Last Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate tried to burnish her national security credentials by claiming that her bachelor’s degree prepared her to fight Isis. She said: “Finally my degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy, because what Isis wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally”.I write about the mis-appellation of "medieval" frequently, as the imposition of chronological alterity seems to be a problem leading to all kinds of confusion, denial of responsibility, and sometimes wrong action.
I’d like to state unequivocally that my years of training to become a professor of medieval history in no way make me fit to be appointed commander-in-chief of the US military. While the Middle Ages do in fact shape contemporary events all the time, Fiorina unfortunately almost always gets the lessons of history wrong.
When we use the word “medieval” to characterize something we don’t like, be it Isis, the Ferguson Police department or Russia’s driver’s license regulations, we are trying to impose chronological distance between ourselves and things we find unpleasant. Thinking of these distasteful or evil aspects of the modern world as belonging to the past makes it harder, not easier, to understand their root causes and fight them.
Some examples from the blog.
- Anti-vaxxers aren't medieval. (Modern anti-science)
- The Ferguson PD isn't medieval. (Modern white supremacy)
- We're in an age of "feudal" inequality (No, we're not)
- Stephanie Miller calls the GOP "war on women" medieval. (Again, modern sexism is different than medieval sexism. Both bad, though).
- The Jews and the Crusades and ISIS as medieval.
