Medieval Studies and Bogus Identity Politics
Re: " Symbols of Past Used by Right Upset Scholars"/"Medieval
Scholars Joust With White Nationalists. And One Another" ( New York Times, May 5th, 2019).
The very term medieval (Latin for
"middle-aged") is a construct, referring to Europe between the
collapse of the Roman Empire around AD450 and the "Renaissance" one
thousand years later. This thousand-year period is Eurocentric by definition, and that cannot be altered. No
similar collapse occurred elsewhere, nor did any similar Renaissance. The
Europe of this period was overwhelmingly white, Christian, and patriarchal, and
any attempt to redefine that is simply an attempt to remake the medieval period
in a 21st-century American image. This may be culturally commendable, but it is
unscholarly.
The Kalamazoo Congress has tried to
appease cultural relativists by organizing sessions on
medievalism in the modern world, as it did in 2018 with a session including the
paper "Fuck this Shit: How Can You Not Say Something?"
Traditional
medieval scholarship may not be trendy or controversial, but it is worthy,
scholarly, and content-driven. The social-media battle you describe in your
article, driven by trollish demagogues specializing in identity politics, does
not represent it.
Labels: conservatism, dorothy kim, kalamazoo, liberalism, Medieval, new york times, rachel fulton brown
posted by sacsanua @ 6:31 PM
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