Dreaming of the Middle AgesUmberto Eco Travels in Hyperreality, 1986

• ..we are at present witnessing, both in Europe and America, a period of renewed interest in the Middle Ages, with a curious oscillation between fantastic neomedievalism and responsible philological examination.

• The Middle Ages are the root of all our contemporary ‘hot’ problems, and it is not surprising that we go back to that period every time we ask ourselves about our origin. All the questions debated during the sessions of the Common Market originate from the situation of medieval Europe.

• Thus looking at the Middle Ages means looking at our infancy, in the same way that a doctor, to understand our present state of health asks us about our childhood, or in the same way that the psychoanalyst, to understand our present neuroses, makes a careful examination of the primal scene.

• But is dreaming in the Middle Ages really a typical contemporary or postmodern temptation?

We are finding ourselves awash with, pseudo- or

quasi- or neomedievalism. It is as if in these post-

Enlightenment, postmodern, post-denominational

days, the country searches again for mystery. And

the last place we can remember hearing of folk who

engaged it - folk who heard holy voices that had no

human origin, who entertained visions that had no

physical explanation, who walked in thin places and

saw out of the corner of the eye - those folk and

those holy things happened before the Reformation

and the Age of Reason. Those things happened in

the Middle Ages, and so we go looking for the

stories of them as if for a way to re-enter the Mystery to which they bear witness

Muddy Waters: Medievalism, Medieval Studies, and the Medieval Turn

“the greatest paradox of twentieth-century medieval studies was it

curious refusal to accept its own role in shaping the critical languages

of modernity[...]from the „suspicion of modernity‟ that characterised

even the most innovative work of Joseph Bedier around 1900 to the

ascetic sense of theoretical belatedness suffusing the disciplines of

medieval studies from the early 1970s through the 1990s.”

Bruce Holsinger,2005)

MID COLONIAL• A progressive or teleological history in which time is conceived as mere seriality

and flat chronology is inadequate to the task of thinking the meanings and trauma of the past, its embeddedness in the present or future. Once homogeneity and progressive or heirarchizing “developmental” models are denied history—once simple, linear sequences of cause and effect are abandoned for more complicated narratives of heterogeneity, overlap, sedimentation, and multiplicity—time itself becomes a problem for postcolonial studies, and the medieval “meridian” or “middle” becomes an instrument useful for rethinking what postcolonial might signify

• One could go further and argue that postcolonial theory in practice has neglected the study of a “distant” past, which tends to function as a field of undifferentiated alterity against which modern regimes of power have risen. This exclusionary model of temporality denies the possibility that traumas, exclusions, violences enacted centuries ago might still linger in contemporary identity formations; it also closes off the possibility that this past could be multiple and valuable enough to contain (and be contained within) alternate presents and futures.

JEFFREY JEROME COHEN – THE POSTCOLONIAL MIDDLE AGES (2000)

“if modern states were to come to share their authority over their

citizens, and their ability to command their loyalties, on the one

hand with regional and world authorities and on the other with sub-

state or sub-national authorities, to such an extent that the concept

of sovereignty ceased to be applicable, then a neo-mediaeval form

of universal political order might be said to have emerged”

Hedley Bull, 1977

Prior to the development of the Westphalian systems of territorial

sovereignty and nation building, he argues, the West was organized

by multiple, asymmetric layers of authority, each of which shared

sovereignty with the others. These layers of sovereignty were

overlapping and were not supreme; authority was shared among

rulers, the vassals beneath them, and the Pope and the Holy Roman

Emperor above.

Neomedievalism and International Relations

1. Competing institutions with overlapping jurisdictions (states, regimes,

transgovernmental networks, private interest governments, etc.)

2. More fluid territorial boundaries (both within and across states)

3. A growing alienation between global innovation, communication and

resource nodes (global cities) on the one hand and disfavoured,

fragmented hinterlands on the other, along with increased inequalities

and isolation of permanent sub-castes (the underclass)

4. Multiple and/or fragmented loyalties and identities (ethnic conflict and

multiculturalism)

5. Contested property rights and legal boundaries (e.g., disregard for

rules and dispute resolution procedures, attempts to extend

extraterritorial jurisdiction, etc.)

6. The spread of what Alain Minc has called “zones grises,” or

geographical areas and social contexts where the rule of law does not run (both localized ghettoes and international criminal activities).

“Peace or War? Utopia or nightmare? Global solidarity or tribal conflict? Nationalism triumphant or the crisis of the nation-state? Progress on civil rights or persecution of minorities? New world order or new anarchy? There seems to be no end to the fundamental dilemmas and anguished questions provoked by the post-Cold-War world. One is almost tempted to turn to the language of myth and fairy tale. Perhaps we should blame the witches and bad fairies who made their wishes over the cradle of the latest born of the international systems. Perhaps the prince has been turned into a monster and will never recover his original form. Perhaps the fall of the Soviet empire has torn a hole in the heavens and in the ground underfoot, allowing us to glimpse through the ruins of the postwar structures both the shinning prospect of a global community and the swarming menace of unrestrained violence.”

(Hassner,1997,215-19)

The Dilemma of IR Theory

Cyber-MedievalismCybermedievalism, Techgnosis and the Noosphere

“In the last centuries of the Roman era, as the empire disintegrated,

such a vision offered special appeal. No matter the chaos and decay

on earth, no matter that disharmony, injustice and squalor reigned

here, after death those who followed Jesus could look forward to an

eternal haven of radiance and light.

So too, in our time of social and environmental disintegration--a time

when our ‘empire’ also appears to be disintegrating--today's

proselytizers of cyberspace proffer their domain as an idealized

realm ‘above’ and ‘beyond’ the problems of a troubled material world,

just like the early Christians, they too promise a `transcendent' haven

of radiance and light, a utopian arena of equality, friendship and

virtue.“

- Margaret Wertheim (1999)

Neomedievalism in Art?

“lot of art right now is preoccupied with a sense of how human society seems to

be drifting towards some sort of gloomy, nondescript end, in some not-so-far-off,

worn-out future.[...] it‟s as if some art is starting to make sense of – and give

shape to – a vague but widespread sense of uncertainty about the state of

humanity that seems to be everywhere in our culture today, reflecting a growing

feeling of apprehension and foreboding, to the point that if there is a future, it

might not necessarily contain humans. Art right now is full of visions of a near

future and the ruins of a recently disappeared civilisation”

J.J. Charlesworth, 2008

Tate Premodern 2008

“ a near future where culture is

nothing more than a constant

reprocessing of past

fragments, which are

themselves projections of a

dead-end future ”

After Nature New Museum, NYC 2008

The artworks and artefacts in

this show might recall the relics

of a lost civilization..It is a land

of wilderness and ruins that

exists in an imaginary time

zone suspended between

aremote past and a not-so-

distant future.

- Massimiliano Gioni