by Medievalists of Color [cross-posted from the Medievalists of Color website]
Medieval studies is increasingly
acknowledging realities of race and racism in the profession—reflected in
everything from the call to recognize that racism is inherent in the very use of the term
“Anglo-Saxon”; to Richard Spencer and the
so-called alt-right’s cooptation of Western European medieval studies to
buttress their white supremacist ideology; to concerns about the exploitation of Hawaiian culture in the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists’ conference
currently underway in Honolulu. These issues have arisen most visibly since the
International Medieval Congress at Leeds in July 2017 with individual and
collective calls for structural change in the profession and its culture.
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| Caspar of the Three Kings, Germany, 15th c., The Cloisters Collection, 1952 |
Medievalists of Color is a fellowship of scholars who study the early, high, and late Middle Ages across the disciplines and who identify as persons of color from a variety of national and cultural backgrounds. We, the Medievalists of Color, find it necessary to offer a collective response that advocates for a more inclusive, productive, and world-improving medieval studies.
If the recent controversies in
medieval studies have seemed shocking, that shock derives simply from the truth
of how uneven and disparate our realities are within the field. A tasteless joke about skin color that inaugurated the 2017 Leeds keynote
plenary on “Otherness” illustrated this disparity all too well. Those who
object to the attention given to a single joke about race fail to understand
that for medievalists of color, this joke is not an isolated event. It is a
symptom of a culture, both in medieval studies and in the wider world, in which
we regularly hear jokes about our appearances, accents, names, and experiences.
Indeed, such jokes frequently
escalate into mockery, threats, and even
physical violence. Opening the plenary session on the problematic thematic
strand “Otherness,” the joke established an unwelcoming environment from the
outset. Likewise, the open acceptance of such racist jokes has proliferated in
various social media, listservs, and other spaces in which medievalists
congregate. This then is not merely a sensationalized incident, but rather a
normalized speech act that indicates a pervasive and deeply problematic
professional and social climate.
Creating and maintaining a climate
that is welcoming to all requires intention and deliberation. Drawing from
extensive administrative experience in higher education in the UK and Australia
as well as several traditions of philosophical inquiry, Sara Ahmed attests to
how professional environments and intellectual cultures engage in a “politics
of stranger making” that reveals “how some and not others become strangers” and
“how some bodies become understood as the rightful inhabitants of certain spaces”
(On Being Included, 2012). The
moderator’s joke—that a suntan would make him appear as an “other”—would have
been inappropriate in any professional setting, but in the particular context
of an introduction to the opening keynotes at one of the major medievalist
conferences in the world, this act of “stranger making” reveals an underlying
assumption that the physical presence of nonwhite medievalists—and our
collective years of expertise in the field on topics of “otherness”—is
ignorable and extraneous to primary conversations in the field.
We emphasize that our letter is not
just about any one person’s alienating comments, nor even about the conception
of one problematic thread. What is at stake here is the very possibility that
such a statement, like countless similar statements every day, could be made
and condoned while its real harm to nonwhite medievalists was left
unacknowledged and unchecked. Though such statements are sometimes made without
malice or intent to harm, the harm they cause is nonetheless real—from
stigmatizing individuals to foreclosing lines of scholarly inquiry. When our
scholarly spaces are not welcoming to all who would practice in the field, the
field loses the capacity for intellectual risk and no longer serves its primary
objective: to seek a comprehensive understanding of the past in order to
analyze the present and help shape the future.
The current controversy offers an
opportunity for medievalists who identify as white to understand the
perspectives and experiences of medievalists and other people of color. On blog
posts and comments, on listservs and on Facebook, the reactions of many of our
fellow scholars have been deeply disturbing, with remarks that range from
dismissing such jokes as “harmless social lubricant” to accusing those who
legitimately express dismay at such jokes as “policing,” “silencing,” or
“blacklisting” conference speakers to violent and profanity-laden abuse
directed at medievalists of color. Some comments and conversations suggest that
our white medievalist colleagues experience dismay at assumptions about them
based on their race: their intentions seem not to matter; they are objects of
suspicion; their positions are assumed to be wrong. We ask white medievalists
feeling this way to recognize that this is what is it is like to be a person of
color every day, in the world and all too often in the profession. We make this
point not to perpetuate a loop of mutual resentment but rather to offer an
inroad to understanding our perspective. This is a watershed moment that, if
used productively, will make medieval studies home to an intellectual
environment that is sustainable and innovative, promotes risk-taking, and
leverages an ever greater number of experiences and scholarly lenses in order
to build the most comprehensive body of knowledge about the Middle Ages
possible.
We, the Medievalists of Color, need
our colleagues to understand the systemic racism of which we speak and the role
it has continued to play in our field’s constitution and practices; to educate
themselves in the critical discourses that address systemic racism both
explicit and implicit; and in doing so to move past preoccupations with individual
intentions. Chafing at the accusation of racism is illogical: systemic racism
dictates that we are all entangled in its articulations and practices. The most
damaging consequence of systemic racism is not that one might stand accused of
racism; it is the harm—historically manifested on a continuum from rhetorical
to psychological to physical violence—done to persons of color. Were more
constituents of medieval studies to educate themselves in the critical theory
of race, we could all actively address these harmful impacts in ways hitherto
not possible in the field of medieval studies.
Indeed, the intellectual and
ethical protocols of our discipline require us to immerse ourselves in relevant
scholarly discourses. No medievalist working on Western Europe would dare
discuss the term “nation” without consulting Patrick Geary’s Before France and Germany. No
medievalist working on medieval memory would ignore the work of Mary Carruthers
in the Book of Memory. We affirm that
the same ethic of scholarly rigor applies to critical race studies and to the
discussion of race, ethnicity, nationhood, and “otherness” because these topics
are crucial to both the content and the professional conduct of medieval
studies. Even, and especially, if we find that the scholarly paradigms of
critical race and ethnic studies, postcolonialism, and decolonization do not
speak fully to the historical moments we study, we are obligated to enter, and
even expand, the conversations they engender. If we wish medieval studies to
engage meaningfully in the modern world of which it is a product, and in which
it is an agent, then medievalists must also rigorously engage with the fields
that examine the ideologies and distributions of power that define the modern
world. When medievalists endeavor to understand systemic racism, medieval
studies becomes a stronger field whose constituents together have far greater
resources for analyzing the past and present while shaping the future.
We aim our attention toward the
survival and future of the study of the Middle Ages, which we must continuously
work to separate from its links to nationalist and white supremacist impulses.
At a time when such impulses have increased the rates of violence—rhetorical,
psychological, and physical—in the US, UK, Europe, and elsewhere, we must
ensure that the conditions for violence are not fostered within medieval
studies. Indeed, medieval studies must form a bulwark against such conditions.
We wish to foster a medieval studies whose members respond to one another, even
in disagreement, with the responsibility to be ethical, compassionate, and well
informed about the systems in which we operate in order that medieval studies
will be a space for free intellectual inquiry—for all medievalists. Race has
always mattered to medieval studies, and scholars of color play key roles in
the field’s past, present, and future.
We intervene, putting ourselves at
professional risk and in the path of potential aggression and hostility,
because of the meaning this field holds for us, the stakes we have in it, and
our commitment to contributing productively to its continued viability. We
intervene for the sake of the innovative space medieval studies has at times
been, and can increasingly be. We intervene to protect the powerful lessons
that the Middle Ages holds for the modern world, and because we believe that
deep and considered knowledge of the Middle Ages, with rigorous scholarly
practices, can help realize a future in which the world is a better place—for
medievalists and non-medievalists alike.
FURTHER
INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
For additional professional
responses to the “Otherness” thread at the International Medieval Congress, see
the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the open letter and petition by the President-Elect of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA), and two letters from the President of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS).
For resources pertaining to the intellectual and professional significance of race in medieval studies, see this bibliography of scholarship on race and medieval studies, the special issue of the journal postmedieval on “Making Race Matter in the Middle Ages,” the plenary session on “The Color of Membership” held at the SAA Meeting in April 2017, the workshop on Whiteness in Medieval Studies (held at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, May 2017), as well as its participants’ reflections and an organizer’s reflection.
For resources pertaining to the intellectual and professional significance of race in medieval studies, see this bibliography of scholarship on race and medieval studies, the special issue of the journal postmedieval on “Making Race Matter in the Middle Ages,” the plenary session on “The Color of Membership” held at the SAA Meeting in April 2017, the workshop on Whiteness in Medieval Studies (held at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, May 2017), as well as its participants’ reflections and an organizer’s reflection.
