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Speculative Medievalism: A Précis

  • The Petropunk Collective (author)
Chapter of: Speculative Medievalisms: Discography(pp. i–xi)

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Metadata
TitleSpeculative Medievalism
SubtitleA Précis
ContributorThe Petropunk Collective (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0021.1.02
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/speculative-medievalisms/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightThe Petropunk Collective
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2013-01-17
Long abstractSpeculative Medievalisms is a collaborative and interdiscipli-nary research project focusing on the theorization and practical development of the speculative dimensions of medi-eval studies. The term “speculative” is intended to resonate with the full range of its medieval and modern meanings. First, speculativeechoes the broad array of specifically medie-val senses of speculatio as the essentially reflective and imaginative operations of the intellect. According to this conception, the world, books, and mind itself were all conceived as specula (mirrors) through which the hermeneutic gaze could gain access to what lies beyond them. As Giorgio Agamben explains, “To know is to bend over a mirror where the world is reflected, to descry images reflected from sphere to sphere: the medieval man was always before a mirror, both when he looked around himself and when he surrendered to his own imagination.”2 This sense of speculative, which also gestures toward the humanistic principle of identity between world-knowledge and self-knowledge, becomes crucial for the development and institution of medieval studies as a disci-pline oriented to the past as both mirror and inscrutable site of origin. Like Narcissus, who at the fount falls in love with himself as another, modern Western culture gazes at the Mid-dle Ages as a self-image that impossibly blurs the distinction between identity and alterity. The speculative principle is ac-cordingly written into the title of the medieval studies journal, Speculum, published by the Medieval Academy since 1926. Speculum’s first editor E. K. Rand explained the aim of the journal via this principle in the inaugural issue as follows:
Page rangepp. i–xi
Print length11 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)