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Medieval Studies in the Subjunctive Mood

  • Gaelan Gilbert (author)
Chapter of: Burn after Reading: Vol. 1, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies + Vol. 2, The Future We Want: A Collaboration(pp. 41–46)

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Metadata
TitleMedieval Studies in the Subjunctive Mood
ContributorGaelan Gilbert (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0067.1.11
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/burn-after-reading/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
CopyrightGilbert, Gaelan
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2014-04-28
Long abstractLet’s just run with it. The potentially instructive, because utterly naïve, thought experiment of entertaining for a moment that we have never been modern. Forget modernism—what if modernitynever happened?Not that we know what “modern” even means, except as an empty qualifier perched with pomp at the crest of history. Then again, that’s precisely the point. Modernity, like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history looking over its shoulder, has always been running from what it no longer wants to be, shouting “not that! not that!” And yet—and it’s a big yet —if we are becoming increasingly convinced by Bruno Latour, then not only were we never not medieval, but medieval no longer has to mean “premodern.” If Benja-min’s angel of modern history can’t stop looking back-ward and defining itself in opposition to what it sees as a sort of negative immanence (what, in the past, it fears and loathes), then perhaps “to be medieval,” as Andrew Cole and D. Vance Smith have put it, “is to posit a future in the very act of self-recognition, to offer a memory or memo-rial to a future that will be recognized at a time and place not yet known.”1 A future, that is, which positively trans-cends presence.
Page rangepp. 41–46
Print length6 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)