My Introduction to Subaltern Studies
By Feather Crawford Freed
Articles by historians and social therists Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Vinay Bahl, Florencia Mallon and others, analyze the origin, development, and potential of Subaltern Studies within the academic community, as well as the social and economic implications of this new approach to historical interpretation. Introduced in India by historian Ranajit Guha in the early 1980s, Subaltern Studies departs from both colonial and Marxist interpretations of the popular experience of the Indian people under colonial domination, seeking to recognize the agency and purpose embedded in their insurgency and resistance.
In Selected Subaltern Studies, Guha enumerates the dangers and limitations of the historiography of colonial India and suggests a new way to read official and administrative colonial archive records. His treatment of institutionalized colonial dishonesty is dynamic and successful as he offers analytical tools that enable historians to ‘read against the grain’ as they cull colonial archives, and recognize the “code of pacification” (Guha 59) that obscures the power and intent of subaltern insurgency. Using concepts of hegemony and resistance first articulated by Antonio Gramsci, Guha makes a profound contribution to the academic effort to separate the historian’s perspective from that of the state.
In his article Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography, Dipesh Chakrabarty explains Subaltern Studies’ radical departure from Marxist historiography and offers a reasonable defense of Subaltern Studies in the face of recent criticism. Chakrabarty lists Subaltern Studies points of departure from previous historical interpretations of power and agency: (a) power is multi-dimensional and separate from capital (b) power bases exist outside of the center-periphery paradigm (c) the nation state is not the best basis for definitions of political activity. With the foundation for Subalternists’ perception of power and agency specified, the reader comprehends the radical paradigm shift represented by this new interpretation. If peasants are not backward and ‘pre-political’, but instead active agent in their own political destiny, experiencing “dominance without hegemony” (Chakrabarty 21) and consciously inverting colonial codes of behavior and destroying colonial symbols of power, then their previously dismissed forms of resistance gain legitimacy. The weakness in this approach stems from the types of archival sources available to scholars looking for evidence that the Subaltern was the “maker of his own destiny” (Chakrabarty 22). Often at a loss for written transcripts of Subaltern experience such as diaries or letters, Subalternists must look at the actions of the Subalterns to access the “collective imagination inherent in the practices of peasant rebellion” (Chakrabarty 23). When historians interpret the actions of a wide swathe of largely illiterate individuals and define their intentions and experiences, they run the risks of producing scholarship rife with assumption, projection, and ultimately, elitism.
Marxist historian Vinay Bahl offers criticisms of Subaltern Studies in her article Situating and Rethinking Subaltern Studies for Writing Working Class History that point out the archival limitations mentioned above, as well as many other issues. Concerned with the abandonment of the Marxist paradigm, Bahl attacks the academic origins and social implications of Subaltern Studies. For example, Bahl points to the Western influences apparent in Subaltern Studies and questions the legitimacy of an approach that at once rejects Western historiography and relies on Western tools of historical interpretation such as postmodernism in order to replace examination of class consciousness with inquiry into the production of meaning. This argument is not compelling, as it implies academic integrity somehow follows from an ethnocentric censorship of ideas. Concerns with the social implications of Subaltern Studies are more convincing, as the world situation reflects many of the fears articulated by Bahl. The replacement of the ideas of class consciousness and struggle with the focus on identity and ‘difference’ provide the language that enables academics, economists and politicians to ignore the material reality of the poor and its underlying causes, and to abandon the struggle against exploitation and inequality.
Bahl, and Arif Derlik, offer a more nuanced and profound critique of Subaltern Studies in the introduction to the book, History after the Three Worlds. They voice fears that Postmodernism, Multiculturalism and Sublternism will be but tools in the hands of dominant social and economic powers, tools with which they will render indigenous cultures more manageable and profitable. The article, The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies, by Florencia Mallon, is a provocative addition to this debate, as it credits the advent of Subaltern Studies for providing alternatives to Eurocentric historiography, while acknowledging the contradictions within Subaltern Studies, for example the way it minimizes issues such as gender, and within subalterns themselves, as they are often both the dominators and the dominated.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Marian apparitions and Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Introduction
In nineteenth-century Europe, the philosophy of the Enlightenment had introduced new concepts that challenged traditional thinking. The regicide and Terror of the French Revolution profoundly threatened the position of elites throughout Europe, and the republican ideology and secularization institutionalized by the Revolution undermined the authority of both the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. Yet instead of becoming a death-bed concern or fanatical pursuit, popular Catholicism remained a powerful social and cultural force that bound people together in communities of consensibility and spiritual meaning. The Catholic Church remained an active political agent, involved in state-formation, and representatives of the Church interacted with newly empowered government bodies, shaping policy along with the religious worldview of ordinary Catholics. The cultural significance of popular Catholicism became manifest in a surge of devotion to the Virgin Mary and wave of Marian apparitions reported in Catholic communities across Europe during this time of popular upheaval.
This paper will address the historical treatment of Marian apparitions by David Blackbourn[1], Jonathon Sperber[2], and Michael Carroll[3]. The works of Blackbourn and Sperber discuss German Catholicism explicitly. In many ways, the experiences of the German people exemplified the social trends listed above, with the pressures of industrialization, the expansionist Prussian state, and the mid-century religious revival. Blackbourn writes about the apparitions that were reported in a small German village, analyzing both micro and macro influences and consequences of the apparitions at Marpingen. Sperber addresses the form and function of German Catholicism during the nineteenth century. Lastly, Carroll attempts to expose the origins of Marian devotion, not specifically in the German lands, but instead within the human psyche. This variety of treatments of Marian devotion demonstrates three distinctly different historiographical approaches toward creating a more complete understanding of the powerful resonance of popular Catholicism.
Marpingen
In his book, Marpingen, Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village[4], David Blackbourn examines the Marian apparitions reported by three young German girls in 1876. Blackbourn argues that the larger social, economic, and political pressures of the Kulturkampf, the depression of the 1870s, and the aggressive centralization and expansion of the state interacted with the discreet details of the personal lives of the visionaries, culminating in a phenomenon that was at once specific to the Marpingen community and indicative of broad European trends. Blackbourn approaches his subject with empathy and respect, drawing his evidence from a variety of sources in order to uncover the historical forces at play as well as the experiences of the people involved in the dramatic incident.
Marian apparitions are a fascinating reminder of the power of popular religion and the subject of several historical investigations beyond what is addressed in this paper. Blackbourn refers to historical and psychological analysis of Marian apparitions contributed by Michael Carroll in his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary [5]and the solid background of social history provided by Jonathon Sperber in his book, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany,[6] and both works are discussed in detail below. Other treatments of Marian apparitions are often religious and reverential in approach, such as the recent work by Cheryl Porte, Pontmain, Prophecy and Protest [7]or, at the other end of the short spectrum, anti-clerical in tone, like Nicholas Perry and Loreto Echeverria’s book, Under the Heel of Mary[8]. In Marpingen, Blackbourn has successfully avoided either moralistic stance, neither embracing nor dismissing the spiritual significance of such incidents in the lives of nineteenth-century Catholics. Combining a variety of details about the visions themselves with a solid historical interpretation of nineteenth-century Germany, he explores many angles of the apparitions with curiosity and integrity.
Blackbourn’s methodology reflects his meticulous research as well as his ability to weave his theory and evidence together into a compelling story of both historical and personal importance. He divides his book into three parts, addressing first the social, political and economic background to popular material insecurity and Marian devotion. In the second part of Marpingen, Blackbourn investigates the apparitions themselves and finally, in the last section he addresses the legacy of the events. This style of organization allows him to address a variety of perspectives with evidence culled from both official and anecdotal sources.
In the first section of his book, Blackbourn begins by examining the trends and patterns of nineteenth-century Marian devotion. He positions the events at Marpingen within a context of epidemics, famine and political upheaval to illustrate the popular desire for an accessible intercessor in the face of hardship and uncertainty. For many Catholic Germans, Mary symbolized piety and comfort, and “her message that plenty could be restored by faith and repentance was a source of hope.”[9] The secular legacy of the French Revolution and the state-building reaction to the Napoleonic Wars had disrupted the hierarchies and institutions of many Catholic communities and resulted in “the first great wave a visions in modern Europe.” [10] In the 1860s and 1870s, the Marian apparitions reported in German and Italian communities occurred against the backdrop of war and insecurity that accompanied the creation of the Italian and German states. Blackbourn convincingly ties Marian devotions and vision to popular fears, not just of war and scarcity, but of a tangible loss of traditional systems of social organization, particularly the authority of the church. Blackbourn supports his position by calling on examples of Marin apparitions in Lourdes, Pontmain, La Salette and Tuscany and other locations that experienced similar threats to tradition.
Blackbourn shifts his analysis to the transformation taking place in German villages, blending the larger trends across region with details specific to Marpingen. He describes the changes in village demographics and the significance of industrialization, modernization, emigration, capitalism and the centralization of state power to prove that Marpingen was a “community fundamentally transformed in the nineteenth century.” [11] Social hierarchies were disrupted, collective land use was restricted and popular religion was standardized, marginalized or politicized. The Kulturkampf institutionalized the struggle between the Catholic Church and the state, while a religious revival among Catholic increasingly emphasized Marian devotion. Blackbourn argues that Marpingen was especially vulnerable to these social, political and economic forces as it was located on the boarder, had been “caught up in a dizzy reel of territorial exchanges and treaties”[12], had rapidly become a mining community in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and had recently welcomed a new priest, Jakob Neurenther, himself a devotee to Mary and indicative of a “large-scale religious revival.” [13]
Blackbourn then steps back from Marpingen to examine the larger forces at play in greater detail. He explains the scope and impact of the depression of 1873, the implications of the German unification and the tensions between agriculture and industry, between the Catholic Church and the state, between liberals and the state and between liberals and the Catholic Church. He provides tables showing migration statistics and the convictions of priests who were caught performing mass illegally. Seeming almost perfunctory, this section of the book is less impressive then his more personal analysis of the visionaries and their community, and Sperber gives a much deeper analysis of this subject that will be discussed later in this paper.
In the second part of his book, Blackbourn investigates the backgrounds and experiences of the visionaries themselves, Margaretha Kunz, Katherina Hubertus and Susanna Leist. The Marpingen apparitions received wide public recognition, became the object of state intervention and interrogation and a formal investigation by the Catholic Church. Blackbourn uses interrogation transcripts, media reports, court records, personal letters and clerical accounts to flesh out his interpretation of the events. He reveals the personal details of the girls’ lives to show how their claims fit with their earlier experiences of loss, illness and deprivation. He points out the similarities between Margaretha Kunz, who he identifies as the ringleader, and Bernadette Soubrous, the visionary at Lourdes, who experienced many of the same personal losses and deprivations that colored Margaretha’s childhood. He then demonstrates the powerful role played by pilgrimages and miracle cures in the popular imagination, concluding, “the apparitions obviously tapped a source of intense spiritual hunger among Germans.” [14] He also points out the disconnect between the official Church disapproval of the apparitions and the enthusiastic involvement of the local priest, demonstrating the disarray of the Catholic hierarchy.
The apparitions at Marpingen, and the ensuing legal debacle exposed, not only the division within the Catholic Church over popular piety, but also the repressive nature of the Prussian state and, ultimately, the limits of its hegemonic project. After two weeks of military occupation, the harsh interrogation of children, and a blatantly disingenuous investigation, there was no evidence of fraud or instigation of public disorder. Indeed Blackbourn argues that the ultimate consequence of the official investigation of the apparitions at Marpingen was a well-deserved contempt of the Prussian authorities and their destructive and repressive tactics. The limits of their power were exposed, as were the limits of the reach of the Church, and “the tacit support of local officials for the apparitions was most telling, and frustrating to higher authority.” [15]
Blackbourn then turns from the religious and political reactions to the apparitions to the tensions between popular Catholicism and liberal ideology, demonstrating the diverse worldviews held by the German public. Speaking in the language of the natural sciences of a “brave new world of progress… (working toward) a society of citizens” [16] underpinned by Darwinian theory, many German liberals were uncomfortable with the mystical superstition they saw at the core of Marian devotion.
The “red thread”[17] of modernity and the problematic interactions between the forces of change and the proponents of tradition acquire new depth and complexity in Blackbourn’s analysis of the apparitions at Marpingen. The failure of the Catholic Church to subdue or absorb popular religious movements and the inability of the Prussian state to repress and punish such movements demonstrate the diverse and contradictory currents of modernity and popular sentiment in Marpingen during the 1870s, but also speak to the underpinnings of Marian devotion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Visions of the Virgin Mary have continued in Germany, between the two World Wars, during the 1930s and the Cold War, supporting Blackbourn’s argument that apparitions occur during “times of political and social stress” [18], yet his caution that these material trends do not suffice when analyzing Marian apparitions is significant because the personal lives and experiences of the visionaries themselves, and the communities in which they live, are crucial pieces of the story.
Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany
In his book Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-century Germany,[19] Jonathon Sperber examines the forces that shaped popular Catholicism in the German land of North Rhine-Westphalia between the years 1830 and 1880, and the role the Catholic Church played in this time of profound change. Sperber argues that the Prussian state was unsuccessful in subsuming popular Catholicism because of the dynamic and flexible nature of the Catholic Church in Germany, and because of its ability to incorporate popular movements and sentiments into a fundamentally counterrevolutionary agenda. Sperber also agues that the church-state struggle Kulturkampf was not the origin of Catholic conservatism in Germany, but instead merely an exacerbating factor. Sperber supports his thesis by exposing the ways the Catholic Church encouraged new religious associations and Marian devotion, restructured pilgrimages, and accommodated the Prussian state while rejecting the ideologies of socialism and liberalism.
Sperber approaches his project as a social historian primarily concerned with economic policies and social trends instigated by politicians and church officials and reflected by archival records kept by the church and state, such as census records, religious association membership and election results. While not delving into the popular experience directly, Sperber provides insight into the relationship between popular movements and political and religious rhetoric. While the reader may be left wondering how German Catholics of this era perceived their social identity or personal agency, Sperber compensates for his top-down treatment of his subject with his deftly nuanced analysis of the Catholic Church’s interaction with both internal and external forces.
Against the backdrop of the secularization and economic change of the Vormarz period of the early nineteenth century, Sperber describes a Church losing control of its congregants. With the replacement of a guild-based economy with a capitalist system came new opportunities for sinfulness. Restrictions on marriage were loosened, and the clergy feared the sexual promiscuity that could potentially result. Formerly collective forest land was privatized, and this transformed previously innocent acts like hunting and wood-cutting into crimes. Sperber provides tables showing the demographic changes[20] that imply the social upheaval experienced by German people increasingly uprooted, and suffering from the “disruption and disunity, decay of traditional practices”[21] The Catholic Church was itself experiencing the winds of change with a growing division between the traditional ultramontane clergy and the clerical “hermesians”[22], influenced by enlightenment ideology.
Once he has established the defensive posture of the Catholic Church in Germany in the early part of the eighteenth century, Sperber explains the conservative nature of the clerical reaction to secular trends in the decades leading up to the Kulturkampf. He describes how the Catholic Church changed the nature of festivals and missions from popular, and occasionally bawdy, celebrations into “a powerful political force, diverting popular attention away from secular, social and political action, encouraging a passive acceptance of existing conditions”[23] (58) Another part of the Catholic Church’s conservative project involved the encouragement of Marian devotion. Sperber illustrates this focus on Marian devotion with a table showing the increasing number of pilgrimages devoted to the veneration of Mary[24], and the complimentary embrace of chastity. New religious associations, Marian Sodalities in particular, reflected the conservative tendencies Sperber observes, as they were run by an increasingly centralized clergy, a change from their previous leadership of laymen. Sperber provides another table, this time demonstrating the decline in illegitimate births[25] to prove the conservative movement of the clergy was manifested in popular behavior. He notes that this growing conservatism both predated and anticipated the Christian Social movement, and was welcomed by different groups, explaining, “For the Catholic upper class, as well as the Prussian authorities, the counterrevolutionary and socially pacifying efforts of the religious revival were visible and most welcome” [26]
Sperber then traces the role the religious revival of the 1850s played in the politicization of German Catholics. According to Sperber’s analysis, “if the political impetus for the Christian Social movement came from the need to counter social agitation, the movement’s organizational form was an outgrowth of the sodalities, congregations, and related Catholic organizations which had developed in the industrial areas after mid-century.”[27]
Having established the conservative nature of the German Catholic Church well before the Kulturkampf, Sperber investigates the struggle between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church. The May Laws, the expulsion of the Jesuits and the prosecution of priests performing illegal Mass were indeed, in Sperber’s opinion, exacerbating factors that led to the hardening of the Catholic Church’s conservative ideology, yet it was the rejection of liberalism, not the expansion of the Prussian state that served as the primary motivation. To further illustrate his point, Sperber uses the rhetoric of politically active Catholic Chaplains, such as Chaplain Laaf, who told an appreciative audience that, “The enemy of religion is liberalism, whose faith is disbelief and whose mother is the revolution”[28] and Chaplain Schunks who proclaimed “he who shakes the alter topples the throne.”[29] Sperber also emphasized the contentious relationship between the clergy and members of liberal, hermesian Freemason Lodges, viewed by many church officials as epitomizing “satanic subversion”[30] and threatening the traditional order with conspiracy and revolution.
Although dry intone and replete with impersonal tables and social analysis, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany successfully conveys the conservative nature of the Catholic Church, and the integral role that Marian devotion played in the popular acceptance of that conservatism. While affected by Prussian state-building, Sperber shows that the politicization of German Catholicism originated in a visceral reaction against liberal ideals, decades before the punitive measures of the Kulturkampf.
The Cult of the Virgin Mary
In his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary,[31] Michael Carroll investigates the historical, sociological, and psychological origins of Marian devotion. He argues that Marian devotion is a unique phenomenon because it is based on the adulation of an asexual mother, that it has explicit historical origins in fifth-century Rome, and it is more common in certain geographical regions than others due to specific ecological and psychological factors. Carroll defines Marian devotion as an immensely popular cult that is often neglected by scholars, even those seeking to explain the division between Catholics and Protestants or explore the sociology of cults like Scientology. In order to uncover the origins of such a powerful popular movement, Carroll investigates the aspects of Marian devotion that make it exceptional in history, and claims that this process will lead to a more complete understanding of early Christianity and the greater human experience.
Carroll contextualizes his approach within both historical and psychological treatments of Marian devotion. The work of historian Guy Swanson[32] connected Marian devotion to agricultural societies with certain political systems, while the structuralist approach of Edmund Leach[33] revealed links between an emphasis on the intercessory role of Mary and patronage, a social organization that concentrates the power in the hands of a few inaccessible rulers. Carroll also uses Carl Jung’s[34] theories of a mother archetype that exists within the human unconscious and manifests itself as goddess worship and Marian devotion. For the purposes of this paper, Carroll’s analysis provides a useful foil for Blackbourn’s cultural approach to the apparitions at Marpingen and Sperber’s social approach to nineteenth-century German Catholicism because it focuses on origins of Marian devotion that are completely independent of nineteenth-century German experiences.
Carroll builds his book around three fundamental questions: why is Mary both a virgin and a mother when other goddess cults celebrate the obvious connection between sexuality and maternity; why does Marian devotion develop in the fifth century, at the same time as the crucifixion symbolism; and why does Marian devotion originally take hold most strongly in Spain and Southern Italy? Carroll answers each question in turn, using a combination of historical interpretation and Freudian psychoanalysis.
Freudian analysis is the primary tool in Carroll’s kit as he constructs answers to his first and third questions. The devotion to a manifestation of a sexless mother derives from an unconscious need to disguise children’s infantile desires for incestuous relationships with their parents. According to Carroll’s analysis, a child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite gender is more common in families that have female authority figures due to the father’s need to be away, seeking sustenance. This “father ineffective family”[35] was a common feature of life in Spain and Southern Italy, due to a combination of harsh ecological and social factors.
Carroll then seeks the fifth-century origins of Marian devotion within the context of the “great transformation” of Christianity “from a middle-class movement to one that incorporated people from all levels of Roman Society.” [36] Carroll argues that Marian devotion was the result of a calculated and successful attempt to integrate peasants into the Christian religion by allowing popular goddess devotion to be transformed into Marian devotion. Carroll also argues that the masochism associated with repressed sexual desires can be seen in the disassociation of Mary with all elements of sexuality, and is also reflected by the fifth-century focus on the crucifixion and the torture of Christ, as well as the celebration of celibacy, or “symbolic castration.” [37] These devotional developments within early Christendom are set against the growing material inequity in fifth-century Rome.
Carroll then tests his theories by applying them to several Marian apparitions. Having established the theories that Marian devotion originates most often in marginalized agricultural communities in need of an sympathetic intercessor, and in ‘father-ineffective-families’ that display both Freudian desires and material needs, Carroll seeks to prove them with evidence from Lourdes, Pontmain, Fatima, and other apparition sites. While his theoretical analysis had been fascinating, if generalized, the weakness of Carroll’s argument is exposed in this empirical section of his book. He spends many pages distinguishing between illusions and hallucinations and defining visionaries as either primary or secondary, while neither distinction proves particularly insightful. Once he finishes categorizing the visionaries and their visions, Carroll seeks the origins of their experiences. Many deceased people have been academically resurrected and psychoanalyzed, and Carroll attempts to do just that to several of the visionaries. The basic premise of applying Freudian techniques to historical questions is problematic. How can a historian simultaneously provide a voice to long-dead individuals and then apply psychoanalysis to the individual the historian himself has constructed?
Ultimately contributing the observation that the French visionaries of the nineteenth century were most likely “prompted by unconscious infantile memories”[38] that were activated by recent events, Carroll’s analysis does not actually augment the reader’s understanding of either the personal or historical origins of the visionaries’ dramatic experiences. However, Carroll does establish the importance of apparitions in Marian devotion, the role of imitation in apparition stories and the interaction between popular religion and social upheaval through his comparison of a variety of Marian apparitions. Unfortunately he relies almost exclusively on Freudian theory for his analysis, and the reader is reminded that once a historical argument becomes defined by the belief in a theory that all humans are shaped by the repression of their sexual desires for their parent, then that theory loses all usefulness as an analytical tool.
Conclusion
Today Marian devotion continues to play a powerful role in the human experience. The image of the Virgin Mary inspires pilgrimages, news stories and bidding wars on E-Bay. Perhaps the origins of such devotion are to be found in a combination of historical, economic, social, and psychological factors, or maybe they are as elusive as a satisfying academic definition of the human soul. This paper does not attempted to locate or interpret the meaning of this devotion, but does, hopefully, provide an analysis of some of the scholarly treatment of this phenomenon.
[1] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993.
[2] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984.
[3] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[4] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993.
[5] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[6] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984.
[7] Porte, Cheryl. Pontain, Prophecy, and Protest. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc..2005
[8] Perry, Nicholas & Echeverria, Loreto. Under the Heel of Mary. London and New York: Routledge. 1988
[9] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993. Pg. 19
[10] Ibid. Pg. 20
[11] Ibid. Pg 44
[12] Ibid. Pg. 58
[13] Ibid. Pg. 70
[14] Ibid. Pg. 141
[15] Ibid. Pg. 233
[16] Ibid. Pg. 256
[17] Ibid. Pg. 374
[18] Ibid. Pg. 327
[19] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984
[20] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984. Pg 41
[21] Ibid. Pg 277
[22] Ibid. Pg. 22
[23] Ibid. Pg. 58
[24] Ibid. Pg. 66 & 67
[25] Ibid. Pg. 93
[26] Ibid. Pg. 92
[27] Ibid. Pg. 179 & 180
[28] Ibid. Pg. 216
[29] Ibid. Pg. 217
[30] Ibid. Pg. 218
[31] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[32] Swanson, Guy. Religion and Regime. Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1967
[33] Leach, Edmund. “Virgin Birth.” In Genesis and Myth and other Essays. London : Jonathan Cape. 1969
[34]Jung, Carl. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1970
[35] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986. Pg. 50
[36]Ibid. Pg. 80
[37]Ibid. Pg. 86
[38] Ibid. Pg. 80
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
In nineteenth-century Europe, the philosophy of the Enlightenment had introduced new concepts that challenged traditional thinking. The regicide and Terror of the French Revolution profoundly threatened the position of elites throughout Europe, and the republican ideology and secularization institutionalized by the Revolution undermined the authority of both the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. Yet instead of becoming a death-bed concern or fanatical pursuit, popular Catholicism remained a powerful social and cultural force that bound people together in communities of consensibility and spiritual meaning. The Catholic Church remained an active political agent, involved in state-formation, and representatives of the Church interacted with newly empowered government bodies, shaping policy along with the religious worldview of ordinary Catholics. The cultural significance of popular Catholicism became manifest in a surge of devotion to the Virgin Mary and wave of Marian apparitions reported in Catholic communities across Europe during this time of popular upheaval.
This paper will address the historical treatment of Marian apparitions by David Blackbourn[1], Jonathon Sperber[2], and Michael Carroll[3]. The works of Blackbourn and Sperber discuss German Catholicism explicitly. In many ways, the experiences of the German people exemplified the social trends listed above, with the pressures of industrialization, the expansionist Prussian state, and the mid-century religious revival. Blackbourn writes about the apparitions that were reported in a small German village, analyzing both micro and macro influences and consequences of the apparitions at Marpingen. Sperber addresses the form and function of German Catholicism during the nineteenth century. Lastly, Carroll attempts to expose the origins of Marian devotion, not specifically in the German lands, but instead within the human psyche. This variety of treatments of Marian devotion demonstrates three distinctly different historiographical approaches toward creating a more complete understanding of the powerful resonance of popular Catholicism.
Marpingen
In his book, Marpingen, Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village[4], David Blackbourn examines the Marian apparitions reported by three young German girls in 1876. Blackbourn argues that the larger social, economic, and political pressures of the Kulturkampf, the depression of the 1870s, and the aggressive centralization and expansion of the state interacted with the discreet details of the personal lives of the visionaries, culminating in a phenomenon that was at once specific to the Marpingen community and indicative of broad European trends. Blackbourn approaches his subject with empathy and respect, drawing his evidence from a variety of sources in order to uncover the historical forces at play as well as the experiences of the people involved in the dramatic incident.
Marian apparitions are a fascinating reminder of the power of popular religion and the subject of several historical investigations beyond what is addressed in this paper. Blackbourn refers to historical and psychological analysis of Marian apparitions contributed by Michael Carroll in his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary [5]and the solid background of social history provided by Jonathon Sperber in his book, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany,[6] and both works are discussed in detail below. Other treatments of Marian apparitions are often religious and reverential in approach, such as the recent work by Cheryl Porte, Pontmain, Prophecy and Protest [7]or, at the other end of the short spectrum, anti-clerical in tone, like Nicholas Perry and Loreto Echeverria’s book, Under the Heel of Mary[8]. In Marpingen, Blackbourn has successfully avoided either moralistic stance, neither embracing nor dismissing the spiritual significance of such incidents in the lives of nineteenth-century Catholics. Combining a variety of details about the visions themselves with a solid historical interpretation of nineteenth-century Germany, he explores many angles of the apparitions with curiosity and integrity.
Blackbourn’s methodology reflects his meticulous research as well as his ability to weave his theory and evidence together into a compelling story of both historical and personal importance. He divides his book into three parts, addressing first the social, political and economic background to popular material insecurity and Marian devotion. In the second part of Marpingen, Blackbourn investigates the apparitions themselves and finally, in the last section he addresses the legacy of the events. This style of organization allows him to address a variety of perspectives with evidence culled from both official and anecdotal sources.
In the first section of his book, Blackbourn begins by examining the trends and patterns of nineteenth-century Marian devotion. He positions the events at Marpingen within a context of epidemics, famine and political upheaval to illustrate the popular desire for an accessible intercessor in the face of hardship and uncertainty. For many Catholic Germans, Mary symbolized piety and comfort, and “her message that plenty could be restored by faith and repentance was a source of hope.”[9] The secular legacy of the French Revolution and the state-building reaction to the Napoleonic Wars had disrupted the hierarchies and institutions of many Catholic communities and resulted in “the first great wave a visions in modern Europe.” [10] In the 1860s and 1870s, the Marian apparitions reported in German and Italian communities occurred against the backdrop of war and insecurity that accompanied the creation of the Italian and German states. Blackbourn convincingly ties Marian devotions and vision to popular fears, not just of war and scarcity, but of a tangible loss of traditional systems of social organization, particularly the authority of the church. Blackbourn supports his position by calling on examples of Marin apparitions in Lourdes, Pontmain, La Salette and Tuscany and other locations that experienced similar threats to tradition.
Blackbourn shifts his analysis to the transformation taking place in German villages, blending the larger trends across region with details specific to Marpingen. He describes the changes in village demographics and the significance of industrialization, modernization, emigration, capitalism and the centralization of state power to prove that Marpingen was a “community fundamentally transformed in the nineteenth century.” [11] Social hierarchies were disrupted, collective land use was restricted and popular religion was standardized, marginalized or politicized. The Kulturkampf institutionalized the struggle between the Catholic Church and the state, while a religious revival among Catholic increasingly emphasized Marian devotion. Blackbourn argues that Marpingen was especially vulnerable to these social, political and economic forces as it was located on the boarder, had been “caught up in a dizzy reel of territorial exchanges and treaties”[12], had rapidly become a mining community in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and had recently welcomed a new priest, Jakob Neurenther, himself a devotee to Mary and indicative of a “large-scale religious revival.” [13]
Blackbourn then steps back from Marpingen to examine the larger forces at play in greater detail. He explains the scope and impact of the depression of 1873, the implications of the German unification and the tensions between agriculture and industry, between the Catholic Church and the state, between liberals and the state and between liberals and the Catholic Church. He provides tables showing migration statistics and the convictions of priests who were caught performing mass illegally. Seeming almost perfunctory, this section of the book is less impressive then his more personal analysis of the visionaries and their community, and Sperber gives a much deeper analysis of this subject that will be discussed later in this paper.
In the second part of his book, Blackbourn investigates the backgrounds and experiences of the visionaries themselves, Margaretha Kunz, Katherina Hubertus and Susanna Leist. The Marpingen apparitions received wide public recognition, became the object of state intervention and interrogation and a formal investigation by the Catholic Church. Blackbourn uses interrogation transcripts, media reports, court records, personal letters and clerical accounts to flesh out his interpretation of the events. He reveals the personal details of the girls’ lives to show how their claims fit with their earlier experiences of loss, illness and deprivation. He points out the similarities between Margaretha Kunz, who he identifies as the ringleader, and Bernadette Soubrous, the visionary at Lourdes, who experienced many of the same personal losses and deprivations that colored Margaretha’s childhood. He then demonstrates the powerful role played by pilgrimages and miracle cures in the popular imagination, concluding, “the apparitions obviously tapped a source of intense spiritual hunger among Germans.” [14] He also points out the disconnect between the official Church disapproval of the apparitions and the enthusiastic involvement of the local priest, demonstrating the disarray of the Catholic hierarchy.
The apparitions at Marpingen, and the ensuing legal debacle exposed, not only the division within the Catholic Church over popular piety, but also the repressive nature of the Prussian state and, ultimately, the limits of its hegemonic project. After two weeks of military occupation, the harsh interrogation of children, and a blatantly disingenuous investigation, there was no evidence of fraud or instigation of public disorder. Indeed Blackbourn argues that the ultimate consequence of the official investigation of the apparitions at Marpingen was a well-deserved contempt of the Prussian authorities and their destructive and repressive tactics. The limits of their power were exposed, as were the limits of the reach of the Church, and “the tacit support of local officials for the apparitions was most telling, and frustrating to higher authority.” [15]
Blackbourn then turns from the religious and political reactions to the apparitions to the tensions between popular Catholicism and liberal ideology, demonstrating the diverse worldviews held by the German public. Speaking in the language of the natural sciences of a “brave new world of progress… (working toward) a society of citizens” [16] underpinned by Darwinian theory, many German liberals were uncomfortable with the mystical superstition they saw at the core of Marian devotion.
The “red thread”[17] of modernity and the problematic interactions between the forces of change and the proponents of tradition acquire new depth and complexity in Blackbourn’s analysis of the apparitions at Marpingen. The failure of the Catholic Church to subdue or absorb popular religious movements and the inability of the Prussian state to repress and punish such movements demonstrate the diverse and contradictory currents of modernity and popular sentiment in Marpingen during the 1870s, but also speak to the underpinnings of Marian devotion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Visions of the Virgin Mary have continued in Germany, between the two World Wars, during the 1930s and the Cold War, supporting Blackbourn’s argument that apparitions occur during “times of political and social stress” [18], yet his caution that these material trends do not suffice when analyzing Marian apparitions is significant because the personal lives and experiences of the visionaries themselves, and the communities in which they live, are crucial pieces of the story.
Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany
In his book Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-century Germany,[19] Jonathon Sperber examines the forces that shaped popular Catholicism in the German land of North Rhine-Westphalia between the years 1830 and 1880, and the role the Catholic Church played in this time of profound change. Sperber argues that the Prussian state was unsuccessful in subsuming popular Catholicism because of the dynamic and flexible nature of the Catholic Church in Germany, and because of its ability to incorporate popular movements and sentiments into a fundamentally counterrevolutionary agenda. Sperber also agues that the church-state struggle Kulturkampf was not the origin of Catholic conservatism in Germany, but instead merely an exacerbating factor. Sperber supports his thesis by exposing the ways the Catholic Church encouraged new religious associations and Marian devotion, restructured pilgrimages, and accommodated the Prussian state while rejecting the ideologies of socialism and liberalism.
Sperber approaches his project as a social historian primarily concerned with economic policies and social trends instigated by politicians and church officials and reflected by archival records kept by the church and state, such as census records, religious association membership and election results. While not delving into the popular experience directly, Sperber provides insight into the relationship between popular movements and political and religious rhetoric. While the reader may be left wondering how German Catholics of this era perceived their social identity or personal agency, Sperber compensates for his top-down treatment of his subject with his deftly nuanced analysis of the Catholic Church’s interaction with both internal and external forces.
Against the backdrop of the secularization and economic change of the Vormarz period of the early nineteenth century, Sperber describes a Church losing control of its congregants. With the replacement of a guild-based economy with a capitalist system came new opportunities for sinfulness. Restrictions on marriage were loosened, and the clergy feared the sexual promiscuity that could potentially result. Formerly collective forest land was privatized, and this transformed previously innocent acts like hunting and wood-cutting into crimes. Sperber provides tables showing the demographic changes[20] that imply the social upheaval experienced by German people increasingly uprooted, and suffering from the “disruption and disunity, decay of traditional practices”[21] The Catholic Church was itself experiencing the winds of change with a growing division between the traditional ultramontane clergy and the clerical “hermesians”[22], influenced by enlightenment ideology.
Once he has established the defensive posture of the Catholic Church in Germany in the early part of the eighteenth century, Sperber explains the conservative nature of the clerical reaction to secular trends in the decades leading up to the Kulturkampf. He describes how the Catholic Church changed the nature of festivals and missions from popular, and occasionally bawdy, celebrations into “a powerful political force, diverting popular attention away from secular, social and political action, encouraging a passive acceptance of existing conditions”[23] (58) Another part of the Catholic Church’s conservative project involved the encouragement of Marian devotion. Sperber illustrates this focus on Marian devotion with a table showing the increasing number of pilgrimages devoted to the veneration of Mary[24], and the complimentary embrace of chastity. New religious associations, Marian Sodalities in particular, reflected the conservative tendencies Sperber observes, as they were run by an increasingly centralized clergy, a change from their previous leadership of laymen. Sperber provides another table, this time demonstrating the decline in illegitimate births[25] to prove the conservative movement of the clergy was manifested in popular behavior. He notes that this growing conservatism both predated and anticipated the Christian Social movement, and was welcomed by different groups, explaining, “For the Catholic upper class, as well as the Prussian authorities, the counterrevolutionary and socially pacifying efforts of the religious revival were visible and most welcome” [26]
Sperber then traces the role the religious revival of the 1850s played in the politicization of German Catholics. According to Sperber’s analysis, “if the political impetus for the Christian Social movement came from the need to counter social agitation, the movement’s organizational form was an outgrowth of the sodalities, congregations, and related Catholic organizations which had developed in the industrial areas after mid-century.”[27]
Having established the conservative nature of the German Catholic Church well before the Kulturkampf, Sperber investigates the struggle between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church. The May Laws, the expulsion of the Jesuits and the prosecution of priests performing illegal Mass were indeed, in Sperber’s opinion, exacerbating factors that led to the hardening of the Catholic Church’s conservative ideology, yet it was the rejection of liberalism, not the expansion of the Prussian state that served as the primary motivation. To further illustrate his point, Sperber uses the rhetoric of politically active Catholic Chaplains, such as Chaplain Laaf, who told an appreciative audience that, “The enemy of religion is liberalism, whose faith is disbelief and whose mother is the revolution”[28] and Chaplain Schunks who proclaimed “he who shakes the alter topples the throne.”[29] Sperber also emphasized the contentious relationship between the clergy and members of liberal, hermesian Freemason Lodges, viewed by many church officials as epitomizing “satanic subversion”[30] and threatening the traditional order with conspiracy and revolution.
Although dry intone and replete with impersonal tables and social analysis, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany successfully conveys the conservative nature of the Catholic Church, and the integral role that Marian devotion played in the popular acceptance of that conservatism. While affected by Prussian state-building, Sperber shows that the politicization of German Catholicism originated in a visceral reaction against liberal ideals, decades before the punitive measures of the Kulturkampf.
The Cult of the Virgin Mary
In his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary,[31] Michael Carroll investigates the historical, sociological, and psychological origins of Marian devotion. He argues that Marian devotion is a unique phenomenon because it is based on the adulation of an asexual mother, that it has explicit historical origins in fifth-century Rome, and it is more common in certain geographical regions than others due to specific ecological and psychological factors. Carroll defines Marian devotion as an immensely popular cult that is often neglected by scholars, even those seeking to explain the division between Catholics and Protestants or explore the sociology of cults like Scientology. In order to uncover the origins of such a powerful popular movement, Carroll investigates the aspects of Marian devotion that make it exceptional in history, and claims that this process will lead to a more complete understanding of early Christianity and the greater human experience.
Carroll contextualizes his approach within both historical and psychological treatments of Marian devotion. The work of historian Guy Swanson[32] connected Marian devotion to agricultural societies with certain political systems, while the structuralist approach of Edmund Leach[33] revealed links between an emphasis on the intercessory role of Mary and patronage, a social organization that concentrates the power in the hands of a few inaccessible rulers. Carroll also uses Carl Jung’s[34] theories of a mother archetype that exists within the human unconscious and manifests itself as goddess worship and Marian devotion. For the purposes of this paper, Carroll’s analysis provides a useful foil for Blackbourn’s cultural approach to the apparitions at Marpingen and Sperber’s social approach to nineteenth-century German Catholicism because it focuses on origins of Marian devotion that are completely independent of nineteenth-century German experiences.
Carroll builds his book around three fundamental questions: why is Mary both a virgin and a mother when other goddess cults celebrate the obvious connection between sexuality and maternity; why does Marian devotion develop in the fifth century, at the same time as the crucifixion symbolism; and why does Marian devotion originally take hold most strongly in Spain and Southern Italy? Carroll answers each question in turn, using a combination of historical interpretation and Freudian psychoanalysis.
Freudian analysis is the primary tool in Carroll’s kit as he constructs answers to his first and third questions. The devotion to a manifestation of a sexless mother derives from an unconscious need to disguise children’s infantile desires for incestuous relationships with their parents. According to Carroll’s analysis, a child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite gender is more common in families that have female authority figures due to the father’s need to be away, seeking sustenance. This “father ineffective family”[35] was a common feature of life in Spain and Southern Italy, due to a combination of harsh ecological and social factors.
Carroll then seeks the fifth-century origins of Marian devotion within the context of the “great transformation” of Christianity “from a middle-class movement to one that incorporated people from all levels of Roman Society.” [36] Carroll argues that Marian devotion was the result of a calculated and successful attempt to integrate peasants into the Christian religion by allowing popular goddess devotion to be transformed into Marian devotion. Carroll also argues that the masochism associated with repressed sexual desires can be seen in the disassociation of Mary with all elements of sexuality, and is also reflected by the fifth-century focus on the crucifixion and the torture of Christ, as well as the celebration of celibacy, or “symbolic castration.” [37] These devotional developments within early Christendom are set against the growing material inequity in fifth-century Rome.
Carroll then tests his theories by applying them to several Marian apparitions. Having established the theories that Marian devotion originates most often in marginalized agricultural communities in need of an sympathetic intercessor, and in ‘father-ineffective-families’ that display both Freudian desires and material needs, Carroll seeks to prove them with evidence from Lourdes, Pontmain, Fatima, and other apparition sites. While his theoretical analysis had been fascinating, if generalized, the weakness of Carroll’s argument is exposed in this empirical section of his book. He spends many pages distinguishing between illusions and hallucinations and defining visionaries as either primary or secondary, while neither distinction proves particularly insightful. Once he finishes categorizing the visionaries and their visions, Carroll seeks the origins of their experiences. Many deceased people have been academically resurrected and psychoanalyzed, and Carroll attempts to do just that to several of the visionaries. The basic premise of applying Freudian techniques to historical questions is problematic. How can a historian simultaneously provide a voice to long-dead individuals and then apply psychoanalysis to the individual the historian himself has constructed?
Ultimately contributing the observation that the French visionaries of the nineteenth century were most likely “prompted by unconscious infantile memories”[38] that were activated by recent events, Carroll’s analysis does not actually augment the reader’s understanding of either the personal or historical origins of the visionaries’ dramatic experiences. However, Carroll does establish the importance of apparitions in Marian devotion, the role of imitation in apparition stories and the interaction between popular religion and social upheaval through his comparison of a variety of Marian apparitions. Unfortunately he relies almost exclusively on Freudian theory for his analysis, and the reader is reminded that once a historical argument becomes defined by the belief in a theory that all humans are shaped by the repression of their sexual desires for their parent, then that theory loses all usefulness as an analytical tool.
Conclusion
Today Marian devotion continues to play a powerful role in the human experience. The image of the Virgin Mary inspires pilgrimages, news stories and bidding wars on E-Bay. Perhaps the origins of such devotion are to be found in a combination of historical, economic, social, and psychological factors, or maybe they are as elusive as a satisfying academic definition of the human soul. This paper does not attempted to locate or interpret the meaning of this devotion, but does, hopefully, provide an analysis of some of the scholarly treatment of this phenomenon.
[1] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993.
[2] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984.
[3] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[4] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993.
[5] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[6] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984.
[7] Porte, Cheryl. Pontain, Prophecy, and Protest. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc..2005
[8] Perry, Nicholas & Echeverria, Loreto. Under the Heel of Mary. London and New York: Routledge. 1988
[9] Blackbourn, David. Marpingen. New York: Vintage Books. 1993. Pg. 19
[10] Ibid. Pg. 20
[11] Ibid. Pg 44
[12] Ibid. Pg. 58
[13] Ibid. Pg. 70
[14] Ibid. Pg. 141
[15] Ibid. Pg. 233
[16] Ibid. Pg. 256
[17] Ibid. Pg. 374
[18] Ibid. Pg. 327
[19] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984
[20] Sperber, Jonathon. Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1984. Pg 41
[21] Ibid. Pg 277
[22] Ibid. Pg. 22
[23] Ibid. Pg. 58
[24] Ibid. Pg. 66 & 67
[25] Ibid. Pg. 93
[26] Ibid. Pg. 92
[27] Ibid. Pg. 179 & 180
[28] Ibid. Pg. 216
[29] Ibid. Pg. 217
[30] Ibid. Pg. 218
[31] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986.
[32] Swanson, Guy. Religion and Regime. Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1967
[33] Leach, Edmund. “Virgin Birth.” In Genesis and Myth and other Essays. London : Jonathan Cape. 1969
[34]Jung, Carl. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1970
[35] Carroll, Michael. The Cult of the Virgin Mary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1986. Pg. 50
[36]Ibid. Pg. 80
[37]Ibid. Pg. 86
[38] Ibid. Pg. 80
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
Nationaliam, Identity, and the Lines on the Map that Make us Who We Are
by Feather Crawford Freed
In Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson examined the rise of nationalism and ideas of “nation-ness” during the last two centuries. Anderson argued that nationalism was a cultural artefact spontaneously created through the convergence of discreet historical forces at the end of the eighteenth century, and transplanted across the world because people became able to imagine themselves part of a community defined by nationality. Anderson argued for his thesis by explaining the historical reasons behind the development of nationalism, ways in which people’s understanding of nationalism changed over time, and reasons why nationalism inspired the sacrifice and dedication once reserved for religion.
Anderson addressed both Marxist and Liberal explanations for the origin and spread of nationalism. The power of national identity, seen by Marxist historians like Tom Nairn as ‘Marxism’s great historical failure’ and Liberal historians such as Hugh Seton-Watson as an anomaly without scientific definition, was identified by Anderson as a significant “cultural artefact” worthy of study. Anderson investigated nationalism as a specific force in human society instead of addressing how well or how poorly the evidence of nationalistic identity fit into existing historical interpretations. Instead of characterizing nationalism as a social pathology or ideology, like fascism or liberalism, Anderson treated nationalism as a part of the human experience, like kinship or religion.
The evidence compiled and presented by Anderson spans the globe and two hundred year of revolution, state-building, and decolonization. While citing numerous compelling examples from nationalist movements worldwide, his argument is highly conceptual. Anderson made a model explaining the development of nationalism from aspects of its European inception and then applied that model to the development of nationalism in Creole states, official nationalism in imperialist states, and anti-colonial nationalism in post-World War II states.
Anderson first defined the nation on page nine as an “imagined political community…both inherently limited and sovereign.” Anderson then traced the cultural roots of nationalism to the ‘unselfconscious coherence’ of medieval religious communities and the permeable political boundaries of preceding dynastic realms. Anderson showed how print-capitalism, book-publishing, and the development of vernacular languages provided the tools people needed to imagine they were part of a much larger community of similar people, even though they might never meet.
Anderson then followed the threads of nationalism as they spread with European expansion and changed with New-World reinterpretation. Anderson addressed the discrepancy between the nationalisms that spawned revolution and national identity movements in the Americas and their European models. The national independence movements of the Americas inspire sacrifice and devotion in revolutionaries, yet instead of rallying around linguistic distinctiveness or ancient cultural identities, Creole nationalists fought and died for the sovereignty of the nations they imagined, nations that had previously been only administrative units of Colonial States. Anderson embraced these differences in Creole nationalism and the European model as evidence that nationalism had become ‘modular’ and ‘capable of being transplanted.
Anderson then examined ways nationalism was self-consciously constructed once the nation-state had become a legitimate and prestigious political entity. Dominant groups and dynastic realms employed policies of “official nationalism” to legitimize their claims to national authority and identity. Anderson pointed to examples of “Magyarization”(102), “Japanification”(98) and “Russification”(86) to prove that nationalism was used by empire-nations to conceal a “discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm”. (110)
Anderson’s final examples of the modular, compelling and adaptable nature of nationalism are found in the formation of nation states after World War II. The postcolonial nation-building in Africa and Asia at this time drew on lessons from European, Creole and official nationalisms, while emphasizing youth and anti-imperialism. Both sincere and self-conscious, this “last wave” (113) of nationalism employed tools for national identity like the map and census to imagine the validity of their political community.
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities is a conceptual toll-kit that helps us understand the origin, function and power of nationalism. The smoothness with which he explains both the abstract and concrete, and the clarity of his arguments, soften the demands upon his audience. The most compelling image is that of Indonesian school children sitting in the classroom, looking at the map of the archipelago, and learning they were the blue-colored islands in the Indian Ocean. The blue-colored islands, Indonesia, that was who they were.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
by Feather Crawford Freed
In Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson examined the rise of nationalism and ideas of “nation-ness” during the last two centuries. Anderson argued that nationalism was a cultural artefact spontaneously created through the convergence of discreet historical forces at the end of the eighteenth century, and transplanted across the world because people became able to imagine themselves part of a community defined by nationality. Anderson argued for his thesis by explaining the historical reasons behind the development of nationalism, ways in which people’s understanding of nationalism changed over time, and reasons why nationalism inspired the sacrifice and dedication once reserved for religion.
Anderson addressed both Marxist and Liberal explanations for the origin and spread of nationalism. The power of national identity, seen by Marxist historians like Tom Nairn as ‘Marxism’s great historical failure’ and Liberal historians such as Hugh Seton-Watson as an anomaly without scientific definition, was identified by Anderson as a significant “cultural artefact” worthy of study. Anderson investigated nationalism as a specific force in human society instead of addressing how well or how poorly the evidence of nationalistic identity fit into existing historical interpretations. Instead of characterizing nationalism as a social pathology or ideology, like fascism or liberalism, Anderson treated nationalism as a part of the human experience, like kinship or religion.
The evidence compiled and presented by Anderson spans the globe and two hundred year of revolution, state-building, and decolonization. While citing numerous compelling examples from nationalist movements worldwide, his argument is highly conceptual. Anderson made a model explaining the development of nationalism from aspects of its European inception and then applied that model to the development of nationalism in Creole states, official nationalism in imperialist states, and anti-colonial nationalism in post-World War II states.
Anderson first defined the nation on page nine as an “imagined political community…both inherently limited and sovereign.” Anderson then traced the cultural roots of nationalism to the ‘unselfconscious coherence’ of medieval religious communities and the permeable political boundaries of preceding dynastic realms. Anderson showed how print-capitalism, book-publishing, and the development of vernacular languages provided the tools people needed to imagine they were part of a much larger community of similar people, even though they might never meet.
Anderson then followed the threads of nationalism as they spread with European expansion and changed with New-World reinterpretation. Anderson addressed the discrepancy between the nationalisms that spawned revolution and national identity movements in the Americas and their European models. The national independence movements of the Americas inspire sacrifice and devotion in revolutionaries, yet instead of rallying around linguistic distinctiveness or ancient cultural identities, Creole nationalists fought and died for the sovereignty of the nations they imagined, nations that had previously been only administrative units of Colonial States. Anderson embraced these differences in Creole nationalism and the European model as evidence that nationalism had become ‘modular’ and ‘capable of being transplanted.
Anderson then examined ways nationalism was self-consciously constructed once the nation-state had become a legitimate and prestigious political entity. Dominant groups and dynastic realms employed policies of “official nationalism” to legitimize their claims to national authority and identity. Anderson pointed to examples of “Magyarization”(102), “Japanification”(98) and “Russification”(86) to prove that nationalism was used by empire-nations to conceal a “discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm”. (110)
Anderson’s final examples of the modular, compelling and adaptable nature of nationalism are found in the formation of nation states after World War II. The postcolonial nation-building in Africa and Asia at this time drew on lessons from European, Creole and official nationalisms, while emphasizing youth and anti-imperialism. Both sincere and self-conscious, this “last wave” (113) of nationalism employed tools for national identity like the map and census to imagine the validity of their political community.
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities is a conceptual toll-kit that helps us understand the origin, function and power of nationalism. The smoothness with which he explains both the abstract and concrete, and the clarity of his arguments, soften the demands upon his audience. The most compelling image is that of Indonesian school children sitting in the classroom, looking at the map of the archipelago, and learning they were the blue-colored islands in the Indian Ocean. The blue-colored islands, Indonesia, that was who they were.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Jochen Hellbeck's Revolution on my Mind
Composition of [the Soviet New] Man
Jochen Hellbeck’s book, Revolution on My Mind, Writing a Diary under Stalin, is poignant testimony to the quest for self-transformation and authenticity undertaken by many citizens of the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. Hellbeck argues that the diaries he discovered in the People’s Archive in Moscow expose the sincere yearnings of their authors to internalize Marxist ideology and Stalinist policy in order to “align” (13) themselves with the heroic trajectory of the new Soviet state, and to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Hellbeck uses many personal diaries from this time period to support his thesis, while also providing a solid historical background of social, political, and cultural factors that shaped the lives and perspectives of the people who wrote them.
Hellbeck is not the first scholar to explore the personal experiences of citizens of an authoritarian regime. He does, however, “challenge the Western notion of totalitarian societies” (2), particularly Orwellian ideas of repressed and fearful subjects, hiding their inner-selves from the totalitarian state’s all-seeing-eye. Hellbeck finds the approach of Hannah Arendt more useful, as she encourages scholars to recognize the validity of the “self-understanding” and “self-interpretation” (11) reflected in the words of oppressed people, and warns against the tendency of historians to dismiss their sources’ understanding of their own experiences in favor of more sophisticated or informed interpretations. Hellbeck also uses Michel Foucault’s work on the implications of popular modernity and the desire of many individuals to “understand oneself as the subject over one’s own life”. (9) Aware that the perceptions of his sources were infused with feelings of personal agency and historical significance, Hellbeck gives a voice to many Soviet diarists without marginalizing their understanding of their lives. He also offers his own historically-informed interpretations that fill in the gaps between their reflections and their material reality of five-year- plans, widespread hunger, and lethal purges.
Revolution on my Mind is a convincing and successful analysis of the Soviet experience because of the richness of Hellbeck’s sources the skillfulness of his methodology. First he establishes the cultural importance of diary-keeping in pre-revolutionary Russia by describing the ubiquitous “Red Army notebooks” (##) used by soldiers during the civil war period, and the children’s diaries that were popular with the reading public soon thereafter. He then addresses the assumption that diaries weren’t kept during the Stalin era by acknowledging that diary-keeping was controversial and potentially dangerous. Through his inclusion of several diaries, however, he proves diary-keeping was not uncommon. Furthermore, the diaries he features are uncanny in their scope and depth, exemplifying Soviet archetypes, such as intelligentsia, kulak and proletariat, while also resonating with hope, longing and other common themes of the human experience, leading the reader to imagine the diaries Hellbeck chose for his analysis are the exceptional finds among many potential sources.
Hellbeck uses the entries of different diarists in the first three chapters of his book to illustrate the values and expectations of many Soviet citizens as they struggled to understand their relationship with their government and their own roles in an exceptional time of change. Wrestling with unwieldy concepts like social and personal purity, consciousness, and collectivity, many Soviet citizens felt obligated to record their experiences in order to leave behind a road map that would assist others in their self-transformation. Often the discrepancy between personal observation and ideologically mandated truth encouraged self-interrogation, and Hellbeck illustrates how this dynamic relationship resulted in the internalization of Soviet ideology until, in many cases, “ideology was a living tissue of meaning”. (28)
After thus establishing the validity and significance of his sources, Hellbeck focuses on four archetypal individuals and their diaries for the remainder of his book. Zinaida Denisevskaya, born thirty years before the revolution, expresses the rejection of the “problematic self” (73) and painful loneliness of a member of the intelligentsia. Denisvskaya’s experience is juxtaposed with that of Steven Podlubny, only three in 1917. His quest for transformation is no less painful, for even though he is still young after the revolution and believes himself adaptable to Soviet ideology, he is the son of a Kulak. His diary reflects that although he hid his origins from his peers, he was sincere in his pursuit of his “inborn essence”. (28) Leonid Potemkin, proletariat and self-conscious participant in his own construction, embraced opportunities to create himself “from nothing” (28). Lastly, Hellbeck delves into the personal experiences of the play-write, Alexander Afinignor, which illustrate the connections between diary-keeping, self-criticism, personal authenticity and Stalin’s purges.
Hellbeck’s book changed my understanding of life within a totalitarian state. Although aware of the potential for individuals to negotiate with state-sponsored hegemonic projects, I had not imagined the hope, sincerity and personal agency Hellbeck reveals. By believing his diarists while also deftly integrating their experiences into the realities of Stalin’s brutal era, Hellbeck’s insightful contribution creates for his readers a convincing and revealing window into the popular experience of Soviet citizens.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Jochen Hellbeck’s book, Revolution on My Mind, Writing a Diary under Stalin, is poignant testimony to the quest for self-transformation and authenticity undertaken by many citizens of the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. Hellbeck argues that the diaries he discovered in the People’s Archive in Moscow expose the sincere yearnings of their authors to internalize Marxist ideology and Stalinist policy in order to “align” (13) themselves with the heroic trajectory of the new Soviet state, and to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Hellbeck uses many personal diaries from this time period to support his thesis, while also providing a solid historical background of social, political, and cultural factors that shaped the lives and perspectives of the people who wrote them.
Hellbeck is not the first scholar to explore the personal experiences of citizens of an authoritarian regime. He does, however, “challenge the Western notion of totalitarian societies” (2), particularly Orwellian ideas of repressed and fearful subjects, hiding their inner-selves from the totalitarian state’s all-seeing-eye. Hellbeck finds the approach of Hannah Arendt more useful, as she encourages scholars to recognize the validity of the “self-understanding” and “self-interpretation” (11) reflected in the words of oppressed people, and warns against the tendency of historians to dismiss their sources’ understanding of their own experiences in favor of more sophisticated or informed interpretations. Hellbeck also uses Michel Foucault’s work on the implications of popular modernity and the desire of many individuals to “understand oneself as the subject over one’s own life”. (9) Aware that the perceptions of his sources were infused with feelings of personal agency and historical significance, Hellbeck gives a voice to many Soviet diarists without marginalizing their understanding of their lives. He also offers his own historically-informed interpretations that fill in the gaps between their reflections and their material reality of five-year- plans, widespread hunger, and lethal purges.
Revolution on my Mind is a convincing and successful analysis of the Soviet experience because of the richness of Hellbeck’s sources the skillfulness of his methodology. First he establishes the cultural importance of diary-keeping in pre-revolutionary Russia by describing the ubiquitous “Red Army notebooks” (##) used by soldiers during the civil war period, and the children’s diaries that were popular with the reading public soon thereafter. He then addresses the assumption that diaries weren’t kept during the Stalin era by acknowledging that diary-keeping was controversial and potentially dangerous. Through his inclusion of several diaries, however, he proves diary-keeping was not uncommon. Furthermore, the diaries he features are uncanny in their scope and depth, exemplifying Soviet archetypes, such as intelligentsia, kulak and proletariat, while also resonating with hope, longing and other common themes of the human experience, leading the reader to imagine the diaries Hellbeck chose for his analysis are the exceptional finds among many potential sources.
Hellbeck uses the entries of different diarists in the first three chapters of his book to illustrate the values and expectations of many Soviet citizens as they struggled to understand their relationship with their government and their own roles in an exceptional time of change. Wrestling with unwieldy concepts like social and personal purity, consciousness, and collectivity, many Soviet citizens felt obligated to record their experiences in order to leave behind a road map that would assist others in their self-transformation. Often the discrepancy between personal observation and ideologically mandated truth encouraged self-interrogation, and Hellbeck illustrates how this dynamic relationship resulted in the internalization of Soviet ideology until, in many cases, “ideology was a living tissue of meaning”. (28)
After thus establishing the validity and significance of his sources, Hellbeck focuses on four archetypal individuals and their diaries for the remainder of his book. Zinaida Denisevskaya, born thirty years before the revolution, expresses the rejection of the “problematic self” (73) and painful loneliness of a member of the intelligentsia. Denisvskaya’s experience is juxtaposed with that of Steven Podlubny, only three in 1917. His quest for transformation is no less painful, for even though he is still young after the revolution and believes himself adaptable to Soviet ideology, he is the son of a Kulak. His diary reflects that although he hid his origins from his peers, he was sincere in his pursuit of his “inborn essence”. (28) Leonid Potemkin, proletariat and self-conscious participant in his own construction, embraced opportunities to create himself “from nothing” (28). Lastly, Hellbeck delves into the personal experiences of the play-write, Alexander Afinignor, which illustrate the connections between diary-keeping, self-criticism, personal authenticity and Stalin’s purges.
Hellbeck’s book changed my understanding of life within a totalitarian state. Although aware of the potential for individuals to negotiate with state-sponsored hegemonic projects, I had not imagined the hope, sincerity and personal agency Hellbeck reveals. By believing his diarists while also deftly integrating their experiences into the realities of Stalin’s brutal era, Hellbeck’s insightful contribution creates for his readers a convincing and revealing window into the popular experience of Soviet citizens.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies vol 1
Blame Their Mothers
The first chapter of Klaus Theweleit’s book Male Fantasies vol 1, entitled Men and Women, is an examination of origins and manifestations of fascism. Theweleit posits that Freud’s concepts of psychoanalysis, such as the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, repression and the unconscious, cannot sufficiently describe the types of fascist men that were members of the Freikorps because their pursuit of the “bloody mass” originated in their prepersonal, symbiotic phase of infancy. Theweleit argues for this by profiling members of the Freikorps and then putting them on the couch for psychoanalysis that has been informed by post-Freudian theories.
Theweleit does not overtly situate himself within established historiography as he pursues the “fascist phenomena” (227), but instead uses the Freikorps as a case study and applies to them theories developed in the fields of philosophy, psychiatry, and child analysis. His own analysis is not theory-driven, but instead originates from his sources and is his response to documents that consistently featured “strangely ambivalent emotions” when members of the Freikorps mentioned women. Far more bold and ambitious than a historical account of blood-thirsty men of a certain era, Male Fantasies attempts to untangle the fears, desires, and relationships that “might belong at the center of fascism, as a producer of life-destroying reality.”227
Theweleit uses autobiographies of members of the Freikorps, novels written about their exploits, eyewitness accounts of their activities and the actions of the Freikorps themselves to establish common perceptions, motivations and fears amongst these exemplars of fascism. Theweleit focuses on their relationships with women and women’s bodies in his analysis, exploring their articulation of their marital relationships, their ideals of motherhood and purity and their descriptions of the bodies of the women they killed. He interprets the meaning of his sources and states that, for these men, “the idea of woman is coupled with violence” (50), “women are robbed of their sexuality and transformed into inanimate objects” (51), and “the men experienced communism as a direct assault on their genitals” (74). Theweleit quotes a Freikorps hero in a novel by Dwinger describing a woman’ death as “it wasn’t really so much a mouth as a bottomless throat, spurting blood like a fountain” (177) and telling his men to attack the rifle-women and “let our revulsion flow into a single river of destruction. A destruction that will be incomplete if it does not also trample their hearts and souls”. (180) The reader imagines the men that would “wade in blood” (205) and recognizes that the intentions and the actions of these men were hauntingly destructive. Theweleit shows his reader the face of the fascist.
Yet there is no comfort in Theweleit’s quantification of the manifestations of fascism because after he illustrates their commonalities he seeks their origin. At this point, Theweleit contrasts a Freudian explanation for the Friekorps with the theories and contributions of Deluze and Guattari, Michael Balint, Wilhelm Reich, and Melanie Klien, among others. Unfortunately, this last portion of the chapter is thick with both Marxist and Freudian jargon that almost obscures Theweleit’s “preliminary findings”. (204) While Freud’s description of the Oedipal triangle and the ensuing repression and anxiety is a simple model not “capable of apprehending the fascist phenomena” (127), the idea that fascism stems from “the fear of/desire for fusion, ideas of dismemberment, the dissolution of ego boundaries, the blurring of object relationships” (206) is daunting both in its complexity and its banality. If the “unconscious is a molecular force” (211) whose “mode of production” (216) could be annihilation as a result of a disturbance in one’s “separation-individuation of symbiosis” (207), then the fascist lives inside us all.
Theweleit profiles these men knowing that he unravels the fascist sensibility without offering a solution to its existence. Once we begin to understand that both the fear of dissolution and the failure to adhere to boundaries are rooted in an infant’s inability to distinguish itself from the living reality that threatens to envelope and extinguish it, we are left to wonder how we can prevent such disorders, and their underlying misogyny, from manifesting into a fascist state.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
The first chapter of Klaus Theweleit’s book Male Fantasies vol 1, entitled Men and Women, is an examination of origins and manifestations of fascism. Theweleit posits that Freud’s concepts of psychoanalysis, such as the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, repression and the unconscious, cannot sufficiently describe the types of fascist men that were members of the Freikorps because their pursuit of the “bloody mass” originated in their prepersonal, symbiotic phase of infancy. Theweleit argues for this by profiling members of the Freikorps and then putting them on the couch for psychoanalysis that has been informed by post-Freudian theories.
Theweleit does not overtly situate himself within established historiography as he pursues the “fascist phenomena” (227), but instead uses the Freikorps as a case study and applies to them theories developed in the fields of philosophy, psychiatry, and child analysis. His own analysis is not theory-driven, but instead originates from his sources and is his response to documents that consistently featured “strangely ambivalent emotions” when members of the Freikorps mentioned women. Far more bold and ambitious than a historical account of blood-thirsty men of a certain era, Male Fantasies attempts to untangle the fears, desires, and relationships that “might belong at the center of fascism, as a producer of life-destroying reality.”227
Theweleit uses autobiographies of members of the Freikorps, novels written about their exploits, eyewitness accounts of their activities and the actions of the Freikorps themselves to establish common perceptions, motivations and fears amongst these exemplars of fascism. Theweleit focuses on their relationships with women and women’s bodies in his analysis, exploring their articulation of their marital relationships, their ideals of motherhood and purity and their descriptions of the bodies of the women they killed. He interprets the meaning of his sources and states that, for these men, “the idea of woman is coupled with violence” (50), “women are robbed of their sexuality and transformed into inanimate objects” (51), and “the men experienced communism as a direct assault on their genitals” (74). Theweleit quotes a Freikorps hero in a novel by Dwinger describing a woman’ death as “it wasn’t really so much a mouth as a bottomless throat, spurting blood like a fountain” (177) and telling his men to attack the rifle-women and “let our revulsion flow into a single river of destruction. A destruction that will be incomplete if it does not also trample their hearts and souls”. (180) The reader imagines the men that would “wade in blood” (205) and recognizes that the intentions and the actions of these men were hauntingly destructive. Theweleit shows his reader the face of the fascist.
Yet there is no comfort in Theweleit’s quantification of the manifestations of fascism because after he illustrates their commonalities he seeks their origin. At this point, Theweleit contrasts a Freudian explanation for the Friekorps with the theories and contributions of Deluze and Guattari, Michael Balint, Wilhelm Reich, and Melanie Klien, among others. Unfortunately, this last portion of the chapter is thick with both Marxist and Freudian jargon that almost obscures Theweleit’s “preliminary findings”. (204) While Freud’s description of the Oedipal triangle and the ensuing repression and anxiety is a simple model not “capable of apprehending the fascist phenomena” (127), the idea that fascism stems from “the fear of/desire for fusion, ideas of dismemberment, the dissolution of ego boundaries, the blurring of object relationships” (206) is daunting both in its complexity and its banality. If the “unconscious is a molecular force” (211) whose “mode of production” (216) could be annihilation as a result of a disturbance in one’s “separation-individuation of symbiosis” (207), then the fascist lives inside us all.
Theweleit profiles these men knowing that he unravels the fascist sensibility without offering a solution to its existence. Once we begin to understand that both the fear of dissolution and the failure to adhere to boundaries are rooted in an infant’s inability to distinguish itself from the living reality that threatens to envelope and extinguish it, we are left to wonder how we can prevent such disorders, and their underlying misogyny, from manifesting into a fascist state.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Lynn Hunt's Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution
In her work Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt examined the transformation of political culture in France during the last decades of the eighteenth century. In Part I of her book, Hunt argued that the origin and legacy of the French Revolution are fundamentally political because the failed political culture of the ancien regime precipitated its fall, and the political culture developed by revolutionaries dynamically articulated the collective intentions and expectations of revolutionaries while also giving rise to a democratic republican tradition that remains the political standard of many nations to this day. Hunt argued for this thesis by illustrating how the idea of “politics” changed from an abstract concept often reserved for social elites to ponder, into a tangible, compelling force that infused the daily life of thousands with potency and significance. Hunt defined political culture as the “values, expectations and implicit rules that expressed and shaped the collective intent and actions” (10), and used this definition as a lens through which to examine the symbolism, ritual, and innovation of the revolutionaries in France and the impact that revolutionary tradition had on the larger world community.
Hunt’s analysis was an elaboration on, and in some cases a rebuttal of, previous interpretations of the origins and outcomes of the French Revolution. Marxist, Revisionist and Modernist scholars tended to ignore the political culture of the revolutionaries and focused instead on the social implications, be they class struggle, status anxiety, or the eventual equality of subjects; yet according to Hunt the revolution transformed politics, but largely left social and economic realities unchanged . Hunt did not disregard previous scholarship; instead she builds her argument upon the assumptions, fallacies, and brilliance of other scholars, making particular use of Mona Ozouf’s work on revolutionary festivals and Maurice Agulhon’s study of revolutionary seals and statues.
In order to convincingly portray the collective intent and expectations that motivated and united the revolutionaries, Hunt used the symbolic practices, rhetorical cohesion and political mobilization of the lower classes as evidence. Hunt recounted the proliferation of liberty trees, festivals, pamphlets, signs, republican catechisms, and tri-color cockades, revealing the vast numbers of such symbols. Once the scope of such popular imagery was established, Hunt concluded that these symbolic practices reflected and shaped the politicization of the French people. Hunt contextualized abstract concepts such as the “mythic present” and other revolutionary ideology within the Enlightenment ideals and conspiratorial threats that bound the revolutionaries together. She cited rhetoric found in speeches, plays, periodicals and instructional books. Hunt used the reorganization and renaming of temporal and special terms, the repetition of meaningful words such as nation, constitution, and patrie, and the usage of revolutionary talking points as evidence to prove the revolutionaries were intent on remaking society while disavowing the past. The very massive amount of words printed, published and spoken about politics during that time persuasively communicated the proliferation of rhetoric, and Hunt used that proliferation to demonstrate the common belief that words could have power and that powerful words could change mankind. The evidence of the politicization of the lower classes was found in the sheer volume of French people involved in elections, political clubs, festivals, marches and publications. Hunt tied this evidence of politicization to her thesis by stating that this level of fervent political involvement was entirely new and accompanied by the belief that politics was “an instrument for reshaping human nature” (49).
In her examination of the political culture of the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt used a rhetorical style that was at once practical and provocative. Her ability to tie abstract concepts to the details of daily life in Revolutionary France gave her narrative powerful credibility and her confident writing style was both convincing and compelling. While a testament to careful scholarship, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, carried with it no obvious underlying valuational, moral or political point but instead provided insightful analysis founded in meticulous research.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Hunt’s analysis was an elaboration on, and in some cases a rebuttal of, previous interpretations of the origins and outcomes of the French Revolution. Marxist, Revisionist and Modernist scholars tended to ignore the political culture of the revolutionaries and focused instead on the social implications, be they class struggle, status anxiety, or the eventual equality of subjects; yet according to Hunt the revolution transformed politics, but largely left social and economic realities unchanged . Hunt did not disregard previous scholarship; instead she builds her argument upon the assumptions, fallacies, and brilliance of other scholars, making particular use of Mona Ozouf’s work on revolutionary festivals and Maurice Agulhon’s study of revolutionary seals and statues.
In order to convincingly portray the collective intent and expectations that motivated and united the revolutionaries, Hunt used the symbolic practices, rhetorical cohesion and political mobilization of the lower classes as evidence. Hunt recounted the proliferation of liberty trees, festivals, pamphlets, signs, republican catechisms, and tri-color cockades, revealing the vast numbers of such symbols. Once the scope of such popular imagery was established, Hunt concluded that these symbolic practices reflected and shaped the politicization of the French people. Hunt contextualized abstract concepts such as the “mythic present” and other revolutionary ideology within the Enlightenment ideals and conspiratorial threats that bound the revolutionaries together. She cited rhetoric found in speeches, plays, periodicals and instructional books. Hunt used the reorganization and renaming of temporal and special terms, the repetition of meaningful words such as nation, constitution, and patrie, and the usage of revolutionary talking points as evidence to prove the revolutionaries were intent on remaking society while disavowing the past. The very massive amount of words printed, published and spoken about politics during that time persuasively communicated the proliferation of rhetoric, and Hunt used that proliferation to demonstrate the common belief that words could have power and that powerful words could change mankind. The evidence of the politicization of the lower classes was found in the sheer volume of French people involved in elections, political clubs, festivals, marches and publications. Hunt tied this evidence of politicization to her thesis by stating that this level of fervent political involvement was entirely new and accompanied by the belief that politics was “an instrument for reshaping human nature” (49).
In her examination of the political culture of the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt used a rhetorical style that was at once practical and provocative. Her ability to tie abstract concepts to the details of daily life in Revolutionary France gave her narrative powerful credibility and her confident writing style was both convincing and compelling. While a testament to careful scholarship, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, carried with it no obvious underlying valuational, moral or political point but instead provided insightful analysis founded in meticulous research.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Virgin, Mother, Whore: The Impossible Triangle of Modern Femininity
Virgin, Mother, Whore: The Impossible Triangle of Modern Femininity
By Ugly Sister
So in the last 15 years the relationship between femininity and sexuality (never straight-forward) has become increasingly problematic. While I was busy watching cartoons and playing with action figures with my kids, the role of women and girls within the narrative of twenty-first-century American identity became publicly sexualized in a way that makes me feel old.
I tend to think of girls in terms of daughters, and having missed most of the 90s (busy with Tom & Jerry – I love animated violence as much as my sons), I never knew Steven Tyler had made a video with his daughter, Liv. Somehow I’d never even heard the song, but I watched Crazy with my friends on Youtube the other day. Wow! He had his 16-year-old daughter work the pole to the lame music of his old, pervy-looking friends? On MTV? Who thought this was a good idea?
More recently, I read a story in the Huffington Post on Britney Spears. No longer hovering on the brink of a complete break-down, she is getting in shape and on the come-back. Britney’s father guides the now slimmer and more photogenic popstar through her apparent recovery. But his description of her, and all of us daughters, struck me as sad and odd. In commenting on the new-found closeness with Britney, he said that “like all daughters, she is very manipulative and cunning.” Really? You mean she’s not just all fucked up because you and the rest of her family promoted an unreal and exaggeratedly sexualized image of her body instead of insisting she develop her consciousness beyond childlike narcissism? Anyway, my goal here is not to join the chorus of Britney analysts, since Matt Stone and Trey Parker have said all perfectly and completely, but instead to explore where we women fit in the here and now, and how this generation of daughters can understand their identities.
What do we expect all the daughters to become? Of course fathers who feature their daughters pole-dancing in their music videos, or work from the assumption that all girls (however damaged and/or ill-prepared) cunningly deceive, are merely convenient caricatures of a popular culture that devours daughters.
But what really are the options? I propose that our girls face an impossible and irreconcilable triangle of choices: virgin, mother, and whore. Simultaneous and contradictory constructions of femininity bombard girls and women with, unachievable and paradoxical standards of, beauty, sexuality, success, validation and power. When you boil it all down (and omit crone, sorry Grandma) we have three overlapping, yet ill-fitting options for our daughters: virgin mother, and whore.
The paradox is immediately clear. A woman cannot simultaneously be a virgin, a mother and a whore. But the idea that a successful woman must be at least two out of the three is pervasive in modern society. Ubiquitous advertising images reflect the widespread cultural emphasis on physical perfection and sexiness in the way we view and judge our girls and ourselves. At the same time, purity and virginity are celebrated in churches, schoolrooms, and in charity programs all over the country. This juxtaposition of expectations and instincts – purity and sexiness – has been explored in depth in literature and movies, but usually from the lens of masculine lust.
In a format that lays Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, Bratz dolls, S & M Barbie and pole-dancing exercise videos alongside of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Burkas, Hijabs, and the lucrative, if doomed Abstinence-Only sex-ed and international AIDS programs, the relationship between purity and sexiness seems hopelessly problematic. Daughters navigate a treacherous path. They are expected to be virgins, but suspected (and encouraged?) to be cunning, manipulative, and ultimately, whorish, if not by a stage-father, than by a society awash in celebratory images of sexy daughters.
The virgin-whore construction is only one angle of the impossible triangle. The other dual relationships both involve women’s role as a mother. I should have saved “ubiquitous” for mothers because everyone has/had one to blame. Mothers prop up the republic, birth and raise the next generation in the midst of hardship, and serve as the conscious of the people in times of extreme repression.
Many little girls (and presumably little virgins and future whores) expect to grow up and become mothers. A steady percentage of women in the US remain childless, but those who do usually have a well-worn explanation ready for conversations. It’s the social norm. Maternal iconography attests to the timeless narrative of the cosmic womb and the depth of meaning attached to feminine fertility.
How do mothers fit with virgins and whores? Why force motherhood into this uncomfortable triangle with obviously contradictory feminine characteristics like chastity and promiscuity?
Well, people do like the mothers of their saviors and kings to be virgins. Mary and Isis were both virgins, as were the mothers of Buddha, Mithras, Montezuma, the pueblo god. This seems like a Jungian example of collective human mythology to me, unless all the women were hermaphrodites who had both male and female reproductive organs. Either way, the virgin-mother is a popular construction that reflects ways we find meaning in our lives. Mothers are great, but the really important ones should be sexually pure. Kings and Messiahs come from unsullied vaginas.
Of course in real life, virgins can’t have babies unless they have sex first. And this is where the paradox again becomes messy. If our daughters are forced to live on the narrow border between virgin and whore that is presented to them in our society, than wouldn’t motherhood (or some version of it) be a potential outcome? Sex is often reproductive, if accidentally so, and for whatever reason reproduction takes a toll on women. Having babies, using birth control, and getting abortions (while hilarious when Sarah Silverman does it) have a spectrum of personal physical, emotional and economic consequences. From the pill to planned parenthood, reproductive choices are part of almost every woman’s life. Few forms of birth control are ideal, as they are invasive, alter hormone levels, or put too great a burden on the female partner.
Abortion divides our society over false positions, pitting imaginary proponents of the “do you want fries with that that abortion”, position against the judgmental pro-lifers who, although riddled with their own metastasizing sin, throw the first stones. Abortion, and the surrounding debates, also reveals the confusion over whom and what a mother should be in modern times. Are we free to be what we want to be? Do we have agency over our bodies and ourselves? Or are we responsible for the safety and character of the next generation? Both? What would we do with the million or so extra babies that would be born if they weren’t aborted anyway? Are we really that into them? And who is lining up to ensure women that motherhood is a preferable option?
For ordinary women, those not giving birth to kings and gods, motherhood has always been a risky endeavor. Even today, motherhood puts one at a disadvantage. Refugee camps teem with women and their children, not men and their families. Social justice and reproductive rights are limited and denied throughout the world, and as a result women become less economically secure, and mothers become increasingly vulnerable. Here in the US, mothers have WIC, Head Start, foodstamps, public schools and school lunches. In many western European countries, motherhood is treated like a public good, and rewarded monetarily. Mothers in third-world countries often have no safety-nets, and even those who aren’t feeding their starving children dirt-cakes in Haiti, or fleeing Soviet invasion in Georgia, live with material uncertainty.
A mother’s right to material security is often associated with her virtue. A mother-whore shames the family, the community, the nation. The patriarchy is threatened by nothing if not uncertainty over who may have fertilized the eggs. The welfare queen condemned in Regan’s speech, the crack whore on COPS with nine children, the baby mama humiliated on Jerry Springer, and the adulteress stoned to death by the righteous - they all got what they had coming. That far corner of the triangle makes neighbors gossip, children cringe, men unite. The mother-whore has no political, moral, economic or social capital. Within the patriarchal structure that we all accept to one degree or another, women who are judged to be mother-whores can be laid low, neglected, and forced into poverty and cycles of violence.
So what will become of a generation of virgin-whores who grow up to be mothers? Has femininity been so redefined in the twenty-first century that seventeen and eighteen-year-olds can Go Wild every spring break, little girls can get stripper dolls for Christmas, and porn can be dirty and commonplace?
Maybe humans are in the midst of a radical redefinition of gender norms and expectations. Maybe Friends With Benefits arrangements don’t lead to sadness or destructive behavior. Maybe when our daughters return from their service in Iraq and Afghanistan they will have only stories of equality, security and empowerment. Maybe motherhood is on the brink of legitimacy as a civic contribution. Perhaps the world our daughters must engage will encourage them to choose from a variety of feminine models – Sarah Silverman’s singing vagina, my beautiful lesbian cousins, adventurers, vagabonds or minstrels. In this ideal paradigm, I, as a secular liberal, would gladly accept adult choices different from my own, like the Texas fundamentalist Mormon women (looking like bulk-bin dinner mints) gathered around their patriarchs.
But I fear the opposite. I fear that we have forced our daughters into a double (or even triple) bind, no-win situation. Allowed to enjoy neither chastity nor free love, inured to a culture that celebrates their degradation, and chasing the unachievable, our daughters may end up looking like anonymous Spears girls – not cunning and manipulative (if only!) but dumpy and disappointed virgin-mother-whores who society has permission to screw, humiliate, and abandon. In danger of being tricked into bartering their innocence and sexuality for the impossible modern female ideal, our daughters must be inoculated against destructive behavior and harmful expectations en masses. Sort of like Gardasil, but instead requiring a complete cultural revolution, a robust examination of power and gender relationships, and global commitment to social justice and a moral, sustainable economy. Until then, I guess I would keep them ugly – thick glasses, baggy clothes, no braces or acne medicine (or, for god’s sake, nose and/or boob jobs – what the FUCK were you thinking mothers?). I would also go for girls-only private schools. But then luckily, I only have sons.
© Feather Crawford Freed
All Rights Reserved
By Ugly Sister
So in the last 15 years the relationship between femininity and sexuality (never straight-forward) has become increasingly problematic. While I was busy watching cartoons and playing with action figures with my kids, the role of women and girls within the narrative of twenty-first-century American identity became publicly sexualized in a way that makes me feel old.
I tend to think of girls in terms of daughters, and having missed most of the 90s (busy with Tom & Jerry – I love animated violence as much as my sons), I never knew Steven Tyler had made a video with his daughter, Liv. Somehow I’d never even heard the song, but I watched Crazy with my friends on Youtube the other day. Wow! He had his 16-year-old daughter work the pole to the lame music of his old, pervy-looking friends? On MTV? Who thought this was a good idea?
More recently, I read a story in the Huffington Post on Britney Spears. No longer hovering on the brink of a complete break-down, she is getting in shape and on the come-back. Britney’s father guides the now slimmer and more photogenic popstar through her apparent recovery. But his description of her, and all of us daughters, struck me as sad and odd. In commenting on the new-found closeness with Britney, he said that “like all daughters, she is very manipulative and cunning.” Really? You mean she’s not just all fucked up because you and the rest of her family promoted an unreal and exaggeratedly sexualized image of her body instead of insisting she develop her consciousness beyond childlike narcissism? Anyway, my goal here is not to join the chorus of Britney analysts, since Matt Stone and Trey Parker have said all perfectly and completely, but instead to explore where we women fit in the here and now, and how this generation of daughters can understand their identities.
What do we expect all the daughters to become? Of course fathers who feature their daughters pole-dancing in their music videos, or work from the assumption that all girls (however damaged and/or ill-prepared) cunningly deceive, are merely convenient caricatures of a popular culture that devours daughters.
But what really are the options? I propose that our girls face an impossible and irreconcilable triangle of choices: virgin, mother, and whore. Simultaneous and contradictory constructions of femininity bombard girls and women with, unachievable and paradoxical standards of, beauty, sexuality, success, validation and power. When you boil it all down (and omit crone, sorry Grandma) we have three overlapping, yet ill-fitting options for our daughters: virgin mother, and whore.
The paradox is immediately clear. A woman cannot simultaneously be a virgin, a mother and a whore. But the idea that a successful woman must be at least two out of the three is pervasive in modern society. Ubiquitous advertising images reflect the widespread cultural emphasis on physical perfection and sexiness in the way we view and judge our girls and ourselves. At the same time, purity and virginity are celebrated in churches, schoolrooms, and in charity programs all over the country. This juxtaposition of expectations and instincts – purity and sexiness – has been explored in depth in literature and movies, but usually from the lens of masculine lust.
In a format that lays Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, Bratz dolls, S & M Barbie and pole-dancing exercise videos alongside of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Burkas, Hijabs, and the lucrative, if doomed Abstinence-Only sex-ed and international AIDS programs, the relationship between purity and sexiness seems hopelessly problematic. Daughters navigate a treacherous path. They are expected to be virgins, but suspected (and encouraged?) to be cunning, manipulative, and ultimately, whorish, if not by a stage-father, than by a society awash in celebratory images of sexy daughters.
The virgin-whore construction is only one angle of the impossible triangle. The other dual relationships both involve women’s role as a mother. I should have saved “ubiquitous” for mothers because everyone has/had one to blame. Mothers prop up the republic, birth and raise the next generation in the midst of hardship, and serve as the conscious of the people in times of extreme repression.
Many little girls (and presumably little virgins and future whores) expect to grow up and become mothers. A steady percentage of women in the US remain childless, but those who do usually have a well-worn explanation ready for conversations. It’s the social norm. Maternal iconography attests to the timeless narrative of the cosmic womb and the depth of meaning attached to feminine fertility.
How do mothers fit with virgins and whores? Why force motherhood into this uncomfortable triangle with obviously contradictory feminine characteristics like chastity and promiscuity?
Well, people do like the mothers of their saviors and kings to be virgins. Mary and Isis were both virgins, as were the mothers of Buddha, Mithras, Montezuma, the pueblo god. This seems like a Jungian example of collective human mythology to me, unless all the women were hermaphrodites who had both male and female reproductive organs. Either way, the virgin-mother is a popular construction that reflects ways we find meaning in our lives. Mothers are great, but the really important ones should be sexually pure. Kings and Messiahs come from unsullied vaginas.
Of course in real life, virgins can’t have babies unless they have sex first. And this is where the paradox again becomes messy. If our daughters are forced to live on the narrow border between virgin and whore that is presented to them in our society, than wouldn’t motherhood (or some version of it) be a potential outcome? Sex is often reproductive, if accidentally so, and for whatever reason reproduction takes a toll on women. Having babies, using birth control, and getting abortions (while hilarious when Sarah Silverman does it) have a spectrum of personal physical, emotional and economic consequences. From the pill to planned parenthood, reproductive choices are part of almost every woman’s life. Few forms of birth control are ideal, as they are invasive, alter hormone levels, or put too great a burden on the female partner.
Abortion divides our society over false positions, pitting imaginary proponents of the “do you want fries with that that abortion”, position against the judgmental pro-lifers who, although riddled with their own metastasizing sin, throw the first stones. Abortion, and the surrounding debates, also reveals the confusion over whom and what a mother should be in modern times. Are we free to be what we want to be? Do we have agency over our bodies and ourselves? Or are we responsible for the safety and character of the next generation? Both? What would we do with the million or so extra babies that would be born if they weren’t aborted anyway? Are we really that into them? And who is lining up to ensure women that motherhood is a preferable option?
For ordinary women, those not giving birth to kings and gods, motherhood has always been a risky endeavor. Even today, motherhood puts one at a disadvantage. Refugee camps teem with women and their children, not men and their families. Social justice and reproductive rights are limited and denied throughout the world, and as a result women become less economically secure, and mothers become increasingly vulnerable. Here in the US, mothers have WIC, Head Start, foodstamps, public schools and school lunches. In many western European countries, motherhood is treated like a public good, and rewarded monetarily. Mothers in third-world countries often have no safety-nets, and even those who aren’t feeding their starving children dirt-cakes in Haiti, or fleeing Soviet invasion in Georgia, live with material uncertainty.
A mother’s right to material security is often associated with her virtue. A mother-whore shames the family, the community, the nation. The patriarchy is threatened by nothing if not uncertainty over who may have fertilized the eggs. The welfare queen condemned in Regan’s speech, the crack whore on COPS with nine children, the baby mama humiliated on Jerry Springer, and the adulteress stoned to death by the righteous - they all got what they had coming. That far corner of the triangle makes neighbors gossip, children cringe, men unite. The mother-whore has no political, moral, economic or social capital. Within the patriarchal structure that we all accept to one degree or another, women who are judged to be mother-whores can be laid low, neglected, and forced into poverty and cycles of violence.
So what will become of a generation of virgin-whores who grow up to be mothers? Has femininity been so redefined in the twenty-first century that seventeen and eighteen-year-olds can Go Wild every spring break, little girls can get stripper dolls for Christmas, and porn can be dirty and commonplace?
Maybe humans are in the midst of a radical redefinition of gender norms and expectations. Maybe Friends With Benefits arrangements don’t lead to sadness or destructive behavior. Maybe when our daughters return from their service in Iraq and Afghanistan they will have only stories of equality, security and empowerment. Maybe motherhood is on the brink of legitimacy as a civic contribution. Perhaps the world our daughters must engage will encourage them to choose from a variety of feminine models – Sarah Silverman’s singing vagina, my beautiful lesbian cousins, adventurers, vagabonds or minstrels. In this ideal paradigm, I, as a secular liberal, would gladly accept adult choices different from my own, like the Texas fundamentalist Mormon women (looking like bulk-bin dinner mints) gathered around their patriarchs.
But I fear the opposite. I fear that we have forced our daughters into a double (or even triple) bind, no-win situation. Allowed to enjoy neither chastity nor free love, inured to a culture that celebrates their degradation, and chasing the unachievable, our daughters may end up looking like anonymous Spears girls – not cunning and manipulative (if only!) but dumpy and disappointed virgin-mother-whores who society has permission to screw, humiliate, and abandon. In danger of being tricked into bartering their innocence and sexuality for the impossible modern female ideal, our daughters must be inoculated against destructive behavior and harmful expectations en masses. Sort of like Gardasil, but instead requiring a complete cultural revolution, a robust examination of power and gender relationships, and global commitment to social justice and a moral, sustainable economy. Until then, I guess I would keep them ugly – thick glasses, baggy clothes, no braces or acne medicine (or, for god’s sake, nose and/or boob jobs – what the FUCK were you thinking mothers?). I would also go for girls-only private schools. But then luckily, I only have sons.
© Feather Crawford Freed
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