tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post712406662549242439..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Wolf Child of Hesse: State of the ResearchCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-84332377087440309152010-11-09T10:07:26.914-05:002010-11-09T10:07:26.914-05:00If in a few days you are able to solve it, I will ...If in a few days you are able to solve it, I will be impressed, amazed, and grateful. I've been puzzling over it for months. Sara Ahmed and I even puzzled over it together at dinner last Friday and we are both stuck there!<br /><br />I would love to hear your further thoughts, as they come...Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63473080267104491642010-11-09T09:57:43.206-05:002010-11-09T09:57:43.206-05:00I'm not, by the way, accusing Harman of believ...I'm not, by the way, accusing Harman of believing that this independent 'stuff' is 'potential'; I'm not entirely sure what he does believe. Give me a couple days.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-23046831443890118962010-11-09T09:54:07.915-05:002010-11-09T09:54:07.915-05:00Jeffrey: funny thing is that when I woke up this m...Jeffrey: funny thing is that when I woke up this morning, I'd become more Latourian. I'm on page 113 of the Harman book, not quite yet at his critique of Latour (there's, as you probably know, an 80-page chapter on Object-Oriented Philosophy), and I just can't conceive of this...stuff...that would exist or be held in reserve independent of relations. I have to think that any so-called potential is just a new combination, a combination that's made possible by earlier combinations and so on in a network that's, in practical (but not actual) terms, infinitely regressive. I have to say practical rather than actual precisely b/c that 'infinite' (see Levinas) is 'a kind of mysticism, or theology'.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68196067380660844142010-11-09T09:16:32.740-05:002010-11-09T09:16:32.740-05:00Rachel,
thanks for joining in! I wrote on Gowther ...Rachel,<br />thanks for joining in! I wrote on Gowther in this space <a href="http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2008/04/gowthers-interrupted-utopia.html" rel="nofollow">some time ago</a>: I tend to think that the romance's resolution of Gowther into proper chivalric humanity is the easy way out. That is, he could have stayed on the hill with the greyhound, neither snatching his food, nor imagining himself abased by being among the animals. Instead of resting there, he moves forward and does his penance. There, in the court, he engages with animals as if they were bestial. He projects himself imaginatively into an already-known animality and finds in that animality a new relationship to the body. As a creature partly demonic, his problem is that he's not sufficiently or authentically of the body; he doesn't know his own death properly. Through becoming-animal (where the animal = body), he comes out more fully human and no longer demonic. In other words, I don't see that he has a mask on at the end, although I <i>like</i> that your reading tends that way and would be curious to hear more abut it if you have time.<br /><br />The Wolf Child of Hesse, however, does not quite integrate. He remains a spectacle, reshaped as a wonder, a similitude of the human whose experience has inextricably lodged something else in him. To put this in Latourian language (!), he has unlocked the black box of the human by showing how what we call the human requires not some substance but a certain set of relations (for example, a relation to sky rather than to earth/pits, as we see in the posture, a relation to the earth of looking up from it rather than leaping, etc?). He wishes he were elsewhere, back among the wolves. He has passed through something, but he has been reshaped by this; and there may be nothing (which is to say everything) to him but this reshaping. <br /><br />Again, I want to stress the symmetry of the narrative: he's taken, then taken, compelled, then compelled, he lives among (as the valued member of the pack), and he lived among (as a differently valued member of the human pack, still a center of attention). Then the symmetry breaks when we hear of his longing. I think this longing <i>has</i> to be the heart of my reading...Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-2689791827227827102010-11-08T14:14:33.627-05:002010-11-08T14:14:33.627-05:00I can't believe I wrote "in which all the...I can't believe I wrote "in which all their are are actants." Good gods, revoke my PhD immediately.<br /><br />So, Karl, if you travel the road of Harman not Latour (OOO not ANT): what do you think is at stake in reserving from potential communication some portion of all objects and bodies? Sometimes I wonder if that insistence upon mystery isn't a kind of mysticism, or theology by secular means.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-24110003747480147602010-11-08T13:32:33.867-05:002010-11-08T13:32:33.867-05:00Whenever I read In The Middle I always feel too sl...Whenever I read In The Middle I always feel too sleepy or too sick or too something to say anything cogent in reply, but since you asked for comments on Twitter, here's just a brief thought that occurs to me... I wonder if you might approach some of your questions by thinking of <i>Sir Gowther</i>. One of the most interesting things about that romance, from my perspective anyway, is the hero's conscious choice to act like an animal in order to become human. By losing his voice and eating with the dogs, Gowther seeks, yes, a route toward divine forgiveness, but I think also a way to become a man amongst men. Gowther, curiously enough, takes a road less travelled to find a path well travelled. Integration is often the happy ending afforded to wolf/lion/eagle-children, but there is something more interesting going on with Gowther, I think. He makes a choice. Of course, one can say he is not a dog-child, or a dog-man; he is wearing a mask, like his mask of muteness. But of course a mask is in itself as much a source of revelation/disclosure as of enclosure/secrecy.Rachelhttp://twitter.com/kindofpalejewelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-45105948708201824692010-11-08T08:59:22.678-05:002010-11-08T08:59:22.678-05:00Ultimately, I think I'm going to throw my lot ...Ultimately, I think I'm going to throw my lot in with Harman. All his hesitations so far, even before he's started his critique (I'm 83 pages into Prince of Networks) jive with my own resistances to Latour.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-69538326242717239302010-11-08T08:54:56.094-05:002010-11-08T08:54:56.094-05:00Interesting. And you know, there is a good deal at...Interesting. And you know, there is a good deal at stake in going full bore Latour (in which all their are are actants in their hybridity and mingled co-existence) or Harman, in which case there is something that withdraws, something noncommunicative about the actants, including the boy -- some mystery that stays reserved.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63976469058842636082010-11-08T08:51:12.139-05:002010-11-08T08:51:12.139-05:00...and of course if I really want to go full bore ......and of course if I really want to go full bore Latour (or Harman, when I eventually finish reading the book), I need to think in terms of the agency of the trees and the pit and the weather. I'm not sure the tale allows for that though, although the second Wetterau one, with its great woods, and its winter, perhaps does more readily.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-44888460372164646642010-11-08T08:47:37.017-05:002010-11-08T08:47:37.017-05:00Aidan, thanks so much for helping me out with my &...Aidan, thanks so much for helping me out with my "small Latine" (and No Greeke). Very helpful, and no I'm glad to now know about your blog. Could I suggest promoting it on twitter as well?<br /><br />Jeffrey: I honestly remembered that one Woolpit child survived hours after I wrote the post, but I figured I'd tempt you into a correction. Really? Anyway, thanks, yes, and thanks for reminder about Octavian: I just reviewed your MIMs material.<br /><br />"I can see the answers you're moving towards implicit in how you've framed them"<br />Well, thanks. I'm not sure I can see them yet! Honestly. Here goes...<br /><br />Here's what troubles me about the story this morning. We have the wolves on one side, and men on the other, and the boy in the middle, drawn to one pole when he's rather be on the other. Given that I've been reading <a href="http://www.re-press.org/content/view/63/38/" rel="nofollow">Graham Harman's <i>Prince of Networks</i></a>, the tale's polar arrangement annoys: the <i>structuralist LeGoffian temptation</i> has to be overcome. The tale IS about wolves vs. humans, but surely there's more going on.<br /><br />Somehow I want to talk about the boy being present (to be stolen back and forth), resistant (in his desires, in his body), and malleable (able to leap like wolves or eventually walk LIKE humans), the boy, in other words, as an ever shifting actant [who affects the wolves, who honor him, and the humans, who wonder at him, write about him, and more or less inaugurate an entire tradition of wild child writing]. All of this runs counter to the notion of some human or animal identity (of course), but it also runs counter to the notion of there being no there there. There's something, but it's unidentifiable except in what happens to it and through it, except through its actions and its actions upon others; there's something there, but it's there in its relations. <br /><br />Something like this! Probably more than I can do in 10 minutes though.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4656585926479635592010-11-08T08:10:49.233-05:002010-11-08T08:10:49.233-05:00Those are very good questions indeed, Karl, and I ...Those are very good questions indeed, Karl, and I can see the answers you're moving towards implicit in how you've framed them: well done.<br /><br />A small note on the Green Children: don't forget that only the boy does not survive. Whereas he perishes as an "unsubsumed" Other, his older sister is (in William of Newburgh's version) assimilated into happy domesticity -- a housewife in Lynn, no less -- while in Ralph of Coggeshall's version the integration doesn't last, and the girl when grown up and married to a knight turns out to be wanton. Typical of William, the children are at once rather feral AND already bearers of an advanced culture.<br /><br />Another source to think about: the ME romance Octavian (c. 1350). The empress of Rome gives birth to twins, is accused of adultery, and exiled with the newborns to the wilderness. One baby is kidnapped by an ape, the other by a lion. The story is not all that invested in this leonine-nourished boy: he survives on milk from the "lyenas pappe" and finds a tender mother in the beast. His human mom eventually recovers him, and adopts the lion as a kind of co-parent, and they live together in Jerusalem. The ape-abducted boy, meanwhile, is rescued by a knight, then becomes captive to outlaws and then to a middle class family. It's interesting to think about that glide, from ape to knight to pirates to merchant family. <br /><br />Anyway, I've written about the romance a little bit in Medieval Identity Machines.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-86009321448181471192010-11-08T03:27:07.452-05:002010-11-08T03:27:07.452-05:00Taking only the editorial correction:
circumiacent...Taking only the editorial correction:<br />circumiacentes (< circum+iaceo) would be 'lying around'.<br /><br />circumiacientes (< circum+iacio) would be 'casting/throwing/placing around/at the flank of', and it looks like the emender construed it with the dative.<br /><br />So (a bit too literally) something like: <br />'...taking the better part and placing it beside (by/?around/?about) the tree, they would grant/award (it) to him to eat.' <br /><br />'At the flank of' is classically used in military descriptions, but it doesn't seem too far a stretch to use it to mean 'to put at the side of' or 'put by', rather than strewing the prey entirely around the tree.Aidanhttp://scribalculture.org/weblog/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-24557081726711015542010-11-07T18:14:21.843-05:002010-11-07T18:14:21.843-05:00I'm having some difficulty with the Latin. If ...I'm having some difficulty with the Latin. If anyone has a moment, how would you do:<br />"Nam, quamcumque predam lupi pro cibo rapuerant, semper meliorem partem sumentes et arbori circumcucientes [nb: "circumiacientes"] ipsi ad vorandum tribuebant"?<br />I do it as: "For, whatever prey the wolves snatched for food, they would take the better part and divide it up for him to eat while they lay around a tree."<br />It's that image of the wolves lying around the tree that seems odd to me. Also: "circumcucientes" is pretty much a hapax, and the editorial to correction "circumiacientes" is virtually a hapax.<br /><br />It's hard to answer this without seeing ms/mss but is it possible that the word is circumcurrentes [running around/surrounding]??Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.com