Foucault's “Medievalism” * ‘Since I presented this topic as a conference paper,! I have developed some reservations about its title's tone and accuracy. Such a title implies that Fou- ccault had a “medievalism,” commonly understood to be a particular schol- arly bias or agenda, or an “erroneous” interpretation of some aspect of the ‘Middle Ages. By calling this discussion “Foucault's Medievalism,” then, I imply that I do not have an agenda, and that I lay claim to a privileged posi- ‘tion of clarity from which [can correct the flaws in Foucault's views. This is, of course, a role that I'd be delighted to take on, but it is also one which I feel that critics in general have played for too long. Rather, I think it is less con- ‘tentious and more productive to suggest that we all have “medievalisms”: varying theoretical perspectives, experiences, and interests that determine ‘what we find significant in medieval literature generally, and in mystical dis- course specifically. Furthermore, I suggest that these multiple (and some- times conflicting) constructions of the Middle Ages can enrich one another and ultimately combine tocreate a far more interesting, vivid, and richly tex- ‘tured medievalism, in which the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. However, despite my inclination toward scholarly pluralism, I feel com- pelled to register some discomfort: namely, with one particular aspect of the use of theory in the study of mysticism. I'm dismayed by the elite status cur- rently accorded to contemporary critical theory in the academy at large, and particularly in English departments. As an example of this, I remember one professor's cautionary remarks during my second year of graduate work. ‘When J told him that my interests included both critical theory and medie- val studies, he maintained that the latter was such an “undertheorized” dis- cipline that I'd no doubt soon become frustrated and choose another field of specialization. I have since heard many variations on that particular theme. * This essay expands presentation given in“How Not To Read the Mystics?” ases- sion organized by Mystics Quarterly at the 28th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Kalamazoo, in May 1993, Mystics Quarterly, Vol, 20 #1, March 1994 10This general attitude (and Fi like to stress here that my professor's comment was undoubtedly well-meaning, and that I continue toadmire his many con- tributions to the profession of literary studies) helps explain why many of us choose to answer the question “how not to read the mystics?” by speedily associating our work with the new: a “new philology,” a“new medievalism.” But I'm also uncomfortable with the automatic, knee-jerk rejection of con- temporary critical theory that I've observed among some medievalists, based on the assumption that medieval studies doesn’t need current theory, even that reading medieval literature through the lenses that it offers is illegiti- mate. This answer to the question “how not to read the mystics?” is as unsatis- factory and reductive as an unreflective valorization of theory. Of course there are very real forces that can inhibit the scholarly pluralism that T'm advocating. Theoretical perspectives typically generate their own vocabu- laries and assumptions, which are difficult for “uninitiated” readers to pene- trate, and the demands of teaching, scholarship, and service can make learn ing the conventions and canons of an unfamiliar style of interpretation impractical, even impossible.? ‘My position, though, is that~thoughtfully incorporated— current critical theory can (and pethaps even must) represent a valuable component of our medievalisms. Newer theoretical approaches can offer provecative perspec tives on such vexing issues as the social functions of literacy, the exercise of power through bodily disciplines and miraculous behaviors, and the politi- cal significance of divine revelation, Critically engaged medieval scholarship also provides a useful bridge for communication with colleagues in other specialties, who may not yet have read (oddly enough) The tree and the xii _frutes of the holy gost or Contemplations on the dread and love of God, but who ‘may share our interests in issues of for example—literacy, gender, and the ‘body as social text. Our participation in discussion of such shared concerns can remedy the progressive marginalization or disappearance of medieval studies in college curricula which Lee Patterson describes so persuasively in his contribution to the 1990 issue of Speculum on the “New Philology” (Pat- terson 99). ‘What we need, then, are more dialogues like the one represented by this session, and the rest of my contribution to this discussion will explain how I find Foucault’s medievalism useful (and problematic as well) in the exercise of my own medievalism, particularly in my work on the relationships between medieval mystical or devotional texts and female readers. ‘In what is perhaps his most frequently cited essay, “What is an Author,” Foucault maintains that the function of an author is not toconvey a personal voice, expressing the subjective views of'a unique individual, but rather “to sharacterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses in ulsociety” (“What is an Author” 124). (By “discourse” I mean language in use in society, especially language associated with specific historical settings, genre conventions, or groups of readers.) Let me stress here that this Foucaultian understanding of the writing process also applies to medieval male authors. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas dictated to scribes, who later expanded their notes back into narratives, and routinely circulated these texts after- wards without the final approval of their putative “authors” (Saenger 367~ 414). It is ironic, then, that modern scholarship has readily attributed the auctoritas of a personal voice and intention to these male authors, while questioning the “mediating influence” of scribes on the work of women writers, who usually worked much more closely with their amanuenses. For an application of this notion of authorship, let us turn to The Book of Margery Kempe, Toward the middle of her Book, Kempe’s scribe describes at length her comprehensive internalization of a complex system of religious materials and values. He concludes that: “over time her mind & her thoughts ‘were 50 joined to God that she never forgot him, but continually had her mind on him, & beheld him in all creatures" (Book 173) Through her con- tinual exposure to a variety of religious discourses (including didactic litera- ture, public preaching, and pious conversation), Kempe comes to read the ‘world and its components as a polyvalent devotional text. She sees politi- cians in high positions, and they remind her of Christ. A glimpse of a pub- licly shamed transgressor calls to mind her own inadequacies. And as her incessant tears, roaring, pilgrimages, and homilies demonstrate, Kempe always subsequently re-publicizes the information that she has internalized. Her participation in her cultural setting represents.a reproduction, even an expansion of the literature and voices that she takes in. It should not surprise us, then, that Kempe's roles in this social drama are always plural, and often in conflict, For example, Christ’s addresses to Kempe initiate her internalization of a variety of feminine roles commonly found in familiar medieval genres. These include courtly literature, monas- tic epistles, and nuptial contemplation.‘ Christ invites Kempe to “be homely” with him (the term she uses to describe their conjugal relations), to play lady-in-waiting to the Virgin Mary, and to view him asa father. Kempe hears Christ ask her to scorperate himself and his mother, that is, to take ‘them both (and their constructions of her) inside her body as soul, to assimi- late them relationally, but comprehensively. Consequently, what may seem at first glance as 2 unified world-as-text is actually a tangled morass of discourses of affect and action. Throughout the Book, joy reveals itself as tears, worldly polities signifies spiritual power, for- giveness continually gives way to shame, and the incorporeal is embodied in 12what seem to Kempe’s companions bizarre and troubling ways (Windeatt 301, Weissman 201-17). These are not merely Kempe’s idiosyncrasies. ‘Such multiplicities and contradictions show up in the devotional material that Kempe comprehends, as well as in the larger cultural settings within which these texts are shaped and articulated. As might be expected, Foucault's notion of the author as recitculator of previously accumulated material is predicated on his philosophy of the development of the self. Most medieval scholarship on what we often call “the rise of the individual” has viewed the “self™ as a preexisting, inner, and “self-evident” entity that can be discovered and distinguished as indepen dent from an objective outer world (Morris, Benton 263-98, Bynum 82-109), For example, Linda Georgianna’s important study of the Amcrene Wisse as an “anti-rule” maintains such traditional notions of the self. Georgianna argues that the Avcrene Wisse encourages its female reader to: “come to understand herself—her desires and memories, her motives and habits of mind~asaunique individual" (Georgiana 6), That is, this prescriptive text seeks either to uncover an existing self that needs to be found, or to actualize an individual that is only partially self-aware. But theories such as Foucault's view the world as a setting for the opera- tion of cultural codes that precede the self and help bring it into being, Seen from this perspective, members of social groups (such as Margery Kempe) inhabit specific and overlapping oral and written systems of organization. ‘These in turn allow the production of variable and shifting identities, roles, and positions of authority. In other words, cultures comprise “the webs of significance” (Geertz 5) that its members spin for themselves out of available discourses and voices. And individuals not only weave these webs of signifi- cance, but they are also confined within their boundaries. Culture is a lin- guistic tapestry that both enables and inhibits the creation of new ideas and identities. Foucault calls the process of identity-formation within this. framework “subjectification,” and deals with this phenomenon most extensively in his “histories” of sexuality. Let me point out first that use the term “history” with caution, for Foucault dees not claim to be a historian in the conven- tional sense.)’ Here Foucault calls for an investigation of “the models pro- posed for setting up and developing relationships with the self, ...(and] for the transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object” (Foucault, Use, 29). Given the wealth of didactic literature written in the Middle Ages, medievalists are uniquely qualified to undertake this sort of project. Unfortunately, Foucault died before finishing his work on medieval models of “subjectification,” so his work develops only what he sees as the dynamic sexual austerity of the ancient Greek and Roman world and the 13asceticism of early medieval Christianity. He argues that the Greek and Roman societies viewed the production of the self as a dynamic process, a continual negotiation between desiring will and desired object. Christian morality, on the other hand, advocates what Foucault calls a “hermeneutics of desire," which seeks to define the self by omission, that is, by eradicating (rather than regulating) undesired thoughts and impulses (Foucault, Use, 3-33). In his essay “The Battle for Chastity” (which focuses on John Cas- sian), Foucault explains the development of Christian consciousness as an ongoing process of self-interpretation and self-definition, what he calls “the techniques of the self": “a whole [system] for analyzing and diagnosing thought, its origins, its dangers, its potential for temptation and all the dark. forces that can lurk behind the mask it may assume” (Battle 24). Such a theoretical frame is clearly applicable to late medieval figures such as Mar- gery Kempe, whose entire existence comprises an introspective self-diagno- sis (assisted by devotional literature, confession, prayer, and conversaticn), which seeks to identify and exclude illicit desire Of course, the diversity among the ethical and sexual practices authorized in a given culture challenges the neat distinction that Foucault draws between the moralities of the Greeks, Romans, and early Christians.‘ Chris- tian didacticism includes the rejection of desire, but also encourages its enhancement and redirection through devotion to Christ’s passion, the sor- row of the Virgin, and Christ as divine bridegroom, However, Foucault’s theoretical model provides the basis for a useful reexamination of medieval. concepts of authorship, individuality, and the relationships between readers and texts. Renaissance “new historicism” has refined and developed this Foucaultian notion of the selfas the fragmentary and protean result of the internalization of overlapping discursive materials. For example, Louis Montrose main- tains that such cultural forces “shape individuals as [sites] of consciousness and initiators of action, and . . . position, motivate, and constrain them within—subject them to—social networks and cultural codes that ultimately exceed their comprehension or control” (Montrose 21). But critics such as Montrose deny the applicability of this Foucaultian mode of analysis tothe ‘Middle Ages, thereby revealing their own medievalisms, They prefer in- stead to represent the Middle Ages asan edenic era of static hierarchies, cor- porate identity, and unchallenged consensus, always in contrast to early modern controversies, challenges, and subversions (Aers 221-40). Tobe sure, though, medievalists have yet to mount a significant challenge to abduction of this line of inguiry by Renaissance scholars, who ignore the fact that imizario—the fashioning and reconstruction of the self in accord- ance with the multiple models provided by the holy family, male and female ifsaints, aristocratic ideals, and an assortment of textualized personages —was the chief aim of virtually all forms of medieval (and particularly mystical) discourse. Though Foucault's medievalism has its useful aspects, some of its more troubling assumptions also deserve acknowledgment. Chiefly, what I object to is Foucault's view of the Middle Ages as sort of a utopian realm, which offers a cultural space free of the routine and disabling surveillance that, for Foucault, characterizes modern society. In Foucault's work, all of Western. history before the seventeenth century functions nostalgically—though ambivalently—as a lost and golden age. Language communicates more powerfully in this era because it participates in a protean network of material relationships between words and things, having “a peculiar existence and ancient solidity . . asa thing inscribed in the fabric of the world” (Foucault, Order 43). This performative power (which Foucault associates with magic and mysticism) provides opportunity for a truly effective oppositional voice for expressing social or cultural resistance, something that Foucault values highly. Praising modern poets Mallarmé and Artaud, Foucault suggests wwistfally that their use of language [finds] its way back... othe] raw being that had been forgotten since the sixteenth century” (Foucault, Order, 44). This view of language offers a superficial resemblance to the medieval trope of “the world as text,” though its purpose is to theorize opposition, rather than to inspire devotion through acknowledging the continual presence of the divine. Ina sense, then, Foucault's medievalism is similar to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medievalisms of writers such as Edmund Burke and Henry Hallam who, while at opposite ends of the political spectrum, both held up the Middle Ages as a past that offered a nostalgic alternative to the problems of the present (Chandler, Girouard, Smith). In his essay “A Pref: ace to Transgression,” Foucault further develops the elegiac quality that characterizes his medievalism. He laments, “never did sexuality enjoy a more immediately natural understanding and never did it know a greater ‘felicity of expression’ than in the Christian world of fallen bodies and of sin. ‘The proofs its whole tradition of mysticism and spirituality which was in- capable of dividing the continuous forms of desire, of rapture, of penetra: tion, of ecstasy, of that outpouring which leaves us spent: all of these experi ences seemed to lead, without interruption or limit, right to the heart of a divine loveof which they were both the outpouring and the source returning upon itself” (Foucault, “Preface,” 29). In contrast, he argues that “modern sexuality’... is ‘denatured’ —cast intoan empty 2one where it achieves what- ever meager form is bestowed upon it by the establishment of its limits” (Foucault, “Preface,” 29-30). Again, Foucault contrasts a Middle Ages that 15enabled—even invited —opposition with a modernity in which resistance subsumed by the successive layers of regulations—sexual, legal, and mi cal—which have become codified and naturalized, and for Foucault, more insidious. Another aspect of Foucault's medievalism which I find disturbing is the absence of women in his studies. The constructed “self in process” that Fou- cault’s work analyzes is inescapably male, as are the institutions that regulate atid condition that self. But this is perhaps a less problematic aspect of Fou- cault’s work than it first appears, since recent studies have begun to remedy this gap (Butler, Sawicki, Diamond and Quinby). Nevertheless, readers of the writing of female mystics cannot borrow wholesale Foucault's theoreti- cal formulations, since they are predicated on male models. Inclosing, then, Pd like to suggest that critical theory, particularly histori- cally engaged theory such as that of Foucault, can offer a productive lens through which to re-read medieval mystical texts. At the same time, such lenses must themselves be held up to the light, as it were, for examination and analysis. Then, as-we take them up critically, we can use these lenses to fashion our own theoretically informed medievalisms. Anne Clark Bartlett De Paul University Notes 1. Thepresent essay draws on material covered in my book, tentatively entitled den tty and Resistance in Middle English Devotional Literature for Women (Ithaca: Carnell UP, forthcoming). 2, Many introductory surveys or anthologies of contemporary critical theory have recently appeared. Some ofthe most useful include Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory ‘An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Catherine Bel- sey's Critical Practice (London: Methuen, 1980); and Raman Selden's A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 2nd edition (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989). Alsosee L. A. Finke and Valerie Lagorio, “Mystical Bodies and the Dialogics of Vision,” Philological Quarcely 67 (1988): 439-60. 3. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 4, For afuller development of these issues, see my ““Lettyrs of Love’: Discourses of ‘Gender and Genre in Middle English Devotional Literature for Women,” PhD The- sis, University of Towa, 1993. 5. See The Archaeology of Kinotoledg, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 12-13; and “Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History,” in The Foucault Reade, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 93. For a rebuttal of Foucaul’s “history” of penance which treats Foucault as a traditional historian, see Pierre Payer, “Foucault on Penance and the History of Sexuality,” Studies in Religion 14 (1985): 315-20. 166, On the origins of Christian asceticism in Stoic practices of renunciation, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Remenciation in Early Chris- sianity (New York: Columbia UP, 1988). ‘Works Cited ‘ers, David, “Rewriting the Middle Ages: Some Suggestions,” Journal of Medieval cand Renaissance Srudies 18 (1988): 221-40. Benton, John F. “Consciousness of Selfand Perceptions of Individuality.” in Remais- sance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Con- stable with Carol D, Lanham. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982, 263-98. Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Did The Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?” in Jesus as Mother: Studies im the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: U of California PR, 1982, 82-109. Chandler, Alice. A Dream of Onder: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature. Lincoln: U of Nebraska PR, 1970. Diamond, Irene, and Lee Quinby, ed. Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resist- ance, Boston: Northeastern UP, 1988, Foucault, Michel. “The Battle for Chastity,” in Western Sexuality: Practice and Pre- cept in Past and Present Times, eds. Philippe Aris and André Biin. trans. Anthony Forster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985) 24. ——. The Order of Things. rans, Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. “A Preface to Transgression,” in Language, Countermemory, and Practice. ‘ed. Donald Bouchard, trans, Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca: Cor- nell UP, 1977, 29-52, ——. The Use of Pleasure. rans. Robert Hurley. 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Patterson, Lee. “On the Margins: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies.” Speculum 65 (1990): 87-108. Senger, Paul. “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Seript and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367=414. Sawicki, Jana. Disiplining Foucault; Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. Smith, R. J. The Gochic Bequest, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. ‘Weissman, H. P. “Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Hysterica Compassio" in the Late Middle Ages” in Acts of Interpretation: The Text and Its Contexts 700-1600, ed. Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth Kirk, Norman, OK: Pilgrim Press, 1982, 201-17, ‘Windeatt, Harry. trans. and ed. The Book of Margery Kempe, Harmondsworth: Pen- guin, 1985, 18