This volume contains an introduction by Nils Holger Petersen and ten essays based on papers presented at the Fourth International Conference of the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, “The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals IV: Transformations of Discourse.” The Centre is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation at the Theological Faculty, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Collated under the section sub-heading “Continuity,” Philippe Buc argues for the survival of a Christian concept of martyrdom into the secularized twentieth century; Miri Rubin situates shifts in images of the Virgin Mary in their social settings; and Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen re-situates the cult of St. Kümmernis in less spectacular devotional conventions. Gathered under the sub-heading “Change,” Peter Burke interprets the literary practice of inserting formal speeches in historiographical writing during the Italian Renaissance by engaging Roland Barthes’ theory of historical discourse; Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger traces the changes which redefined the act of kneeling in submission to Emperor Charles V after the Schmalkaldic War; Stephen Bann tracks the rise in popularity of da Vinci's Mona Lisa due to new technologies, in particular lithography and photography; and Mette B. Bruun delineates new interpretations of Bernard of Clairvaux during the reign of Louis XIV. The final section, entitled “Permanence” includes three essays. M. B. Pranger compares concepts of perseverance and immobility in Augustine and Heinrich von Kleist; Rob C. Wegman's and Eyolf Østrem's essays are largely theoretical reflections on the vacuum left by the seeming decline of master narratives (Wegman) and Western concepts of temporality and the task of representing the past (Østrem).
As can be expected from a volume of conference proceedings, the essays collected here do not blend together very well except that most steer away from questions about methodology, categories of analysis, and standpoint. The volume offers case studies of narrowly circumscribed medieval or Renaissance cultural domains and phenomena, all (re)conceptualized as discursive practices—be they visual, literary, kinetic, thematic, or theoretical—that have been subject to either continuity or change. The overarching epistemological issue and the one I wish to focus on in my review is the question of how we might re-calibrate the lifespan of a discursive/cultural phenomenon in the absence of a Euro-American master narrative that classified temporal processes of cultural change. The master narrative in itself might be considered the cultural distillation of social relationships of unequal power. It offered us the comfort of simple temporal syncopation through concepts such as progress, decline, or growth in conjunction with the valorization of elite perspectives and archives. Confronted with the loss of such a narrative, and perhaps thus confronted with one big dustbin called history, as Baudrillard put it, the book's focus on time and its effects on culture is therefore, pun intended, rather timely.
Time happens in context, however. Although not made explicit in the book's title, the perspective of most essays concerns European elite culture uncritically by ignoring its panoptical gaze, its hegemonic practices, and its well-known processes of strategic discursive marginalization or what Toni Morrison has called “playing in the dark” in her study with the same title (Playing in the Dark, New York: Vintage, 1993). Largely absent are reflections about how the matter of discourse, modes of temporality, historicity, and resonance might be related to the formation of identity, memory, and heritage, thus avoiding engagement with Foucauldian, post-colonial, and other critical theory approaches and a standpoint positioning of an author's point of view and construction of academic narrative.
Although it is en vogue to proclaim that the master narrative of Western Civilization, including its sequencing of “defining moments” of change and large scale transformations is declared dead, I suggest that it still continues in the frequently unexamined privilege of not being expected to reflect on the aims and responsibilities of the post-colonial academy. Is it not an urgent demand to be inclusive of subaltern communities, histories, and voices, and to demonstrate at least a minimal engagement with critical theory?
The question then arises, as we try to find our way into new kinds of temporalities, how and when does academic work reproduce the ideology that obfuscates relationships of power generated by past elites? I suspect that an academic study of modalities of temporality (“resonances”) without attention to their function in networks of social relationships will generate precisely such ideological permanence even if not intended. As an example of how a focus on patterns of change could be joined with standpoint analysis, Caroline Walker Bynum's study of metamorphosis in medieval Christianity might be helpful (Metamorphosis and Identity, New York: Zone, 2001). As an example for a critical, post- “master narrative” analysis of the construction of historical archives, academic research, and a public memory of culture, Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) would be constructive.
Although Rubin begins her essay on images of the Virgin Mary with a standpoint statement and Burke engages Barthes and other theorists, only Wegman's and Østrem's essays tackle theoretical issues without direct application to medieval primary sources. The work is done, however, without much heavy lifting. Wegman confesses to be a “lapsed postmodernist” (231) and pleads for having fun while working in what he calls the post-modern academic bubble, which includes regular travel in Europe. After reviewing critical takes on the presumed objectivity of narrative historiography beginning with Hayden White in the early seventies, Østrem takes refuge in the notion that after all, good historiography is good storytelling and as such, a kind of mythmaking. I am not sure how either Wegman's or Østrem's position will resonate in time to come, but this volume demonstrates, in my view, both continuity and change in the temporal workings of the Euro-American master narrative.
