Liveblogging Kalamazoo: Saturday 1:30-3 pm
May. 9th, 2009 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjAnd it’s queer studies afternoon!
Session 435: Queer Friendship
Glittery Things: The Rhetoric of Sanctity and Female Homoaffective Desire in Hali Meidenhad and The Passion of Saint Margaret (Adin Lears, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center, CUNY)
Purity is linked to the beauty and purity of precious stones. Holy people are described as being like gemstones and objects venerated as sacred were deemed less worthy if not adorned with gems. Books such as Hali Meidenhad were “sales pitches” to women for a cloistered life, with the attractions including homoaffective relationships that were both passionate and – technically – chaste. It helps to distinguish between “erotic” and “sexual” concepts, where the former does not necessarily impinge on chasteness. Women are encouraged to meditate on female figures whose physical beauty is presented as reflecting inner sanctity, contrasted with the effects of a worldly life, in the form of pregnancy, which is presented as detracting from attractiveness. The virgin bodies presented in texts such as S. Margaret can be viewed as women’s gift to women readers, creating homosocial relationships in parallel with the worldly gift-economy. These virgins also take on male characteristics such as agency (Margaret’s freeing herself from the dragon by the sign of the cross, a magico-religious act traditionally reserved for male figures) and impenetrability.
The Queer Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry (Jennifer N. Brown, Univ. of Hartford)
In the text, a priest (probably a disguised form of the author Jacques de Vitry himself) takes the hand of the holy woman Marie d’Oignies in a gesture of spiritual friendship that turns, in the moment, to an erotic stimulus, re-framing their relationship from priest-penitent and follower-holy woman to man-woman. The author then goes on to blame the episode on Marie for being so naïve and pious that she didn’t understand what effect she might have. He describes her metaphorically as a skin (drum-head?) stretched so tight between two crosses that she was dried out of fleshly feelings. A divine voice intervenes saying, “Do not touch me” which Marie disavows understanding of, but Jacques obeys. Thereafter he withdrew from her in order to control his response. [me: I’m still waiting for the queer content here … ah, ok] The “perversion” here is the desire of chaste for chaste and the erotic triangle between Jacques’ desire, Christ’s jealousy, and Marie as passive and unwitting object between them. [me: hmm, still doesn’t sound that far outside traditional heterosexual narrative structures] We get a flashback to Marie’s life as a new bride (who would rather have led an ascetic religious life) mortifying her body as penitence for not having control over that body (in the marriage bed). Jacques, as her confessor, had access to these intimate details of her life, helping set up the conflicting ways in which their relationship was framed. But while praising the holiness of her life (in his writings) as a model for all women, he simultaneously cautioned other women off from emulating the specifics of her practices.
Transitioning from Transvestite Relationship to Transgender Friendship: Expanding and Re-reading Lives of the Cross-Dressed Saints Using the Lens of Transgender and Friendship (E. James Chambers, Ball State Univ.)
There are 80 cross-dressing female saints recorded across medieval Europe. Discussion of the relative appropriateness of “cross-dressing” vs. “transvestite” vs. “transgender”, depending on whether the term imply an erotic purpose to the action or the degree to which the identify or simply the outward appearance of the other gender is taken on. [me: he’s making some broad-brush generalizations about the personal fulfillment opportunities for women in various social roles that are beginning to annoy me] The motivations behind the female cross-dressing in the saints’ lives are broad, from avoidance of female sexual vulnerability to her parents’ desire for maintaining control of economic resources (if only sons are allowed to inherit). One common theme in the stories is the dilemma of the cross-dressing women as inducing an apparently opposite-gender desire in women they come in contact with. Conversely, the CD woman, if operating in an all-male environment (e.g., monastery) may engender unwanted same-sex desire in the men around her. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on desire itself as unwanted rather than on the specific genders involved. Another dilemma comes when the CD women are offered male authority roles (e.g., abbot of a monastery) and are torn between self-doubt regarding taking authority over men and the hazards of “outing” herself as a woman. Transitioning back to a female life often (although not invariably) results in an Unfortunate End. [me: I kind of lost the overarching thrust of the paper in the details of the examples. Bad listener! Bad!]
Session 435: Queer Friendship
Glittery Things: The Rhetoric of Sanctity and Female Homoaffective Desire in Hali Meidenhad and The Passion of Saint Margaret (Adin Lears, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center, CUNY)
Purity is linked to the beauty and purity of precious stones. Holy people are described as being like gemstones and objects venerated as sacred were deemed less worthy if not adorned with gems. Books such as Hali Meidenhad were “sales pitches” to women for a cloistered life, with the attractions including homoaffective relationships that were both passionate and – technically – chaste. It helps to distinguish between “erotic” and “sexual” concepts, where the former does not necessarily impinge on chasteness. Women are encouraged to meditate on female figures whose physical beauty is presented as reflecting inner sanctity, contrasted with the effects of a worldly life, in the form of pregnancy, which is presented as detracting from attractiveness. The virgin bodies presented in texts such as S. Margaret can be viewed as women’s gift to women readers, creating homosocial relationships in parallel with the worldly gift-economy. These virgins also take on male characteristics such as agency (Margaret’s freeing herself from the dragon by the sign of the cross, a magico-religious act traditionally reserved for male figures) and impenetrability.
The Queer Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry (Jennifer N. Brown, Univ. of Hartford)
In the text, a priest (probably a disguised form of the author Jacques de Vitry himself) takes the hand of the holy woman Marie d’Oignies in a gesture of spiritual friendship that turns, in the moment, to an erotic stimulus, re-framing their relationship from priest-penitent and follower-holy woman to man-woman. The author then goes on to blame the episode on Marie for being so naïve and pious that she didn’t understand what effect she might have. He describes her metaphorically as a skin (drum-head?) stretched so tight between two crosses that she was dried out of fleshly feelings. A divine voice intervenes saying, “Do not touch me” which Marie disavows understanding of, but Jacques obeys. Thereafter he withdrew from her in order to control his response. [me: I’m still waiting for the queer content here … ah, ok] The “perversion” here is the desire of chaste for chaste and the erotic triangle between Jacques’ desire, Christ’s jealousy, and Marie as passive and unwitting object between them. [me: hmm, still doesn’t sound that far outside traditional heterosexual narrative structures] We get a flashback to Marie’s life as a new bride (who would rather have led an ascetic religious life) mortifying her body as penitence for not having control over that body (in the marriage bed). Jacques, as her confessor, had access to these intimate details of her life, helping set up the conflicting ways in which their relationship was framed. But while praising the holiness of her life (in his writings) as a model for all women, he simultaneously cautioned other women off from emulating the specifics of her practices.
Transitioning from Transvestite Relationship to Transgender Friendship: Expanding and Re-reading Lives of the Cross-Dressed Saints Using the Lens of Transgender and Friendship (E. James Chambers, Ball State Univ.)
There are 80 cross-dressing female saints recorded across medieval Europe. Discussion of the relative appropriateness of “cross-dressing” vs. “transvestite” vs. “transgender”, depending on whether the term imply an erotic purpose to the action or the degree to which the identify or simply the outward appearance of the other gender is taken on. [me: he’s making some broad-brush generalizations about the personal fulfillment opportunities for women in various social roles that are beginning to annoy me] The motivations behind the female cross-dressing in the saints’ lives are broad, from avoidance of female sexual vulnerability to her parents’ desire for maintaining control of economic resources (if only sons are allowed to inherit). One common theme in the stories is the dilemma of the cross-dressing women as inducing an apparently opposite-gender desire in women they come in contact with. Conversely, the CD woman, if operating in an all-male environment (e.g., monastery) may engender unwanted same-sex desire in the men around her. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on desire itself as unwanted rather than on the specific genders involved. Another dilemma comes when the CD women are offered male authority roles (e.g., abbot of a monastery) and are torn between self-doubt regarding taking authority over men and the hazards of “outing” herself as a woman. Transitioning back to a female life often (although not invariably) results in an Unfortunate End. [me: I kind of lost the overarching thrust of the paper in the details of the examples. Bad listener! Bad!]
