Liberation of Medieval Fashion

Great essay on appropriating medieval fashion as feminist.

In doing so they began a feminist tradition that continues today. We saw this most recently at the Met Gala where stars donned fashion inspired by the Roman Catholic Church’s long heyday from the year 500 to 1550, including Rihanna’s glittering papal mitre and cloak. It was hard to miss the pointed irreverence of Rihanna assuming (and sexing up) the supreme mantle of an institution in which women can’t hold office. Coming at a time when campaigns against sexual harassment are sweeping the entertainment industry, the theme was surprisingly pertinent.

Medieval Studies, Medievalism, and Racism - A master list of posts.

Kudos to "Surrey Medieval" for pulling this together. Not comprehensive, they make clear, but a great collection.

Racism in Historical European Martial Arts

There's a vibrant sub-culture of people who practice "Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)." This is not the Society of Creative Anachronism, though surely there's plenty of cross-over in North America, but people learning how to use European weapons to fight.

As I've been writing about, any sub-culture that engages the imagined European medieval past can easily become a locus for anxieties about whiteness and identity.

I've been made aware of a Tumblr on "Racism" in the HEMA community. This spring, I hope to talk to Ken Mondschein, who is researching this phenomenon, when we're both at a conference. For now, you can browse the tumblr.

Stop Saying Crusade (Psst: He's talking to us medievalists too)

Medieval history professor Matthew Gabriele, of Virginia Tech, has published a powerful new article about the word "crusade" in both its modern and medieval contexts. He's arguing not just that modern people mis-use Crusade, which they do (he digs into the famous W. Bush quote about a 'Crusade against Evil'), but that medievalists need to stop doing it as well. Gabriele is an expert on nostalgia, in particular, in medieval historical and apocalyptic writing (and of course apocalypse is just history that hasn't happened yet) and has often written about the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined past inform contemporary political discourse. Here, though, he breaks new ground (to me) by looking at the religious discourse surrounding the Virginia Tech killer's writing.

What's interesting about Gabriele's argument here is the way he focuses on the uselessness of "Crusade" in describing any actual medieval phenomenon, not just the more usual critique (which I've often made) about moderns appropriating the word in all kinds of ways. At the end, he concludes:

Is ‘crusade’ useful to us, the namers? I’m beginning to think that it isn’t. It has become a word that carries its baggage invisibly, a multivalent symbol that obscures rather than clarifies, that stands as a cipher for (almost) everything except an actual medieval phenomenon. Perhaps it is time to stop using ‘crusade' altogether — or, better, ‘archive’ the word. Remember its origins, what it has come to mean, and only deploy it sparingly. Scholars can then focus on the complex, changing relationship between religion and violence across the centuries, free from the baggage the word carries with it, free from the circular logic of arguing the ‘real’ meaning of a symbol.

You can read the whole article here. I'm ready for him to blow up Crusade Studies, much the way as there is no society for Feudalism studies. Instead, medievalists talk about Lordship, or rule, or power, or any number of other things that don't presume a coherent construct where there was none. Is it time to just talk about sanctified warfare and let the Crusades go?

I doubt that's going to happen, but appreciate Gabriele's inquiry.

Medievalism Watch - Trump and ISIS

Trump likes to compare ISIS to medieval times. Here's a transcript of the latest debate, and some video.

COOPER: You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
TRUMP: No, I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was — this was locker room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk.
You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have — and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.
And they look and they see. Can you imagine the people that are, frankly, doing so well against us with ISIS? And they look at our country and they see what’s going on.
Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS."

So beyond Trump avoiding responsibility for his pro-sexual-assault comment by talking ISIS, his "this is like medieval times" comment is a pretty frequent remark for him. Here's another set of video.

 

Trump isn't alone. Obama has talked about ISIS as medieval, as has Fiorina. So have many journalists. Read John Terry on the ISIS issues.

But there's a broader pattern. As I've said many times, the use of "medieval" to impose chronological alterity between us and something we don't like, is a move intended to deny responsibility for that thing, to deny how neatly it fits in modernity.

And it always fits in modernity very neatly.