tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post115587657070184957..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Anxiety of the Influence of Medieval Identity MachinesCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156252875350293942006-08-22T09:21:00.000-04:002006-08-22T09:21:00.000-04:00But whatever you do, do NOT read his book, as it i...<I>But whatever you do, do NOT read his book, as it is absolutely DREADFUL [!] from a narrative perspective.</I><BR/><BR/>But it might be very useful from a symptomatic perspective.<BR/><BR/>--<BR/><BR/><I>Many medievalists continue to approach romance as a disembodied aesthetic game</I><BR/><BR/>I wouldn't have thought that still possible, except that, at the last Kzoo, because everyone had dropped out of my session but me, I session-hopped my own session. After doing my Chretien paper, I ran upstairs to a full-on Chretien session, and although I can't remember the 2 papers I saw, one of them did an allegorical analysis of Erec's cloak as a figure of rhetoric: or something equally dull. That presentor was from a Baptist University in the South, so go figure.<BR/><BR/>--<BR/><BR/><I>I think you'd be hard pressed to find a medieval author more perversely intent on frustrating easy readings of what his narratives mean.</I><BR/><BR/>Except, of course, Anonymous.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156207800269994352006-08-21T20:50:00.000-04:002006-08-21T20:50:00.000-04:00Agreed; hence my problems with Haidu's book (q.v.)...Agreed; hence my problems with Haidu's book (q.v.). Romance is a genre with its own rules and utility; Chretien participates in by furthering some of those aims some of the time, while subverting and even defeating them at others. Plus, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a medieval author more perversely intent on frustrating easy readings of what his narratives mean.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156199183977989712006-08-21T18:26:00.000-04:002006-08-21T18:26:00.000-04:00I love Kaueper's book and recommend it to my medie...I love Kaueper's book and recommend it to my medieval lit. students EVERY chance I get. I think we have to be some what careful when we talk about the ways in which literary projects participated in certain, let's say, social formations, by which I mean, I try not to look at it as a "top down"-only phenomena, with Chretien sitting down and saying, "today I am going to write a story that glorifies knighthood and drives young men like lemmings over a tall cliff to their deaths." In other words, I don't think of artists as "agents" of the State, let's say. At the same time, I think many motives--whether belonging to artists or readers--are often unconscious--and art plays a huge role, I think, both in the past but also today--in shaping how we think/feel/enact our identities, and whether wittingly or unwittingly, romance literature of the Middle Ages, especially, seems to have provided the imaginative playing field upon which men [but also women] could be persuaded to believe in things that are never entirely "real": i.e., romantic love, erotic/bodily perfection, honor, etc.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156117616613223812006-08-20T19:46:00.000-04:002006-08-20T19:46:00.000-04:00Just want to point out one more thing about Eileen...Just want to point out one more thing about Eileen's essay that deserves note: its treatment of romance as catalyst to the formation of a certain kind of socially useful subject. Many medievalists continue to approach romance as a disembodied aesthetic game, even after the work of Joachim Bumke and Richard W. Kaueper (the latter was my undergrad history prof., so he was trying out the material that became his awesome <EM>Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe</EM> when I was but a babe who sucked it in as received truth. He and Tom Hahn co-tuaght an undergraduate course on chivalry that started the thinking that became the Chevalerie chapter of MIMs).<BR/><BR/>I'm not saying Chretien wasn't obsessed with aesthetics (he was so damn playful that he couldn't resist turning the ordinary into multivalent shiny objects), but he was also part of a burgeoning movement to beautify the young warrior's knightly body. Cf. those homoerotic WWI poets who had so much in common with <A HREF="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2006/08/frederick-rolfe-baron-corvo-and.html" REL="nofollow">Baron Corvo</A>.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156112778794489992006-08-20T18:26:00.000-04:002006-08-20T18:26:00.000-04:00Karl--now that you have elaborated further on your...Karl--<BR/><BR/>now that you have elaborated further on your point, I can see some of the sense of it, especially in relation to Rozelle's comments about not wanting to be in the infantry and you idea of the "return of the repressed," and SURE, just because Rozelle claims that he trained to make the prosthesis feel natural doesn't make it so, although I do feel it is important to try and understand his situation as much as is possible through his own take on it. But whatever you do, do NOT read his book, as it is absolutely DREADFUL [!] from a narrative perspective. Of course, if we tried to talk to Rozelle about Deleuze and those "inhuman circuits," I'm not sure how he would respond, although he *was* an English major in college.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156086874746508232006-08-20T11:14:00.000-04:002006-08-20T11:14:00.000-04:00Emile: W. R. sounds difficult, but I'll track it d...Emile: W. R. sounds difficult, but I'll track it down someday. I'm dubious about any film that claims to capture an era--<I>Blowup</I> and <I>Performance,</I> yuch, come to mind from that era--but maybe the imdb review is concentrating on the wrong things: the claim likely isn't the film's, anyway.<BR/><BR/>Favorite movie? A favorite is David Lean's <I>Summertime</I> (<I>Summer Madness</I> in the UK), if only for this bit: <BR/><BR/>Rossano Brazzi*: "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No,' you say, 'I want beefsteak.' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli." <BR/>Katharine Hepburn (petulantly, like a child): "I'm not hungry."<BR/>--<BR/>*Famous in my mind because of the <I>South Pacific,</I> where he says "I killed a man." Just watch it. You'll understand: it ranks above Orson Welles' "I killed a man" in <I>Lady from Shanghai,</I> but only just.<BR/>===<BR/><BR/>JJC: Perceforest sounds like it might just bump William of Palerne aside. Sounds fantastic.<BR/><BR/>==<BR/><BR/>EJ:<BR/><BR/>What you're saying definitely makes sense. Here's why I'm dubious, a little: the narrative of overcoming one's prosthesis is the standard narrative for such stories, likely because it <I>is</I> difficult to make such things work, but also likely because it would be too disturbing for it to be otherwise. So I want to resist that narrative. My dubiousness also comes, I'm afraid, simply from the <I>fun</I> I had with my reading: sheer cussed contrarianism.<BR/><BR/>Now, what can I offer in return? Not sure, except wondering what you would turn up if you pushed around a bit in either cyborg theory, transhumanism (ugh, avoiding the libertarian stuff if at all possible), science fiction more generally but especially what I imagine is the large body of critical material that's coalesced around <I>Robocop.</I><BR/><BR/>What drove me to my reading--apart from the sheer cussedness--was, first, the discussion of (in)human circuits in JJC's MIMs, and second, that line about "poor bastards" who don't get the participation/fulfillment with/in machines of the armored cavalry. I might be over-reading, but that alone drove me to want to see an analogy, some kind of return of the repressed, between Rozelle's initial desire to be body + 1 that became, post-maiming, body - 1, and post prosthesis, a body gradually pushed out in favor of machine.<BR/><BR/>This is all I can do with it now, though: and there's, of course, a bit of a danger is using Rozelle, who's after all a living person, to make critical hay.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156025234655134892006-08-19T18:07:00.000-04:002006-08-19T18:07:00.000-04:00Disability studies, you say, Emile B.? Don't tar m...Disability studies, you say, Emile B.? Don't tar me with that feather! Disability, schmisability. Okay, now I have to go locate "Tetsuo."Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1156021195669838262006-08-19T16:59:00.000-04:002006-08-19T16:59:00.000-04:00Dammit, and we're back to disability studies, aren...Dammit, and we're back to disability studies, aren't we? <BR/><BR/><I>Tetsuo: The Ironman</I> is perhaps my favorite film of all time (a tie with <I>WR: Mysteries of the Organism</I>). I have memorized it shot by shot.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155963833150708212006-08-19T01:03:00.000-04:002006-08-19T01:03:00.000-04:00Karl--your comments, as always, are really appreci...Karl--your comments, as always, are really appreciated, especially since medieval romance literature is not a specialty of mine [as is Old English poetry]. I wonder, though, about your thought that, for Capt. Rozelle, "[t]he artificial limb is not an inauthentic replacement of what used to be fully present but [is] rather a fuller presentation of the fantasy of armored, technological self-presence of the knight Rozelle (or Yvain) imagines himself [to be]." On one hand, I agree with you, but on another, if you read Rozelle's account of how difficult it was to adapt to and utilize [somewhat fluidly] his prosthesis, it is hard to see Rozelle thinking of his new limb [or limb extension] as a more "present" armored [as you say] component of his fantasy [mythological] warrior-self. If anything, the prosthesis was a kind of obstacle for him that he had to almost "will" himself into believing was a "natural" part of himself [which is different than imagining his prosthesis as a refined machinic element of his warrior/chevalier persona]. The key to adapting to and "using" his prostheis, according to Rozelle anyway, was to train to such an obsessive extent, that he almost forgot it was artificial, and not a part of his "original" body. In other words, the real point of re-training himself [for Rozelle,in his own words], was to return to a body that was unmaimed and supposedly whole again--to be, not a warrior-machine, but a warrior-human--to not let, in other words, the absence [maiming/loss] of a particular body part stand in his way of enacting his soldier/warrior/Army captain/combat leader self. It's not that the machinic element enhances his abilities as a solider, but that it must be "overcome" [by, suuposedly, force of mind/will/exertion] in order to return to a state where he is so in control of his physical form--wetware or hardware--that he can "transcend" it. Does this make sense?Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155930311875313472006-08-18T15:45:00.000-04:002006-08-18T15:45:00.000-04:00Speaking of Fish Knights: let me put in an early p...Speaking of Fish Knights: let me put in an early plug for Sylvia Huot's <A HREF="http://www.boydell.co.uk/43841045.HTM" REL="nofollow">Postcolonial Fictions in the 'Roman de Perceforest': Cultural Identities and Hybridities</A>. The book does many amazing things with this completely insane text of transformations and experiment, but one of my favorite sections involves the Fish Knights on whose island a stranded "real" knight is forced into daily combat just to survive. These fish are chevaliers as well as possible good food (they really are fish, but they joust and speak). <BR/><BR/>The book comes out next year in the new <A HREF="http://www.boydell.co.uk/GALCA.HTM" REL="nofollow">Gallica</A> imprint of Boydell and Brewer. I predict it'll soon make Perceforest everyone's favorite romance .... if they can find and read it (it's in French and not fully published yet).Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155929770264858562006-08-18T15:36:00.000-04:002006-08-18T15:36:00.000-04:00Nice work EJ. Now, I'm in the midst, right now, of...Nice work EJ. Now, I'm in the midst, right now, of revising the received wisdom about Yvain's madness (not to end discussion, but to provide space for a new beginning for a critical conversation that's been running in place at least since Le Goff's Levi-Strauss in Broceliande): but I don't want to give the game away on that just yet.<BR/><BR/>If you want to take your argument a bit further, you might exploit this:<BR/><BR/><I>he chose to be a “cavalryman” in an armored division, in order to never be one of the “poor bastards” who make up the infantry. In other words, Rozelle sees himself as having chosen the more “elite” military path, one with definite associations with the images and symbolism of the medieval chevalier. </I><BR/><BR/>The elite status of this military profession derives precisely from its inhuman interpenetration of armored cavalry with warrior; in other words, Rozelle came at the profession already prepared for, already desiring a prosthesis, a supplement to promise completion. The artificial limb is not an inauthentic replacement of what used to be fully present but rather a fuller presentation of the fantasy of armored, technological self-presence of the knight Rozelle (or Yvain) imagines himself. I think of what might be the oddest example of medieval romance that I know, from <I>The Knight of the Parrot (Le Chevalier du Papegau)</I> Trans. Thomas E. Vesce. Garland Library of Medieval Literature. Garland: New York, 1986, where Arthur meets up with an enormous knight riding on an enormous horse. Arthur, in examining the corpse after the fight, discovers that "the knight, destrier, hauberk, helm, shield, sword, and lance were all one and the same thing" (17). The next day, they skin this knight, and the author invokes mappamundi for witness to these sorts of things being able to exist, citing something called the "Fish Knight," which is also a knight all of one piece, a perfect example of what Anne Berthelet posits in “Merlin, ou l’homme sauvage chez les chevaliers” (in CUER MA Université de Provence Le Nu et la Vêtu au Moyen Age (XIIe – XIII siècles) Senefiance No. 47 (2001)): armor sort of substitutes for clothing, but it also makes knights "comme des sortes de homards indissociables de leur carapace" (like lobsters, inseparable [or 'conjoined with'] their carapace). And so we've returned to the assemblage through which identity must be lived and continually deferred at once, a chivalric version of <A HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096251/" REL="nofollow"><I>Tetsuo.</I></A>Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1155906874350318062006-08-18T09:14:00.000-04:002006-08-18T09:14:00.000-04:00Thanks, Eileen, for posting that powerful essay. T...Thanks, Eileen, for posting that powerful essay. Those words addressed to Henry really do resonate, don't they?<BR/><BR/>I'm happy, too, to find that MIMs was a catalyst. Your posts on this blog and your publishing ventures elsewhere have served similarly for me, and I'm indebted to you for that.<BR/><BR/>I do feel that, of all my own publishing projects, MIMs has been the unloved child. That's OK -- it is a weird book -- and it was probably the most ambitious thing I'll ever compose. Like everything I do, it was also a labor of love, and I had a great time putting it together over the years. Medieval studies should always be that exuberant.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com