviously thinks so, and look at his photo on his website--he's such a young lad, and if only he could remain so!].
It goes without saying that Nick B. et al. spend a lot of time calculating all sorts of catastrophic "risk" scenarios for us and our planet, and regularly publish their projections on very eminent science journals such as "Nature" and "Science." Apparently, traditional humanistic knowledges, as far as they are concerned, are not necessary to forumlating the transhuman future, where they will have uploaded themselves after we have perished in the next ice age.
So the question, I think is, do we just laugh at Nick B. and his ilk [and shake our heads at Oxford and even the British government for taking them so seriously], and fume a little at the "third culture" scientists over at Edge who have supposedly appropriated our humanistic discourses because they feel they are better suited than we are to address the "big" philosophical questions, and do we also kind of cluck sadly yet shrug our shoulder's at Al Gore's doomsday projections regarding global warming, OR, do we ask ourslves, *especially* in light of recent conversations on this blog: if, in about 50 or so years, this planet entered a phase of global catastrophe, with 50 or so million persons displaced by rising ocean tides, but probably enough time to live out our own lives before the real "real end," what kind of humanistic work do we want to do? What would be best? What would be most virtuous? Most sane? Most useful? Why is it uncool not to take these questions more seriously? What if you can't preserve the future--how might you preserve the past, anyway? Food for thought.
Subject and text, state and civilization, are profoundly ambiguous icons of problematic interdependences. This book does not sing their praises: it views them with suspicion, convinced of the profound continuities between the medieval period and modernity, between violence and state-form ... Those suspicious icons – subject, ideology, text, state, and civilization – have effectivities; they exist. They require examination as objects of historico-theoretical research, an examination impelled by the multiple passions of beauty, justice, and knowledge, as art of an effort to deal with a world increasingly seductive and terrifying (The Subject Medieval/Modern 6)
If voice means subjectivity, François Villon's great gift, his greatest bequest, is the voiced being of subjectivity to those who lacked it. In the whorehouse of life, there is room for that gift, the self-extension of the subject" (340)
Our discomfiture, our guilt and anxiety, our helplessness at the machinations of systems and officials of power, devolve from structures of subjective consciousness rooted in the continuing medieval construction of modernity. Within this paradoxicality, which really turns into a sense of impending tragedy, the attentive reader repeatedly stumbles across the thirst, among multiple and oppressive determinations of subjectivity, the parched, unending thirst, in the records of the past, for human peace and freedom. (364)
