MEDIEVAL SUBJECTIVITY JIM EARL: The discussion of medieval subjectivity and faculty psychology is about to begin, and I'd like to lower expectations a bit after our enthusiastic idealizing of Interscripta in June. I'm not an expert on subjectivity; I just find it interesting, and want to learn more about it. This will not be like an electronic NEH summer seminar, where I am the teacher! Also, if you're like me you have many other things to be doing this month, and this discussion can't take more than a small portion of your time. Several people have written to ask me what I mean by subjectivity. Sometimes the word is used psychologically, sometimes philosophically, sometimes ideologically. I was drawn to the topic by Lee Patterson's _Chaucer and the Subject of History_, a big book on the subject that conspicuously ignores psychology. By subjectivity Patterson means an ideology of the autonomous self, the belief that individuals are "defined not by social relations, but by an inner sense of self-presence, a sense of their own subjectivity." How is the sense of self expressed in the Middle Ages? With my background, I tend to look for answers in psychology, which for medieval thinkers is a branch of philosophy and theology. My background, by the way, is as literary critic, Anglo-Saxonist, with side-interests in patristics and psychoanalysis--if you can imagine that. I teach English at the University of Oregon, and my new beard is surprisingly gray. (Introductions might be nice in this faceless forum.) I look forward to discussing the subject. Can we start by exhanging definitions and approaches, and also useful bibliography? The format will be like before, with Deborah receiving our notes and posting them every day, or after a few have collected. This way I side-step the work, and cannot dominate the conversation. Thanks to Deborah for agreeing to this. **** JEFFREY COHEN: As Jim has pointed out, before we launch into a discussion of medieval subjectivity, we need to define our terms - and it seems to me that the search for a workable definition of "subjectivity" might prove the most difficult part of this exchange. "Individuality" and "subjectivity," like "gender" or "culture," are terms in constant flux, negotiating or moving between definitions and limits; this movement occurs in that space where the power of the social matrix ('culture") encounters the potentially resistant potency of one of its constituent points (the "individual"). The question arises whether the terms "individual" and "subjectivity" can be conflated. An individual is always a subject, "that which is thrown under" (or, as Althusser would have it, "interpellated into") culture, which in turn delineates the terms of "subjectivity," sometimes unsuccessfully. The modern word "individual" was unavailable in the Middle Ages (1), a heterogenous expanse of history with a tendency (but only a tendency) to valorize tight subordination to socioreligious hierarchy rather than to mythologize political or economic autonomy (as the twentieth century has done), but acts of rebellion against these constrictions were as frequent then as they are now.(2) While an eternal human ontology is unlikely to exist, and although terms like "human nature" are inseparable from the cultural moment which embeds them, we are nonetheless tied to history by frustratingly intertwined cords of similarity and radical difference. We may never untie the knots that bind us to history, or "subjectivity" to the culture that enables it, but we can loosen them a little, and at least begin to understand something about origins - and excavating a medieval notion of subjectivity is about nothing if not origins. NOTES (1)As Peter Stallybrass has pointed out, medieval Latin had no term for "individual"; see "Shakespeare, the Individual, and the Text," _Cultural Studies_, ed.Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New York:1992), pp.593-612. "The individual" might be a new term, but "subjectivity" in one form or another is at least as old as written history; subjectivity must be the result of the difficult negotiation between what has traditionally been called the unconscious and the sociocultural, which occupies itself with circumscribing the realm in which subjectivity can be known, and know itself. (2)Foucault has famously argued that seemingly subversive acts (such as "perversions") are over time contained by and within the "society of the panopticon", where "polymorphous conducts [are] actually extracted from people's bodies and from their pleasures...[to be] drawn out, revealed, isolated, intensified, incorporated, by multifarious power devices" (_The History of Sexuality_, vol.1, tr. Robert Hurley [NY:1978, 1990], pp.47-8) **** JIM EARL: Well, after an unexpected delay, at last we seem to be on-line with this topic. Let's hope for the best, technologically. I was going to start by elaborating somewhat on my preliminary; but Jeffrey Cohen has already carried the problem beyond the introductory terms I wanted to start with. Since it will take me a while to digest his note, however, I'll post mine anyway. I won't offer definitions of the individual and the subject yet, just a few thoughts on the individual. Burckhardt claimed that the Renaissance invented individualism. Most medievalists now push the date back at least to the twelfth century. Walter Ullmann, _the Individual and Society in the Middle Ages_ (1966). Colin Morris, _The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200_ (1972). Robert Hanning, _The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance_ (1977). Carolyn Bynum, "Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual," in _Jesus as Mother_ (1982). _Reconstructing Individualism_, ed. T. Heller et al (1986). (Thanks to Mary Wack for this and other bibliography.) In Abelard, for example, we find not only a sharply individualized character, voice, and self-consciousness, but also the beginnings of a philosophical analysis of the problem of individuals and universals. I have little difficulty seeing Chaucer as the inheritor of a momentous nominalist shift, and little difficulty ascribing subjectivity--however we are to define it--to Chaucer and his literary characters. But the early Middle Ages is another matter. Patterson, in his Chaucer book, begs to differ. He claims that subjectivity was a fundamental issue throughout the Middle Ages. The dialectic between an inward subjectivity and an external world that alienates it from both itself and its divine source provides the fundamental economy of the medieval idea of selfhood. . . . We see it at work in the confessional Augustinianism in force throughout the period and especially remarkable in Petrarch's _Secretum_. (8-9) I can't claim to understand what Patterson is talking about here. My impression is that in the early Middle Ages the individual was defined and experienced primarily in terms of social relations, and not as an autonomous ego. Individuals in isolation (as in the Old English elegies) exist, but are voices of despair, having been stripped of their authenticating group identities. The test case is clearly Augustine himself, since it's hard to deny the author of the _Confessions_ a subjectivity very like our own. When Augustine seeks his "I" in the _Confessions_, below layers of sensory experience and historical accident he finds a soul trapped in his body, bound to it by chains of fleshly habit but theoretically free and historically undetermined. This soul, however, is not individualized and unique; like every other soul it is an extension of God's pure rationality. For Augustine, individuality is an accident, and the essential subject of the human being is Reason itself. He may have been an individual, but he was not an individualist. It is not just group identity, then, that delimits the subjectivity of the early Middle Ages; it's also this theoretical conviction in Augustinian Christianity that the deeper we search in ourselves the more universal is the self we discover. These two factors were enough to inhibit the expression of the sort of subjectivity we associate with the later Middle Ages, Renaissance humanism, and modern consciousness. **** DAN LUSTHAUS: It might be useful to keep in mind that Medieval philosophy opposed "subjective" to "formal." The former term actually corresponds rather closely with our modern term "objective" (the "subject" under consideration), while "formal" meant ideas in the mind (from the Greek eidos which becomes "form" as well as "ideas") corresponding more or less with our modern term "subjective". Such usage continues at least through Descartes and Spinoza. So, to some extent, the sort of question being addressed here should examine notions of the "formal," and not become distracted by the word "subjective." **** AMELIA E. VAN VLECK: Following Jim Earl's invitation to simpler contributions (mere bibliography, definitions): Sarah Kay, _Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry._ Cambridge Studies in French. CUP, 1990. She says, "By 'subjectivity', I mean above all the elaboration of a first- person (subject) position in the rhetoric of courtly poetry." Although she focuses on Occitan lyric, she points us to a more general work: Michel Zink, _La Subjectivite litteraire au moyen age_. Paris, 1985. Kay: "...Zink observes that in early twelfth-century writers (such as Wace), subjectivity is dependent on antecedent texts and prior 'truth'; the subject is _subject to_ preceding values with which it identifies, and is thus generalized. In the thirteenth century, however, the subject situates itself with respect to the contingent, and to the here and now; it thereby becomes far more particularized." (p.3) I look forward to Interscripta's development of this topic. Like Kay, I work with troubadour poetry; her excellent treatment of the topic still leaves me with questions... Since the "first-person (subject) position" is tied to the pronoun expressing it (I, _ieu_), then strange pronoun uses point to strange uses of the "subject." I've been looking in medieval grammar books (like the _Donatz Proensals_) to see how they view the link between "pronoun" and "human being." Pronouns and "subject positions" are oddly interchangeable in this poetry: In performing a song, "you" sing under the alias "I"... Patrick Diehl (_The Medieval European Religious Lyric,_ (67-72) shows how "In many medieval religious poems, singular and plural first-person pronominal forms seem to be virtually interchangeable." The _Donatz Proensals_ treats pronouns if they were all demonstrative, deictic -- which "points to" (so to speak) a connection between the pronoun and the body... **** JEFFREY COHEN: Dan raises an important point: in the course of this discussion, we must decide the difference between medieval and (post)modern notions of subjectivity - as I indicated in my previous post, this difference is likely to be quite radical. Critics working in the field of identity politics are likely to use a formulation of subjectivity that might be graphed something like this: C <---> S --> O where C is a given cultural moment that attempts to determine the limits of what "subjectivity" can encompass; S is that subjectivity (which arises when the power of C meets what has traditionally been called "the unconscious" - something resistant and potentially uncontrollable within each of the culture's members); and O is the "object" - the person, event, or thing "in the real world" that can only be seen through the lens of S. (O - the thing itself - is therefore unknowable as an absolute truth; C, also, can only be reconstructed through S [hence the double arrow]). This is a model with all kinds of built-in uncertainties that can seem infuriating, but must be taken as cautionary - knowledge has its limits. "Subjectivity," then, has a double meaning: as "the individual," it takes O (the object of inquiry or interpretation) and "throws it under" (I'm playing with the word's etymology) its system of knowledge/knowing, just as subjectivity itself (that is, being and self-awareness) is the state of being thrown under - of being part of a given culture at a given moment, and being limited by what that culture "allows." The degree of this cultural limitation obviously varies (although constructivist theorists of identity argue that it is absolute). (1) To be a subject is also to be an object; the constructivists say that it is ONLY to be an object. So, we can agree (I think) that subjectivity is a messy subject (pun intended) - all the more reason to study it. What we need next, I think, is specific information on what constitutes the individual in the Middle Ages, the role of the individual (or the "I") in interpretation; the connection between the soul and individuality, and the implications of an identity system in which the body plays litle role; the relationship between gender and subjectivity (does the soul allow the transcending of gender restrictions?). Perhaps Dan can also supply us with some quotations from medieval philosophers aboutthe subject? NOTE (1)The literature on the constructivism debate is extensive. A good starting point is the work of David Halperin, esp. _One Hundred Years of Homosexuality_ (NY: 1990) and _Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World_ (ed. Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin, Princeton: 1990). For a rebuttal, see Nancy F. Partner, "No Sex, No Gender," Speculum 68 (1993). Writing out this footnote has been a forceful reminder how entangled in sexuality modern notions of identity and subjectivity are, whereas the Middle Ages tended to imagine that identity transcended the corporal, esp. sexuality. **** DAN LUSTHAUS: Jeffrey Cohen asks: "Perhaps Dan can also supply us with some quotations from medieval philosophers about the subject?" The medieval ideas, of course, go back to Aristotle, so there is too much literature to try to pack into a e-mail message. I suggested that the medieval notions on what we would call subjectivity are most explicitly addressed in their notions of "form" and "formal," since these are the "ideas" that individuals experience. Most postmodern strategies prefer to ferret out implicit previously unnoticed marginalia (which, once discovered, meander through the center of the discourse), rather than concentrate on explicit statements. But we should probably get the basic medieval categories straight before loosing our postmodern hermeneutic toys on them. One place to pursue a comparison between the Aristotelean/Medieval "formal" categories and [early] modern notions (specifically Spinoza - who probably sounds medieval to most postmodernists - Deleuze being the major exception) is Harry Wolfson's _The Philosophy of Spinoza_ (NY: Schocken Books, 1969), volume II. Wolfson compares Spinoza's formulations with those of his predecessors, and his Latin vocabulary is drawn (via Descartes) directly from them. Hence the "margins" between the Medieval categories and more modern concerns is discernible throughout. Issues and notions of "the individual" and "body and mind in man" (chapter XIII.III), cognition, imagination, memory, consciousness and reason (XIV.III - which includes an excellent discussion on "consciousness in Aristotle and the Medieval authors") are all discussed and fleshed out. The various types (hierarchy) of forms (forma corporeitatis, forma humana, forma ideae, forma sensibilis, etc.) are discussed in various places (e.g., Volume II, pp. 59ff). Also before we really start to believe that those bawdy medievals didn't take their bodies seriously, Aquinas writes (De Ente et De Essentia, Parag. 14-16): 14. In composed substances there are form and matter, for example, in man soul and body. 15. But we cannot say that either one of them alone may be said to the essence. That matter alone is not the essence of a real thing is clear, since through its essence a real thing is knowable and assigned to a species or to a genus. But matter alone is neither a principle of knowledge, nor is it that by which something is assigned to a genus or to a species; rather a thing is so assigned by reason of its being something actual. 16. Neither can the form alone of a composed substance be said to be its essence, although some try to assert this. For it is evident from what has been said that essence is what is signified by the definition of a real thing. And the definition of natural substances contains not only form, but matter as well; otherwise natural definitions and mathematical ones would not differ. (tr. by Joseph Bobik, _Aquinas on Being and Essence_, University of Notre Dame Press, 1965, p. 59. Bobik's commentary on pp. 59-69 are also useful) Even the old theologian was against reducing us to numbers. **** JIM EARL: I wonder if Jeffrey, Dan and Amelia--and others too--might not at some point introduce themselves. Dan's point about the apparent reversal in the meaning of the term subjectivity reveals the confusion that prompted me to suggest this topic. In ordinary language, "subjectivity" is defined by its opposite, "objectivity." But critical theory uses the term in a variety of senses pretty remote from that. If Dan is right (have I got this right?), postmodern theory is actually reviving an old meaning of the term, preserved in its etymology. Amelia refers to Zink, who is paraphrased as saying that in the early Middle Ages "the subject is _subject to_ preceding values with which it is identified." [See also Michel Zink, "The Allegorical Poem as Interior Memoir," _Yale French Studies_ 70 (1986), 100-26.] Zink's formulation, or Althusser's "thrown under," seems to fit Dan's point that "subjective" once meant what we now mean by "objective" (as "idealism" once meant what we mean by "realism," and vice versa). As Jeffery says, "to be a subject is also to be an object"--perhaps even ONLY an object. I too would like to see an illustration of Dan's point from medieval philosophers; but for now I'm more concerned about how we use the term today. I often get introduced to these questions through Chaucer criticism. Patterson's book on the subject appeared right after Marshall Leicester's _The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales_ (California, 1990). Leicester's explanation (p. 14) is pretty clear: In modern theory the subject is not conceived as a substantial thing, like a rock, but as a position in a larger structrue, a site through which various forces pass. . . . The subject as construed by these disciplines is the continually shifting vector product of all the forces in play at the subject site, including unconscious desire, concealed or mystified material and social power, the structures of language, whose relation to consciousness is perhaps less clear, and of course consciousness itself. The essentialist or so-called humanist view of the self as a substance, something permanent and fundamentally unchanging, is from this point of view an illusion. What may seem to consciousness (one's own or another's) a stable and continuous given is in fact a construction and an interpretation, whose character is in large part dependent on who or what is doing the constructing and interpreting. Some of us are interested in medieval subjectivity as the phenomenology of consciousness in the Middle Ages as revealed in its literary, religious and philosophical texts, and in its art; some are more interested in the vector field of political and social forces that constitute the subject within certain limits. Can we have it both ways, do you think, without pointless quarreling? **** JEFFREY COHEN: James has sugested that inroductions would be appropriate. I agree. I am currently a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. The Committee on Degrees in History and Literature is a strange but fascinating place: we're not a department (we don't grant graduate degrees), but an undergraduate concentration that is wholly interdisciplinary. The students I teach are required to fill their academic plates with servings from medieval history, philosophy, and literature; many of them also become involved in critical theory and cultural studies. It's a demanding place to work; I often fear that my students know more than I do, they're so capable and eager. My background is mainly in medieval England, from the good old Anglo- Saxon days to late romance. My research involves a group of imbricated issues: heroic identity, gender identity, and monsters. The project I'm working on right now is a book entitled _Reading Monsters / Reading Culture_, a collection of essays by a diverse group of critics which attempts to understand various cultural moments through the monsters they spawn. The essays cover topics as diverse as Grendel's mother, Old Norse revenants, Gargantua, and Jurassic Park. I offer this short biography so that the other readers/contributors will feel like they know me, as I feel I know James (just a bit) through his initial posting and description - the detail about his beard stands out. Now he no longer seems disembodied, a voice without a physicality -or (dare I say it) subjectivity. Of course, this impression is to a large degree an illusion: I don't really know James, and whoever is reading these words won't really know me. I've given a short description of my academic life, from which a reader will try to reconstruct something about the kind of person I am, to avoid the "disembodied" effect that is so troubling (why?). But I've offered only the tiniest fragment of who I am, nothing personal (Am I married? Do I beat my dog? How old am I? Do I belong to the NRA? - providing the answers to any of these questions could potentially alter the way in which my words are received - alter, that is, the reception/reconstruction of my subjectivity by others whose subjectivity I do not know). I could also be lying about what I've told you; I might also be a computer programmed to provide these responses. My point here is simply this: subjectivity is to a large extent unrecoverable, and unreliable; our reconstruction of it for other people reveals as much or more about ourselves than it does about whatever "O" we've reconstituted. We must acknowledge why we are drawn to the past, and what we hope to find through studying it (What am I to Chaucer or Chaucer to me?). Because our own subjectivity comes pre-conditioned (remember the graph), we are prone to make certain judgments, and seek certain similarities. Because we sometimes wonder about the autonomy of our subjectivity, we are drawn to establish a determining subjectivity in others - even in disembodied voices that computers propel through cyberspace and deliver to our computer screens. [The logical next step would be to connect that thought to the dissemination of medieval manuscripts - and the reactions of marginalia - but I've already gone on too long] **** JIM EARL: I'm very grateful for Jeffrey's introduction, even if it's so coy as to question its own value and even its truthfulness. I myself think every word we say reveals worlds about us, in spite of our best efforts to hide. Unlike Jeffrey, I don't think subjectivity is unrecoverable at all; I see it leaking out everywhere, in e-mail messages and scholarship, as well as medieval texts. That our own subjectivities get mixed up with the other's in the act of reception only makes interpretation more complex and interesting, revealing interpreter as well as interpretee; it makes intersubjectivity possible, if not unavoidable. Why do intellectuals like to think subjectivity is so unrecoverable? Perhaps because we feel the world doesn't really understand us? When my colleagues insist on the unrecoverability of medieval subjectivity, I reply that "literature," especially poetry, in many ages seems to have been invented precisely as a repository for expressions of what we now call subjectivity. Poetry, in Anglo-Saxon England and elsewhere, is a discourse at least partly set aside for the exploration of thoughts and feelings that fall outside public discourse. How might Wilfrid have felt, heading out to sea again? "The Seafarer" gives a clue. What did Bede think as he lay dying? Read the "Death Song." How might an aging monk have kept his faith alive in the grip of accedia? "The Dream of the Rood." The gnomes, the riddles, the elegies, all give us sharp insights into Anglo-Saxon subjectivity--and our own too, necessarily, when we read them. I hope the rest of you are enjoying this little conversation between me, Jeffrey, Dan and Amelia. I'm told there are a couple hundred people at this table, most of whom know a lot about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Julie, Naomi, Bob, Sheryl, Calvin, Laurel, Georgia, Bea, Gina, Mary? Are we almost ready to start talking about medieval subjectivity? Or we can continue for a while, exposing our disagreements about the definition of the word subjectivity--I'm enjoying these preliminaries, and there's certainly much more to say; but I know many of you have other interests, and I myself look forward to learning more about medieval psychology and other related topics. **** H. SULE ELKATIP: The topic of subjectivity is also interesting for philosophical purposes. In fact there we may distinguish two explanations of what it is to be subjective. We may call one of these the positive and the other the negative interpretation. According to the negative approach, the subjective signifies the lack of truth and reality: it has to do with imagination, fantasy and chimeras. But according to the positive view of subjectivity it is a party to the dialogue between the self and others (divine and human). It appears to me that both of these attitudes are richly exemplified in the Middle Ages and perhaps can be traced further back to the Greeks. I will not try to substantiate this claim right now but one could do it very easily for Scotus for example. Instead I prefer to mention the case of St Anselm and Gaunilon and their amazing debate about the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. This was before Abelard (and certainly much before Scotus). The fool must have been "subjective"! **** JEFFREY COHEN: I would like to respond briefly to Jim's last posting, and then I am going to lurk quietly for a while to give others a chance to join in the discussion. I did not mean to imply that subjectivity is unrecoverable. In fact Jim has found the perfect term for the effect I was trying to describe: "intersubjectivity," a hybrid beast that arises when a subjectivity from the present attempts to reconstruct one from the past. "Intersubjectivity" can be dangerous or liberating, depending on how self-aware the critic is in reconstituting history; the past is always Our past, no matter how ontologically Other. One more fine point: perhaps it would be useful to differentiate between a cultural vs. an individual subjectivity. Several of the poems that Jim cites seem to me to be anything but personal in their emotional range, even though they *appear* to reflect the feelings of a single speaker. "The Wanderer," for example, seems to reflect more of a cultural consciousness than individualized feelings; the wraecca is the (eternal) exile from the system of living that gives life meaning, but the poem may or may not have been written by a "wraecca" - it has more to do with the spirit of an age than the plight of a historically identifiable lordless man; it was written to be received "in the abstract" rather than to be appended to a single, determinate subjectivity (no embedding "history"). Aelfred's preface to the _Liber Regulae Pastoralis_ is another story: it loses its meaning when unhinged from the specific moment that provoked it, and is meant to be a part of other texts - the literal text of the _Rule_ and the fragmentary text of Aelfred's life and times that we reconstruct in part through the letter itself. We hear a cultural subjectivity through Aelfred, but we can hear a personal one, too. This double-reading gives a new edge to the question of how many speakers there are in "The Seafarer"... **** LAUREL CARRINGTON: After Jim Earl's plea to me and to others to speak up, I realized that I have been acting the part of one of my quieter students in a seminar, who lets the others do all the talking because she's afraid to open her mouth and make a fool of herself. Such students typically frustrate me, but from now on I'll have more sympathy for them! I teach history at St. Olaf, a Lutheran-affiliated liberal arts college in Minnesota, and my training is mainly in the Renaissance. My research interest thus far has been the writings of Erasmus, although I am now moving in the direction of a more broadly-based study of the literary culture of the French reformation. Through my work with Erasmus I have encountered some interesting discussions of how people reflect who they are in the way they use language, and that is how I find my way into Jim's discussion. Erasmus is drawing on the rhetorical works of Cicero and Quintilian, who describe the relationship between _oratio_ and _ingenium_. _Ingenium_, related to _gigno_, and also to _genus_, _genius_, _gens_, is that inborn nature that cannot be suppressed; in a dialogue entitled _Ciceronianus_, Erasmus warns that for a writer to persevere in adopting a form of _oratio_ (I shrink from the word `style') that is contrary to his _ingenium_ is an exercise in futility. In seeking to imitate Cicero too perfectly, we fail to be ourselves. Cicero and Quintilian both suggest at various points that a writer must be guided by his _ingenium_, yet be flexible enough to be able to adapt to a variety of situations. This sense of an innate natural tendency is highly individualized. Erasmus uses it in _Ciceronianus_ to explore two opposing models of perfection in writing, the one looking to imitate an ideal (Cicero) that is fixed for all time, the other seeking an eclectic approach that allows for historical differences and variety among (dare I say it?) individuals. Now that I have spoken up, I wish to say that I am relctuant to let these new categories impose upon or bring confusion to what is already on the table -- I am however offering this in an attempt to help sort out what is under discussion. If, for example, we are looking for lines of convergence or divergence between what is commonly called `medieval' and `Renaissance,' then this debate about writing, contrasting the individual and historically- situated with the universal and ahistorical, might provide some useful food for thought. How people choose models for the task of constructing an ideal self is not irrelevant to the Middle Ages -- and while I could go on much longer, I think I'll leave it at that for now. **** SHERYL BROEDEL: Jim, You write: "I hope the rest of you are enjoying this little conversation between me, Jeffery, Dan and Amelia. I'm told there are a couple hundred people at this table most of whom know a lot about the Middle Ages and Renaissance... are we about ready to start?" Honestly? I don't know. But, since you so graciously include me among your list, I guess I'll throw in my $ .02 worth anyway. A few comments/questions: 1. For what it's worth, I find the preliminary remarks to be a bit "high flown"; I'd prefer to bring the discussion down a notch or two. (Despite that, if we are going to stay in the land of the problematic, might I suggest that one useful approach might be that offered by psychological anthropology? Cliffor Geerta, George Deveruex and Melford Spiro have all addressed the problems inherent in cross cultural studies of personality and subjectivity. Jefferey Cohen has raised the question: can the term "individual" and "subjectivity" be conflated. Certainly, but I suppose that I would say that within a cultural context, one's subjectivity is derived experientially. Subjectivity may therefore properly belong among the self-reflexive constructs that make up personality; as such, it can be thought of in a Geertian sense as extrinsic to the individual in question.) But that's theory, so, 2. I'm a little unclear about who is the "subject" of this discussion. If we are talking about the medieval "everyman", then I think it might be worthwhile to ask whether the subjectivity of the vast majority of people in the midle ages was any different from that found in more modern traditional communities -- in southern Italy in the 17th-C., for instance, or 19th-C., rural Scandinavia. When Aron Gurevich, for example, writes that medieval people conceptualized themselves in collective terms (kin/community) he is, I think, writing about "people" in this broader sense. My impression, thus far at any rate, is that we are discussing only a particular medieval elite: that is, the one engaged with the artistic production of texts (Chaucer, lyric poets, etc.). If this is true, I can't help but to wonder: can problems of "subjectivity" become conflated with problems of "aesthetics"? 3. Which, although I realize this is long, brings me to my final question for you, Jim. Thought it's perhaps fashionable these days, why the seemingly casual dismissal of Burkhardt's claims for a distinctive Renaissance "individualism"? It seems to me that even late medieval representations of "self" are quite different from those of the Renaissance. Like Augustine, the late medieval texts still try to situate the individual within a universal sciptural contect; individual voices may speak clearly and self-conciously, but the individual's experience is valorized only as it is, at least metaphorically, bound to that of Christ. Denise Depres covers this ground in _Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late Medieval Literature_, as does I.B. Nagel in _Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form_. Both make the point that the medieval understanding of the individual was conditioned by the essentially collective nature of the devotional experience. (As points of comparison, one can look at Renaissance autobiographies --e.g. Cardano or Cellini-- in which the self is valorized *because* it is unique and individual. In Cellini, particularly, the metaphor of self/Christ seems clearly to have given way to that of self/artist, or even that of self/Art -- which is, I suggest, exactly that newly "unique spirit", that new "self-conciousness" that the old art historian had in mind all along. (Sorry for the length. Call it my $20 instead...) **** CLARE LEES: With such a wealth of scholars and skills, our discussions are bound to be multidimensional at first, and my area of expertise in Anglo-Saxon religious texts hardly equips me to speak comfortably about such a wide topic. In fact, I confess freely to some bemusement about just what is at stake in our exploRation of medieval subjectivity--or is it individuality, or consciousness, or character, or interiority, especially in contradistinction to terms like mentalite, "spirit of the age", and cultural subjectivity (is this latter the same as a collective unconscious, I wonder?). Still, these generalities are inevitable,important, and fruitful. Sheryl Broedel asks who is the subject of this discussion, and its a good question (though her use of Gurevitch to distinguish between elite and peasant/popular mentalite strains his own insistence on the inter-relatedness of both, understandably perhaps), so I'd like to take the liberty of reformulating the question very slightly: who is the historical and gendered subject of this discussion and why? I shall only begin to answer this of course For Jim Earl, as for many other medievalists, the notion of the individual subject can be dated to the twelfth-century reform period. This is a common enough view asserted against claims of renaissance scholars who locate the exact same claim in their own period: I don't think this is a recent fashion among medievalists, however, this discussion has been going on for at least 30 years. What we are arguing about then is not only the history of subjectivity but disciplinary claims to ownership of that history. In fact, both medievalists and renaissance scholars appear to be talking about the same phenomenon: the emergence of a concept of identity forged from that of a uniquely individual self, which is in turn radically difference from that forged only from a social or communal sense of self. (Correct me if I'm way out of step here.) In other words, it seems to me we are talking about the emergence of the subject as humanist--hence the cluster of associated terms such as private, unique, character, interior and so forth. For me, this seems a straightforward enough generalization, albeit vexed in both chronological and gender terms. But it is limiting in some respects-- to deny subjectivity to the Anglo-Saxons, for example, is thus only to Deny their claim to subjects-as-humanists, and that negative definition doesn't seem very helpful to me. This is why, I think, Anglo-Saxonists and other scholars working before the 'watershed" of the twelfth century find themselves alternately embracing and repudiating concepts of subjectivity. The "I" of the Old English Elegies, for example, though one would have thought an invitation to identification and hence exploration of selfness is routinely held to be mere convention (in spite of Earl's strenuous and important counter-arguments, and in direct contrast to the use of the "I" in later critical work such as that associated with the troubadours, which Amelia Van Vleck brought to our attention). On the other hand, there is, as Jeffrey Cohen notes, an increasing "fashion" to identify the public, authroitative, discourse of King Alfred as somehow revelatory of his self, in spite of the highly conventional tropes of his language. Perhaps part of this problem is the discomfort many of us have with the terms of public and private in this period. In any case, to make matters even more complicated, the pre- eminent language and psychology of the self in the early period is, as everyone has dismissively noted, Christianity. In that arean of a communal religion, a concept like "subjectivity" requires soME very fine-tuning to have any explanatory power at all, and yet Christianity yields an extra-ordinarily rich vocabulary for the self throughout the period. What I'm getting at, I think, is that paradoxically, our terms are both too broad, and yet inflexible, if we want to account for experiences of self that are non-humanist in this discussion. I'd like to learn more from the experts on the subject of subjectivity in the later medieval period and from the renaissance to test my own ill-informed generalizations. In any case, I'd like to understand this paradigm shift and its components more clearly so as to have a sense of what early medieval subjectivity cannot be. **** JEFFREY COHEN: Clare's words on the subject(ion) of subjectivity were very useful in thinking through this complicated problem. As a follow-up that illuminates what she has said about the (early) Middle Ages and changes in subjectivity over time, I would like to offer a brief quotation from James Miller's biography of Foucault, which I happened to be reading when Clare's message came over the net; Foucault seems the proper modernist to invoke here because the Middle Ages were so much his Other time, his source of discontinuity in meaning: "Far from welcoming the disappearance of torture, [Foucault, in _Discipline and Punish_] raises ever more pressing doubts about the hidden costs of a 'penal style' that wold avoid visible coercion and act instead 'in depth' by seeking to transform 'the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations.' Efforts to institute 'less cruelty, less suffering, more gentleness, more respect, more "humanity"' have, according to Foucault, had the perverse effect of reinventing the entirety of modern society on the model of a prison, imposing ever more subtle, and insiduously punishing kinds of 'discipline,' not just on convicts, but also on soldiers, on workers, on students, even on the various professionals trained to supervise various 'disciplinary' institutions, in the process refining new 'corrective technologies of the individual' - and producing a 'double effect: a "soul" to be known and a subjection to be maintained.'" (_The Passion of Michel Foucault_ [NY 1993], p.212) For Foucault, as for Neitsche, the soul is the prison of the body; the determination of subjectivity is part of a program of enslavement of the will. How different were the Middle Ages? The soul was imagined to be transcendent, fettered temporarily within a mortal frame that bound it, kept it limited, but from which it would some day escape. And yet the body was not wholly dismissable: meaning could be written across it (as Augustine and Isidore argued in their explication of the semiotics of deformity and monstrousness), and the body was the temple to which the soul would one day return, at the Last Judgment when subjectivity would find its fullest realization, through Resurrection and eternal union with God. The body is at once despised and rejected (as a source of temptation and a stumbling block to transcendence), and returned to, a source of comfort, meaning, - and identity. Unlike Foucault, the thinkers of the Middle Ages did not think themselves all body; yet the soul (which at first seems a pure source in which "medieval subjectivity" is distilled) cannot be so easily severed from the meaning- system of the body. Some questions, then: What kinds of debates were being waged about the ontology of the soul, and how might they impact our discussion of subjectivity? To what extent is the soul gendered, and how might gender influence a reconstruction of medieval subjectivity? Finally (perverse as this may sound), might Foucault's way in _Discipline and Punish_ - reconstructing individuality vs sociality through a study of mechanisms of control - work here? I'm thinking of a very useful ANSAX-L thread on "The Semiotics of Torture" that brought together individuality, gender, and martyrdom. What does the disruption of the body through torture (in, say, The Acta Sanctorum) reveal about the (dis)aggregation of identity in the Middle Ages? **** JIM EARL: I've been reading the fifteen messages of the subjectivity thread for a few days now. Most of us have headed back to school, but even if that weren't so, silence might descend, as it sometimes does in a seminar. There are so many questions and issues on the table. It's late at night, and there's a hint of desperation in the air. It's impossible to summarize the discussion, so I'll respond to the last several notes and hope a direction emerges. (As I log on to send this I find that Jeffrey Cohen has broken the silence with a note about Foucault--my least favorite thinker. As before, I 'll post what I've written anyway, and take time to think his over.) H. Sule Elkatip (an introduction would help there, H.!), like many of us, finds two terms for the janus-faced concept of subjectivity (positive and negative), and suggests both are richly exemplified in the Middle Ages. "I will not try to substantiate this claim right now but one could do it very easily for Scotus for example." Many of us have offered examples this way, but it seems no one wants to pursue one and force it on the group. I'd enjoy pursuing Scotus; instead H. refers to an anecdote about Anselm which also sounds interesting, but I need elaboration or a reference, since I don't know it. Could you? Laurel Carrington, like Amelia Van Vleck, approaches subjectivity through rhetoric. Rather than the "subject positions" in the rhetoric of courtly love, she offers Erasmus's rhetoric of individual style. The example is extremely interesting, but someone has to answer the implicit question, was this distinction common in the Middle Ages too? I don't know. Sheryl Broedel poses three questions for me. (1) Why not introduce the terms of psychological anthropology? Excellent, but you or someone else will have to do it, since I'm not familiar enough with Geertz, Devereux and Spiro. Could we have a reference to Geertz's work on the problems inherent in cross cultural studies of personality and subjectivity? That subjectivity is derived experientially, and is therefore in a Geertzian sense extrinsic to the individual in question, eludes me without explanation. (2) Who is the "subject" of this discussion--a medieval "everyman"? Excellent question. I myself think the history of subjectivity is like the history of an individual, that it goes through stages, but as Freud says, nothing is ever lost. I don't have to go as far as traditional communities of southern Italy in the 17th c. to find remnants of medieval subjectivity, I can go to group-psychological phenomena all around me, and my own experience. I don't think the Renaissance was a paradigm-shift in the sense that suddenly everyone was individualized; rather, new forms of subjectivity were articulated by a few extraordinary people, and added to the repertory of available modes of being, primarily through texts. (3) Am I casually dismissing Burkhardt's claim about the Renaissance? No, I recommend Kerrigan and Braden's _Idea of the Renaissance_ (Johns Hopkins 1989), which brilliantly defends Burkhardt. But I disagree that "the medieval understanding of the individual was conditioned by the essentially collective nature of the devotional experience"--not that it isn't true, but it's true of the Renaissance, and of the church down the street. Clare Lees, a fellow Anglo-Saxonist, nicely summarizes the confusions inherent in this topic. She pleads for the complexity of the phenomena of subjectivity, and especially the complexity of the Christian interpretation of it. I agree whole-heartedly. Her reply to Jeffrey Cohen demands a reply, I think: Jeffrey dismissed the ostensible subjectivity of the "Wanderer," and pointed instead to King Alfred as a subject embedded in history; Clare wants to know why a first-person interiorized monologue should be set aside as important evidence about subjectivity, in favor of an authoritative, public, kingly discourse. I would be happy if the conversation resumed on this last question--the subjectivity of a fictional representation like the "Wanderer"; or if we turned to the larger problem Clare poses, of discussing the Christian vocabulary of subjectivity--which for me means Augustinian trinitarian psychology. Anything but silence. (And if I have anything to say about it, anything but Foucault, who knew nothing about the Middle Ages. Am I wrong, Jeffrey?) By the way, I have edited the conversation to this point, and would happily supply a copy to anyone who wants to read it. **** JEFFREY COHEN: RETRACTION: Following Jim's suggestion, I have gone back and re-read the entire thread. I was struck by how carefully thought out each piece was, and how rational a mediator Jim has been. I also saw that for the most part my contributions aimed to complicate discussion, right from the start. Often, I'm afraid, they tended to *over*complicate things, dragging us to the holes and fissures in "medieval subjectivity" before we'd ever arrived at a working template. I apologize if I've made getting the discussion off the ground more difficult than it should be. Write it off to youthful enthusiasm (it's been a mere two years since I finished my doctorate). Behind all this verbiage on my part has been the conviction that subjectivity is a timely and essential topic - I can't think of a better way to inaugurate _Interscripta_. I hope I haven't scared anyone off from contributing! Along these lines, I would like to say a few words about my last posting, which included an excerpt from Foucault ("thilke that sownen into synne," as Chaucer might have said). I agree wholeheartedly with Jim that pauvre Michel got the Middle Ages all wrong, but he does seem to be the modern philosophical touchstone for discussion of subjectivity; for both these reasons I thought he might be valuable here. But again, I was opening another can of worms before it was time. All of our postings have been so full of questions; it must be the difficult nature of the subject (and I promise to stop punning on that word). Perhaps now it's time to start groping toward some answers. SOME THOUGHTS ON "THE WANDERER" I like Jim's suggestion of starting with a single text and tackling the problem through it--perhaps this excersise will give the discussion more focus. "The Wanderer" is (to say the least) a complex poem. The speaker laments the impermanence of humanity and its achievements by pairing the wreckage of a city with the ruin of its inhabitants (Woriath tha winsalo, waldend licgath / dreame bidrorene). A silent testimony to the descructive inevitability of time, these windswept remains are "the old work of giants, standing abandoned" (eald enta geweorc idle stodon). For all its stock character, the allusion to giants fits remarkably well into the poem's theme of unrecoverable loss. Associated with a race defined simultaneously by its terrible power and its ancient vanishing, the fragmented architecture becomes a living elegy (88-98). At least four time frames are evident here: the distant past when the city was constructed out of stone; a nearer past when men lived and died; the bitter present of an exiled warrior narrator (the eardstapa), whose state of mind seems to find a reflection in the ruins; and the timeless moment of the wise observer who moralizes on the remains. The city's giant builders are conflated with eulogized warriors who perished in a bloody past; they in turn are linked with the plight of the wraecca ("exile"), and his fate prvokes a consideration of universal end. There are multiple voices in these lines, all of them glum. The poem is a convergence of fragments: pieces of narrative, slivers of four juxtaposed temporalities, an unnamed city, uncertain but peripheral geographies, Other races, perhaps the shadows of various scribes. This melange of times, peoples, experiences, and emotions sometimes condenses into a singular moment: the pause of the eardstapa, arrested temporarily in his wanderings, confronted and overwhelmed by the enta geweorc. We are never invited to associate the wanderer with anyone in particular. He is an Anglo-Saxon archetype, socially unmoored, drifting far from the structures that organize life and give individuality meaning (the world crumbles into ruins). The poem cannot be attached to any individual or to any author, and it doesn't seem as though it was ever meant to be so attached: the lines interest themselves in universals, and resist particulars. That is, the poem imagines one subjectivity (that of the wraecca) in order to valorize another way of life - and to meditate upon the passing of all life. It's an act of imagination, an act of fiction - not an enactment of individuality, but just the opposite. "The Wanderer" is found in the Exeter Book, that great medieval compendium. It is a piece among other pieces, assembled by unknown hands into a *collection* that includes (among other fragments) "The Ruin" - a poem whose physical condition (stained, torn, full of holes) makes it a fine cautionary metaphor for what such works can yield about subjectivity. These poems offer the pieces of a complex subjectivity that is always partial and always in need of emendation; this subjectivity is part of greater whole (just as the poems themselves are pieces within an imperfect compendium), and may help us to understand a given cultural moment, but (as universalizing acts) are less useful in reconstructing the subjectivity of historical individuals - unless we in turn redefine exactly what an individual _is_ (the extension of a cultural moment? a potentially resistant point within that continuum?) It is important to realize that subjectivity is here created through an act of fiction... **** MAURY MCCRILLIS III: I find that the working definition of subjectivity that is being formed so far is tending toward a deconstructionist notion of self. Jeffrey Cohen, for example, noted that in the Middle Ages "the soul _was_ imagined to be transcendent, fettered within a mortal frame." I must ask why the past tense here and why "imagined," as if the medievals only fantasized about something which--the assumption seems to be--has been discredited today. Also, surely not just the medievals refused to "think themselves all body." Just as we are not speaking to our computer terminals here, but to individuals who are, like us, only using these computers as tools for communication, neither are we speaking to one another's bodies but to the individuals who are using those bodies as tools for communication. To look back upon the medieval conception of the self/soul as an indivisible and permanent essence with the self-assured belief (and I emphasize the word belief which of course is not always founded upon logical proof or material evidence) that the idea of the self has an absolute essence has been thoroughly disproven is a huge mistake. On the contrary, the deconstructionist notion that the self is predicated upon "deep structures of desire and institutional power" (H.M. Leicester, _The Disenchanted Self_ (Univ. of Calif. Press, 1990) p. 22) is far less tenable than--say--Scotus's notion of a necessary individual haecceitas (thisness). The deconstructionist notion of self is flawed, or least problematic, in so far as it cannot account for the existence of the property of agency in the individual. Leicester elaborates on this point somewhat in his book. If, then, we must establish a working definition of the subject, then let us establish a medieval definition. I, along with Jim Earl, prefer Scotus's notion of the self. Better yet, maybe we shouldn't attempt to establish a working definition at all since those who may reject that definition are always going to be trying to subvert it. Let us instead engage in a dialogue in which we test out essentialist and deconstructionist theories of the self in the context of a single medieval work of literature. **** MAURY MCCRILLIS: I apologize for the number of typos in my last append. It's impossible to go back and edit a line once the return key has been pressed with this system. Once a line is entered the only options are to either send it or cancel it and start all over again at the beginning. I want to clarify one point. If we distinguish between the subject as the author of a text and the grammatical construction of the subject within a text, we might be able accommodate both essentialist and deconstructionist notions of the self in the discussion. Problems immediately arise, though, when those who take the essentialist position insist that the first person pronoun in a particular work actually is the author himself or herself. Similarly, problem arise when the deconstructionist insists that the decentered subject in a particular work necessarily points to the absence or disappearance of an essential self in the author. It may be useful to look at the literary "form" of the author subject in a particular work as something analogous to the logical form of the individual which Scotus speaks about. The logical form of the individual, though, is not what makes the individual unique. Rather, it is that person's haecceity or "thisness." The individual, then, for Scotus is comprised of a logical form (of objective properties) and an individual haecceity both of which are separable conceptually but which are combined in reality. In terms of literature, then, the subject position in a particular poem can be seen as conceptually distinguishable from the haecceity of the author, but in reality both constitute the total individual. **** SHULE ELKATIP: The written debate entertained by St Anselm and Gaunilon is mainly about a certain proof of God's existence written by Anselm. Gaunilon criticizes this proof. And Anselm writes a long reply for this criticism. But in the meantime they have to discuss issues involving the actuality of subjectivity: What happens when a person has thoughts which are certainly false like "there is no God"? Can there be such thoughts which are also meaningful? One can for sure be mistaken about the existence of an island but about the existence of God...how can someone end up thinking that something which is certainly false is in fact true? They, Anselm and Gaunilon, both have accepted that it is a fact that this may happen: according to the authority of Psalm 13:1! It happens. The question is how. This question is crucial by the way for St Anselm's proof because he intends to prove that when one understands what is meant by "god" then he can not help but contradict himself if he says "He does not exist". (must be he/she!) Nevertheless of course this person (the fool!) would be saying something which is both *certainly* false and meaningful. Here is how St Anselm puts it in the *Proslogion*: "And if it be true, or rather, since it is true that he thought it because he said it in his heart, and it is also true that he did not say it in his heart because he could not think it, it follows that there is not just one way to think of something or to say it in one's heart". (The English translation I have here says CH IV., by A. B. Wolter.) In the course of this debate they talk about St Anselm's example: "When a painter thinks of the work he will make beforehand..." Gaunilon in his criticism brings this example to ruin because he compares it to "A carpenter about to make a box..." Gaunilon here is quoting from St Augustine but the effect of his quotation and Augustine's authority is to destroy the dissimilarity between a work of art, such as a painting, and the work of a technician. For those who are interested in the issue of subjectivity it would be fruitful to read what they say about conceiving a work of art or techne before it is realised. Also it is interesting to note that they say "...a fool who *says*..." and not "...a fool who thinks..." point blank. So this fool seems to be talking with at least himself. Hence we would have here both aspects of subjectivity, as the fool fails to talk to God but talks to himself instead! Finally I wish to add as a note that as far as philosophy is concerned "subjectivity" should not be identified with "individuality" unless one wishes to argue that they are equivalent. But this would be an overwhelming task. **** SVATO SCHUTZNER: "Certe tantam corporum esse diversitatem ut vix in tanta hominum multitudine similia reperiantur; et, cum animae sequuntur corpora, non minor putanda erat varietas animorum et Imaginationum: ita fit ut quod uni placet alteri displiceat ..." sending because not much known and conceivably could be found of Interest; it is said to come from an address given in 1407 by benedict XIII. I am quoting the passage third or fourth hand, mainly because it is likely not to be found relevant. I am told it can be found in the CHRONIQUE DE CHARLES VI; will try to get closer to the source if it should be of interest. -- I have been reading the Medieval Subjectivity discussion with interest but am not competent to participate actively. **** JIM EARL: Battling a tough case of poison oak on both arms this morning--so when I lift them to the keyboard I am much more sympathetic with Augustine's notion that the body is the prison of the soul, than with Foucault's notion that the soul is the prison of the body. Lucky for me, Augustine did not say we would re-inhabit these our animal bodies on Judgment day, but rather our spiritual bodies. These disgusting arms will be perfected there. If there is any justice in the afterlife, Foucault is sitting in some bolgia or other, being forced to read the City of God, book 22, chapters 12- 21, in which Augustine discusses the resurrection of the body. The concept is easily ridiculed by pagans, as Augustine says, and is indeed riddled with paradox; but scripture speaks of it too often for it to be set aside for all that. The best Augustine can do is conclude that the body in question is not the corruptible thing we now possess, but rather its perfection. Although the doctrine may seem to have an individuating effect--and appeals to those in love with their own bodies--Augustine does what he can to minimize it. Well, I was hoping our conversation would finally turn to specifics after two weeks of theorizing about subjectivity, and suddenly we have an embarrassment of riches on the table: not only Augustine, but also Laurel's suggestion about Erasmus (which is still waiting for someone to connect it with the medieval rhetoric of subject-positions); also Jeffrey's thoughts on "The Wanderer." Also, Maury McCrillis picked up Shure Elkatip's suggestion about Scotus, in a note filled with clarifying insights; and Shure further developed her thought about Anselm. I'll spend part of my Labor Day weekend reading Scotus and Anselm; but being who I am, I can't resist taking up Jeffrey's reading of "The Wanderer" now. It's like being challenged to a duel. For Jeffrey, the "Wanderer" is "not an enactment of individuality, but just the opposite." The speaker is "an Anglo-Saxon archetype. . . . The lines interest themselves in universals, and resist particulars." This last sentence nicely illustrates what happens when you read too much Foucault. Without an individualized author, narrator or audience, it's the text that somehow "interests itself" in things. Of course I agree with most of what Jeffrey says about the poem; but I myself sense a strongly defined "subject position" in the poem--which, as Maury reminds us, needn't be identified with the subjectivity of the author. Whereas Jeffrey cites universalizing passages and themes in the poem, I could as easily cite the particularizing ones that have led so many readers to hear an individualized voice in it--like the dreaming/waking episode of ll. 39-57. No amount of particularized detail, however, can derail a Foucauldian reading: any text (even the one I'm writing now) can be read as a vector field of cultural forces, if that's how you choose to interrogate it. The "Wanderer" invites this sort of reading, too, in conjunction with the more traditional reading. The narrator is tormented by pain, loneliness, and the meaninglessness of solitude in a culture where personhood is defined in social terms; the consolation he strives for is reunification with authenticating group identities and universal structures. He wants to be relieved of his terrifying individual subjectivity. No wonder modern readers find the poem so powerful. The individualized voice of the poem modulates through more and more general perceptions and themes, as the Wanderer's condition is gradually identified with the world (bound in ice, just as the heart, mind and soul are bound in the body), with mankind (everyone grows old and dies) and with history (in ruins, itself falling toward apocalyptic death), until in the end he finds consolation in a rush of depersonalized gnomic sayings. Many readers are disappointed with the poem's chiche-ridden conclusion, but it's in the blunt wisdom of these simple truths of his culture (be loyal, keep quiet, be brave, and beg God's mercy) that the Wanderer is freed from the affliction of his individuality. Jeffrey, tell me if you don't sense from your reading of Foucault's biography, that he was in the same boat: a man in pain, grasping at the world in practice and fleeing from it in theory--though his theory is a lot less comforting than the one the Wanderer finally embraces. ***** JEFFREY COHEN: In answer to what Jim has written about "The Wanderer," and my thoughts on it: The harsh words about Foucault were rather amusing, but I'm curious to know what about my reading of "The Wanderer" prompted Jim to mark it as Foucauldian (it probably owed more to Barthes than Foucault, but I certainly wouldn't stretch that point). If the ghost of Foucault has read my critique from whatever bolgia Jim has banished him to, I don't think he's very pleased. Jim and I examine "The Wanderer" in ways that are not completely incompatible, but whereas Jim (like many traditional scholars) tends to emphasize its organic unity (here by excavating a "subject position" that organizes the poem and gives it coherence), I am more interested in the ways in which the poem tends to fragment into a marvellous compendium (and I choose that word both for the poem's provenance and to emphasize the binding of its many parts, its several voices). And so I find it easier to speak of the text's interests rather than its author's (who was its author? is a word like "author" useful in examing the poem?) or its narrator's (it's too multivocal for such a limitation). "The Wanderer" does not slide into incoherence under the weight of such a reading, but expands; not a flat snowflake, cut from paper, but a delicate crystal, difficult to hold, dangerous to examine, but full of complexity, and embedded in a matrix of history and culture. Its intertextuality and interconnectedness (both internal and external; "culture" is one of these texts) imbues "The Wanderer" with its vitality, its expansiveness. The "cliche-ridden conclusion" (which Jim tells us "many readers are disappointed with") is the most obvious speaking of this cultural text, and as Jim says, its voice frees "the Wanderer...from the affliction of his individuality." I could not agree more. Jim broadens the question to ask if Michel Foucault himself might not have been in the same boat as the Wanderer, "a man in pain, grasping.. and fleeing" (This move, quite charming here, is typical of Jim's method of inquiry - the power of personal psychology is invoked as the deeper explanation behind group actions, so that he states one doctrine "appeals to those in love with their own bodies," and asks "Why do intellectuals like to think subjectivity is so unrecoverable? Perhaps because we feel the world doesn't really understand us?"). Miller's biography (_The Passion of Michel Foucault_) is controversial precisely beacuse of this same kind of linking: Miller ties Foucault's worldview (at times paranoid and sadistic) to Foucault's experience (literary and psychological) - that is, he traces Foucault's philosophical inquiry to his subjectivity, his individuality (the very thing that constructionist followers of Foucault argue doesn't really exist). Was Foucault a man in pain? Yes, and he gave a great deal of pain to others. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about him, and was rather surprised to see my reading of "The Wanderer" labelled Foucauldian. Which brings me to a final observation. Tongue in cheek, Jim says that he feels he's been "challenged to a duel" by my words on "The Wanderer," but I'm not his enemy. Jim's posting contructs my own words as its Other (note removal of authorial intention!), but our *modi legendi* have more in common than Jim admits. In my early postings I tried to emphasize the importance of a double reading - one which grants determining potency to both culture and subjectivity/individuality/the unconscious; later I amplified this claim for another kind double reading, one which also aknowledges the cultural moment and personal investment of its own creator, and the history of the text's reception (isn't the Wanderer, for example, at least partly a Victorian creation - its title and its glossary an anitiquarian rather than an Anglo-Saxon inheritance?). I differ with Jim (and this seems to me a rather minor point) only in insisting that the recovery of an individuated subjectivity is not always possible, desirable, or revelatory. **** JIM EARL: If this were a real-time seminar, I wouldn't want the dialogue about the Wanderer to go on too long unless others join in. Some people might not know the poem; some have told me they're not so interested in literary issues. But poetry is where I find the clearest representations of medieval subjectivity, while philosophy is where I find the clearest analyses of it. Ideally, we could all collaborate in applying what we know about the medieval analysis of the self to a specific expression of it like the Wanderer--or Piers Plowman, Provencal lyrics or whatever. The special interest of the Wanderer is that it is so early, from an age when the representation of anything resembling modern subjectivity is so rare. With my interest in psychology, I've always been struck by these lines toward the beginning of the poem: Often alone I must every morning make known my care. There's no one alive to whom I dare now clearly speak my own mind. I know for a fact for an earl it is always a noble habit to bind fast his breast's locker, his heart's coffer, think what he may. The weary mind cannot withstand fate, nor a troubled spirit be of assistance. Eager for glory then, often the dreary he binds fast in his breast's coffer, as I in misery my own spirit, deprived of home and far from kin, must often seal in chains of sorrow, since years ago in the dark earth I folded my gold-friend, and went hence, winter-sorrowing, over bound waves seeking, hall-weary, near and far, a giver of treasures. Now here is a cultural value, the legendary Anglo-Saxon restraint, the suppression of affect, in conventional gnomic form: "For an earl it is always a noble habit to bind fast his breast's locker." But it is set in a personal lyric, in the voice of a speaking individual, ic. The concept hardly requires first-person expression, which is relatively anomalous in the early Middle Ages. In fact, this speaker is having some difficulty with the advice he's giving: he can't seem to bind his heart and keep quiet, though he knows he should. One of the pleasures of the poem is that the speaker's personal complaint breaks this cultural taboo, Thou shalt not whine. I am fascinated by the rationale "the weary mind cannot withstand fate." This seems to mean that if you bind disturbing thoughts and feelings in your breast, the mind will not be weary. There's a surface coherence to the maxim, but in context it is startlingly illogical. Today we assume that emotional disturbance is relieved by speech and worsened by silence. I don't expect the Wanderer to know that; but he assumes if you don't express it it just isn't there. This is a clue that even in this strongly personalized first-person poem there is still no real concept of an interior, other than a closed door viewed from without. Still, the poem as a whole seems to open the door and peek in. For his day, the Wanderer is pushing the envelope. I wonder if the Provencal lyrics, or other early traditions you may know about, make a serious advance on this image. **** JIM EARL: I hear from many people who are enjoying the Medieval Subjectivity thread, some of whom tell me they are planning to contribute soon. I know I encouraged everyone to think before writing, but this is ridiculous! In one week our month will be over, and though I might extend our time by another week, this forum will only be open for a little while longer. Hurry up please, it's time! **** JIM EARL: Since no one is responding to my meditation on the Wanderer, I will take my own advice this morning anmake a few remarks off the cuff to scare the timid into talking. I am off to the mountains today to clear my head, and when I get back I'd like to hear a few people tell me I'm nuts. I think what the Wanderer is talking about in the passage I quoted last time is what Freud calls repression. He inhabits a culture where repression is so pervasive that sbjectivity (as self-consciousness) is rare. The extremity of the Wanderer's situation has forced much unwanted affect to the surface, and the illogic of his meditation is really an expression of ambivalence. Is he breaking the rule of silence or not? Hard to say, because he plays it both ways. He plays everything both ways, which is why the poem is so open to conflicting readings. It is ambiguous because the voice is ambivalent. This is to say that I find Freud's vocabulary extremely helpful in describing subjectivity, even medieval subjectivity--even medieval non-subjectivity. I find Freud's categories surprisingly analogous with those of Augustine's faculty psychology, and would enjoy running a text like the Wanderer (or any other) through a double analysis, Augustinian and psychoanalytic. Freud's goal is to convert the id to ego; Augustine's is to convert both to superego. Now if that doesn't wake up this sleepy little network, I don't know what will. I'm off to the Cascades. **** DAN LUSTHAUS: "I think what the Wanderer is talking about in the passage I quoted last time is what Freud calls repression. He inhabits a culture where repression is so pervasive that sbjectivity (as self-consciousness) is rare." From Freud's "Negation" (1925) [in _Collected Papers_ 5, p. 185]: "The achievement of the function of judgement only becomes feasible, however, after the creation of the symbol of negation has endowed thought with a first degree of independence from the results of repression and at the same time from the sway of the pleasure principle. . . in analysis we never discover a 'No' in the unconscious, and that a recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula." **** MARTIN IRVINE: I confess to having been, unavoidably, a lurker so far. Sept. brought a number of deadlines for me, not the least of which was preparing for a new course that is directly parallel to our discussion--"Inventing the Subject: Gender, Sex, and Texts, 800-1500." Our _Interscripta_ discussion will find immediate application in my course this semester. I'm also working on a book on the Abelard and Heloise correspondence, which will treat the problem of gendered subjectivity mainly from the standpoint of discourse, genre, and social position. I'm not as optimistic about recovering the psychology of the past as Jim is, but with Abelard you can't avoid psychology. A few points about the discussion so far: "Subjectum" in classical and medieval Latin doesn't mean "thrown under" in a sense that could lead to Althusser's notion, but it *could* mean "subject to, subject of" a higher authority or power (see below). In philosophy, a "subjectum" is a Latin calque of Greek "hypokeimenon" (an underlying thing, a substrate, a subject), closely related to the notion of substance. A "subjectum" is that which is capable of have a predicate in logic and grammar. So ingeneral usage, "subjectum" means something that underlies, i.e., an individual sub-stance like the soul or self or person. Stallybrass is wrong about there being no medieval term for "individual" (as person); it is attested in Latin many times from at least the 12th c. on. Recent lit/cultural theory tends to fold the varied terminology for "individual" and "subject", as these terms are used in specialized contexts, into a common field of meaning. Thus we have: 1. The "subject" in linguistics and traditional grammar (Benveniste) 2. The social/political/economic "subject", in the sense of "being subject to" or "the subject of" historical, material, and political forces (Althusser, Foucault, most of the "new historicism") 3. The psychological "subject" formed of layers of unconscious and conscious forces (Freudian and Lacanian theory) 4. The ethnographic and anthropolical "subject" as part of larger communities of racial, national, class, sexual identities 5. The gendered "subject" of recent feminist theory, which borrows from the other models Are these subjectivities translatable into each other? For bibliography and conceptual models not mentioned so far, the following I find useful (though some mainly for classroom use): Kaja Silverman, _The Subject of Semiotics_ NY: Oxford UP, 1983. [After 10 years, seems kind of dated, but chap 4, "The Subject", is a very good overview of the Freudian and Lacanian models.] Catherine Belsey, _Critical Practice_. Routledge. [Good overview of Beneviste, Althusser, and Lacan on "the subject".] Emile Benveniste, "The Subject of Linguistics," in _Problems in General Linguistics_ (1971). [The classic structuralist statement that subjectivity is formed in language through the linkage of "person" and "I". Still important.] Jeffrey's mention of the soul (way back on Sept. 1) is apt: some of the profoundest thoughts on what we call "subjectivity" seem to be discussed in medieval theory about the soul. I am especially interested in Abelard's view; the _Ethics_ is especially full of conceptions of, and theory about, subjectivity. For example: "But however much men prevail over us, they bring no baseness into our lives unless after the manner of vices they subject (subiciunt) us to shameful consent. When they command our bodies, so long as the mind (animus) remains free, true freedom is not in peril and we do not fall into indecent servitude. For it is shameful to serve vice, not man; subjection (subiectio) to vices soils the soul, bodily servitude does not." (ed. Luscombe, p.4) This is part of Abelard's doctrine of pure intention: the soul is the seat of subjectivity--the essence of selfhood--and only sins through a corrupt intention--consenting to sin--not through bodily servitude to vice. "All sins are only of the soul (animae), not the flesh" (p.40). An "intentio" can be good and right even when the effects of an action are not; there is no sin unless it is against "conscientia" (pp.54-56). This work, and his letters, shows that Abelard has a very clear sense of self, of subjectivity in various senses: the soul as being subject to multiple desires, the seat of the freedom of the self, the essence of the individual person. Can Abelard's model(s) be usefully applied to reading medieval lit.? **** LAUREL CARRINGTON: I want to begin with two points of order. First, early on I opted for the digest format, thinking that it would be more convenient to receive a lot of messages at once. However, what has happened is that I've lost the thread from week to week, and not seeing new postings every day has nudged me into an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of mentality. I realize that I can switch back and that this is my problem, but I am offering this by way of feedback to let you know how things are working out. Second, I am beginning to think that a month is much too short for a discussion like this. In effect, we don't have just one discussion here, but several, some of which have been developed, others not. I would like to see some of the strands that have been left hanging picked up. Can we have an extension, please? My own strand, way back when, was Renaissance humanism, specifically the self-presentation of the subject in rhetoric. What I see shaping up in the "Wanderer" discussion suggests parallels with debates in my own field. Jim and Jeffrey differ over the degree to which the poem can be said to represent an individual consciousness, expressing an emotional state that could possibly be understood in terms of psychological categories. In Renaissance studies, people are debating the degree to which an author's works, some of which may seem intensely "personal" (i.e., letters), actually reflect a self-conscious attempt to construct a persona to present to the literary world, present and future. (Of course, the problem of self-consciousness in presenting "oneself" brings in new layers of meaning to the discussion of subjectivity!) I realize that in this paragraph I have scandalously intermingled "subjectivity," "consciousness," and "individual," not to mention "persona" and "self-consciousness." The question may concern more the function of literature in a given society than subjectivity _per se_ -- does Erasmus in the 16th century even try to use writing as an expression of interiority (to use a term Jim brought in)? Would the poet who wrote "The Wanderer" be interested in expressing a kind of personal complaint, as Jim suggests, thus pushing the envelope for his day? Or is he using the language of affect to an artistic end unrelated to any individual case? It seems to me that to know how to answer such a question, we need to learn about the role such literature may have played in people's lives, just as in the case of Erasmus' letters we need to know something about epistolary conventions in order to sort out personal expressions of feeling from conventional posturing, or other reasons for writing. Lisa Jardine, for example, has suggested that one of Erasmus' most famous quarrels, with Martin Dorp, does not represent an actual wrangle between individuals, but that it was stage-managed as a means of promoting a certain public interpretation of the _Praise of Folly_. Finally, Martin Irvine's question about Abelard's doctrine of pure intent, and the extent to which it can illuminate our reading of medieval literature, would require that we understand what relationship exists between the audience Abelard addresses and the idiom he uses on the one hand, and the literary culture that produces love-songs on the other. We know, of course, that Abelard himself wrote love-songs in his youth, but how do the various strands of literary culture draw upon the kind of philosophy Abelard is doing? At various times, various forms of cultural endeavor (say, humanism and scholasticism in the 16th century) exist in relationships of contestation or affiliation, or degrees of both. In other words, there is no single, fundamental, royal road to medieval subjectivity as such! ***** JIM EARL: Many thanks to Laurel Carrington for her note. Let me answer her points of order first. It is indeed suprisingly difficult to keep this thread present to mind, without reading it through periodically. Again, I have edited the whole thread to make it easy to review, and will happily supply it to anyone who wants. It now occupies two mail-messages, the first of which will probably be the largest you ever receive. As for closure, it is certainly true that the conversation could go on indefinitely, but it must not. One week from today, on Sept. 23, I will cut the thread and proceed to make my summary. If you have been waiting to say something about Augustine, the Wanderer, Scotus, Abelard, Provencal lyrics, Piers Plowman, or Erasmus, now's the time. Will no one defend Althusser against Martin Irvine's statement? When the thread is cut you will not be bored, since I understand another topic will be announced soon. I will leave for another message my reply to Laurel's concern about the representation of subjectivity in fiction, or self-representation. ***** JIM EARL: The Wanderer on the Couch In the next few days I'll pull my thoughts together and tie off my part of this thread. I'd like to run parallel Augustinian and Freudian analyses of the representation of subjectivity in "The Wanderer," to test my intuition that these two discourses for describing subjectivity are roughly translatable into one another. Since Dan Lusthaus drew my attention to Freud's essay "Negation," I'll pick the thread up there. In this 3-page essay Freud describes the way repressed thoughts enter consciousness in negated form, and "the origin of an intellectual function from the interplay of the primary instinctual impulses." Intellectual judgment, he claims, arises from the refusal of consciousness to accept what is being un- repressed. (He is not describing "the origins of consciousness" but a situation he meets with in individuals.) This is the state of mind I claimed "The Wanderer" represents: the Wanderer's negative meditation procedes from the impossibility of his keeping his thoughts and feelings securely locked in his breast. In this essay Freud defines subjectivity the way we all used to, before English professors started screwing up the concept, and describes reality-testing that distinguishes between them: What is unreal, merely a presentation and subjective, is only internal; what is real is also there outside. . . . The antithesis between subjective and objective does not exist from the first. It only comes into being from the fact that thinking possesses the capacity to bring before the mind once more something that has once been perceived, by reproducing it as a presentation without the external object still having to be there. The first and immediate aim, therefore, of reality-testing is, not to _find_ an object in real perception which corresponds to the one presented, but to _refind_ such an object, to convince oneself that it is still there. . . . The reproduction of a perception as a presentation is not always a faithful one. . . . In that case, reality-testing has to ascertain how far such distortions go. But it is evident that a precondition for the setting up of reality-testing is that objects shall have been lost which once brought real satisfaction. Before I follow the essay to its conclusion, note the general conformity of the Wanderer's mental state to the one Freud describes. He has lost his his gold-friend and searches for another to replace him; on the sea he dreams of his dead lord and the lost joys of the hall, only to wake to the unfamiliar songs of seabirds. Memories of his kinsmen fly around his mind and out over the sea. The mind can produce such hallucinatory "presentations," whose painful unreality dislodges our sense of reality. His dream is not nostlgia, but a disturbing confusion of subjective and objective. The whole poem is devastatingly negative except for the abstract consolation of the last lines. His perception of transience mounts quickly to an apocalyptic vision of the world crumbling away entirely. Toward the end of "Negation" Freud says "The general wish to negate, the negativism which is displayed by some psychotics, is probably to be regarded as a sign of a defusion of instincts that has taken place through a withdrawal of the libidinal component"--that is, an exaggerated form of mourning, expressing the destructive instinct. In more normal cases, however, negation has a positive value: "The performance of the function of judgment is not made possible until the creation of the symbol of negation has endowed thinking with the first measure of freedom from the consequences of repression." What was the Wanderer repressing, the negation of which provides the occasion for the emergence of thought? I suggested before it is subjectivity itself. Alone at sea with his memories and dreams, he is tormented by his own subjectivity. In the opening of _Future of an Illusion_, Freud says memorably that "every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization. . . . Thus civilization has to be defended against the individual." Anyone who has been in the military will recognize the thought, and the Wanderer is a warrior whose group-identity was extreme to start with. In "Repression" Freud also makes this point, that "repression acts _in a highly individual manner_." It is not culture that undergoes this transformation, but the individual. I'm almost done. Forgive me for taking so much time, and also for not quoting the poem. E-mail is such a funny genre. There are so many loose ends I would like to tie up, and I can't. But I must add this, that when WWI broke out, Freud wrote a short piece "On Transience," which addresses the mental state of peoples during wartime, and which also speaks to the mental state of the Wanderer. "Those who seem ready to make a permanent renunciation because what was precious has proved not to be lasting, are simply in a state of mourning for what is lost." What is the Wanderer mourning? First of all his gold-friend; but war can produce these feelings in a whole culture (which is why some readers sense a larger historical or allegorical dimension to the poem). War, with its powerful affective states and deep personal losses, requires massive repression, and prompts massive abreactions when repression fails. Repressed emotions flood into consciousness in negative form, sending some men into crowded restaurants with automatic rifles; but some men, like the Wanderer, discover in these circumstances the growth of intellectual judgment, and wisdom is born. Two people wrote me to say they were clenching their chairs in silence at my earlier remarks about Freud. I hope they feel free to answer now, or pursue their own analyses of illustrative texts in our remaining time. I won't close down the discussion as long as anyone tells me they have something left to say--and I myself have yet to play an Augustinian variation on the above. ***** JEFFREY COHEN: Let me return to a point I made earlier in the discussion about the disturbing fictional component within subjectivity. Jim has usefully supplied references to Freud's writing on the repression of traumatic events, and has even speculated how these observations translate over an entire culture during periods of upheaval (e.g.war). These events are crucial to the formation of a subjectivity (social or personal). One would think, then, that the fact that such an event has happened and can be reconstructed is an essential part of this thesis of subjectivity-formation. At least, that's what Freud leads us to believe. But Freud's actual method is quite different from his assumptions. Take, for example, the case written up as "A Child is Being Beaten." Freud diagrams the progress of a female patient's fantasy as it moves from a scene of a child being beaten by her father to another of some boys being beaten by a "paternal representative." He then describes at length the scene which occurs between these two, a scene which explains them both: the patient herself is being beaten by her father. Without getting into the dynamics of the case, I will point out only this: this middle scene is a fabrication, the analyst's own fantasy. Freud writes: "This second phase is the most important and most momentous of all. But we may say of it in a certain sense that it has never had a real existence. It is never remembered, it has never succeeded in becoming conscious. It is a construction of analysis, but it is no less of a necessity on that account." That last sentence says it all: "It is a construction of analysis, but it is no less of a necessity on that account." Is a child being beaten? Can we ever know? Again, I invoke an uncertainty principle, and suggest that we have to make do with fragments. It is possible, then, that The Wanderer was composed in a time of peace. It could be that The Wanderer was not an exile, but a monk safe in some cloister. It is possible that The Wanderer is more a part of larger cultural narrative than a personal one (just as "A Child is Being Beaten" can't really be understood outside of Freud's place and time - about which it reveals more than about his patient). ***** JIM EARL: Here toward the end of the discussion, I don't see why I shouldn't break with my usual restraint and just shoot back an answer. I agree entirely with Jeffrey about the fictionality of the Wanderer and the fictionality of much of the work of analysis. Freud was way ahead of both of us on this. He has plenty to say about art, fiction, and what we now call "representations"--you see he calls them "presentations" in the passages I cited. Jeffrey, you cannot believe that I would confuse the character of the Wanderer, the representation of subjectivity to be found in the poem of that name, with its author, whoever it was. Probably a monk indeed, though I would stress a very talented monk as poet, and a monk supremely sensitive to human nature as his society understood it. A monk whose brilliance is not to be written off to a mastery of some traditional skill or tradition of poetic representation, since the poem stands out in the early Middle Ages as a highly original production, its resemblance to a few other OE poems notwithstanding. The representation of subjectivity in art is of enormous value in the reconstruction of medieval subjectivity. The fact that "real" subjectivity is also in large part fictional makes this point even more salient. Bernard Williams, in his new book _Necessity and Shame_, asks why we should turn to the Greek tragedies to understand the Greek self, and wittly replies (I am paraphrasing, without the book at hand) that if he relied on the self-representations of historical personages he would be using bad art instead of good art. ***** DAN LUSTHAUS: Jeffrey Cohen is right to interpret that particular passage of Freud's as a statement claiming that certain childhood "memories" are heuristic constructions pulled together (deduced/induced) by the therapist that are necessary at certain phases of treatment. But Freud's position on the reality vs. fantasy component of these reconstructed memories vacillated, and there has been much made of that over the last few years. He initially believed all the stories - primarily of sexual abuse or witnessing of sexual acts - that his patients reported having had as children, which only emerged painfully during the course of analysis, were true facts. Later, for a variety of reasons, some of which have fueled the recent controversies, he decided that in most (but not all) cases, they were constructions, false memories, but involved a certain encoding of real processes if not events. What does not emerge through Freud's vacillations is a clear criterion by which one may determine which "memories" are reconstructed from actual events and which are fabricated from other factors (though he does try to lay out a description and analysis of those "other factors"). If historicity is one's only criterion for truth, then this structure is ambivalent. But if one accepts "necessary" structures as truth of some sort, and concedes to Freud that this structure is "necessary" ("It is a construction of analysis, but it is no less of a necessity on that account."), then Freud's analysis is still true and applicable. Certainly in medieval philosophy there was a direct correlation between necessity, certainty and truth. ***** JEFFREY COHEN: I didn't mean to imply that Jim was confusing the author's subjectivity with the speaker's - - he's far too sophisticated an analyst for that. Jim concedes fictionality in the Wanderer, fictionality in analysis - will he concede the fictional component of subjectivity itself? Both Freudians and deconstructionists agree that authors are not always in control of their own meanings. Our putative monkish author is, then, only one creator of a multiply-authored text. Kind of like _Interscripta_? ***** JIM EARL: I regretted snapping back a reply to Jeffrey yesterday, but obviously I didn't learn my lesson. Just a quick note about "fiction." First of all, what Bernard Williams really says is, "Why not take examples from life? It is a perfectly good question, and it has a short answer: what philosophers will lay before themselves and their readers as an alternative to literature will not be life, but bad literature" (Shame and Necessity, 13). Of course I recognize the fictional component--or fictional nature--or subjectivity. What could Jeffrey be thinking of as an alternative? The renaissance understood that we fashion ourselves. That's Pico's concept in his Oration, and the subject of Greemblatt's _Renaissance Self-Fashioning_. The humanistic tradition understands subjectivity as a fiction in that sense, something we create. I tell my students that they are in their educations fashioning themselves: we all read different books, or the same books at different moments in our histories, or in a different order, in the context of different personal circimstances, and therefore we all turn out to be quite different, intellectually and characterologically. Thank goodness. When you read a book you change yourself. You can choose how to do this to some extent: choose a mojor, choose your courses and teachers, choose what to study, choose your friends; and the sum total of these choices is a self you have to that extent created. Call it a fiction if you like. What's so annoying about Greenblatt's critique of this self-fashioning is that he thinks if the self is not totally autonomous, as Pico depicted it--and of course it's not--then the concept of self-fashioning is false. If we're not totally free, then all talk of free will is an illusion. Who could seriously believe this, that we are either free or not-free, and those are the choices, when daily life is obviously an engagement of our limited freedoms with the world's limited power over us? And Freud's recognition that we have unconscious motivations hardly destroys the idea of the individual. And he knew as well as anyone that the self is a "fiction"--Freud, who first discovered that our very memories are always fictional. In a few moments I will again regret speaking quickly. But I wouldn't mind hearing a few others speak their minds at the end of this discussion. Take a chance; it's your last chance to comment on the last five weeks' discussion. ***** MAURY MCCRILLIS: What strikes me as peculiar about the statement that the "renaissance understood that we fashion ourselves" is the notion that that which does the fashioning is the same as that which is fashioned. That is, if we are to understand "fashioning" as making a variety of choices (ie, reading a book, taking a course, and so on), the sum total of which results in a "self [that] you have...created" then of course that self which is created must not have existed prior to the point in which it was created, otherwise it would make no sense to say that it was "created." Hence, if we assume that the self can be "created" and that the self which is created only comes into existence after it is created (literally "brought into existence"), and if we assume that one can create themself by making various choices (again, reading a book or what not), then we are left with the perplexing problem as to how that which is brought into existence (ie, the self-fashioned self) can be brought into existence by itself (ie, the self that exists prior to the existence of the self). Perhaps, then, it is necessary to avoid the notion that the individual creates himself or herself since just as something cannot come from nothing, neither can something come from (ie, be created by) itself. Something can only be created by something else. I am inclined to reject the notion that the self is created by (in the strict sense of being brought into existence by) those things which Jim Earl mentions: books, courses, etc. To say that the self is created by or even predicated upon those things is to fall into the clutches of a numerous variety of deterministic theories. This does not mean, however, that self-presentation and re-presentation are not influenced by literature and academics. Jim's notion of self- fashioning is, I think, redeemable if we do not needlessly impose a theory of causality on the discussion which would make the self seem entirely predicated upon external phenomena. The way in which the self is constructed grammatically is contingent upon a number of things that are external to it--literary convention, for example. Yet the grammatically constructed self is also contingent upon the self as it exists essentially if in no other sense that the self as portrayed in writing does not exist prior to the self (the self of the author) who undertakes the process of writing. To speak of literary self-fashioning, then, is fine as long as we do not make the mistake of believing that grammatically constructed selves in literature ARE literally the authors themselves. As A.C. Spearing points out in "Prison, Writing, Absence: Representing the Subject in the English Poems of Charles D'Orleans," documents exist (ie, legal documents) "precisely because [their] originator cannot be present" (91). "Medieval awareness of this connection between writing and absence," Spearing explains, "is indicated by statements such as John of Salisbury's that 'Littere... absentium dicta sine voce loquuntur' [letters speak without voice the sayings of those absent]." Not just legal documents and patents, however, are marked by the conspicuous absence of the author himself or herself. This is not to say, though, that because the author is not literally there among the inkblots on the page that the "I" of poem points to just anything or that there never was an identifiable author who originally wrote the work. The grammatically constructed self, it seems to me, points to the essential self but of course is not essentially that self. The essential self, I think, also points to the grammatically constructed self since language is the medium of communication, but the essential self is not the grammatically constructed self. Self-fashioning, then, is not a means of self-creation but a means of dressing onesself in borrowed robes. ***** JIM EARL: Another Subject, Please Now I know why so many of you lurked through the subjectivity discussion! Classes finally started in Oregon last week, and there's been just no time for the final message I promised. I don't want the first discussion to end with a whimper, but fate goes as it must. So I cobble together these last few thoughts on Augustine, Freud, and the Wanderer out of duty, and a desire to be done with it. Write in your last thoughts if you like, and we have a wrap. "Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee," Augustine says at the beginning of the _Confessions_. The troubled mental state of the Wanderer is no surprise; his subjectivity is paradigmatic of fallen man. We are already familiar with an Augustinian psychological reading of the poem: James Doubleday, "The Three Faculties of the Soul in _The Wanderer_, Neophil 53 (1969): 189-94. John Selzer, "_The Wanderer_ and the Meditative Tradition," SP 80 (1983): 227-37. In this reading, the poem presents the trinity of mental faculties, _memoria_, _intelligentia_, and _voluntas_, as they work in sequence and in harmony to ascend to God. It's an awfully benign reading, since to me at least the Wanderer seems pretty mired in his fallenness--the poem hardly stresses the salvific. I'm more impressed with the portrait of a soul bound in the body, fallen into the material world and struggling to escape. This Augustinian doctrine, derived from neo-Platonism, might account for images of bondage in the poem: the Wanderer is bound by sleep and sorrow (as the Seafarer is bound by fetters of cold), and the body is variously a house, locker, or coffer of the spirit, mind, or life; the Seafarer, in a moving act of projection, sees the earth itself bound in ice. Because they are fallen souls trapped in the world, their salvation lies in dreams and visions in which the soul leaves the body, and in the gnomic wisdom that concludes the poems--but neither escape seems deeply consoling in The Wanderer. Could this image of the soul trapped and struggling to be free be analogous to the theme of repression and un-repression I outlined in my earlier note? In the _Confessions_ (X:8) Augustine says of _memoria_, "It is a vast, immeasurable sanctuary. Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am. This means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. . . . I am lost in wonder when I consider this problem." The _Confessions_ itself, Augustine's self-analysis, takes the form of a gradual recovery of what has been forgotten, lost in the memory--dare I say repressed? It is the exiled soul's voyage, as much as The Wanderer is. I'm not suggesting that the poem is Augustinian, influenced by _The Trinity_ or _The Confessions_, and I realize of course that kennings for the body are not derived from Christian doctrine. I am suggesting that the representation of subjectivity in the poem is easily described in Augustinian terms, as it is also in Freudian terms, and that these terms are surprising harmonious. Freud's tri-partite psyche is as much a faculty psychology as Augustine's tri-partite soul. Well, these few thoughts fulfill the letter of my bargain, and it is with some regret that I bring this our first Interscripta discussion to a close. We hardly scratched the surface of the topic, though the contributions were excellent and we learned a lot. Thank you all. And to Jeffrey, our next host, my special thanks and very best wishes.