Margery Kempe and prayer

(This is part of the preparation I've been doing for discussion on Tuesday....)

We’ve talked about Lacan and the feminine/masculine positions, and we’ve seen that the feminine position is ambiguous toward use of language, never in control of language. 

What, then, do we make of Kempe’s speech, particularly her prayers? Pg. 39-41, “The creature, being in her prayers, having mind of this matter, Christ said unto her spirit….” She repeatedly prays to Christ, who tells her what will happen in the future, who will die or not, etc. Kempe’s prayers seem to have a great deal of power to predict what will happen in the world and to change even the will of God. She prays for a man who is sick, and as a result “he lived many years after in good health and prosperity” (40). She prays for a “wicked woman” who “shall be dead” as Christ tells her, but as a result of her prayers “our Lord granted her mercy for the soul” (40). 

We’ve mentioned how Custance in “The Man of Law’s Tale” prays frequently, but we haven’t really talked about how prayer may differ from normal speech or about why it seems to be so important to these female characters. It might seem that prayer is simply Kempe’s way (and Custance’s way) of gaining masculine authorization for her actions—true, the masculine authority in her case is God himself, but she’s still just another woman under male domination.

However, it seems to me that prayer in Kempe’s case is more complex since her prayers often result in her going head-to-head with some male church authority, and also since her prayers appear to change Christ’s own course of action (in the case of the woman whose soul is damned until Kempe intercedes). In this second way Kempe actually takes up the Biblically masculine role of Christ, becoming a mediator for sinners as he is supposed to be (1 Timothy 2, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus….”). So in what ways does prayer function to authorize Kempe? Or does it authorize her at all?

"Cruel" Acts and Monuments

Well, we seem to have arrived at the difficult, harried middle of the semester--it's own "traumatic kernel," if not of the Real, than at least of calendar! (That's a joke! she hastens to add .  .  .)

I was struck, in reading the Marshall essay alongside the excerpts from Foxe, that this week usefully returns us to some of our preoccupations from early in the semester: viz., the contrast between "love" and "justice," the contradiction of a "universal" religion (Christianity has this ambition) that is nonetheless regularly obsessed with different degrees of "insider"/"outsider" status. The Pagan, the Jew (from the Prioress' Tale), the Saracen (from the Charlemagne Romances), the Virtuous Pagan (from Erkenwald), the heretic (from Foxe, but also related to the Saracen), and the problem (raised in the Man of Law's Tale, and explicitly addressed by Shibanoff) of which kind of outsider might more troubling: near or far, heretic or religious other?  It's increasingly interesting to think about the degree to which medieval and early modern Christian texts worry over the limits to Christian universalism--in terms of our concerns this semester, this is also to say that such preoccupations register doubts about the very universalism to which Christian redemption lays claim. If not the virtuous judge from Erkenwald (left, sorrowfully, for hundreds of years in "hell"), then who? But if that virtuous judge then why not any virtuous person with or without belief?

But, back to Marshall: on p. 102, when she turns to the question of "neighbor-love," Marshall descibes Lacan's understanding of this as an "anti-morality," and quotes Lacan quoting the Marquis de Sade: "To love one's neighbor may be the cruelest of choices."  She continues with the quote (this is Lacan): "my neighbor possesses all the evil Freud speaks about,but it is no different from the evil I retreat from in myself. To love him, to love him as myself is necessarily to move toward some cruelty" (102; quoting Seminar VII).

I'm struck by Lacan's phrase: "to move toward some cruelty." This is a delicate way to put it--it's not, for instance, to "be cruel" or to "enact cruelty"--and, in fact, Marshall is quite clear that the cruelty imagined (and textualized) in Foxe is very different from actual torture.  What does it mean to "move toward" cruelty without inflicting it? Do any of the texts we've read "move toward" some cruelty in a way that seems to involve either 1) "loving" the cruelty of the neighbor? or 2) loving the cruelty of the neighbor as part of the desire for cruelty within myself? It might be more useful in this regard NOT to focus on particular characters so much as to focus on how the TEXT approaches these issues overall.

Sorry this post came so late this morning--I'm indeed in the middle of some traumatic kernel of a schedule!
  

Difference Between vs Difference Within in the Man of Law's Tale

Reading Schibanoff's article on the Man of Law's Tale, I was struck by the issue of "difference between" versus "difference within" in her discussions of religious othering and antifeminism. As we discussed in class yesterday, it seems as though only one type of difference/othering can be addressed at a time. This is most definitely seems to be the case in Schibanoff's interpretation of the Tale. In her discussion of religious and racial othering, she is concerned primarily with establishing the threatening proximity of the Romans and the Saracens, and the radical difference between Cunstance and the population of Saxon Britain. However, when she moves to a discussion of "mannysh" women, all racial and religious difference is cast aside. The Sultaness and Donegild are discussed as equals. Issues of their position as racial/religious others is not addressed, as it is their threatening proximity to the male position that is brought to the fore. In this case, it appears as though race and religious difference are overridden, as these women's proximity to male-ness becomes more threatening than their position as racial/religious others. These women function as part of the same group - one that threatens the male position - rather than as members of two very different othered groups. It is as though racial otherness is made absolute in order for the examination of their gendered difference to be carried out. Is it possible for us to view these two subversive women simultaneously in terms of their othered racial/religious positions and their proximity to male-ness? Or does viewing their racial difference undermine the power of their gender ambiguity?

Siege of Milan: Is neighbor-love ever impossible?

Towards the end of the first part of The Siege of Milan, as the initial Christian attack against the Saracens has been unsuccessful and the Duke of Normandy is dying in Roland's presence, the Duke makes this speech about seeing soldiers going to heaven: "Loo! I see oure vawarde ledde to hevene/With angells songe and mery stevene...." (316-324). He's been talking to Roland for awhile about what he wants Roland to do if he ever gets back to France, but it's not until this moment that a Saracen standing nearby "brayded owte with a bryghte brande/When he harde hym say soo;/And to the Duke a dynt he dryvede" (325-327). It would appear that the Saracen didn't mind Roland paying his last respects to the Duke until the Duke's speech took a distinctly religious turn.

My question in terms of this moment is this: Is religion here a "traumatic kernel"? Zizek talks about how the "traumatic kernel forever persists in my Neighbor--the Neighbor remains an inert, impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes me" (140-141). I think that perhaps we can read this moment in terms of religious hystericization.

Another example of religion as the traumatic kernel in the Neighbor that leads to hystericization would be lines 385-480. Here the Sultan, after hearing Roland give what's basically a credal statement about his faith, laughs and orders a cross to be burned--which becomes an epic failure, of course, with a spectacular explosion that blinds all the Saracens.

So if religion is a traumatic kernel that keeps these two sides from being able to get along, does the text open up any places for redemption to happen? Any places where the two sides can meet? Or could we argue in this case, contrary to R/S/Z, that neighbor-love is impossible, and the text does not want contact between the two sides on any level? Are there times when neighbor-love fails totally and completely?

A Question on Nourishment

I know we're going to talk about these topics in class tomorrow, but this is mostly to post the question in the hope someone else will be able to make more sense out of this than I can.

I keep thinking there should be some sort of connection between Floripas's magical girdle and the two giant babies. The babies die for want of their mother's milk, essentially because Charlemagne is unable to provide them with nourishment. Floripas, on the other hand, is able to provide nourishment to the knights through her magic girdle. I can't help but think that it should be the other way around. Why is Floripas, a Saracen, able to nourish the Christians while a Christian can not nourish the Saracen? Is it simply because Floripas was already a Christian even if she wasn't officially a Christian? Does it lie in the baby giants not accepting the food that Charlemagne offers? If so, would that go back to the question from RSZ about "what if my neighbor wants to die?"? Is this a way of absolving the Christians of the blame for the giant babies' deaths? Charlemagne did not cause their deaths, they caused their own deaths by not accepting the food they were offered?

I'm also wondering if it could have to do with the substance of food itself. Food is an important marker of identity, and what we don't eat can be just as clear a marker as what we do eat. Floripas' girdle feeds magically and helps the knights avoid eating Saracen food. The babies, on the other hand, are offered actual food but reject it and die for want of their mother's milk. Does this symbolically indicate they are offered the chance at a new identity (which they should have already received through baptism) but choose to retain their old one?

I'm curious if anyone has any insight into this.

Any Universalism?

Jeffrey Cohen writes, "But the anxiety which provokes such a dismissal of Kristeva's work is understandable, for any universalism would seem to exclude the determinative power of the local, the contingent, the historical, all of which are central to critical work on ethnicity and race" [emphasis his]. Cohen's project, then is to "[break] the power of universals" via universalizing psychotherapy.

What, then, does he mean when he complains in The Sultan of Babylon of a "dehumanized foe?" It seems to me as if he incorporates language that subverts his goal by tacitly agreeing to what he is attempting to abolish. Because doesn't the category "human" include at least a pinch of universalism, a touch of essence (and any universalism is fatally detrimental to Cohen here)? It seems to me that a project truly intent on deconstructing human universalism would have to abolish the human. It would have to see through to only bodies. So is "humanity" merely a trace, a shorthand for a category that is useful for discussion but really meaningless?

But that is irrational. How can the meaningless be useful for discussion? It seems to me that this deconstruction includes the threads of its own deconstruction. Cohen, by attempting to abolish all universalism has set himself up against the Goliath of language, which penetrates even his own thinking.

Even the smallest mustard seed of the universal, which I am coming to think Kristeva defends pretty well, is utterly devastating him.

Notes from 9/30 Discussion

Hi, I've posted all of the quotations from yesterday's hand-out below for your reference.

Enemy/Friend Distinction: Babylonians/French, Laban/Charlemagne

- “One problem with this [Schmitt’s] account of the political, where we divide the world into friends we identify with and enemies we define ourselves against, is that it is fragile, liable to break down or even to invert and oscillate in the face of complex situations [. . .]A world not anchored by the ‘us’ and ‘them’ oppositions that flourished as recently as the Cold War is one subject to radical instability, both subjectively and politically” (Reinhard 16-17).

Fight between Oliver and Ferumbras

- “On the other hand, to refuse to testify, for the sake of saving the other person’s life, is to treat him as my ‘fellow man,’ mon semblable, whose good (self-preservation, satisfaction of needs) I imagine in the mirror of my own ego. And this is to fail to encounter him as ‘my neighbor,’ mon prochain, whose jouissance I cannot presume to know and which I may in fact betray along with the moral law in not testifying against him” (Reinhard 48).

Textual Pleasure in Violence

- “What prevents us from ‘freely enjoying sexuality’ is not a direct repression, the so-called internalization of inhibitions, but the very excess of enjoyment coagulated into a specific formula which curves/distorts/transfixes our space of enjoyment, closes off new possibilities of enjoyment, condemns the subject to err in the closure of a vicious cycle, compulsively circulating about the same point of (libidinal) reference[. . .]the aim of psychoanalysis is to get the subject to come to terms with the sinthome, with his specific ‘formula of enjoyment.’ Lacan’s insight here is that of the full ontological weight of ‘stuckness’: when one dissolves the sinthome and thus gets fully unstuck, one loses the minimal consistency of one’s own being – in short, what appears as obstacle is a positive condition of possibility” (Zizek 175).

Facelessness and Justice: The Dead on the Battlefield(s)

- “[. . .]the true ethical step is the one beyond the face of the other, the one of suspending the hold of the face, the one of choosing against the face, for the third. This coldness is justice at its most elementary. Every preempting of the Other in the guide of his or her face relegates the Third to the faceless background. And the elementary gesture of justice is not to show respect for the face in front of me, to be open to its depth, but to abstract from it and refocus on the faceless Thirds in the background. It is only such a shift of focus onto the Third that effectively uproots justice, liberating it from the contingent umbilical link that renders it ‘embedded’ in a particular situation” (Zizek 183-84).

Floripas’s Tower and Neighborhood

- “These new sets can be unnatural sets or communities that depend on nothing to hold them together and which cannot even be perceived from any position outside the set – neighborhoods, we might say, that exist within the political without being determined by citizenship, nationality, or any other legal or authchthonous [indigenous, occurring naturally] status[. . .] the logic of the not-all suggests an infinite set of possibilities of social inclusion and association. . .” (Reinhard 63).