Over at In the Middle, Eileen Joy has a very moving post up now, building off of a recent viewing of the Ken Loach film, "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." I share her concern, as I've noted elsewhere, that no history (memory?) should be considered" sacred. It is precisely our job, as academics, medievalists, and public intellectuals, to problematize those "sacred" narratives, especially when they tend towards the troubling, violent, and/or exclusionary.
Another thing that struck me, being a pseudo-Carolingianist (or Car-oh-LING-ee-ahn-ist, for those of the more UK persuasion), was her note about Michael Moore's forthcoming book on Frankish bishops. Man, does that sound intersesting. I don't know, however, how true it is that popular scholarly opinion holds that "force" is the most decisive factor in how things turn out. It seems to me like it could be a bit of a straw man argument. That being said, I'm getting this third-hand, have not seen anything Prof. Moore has written, and I'm perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise. He is, however, certainly right that few write "big" histories anymore. But that too might be changing, I think. Watch out for Brett Whalen's monograph from Harvard UP, in a year or so. I might even have something to say about something (eventually).
4 comments:
Matthew: thanks for your comments regarding my post. Michael Moore is a brilliant scholar, by the way, who I think you would like a lot because he also writes quite a bit on modern subjects and their relation to the Middle Ages [and vice versa]. He has a chapter in a book that just came out [on which I was the lead editor], "Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages," titled "Wolves, Outlaws, and Enemy Combatants," where he looks at US policies regarding the imprisonment and treatment of "enemy combatants" alongside medieval practices of banishment and outlawry. It's a gorgeous essay. He also contributed an essay to a special issue I edited of the Journal of Narrative Theory ["Premodern to Modern Humanisms: The BABEL Project"; vol. 37.2], titled "A Medieval Historian's Notes for a Miloszan Humanism" [with "miloszan" referring to the the poet Czeslaw Milosz].
Michael is on retreat right now but I suspect when he returns [early this coming week], he will chime in to the post and I will also direct him to your weblog here.
Cheers, Eileen
Thanks, Eileen. I'll certainly look up those articles you mentioned and I look forward to more of his stuff (and, of course, yours). Sounds fascinating...
I think big histories are coming back. Framing the Early Middle Ages, anyone?
I think that's true, Steve. And honestly, that can only be a good thing. It's about time we looked again at some of the big pictures.
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