Alterity:
Refers to the quality of being ‘othered’. For our class, we understand alterity to refer to the gap between the present and the past, and to the radical otherness or ‘foreignness’ that we are presented with when we attempt to study the past. Analepsis: Analepsis is a way of giving meaning to history through retrospection and flashback. Aporia: From the Greek word meaning “impasse”, aporia refers to a rhetorical device used to express feigned doubt. Inherently in language there are moments of impasse, that are simultaneously contradictory. The aporetic moment comes when you realize that both are correct at the same time but both cannot be correct at the same time. For example, Hamlet says: “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw” (Hamlet II.ii). His dialogue supports both meanings at the same time, just as the text supports both meanings simultaneously. Derrida, in his work Given Time, describes it by using a gift as an example. The giving of a gift, he says, is both possible and impossible at the same time. To be understood as a real gift, and not simply as a cycle of giving to receive (another gift or even praise for one’s ego), a gift must be given anonymously, with no benefit to the giver and no acknowledgement from the receiver. Otherwise, it can be said that the receiver is giving the gift only in expectation of what they’ll receive in return. Since the de facto nature of gift-giving is totally contradictory to the true nature of the gift, the process is both possible and impossible at the same time. Artifact: A material object (created by humans) that acts as a sign pointing to a particular historical context. An artifact is used to suggest the time period it was used or created, and to show a type of trend occurring during the period. Since books contain an abundance of historical and cultural context, a story within a book or scroll is considered to be an artifact that helps expose trends and traditions within a time period. Auctoritas: Auctoritas is the Latin word for “authority,” and is also the root of the English word, “author.” The medieval use of the word “author” was somewhat different than its use today; it was meant specifically for those who used thoughts and ideas of others to reinforce their own writings. This is important because in medieval culture, originality meant nothing if it was not a novel idea synthesized through the use of material that was already seen as worthy or great. The true auctor establishes auctoritas through the use of works previously accepted, showing that they have mastered the concepts and are then able to credibly build upon them with their own original ideas. Babylonian Captivity: Having occurred between 598 and 596 BCE, the Babylonian Captivity or Exile refers to a time period in Jewish history in which Jewish people were deported from the Kingdom of Judah and relocated to Babylonia. The term is sometimes used to refer to the Avignon Papacy - a time between 1309 to 1378 CE in which a handful of successive popes lived in Avignon, France - because of perceived parallels between the two events. Cultural Studies: A way of interpreting cultural phenomena stemming from class-inflected political acts in the 1960s and 70s. Today, it is an interdisciplinary method of studying culture through artifacts that assumes all forms of culture can be analyzed through the lens of the text - literature, television, fashion, etc. Epicureanism: A line of thought from the philosopher Epicurus, who believed that ‘pleasure’ was the greatest good. For him, pleasure was derived from living modestly and gaining knowledge of the world and the self. Pleasure, thought of in this way, is considered the absence of pain. Also characteristic of this school of thought is the notion that there is no afterlife after death, so adherents are encouraged to focus their energies on living pleasurably in the Earthly present. Eschatology: The study of the end of things or time, operating under the belief that it is the proximity of imminent destruction that reveals truth about humanity. Extant manuscript: A manuscript that has survived through time. Most texts that were read and used often were destroyed over time, it’s the unused that survived longer. Heresy: Any belief at odds with those already established, especially within religious circles. In the Middle Ages, people or texts could be deemed heretical if they went against the Catholic church, and would often be punished by law (Opposite: Orthodoxy, or adherence to norms). Hermeneutics: A system of interpretation in which meaning is derived from signs embedded in the various systems, including those of text, author, reader, and historical context. |
Hermeneutic Momentum:
An understanding of the material in the reader that the text must establish and build upon, propelling the reader forward so that they can follow what the text is doing/saying. (Coined by Heather Hayton) Histoire: In the Middle Ages, this term referred to any fictional story. Histoire shows us that the root of the word ‘history’ implies fiction, lies, and the art of narrative storytelling. Homo Sacer: Literally “Man Set Apart,” or “Sacred Man.” Homo Sacer is a term in the legal system of ancient Rome that refers to someone who, typically having been judged of some crime, is rendered sacred and no longer considered a person a value within society. He is politically and legally removed from the social order, but physically remains a part of it. Anybody can terminate the life of the sacred man with impunity, but he is prohibited from being sacrificed as he has no value or currency with the Gods. In other words, he cannot be used as ritualistic payment. Homo sacer, in classical antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, is essentially an outlaw, a red character who exists outside of the law. Although the sacred man is not actually deceased, he inhabits a liminal ground between life and death because homicide laws do not apply to him. This condition is the ultimate and extreme result of ‘biopolitics’, a system of politics in which life is determined as either valuable or valueless within a society by a sovereign power. A modern day example of homo sacer would be Jewish people in Nazi Germany, who were judged as valueless to the social order while still physically remaining within it. Giorgio Agamben, in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) describes Jewish people in Nazi Germany as being reduced to “bare life” until they were considered neither human nor animal – in essence, being relegated to a form of living death. Integumentum: The truth cloaked in lies. Fabula: The cloak of fiction; art, stories. Interpellation: A representation that convinces you that you have a choice when your choices are limited from the start. Originates from Marxist social and political theory and the claim that individuals are produced by social forces, and therefore have less agency than might be imagined. Example: the Matrix’s red pill vs. blue pill. Medieval: Derived from the Latin medium aevum (middle period), the term was coined in the 1770s by Burkhardt. Medieval people called themselves moderni. Nostalgia: From the Latin nosto (return home) and algos (pain). First used in 1688 to refer to a lethal disease contracted by soldiers. Kant, in 1798, said it was “a yearning for a time, not a place.” It refers to temporal, not spatial dislocation. Nostalgia costs us living in the present. Palimpsest: A manuscript that has been scraped clean and had all/most of the writing removed from it, then used again for other writings. Traces of the removed text were often still visible and later recovered. Philology: Literally, the love of words, it also refers to the process of examining written, historical language for the purpose of tracing it back to the origin. Prolepsis: The representation of a future development as if it presently exists; A flash-forward within the text. Spolia: Derived from the Latin spolium, spolia refers to the reuse of architectural fragments to create new works. This was a common practice in the ancient Greco-Roman world, where builders would often reuse marble or columns from old monuments when constructing new ones. Teleologies: The implication that there are neat beginnings and endings in history, often because it is a comfortable and reassuring assumption. Derrida talks about the human search for ‘originary’ moments while advocating that these moments can never really be reached or understood. The human desire for teleologies often leads to a whiggish understanding of history. Whiggish History: A type of history that shows progression along a horizontal line. More specifically, it uses the lens of the present to look at the past. This can be problematic, because it alters our perception of the events that actually took place. Contemporary understandings of history suggest that it is not a single progression of events, but more of a web of interconnected occurrences that lead to the present. |