[This is the paper I will be giving later this week to a conference on La Construction du Sujet Exclu (IVe-IXe Siècles): L'Individu, La Société et L'Exclusion. For reasons that may be obvious, I decided not to try to write this in French...
The main, political point I am trying to make as the subtext of this paper is that there is - there can be - no community without the recognition and acceptance of dissent and disagreement. The obsession, of at least one leading early medievalist, with painting a picture of cozy consensus and harmony in early medieval politics, seems to me to be entirely reactionary, rather like the Haigiography I discussed a couple of weeks ago - a case of 'we're [or we were] all in this together.' It finds a pretty obvious context in the politics of the present. Indeed it maps pretty well onto the social politics of academic early medieval history in the UK, which are pretty viciously conservative - for all the widespread pretence at left-wing credentials.
As for the paper itself, it opens with a critique of the notion of the individual - whether as something natural, something to be valorised, or even as an analytically useful category - suggesting that each social actor stands at the (ever-changing) intersection of a number of different identities of groups. Each identity functions, however, only as an ideal, towards which a subject may move, and thus as a signifier like any other, as much composed of what it is not as what it is, or might be. Even what it might be is ever-changing as a result of social dynamics. The subject is thus always already excluded from whatever category s/he may wish to be included in. I propose a concept of the 'unworked individual' as a basis for discussion. Social dynamics are discussed as more contingent and uncertain, and with a greater possibility of misrecognition and miscommunication than I acknowledged in early works.
After a discussion of ways of trying to limit the slippage and miscommunication in sixth and seventh-century Gallic society, especially through a heavy semiotic investment in costume, the paper compares subjectification in the Roman Empire with that in seventh-century and later Gaul to argue that in the latter case there was no master-signifier that could serve to fundamentally 'work' (or operate) or construct a political community in the same way as the Roman civic masculine ideal had done in the Roman Empire. This means that references to consensus and community in seventh-century and later texts should be seen for what they are, not as descriptions of a reality, but as active attempts to create a community including some, while excluding others.
Update 23/11/2014: I have updated this post so that it now represents the text submitted to the volume, with footnotes etc.]
***
This chapter examines
the volume’s key terms from a slightly different perspective from those adopted
elsewhere; I hope a new and productive one.
It is fair to suggest that when borrowing approaches from other
disciplines, early medieval history has, most frequently been shaped by social
theories from sociology, anthropology and ethnology. Durkheim and Weber were mentioned in the
rationale for the Padova conference and my own earlier work borrowed much from
this field.[1] I this chapter, however, I will employ an
approach drawn from what, in the UK, is called ‘continental philosophy’ to challenge
the ontological status of the categories – and communities – into which we are
accustomed to organising early medieval society.[2]
*
What do we
envisage when with think of medieval binaries? Normally a list of pairs separated by a colon
is brought to mind. The following seems
like a reasonable selection:
Free : unfree
noble : free
(or noble : peasant)
Frank : Roman
adult : child
man : woman
Usually the
terms on either side of the colon are seen as fixed entities, to which
definitions can be appended. What is at
stake is often privileging the categories to the left of the colon and seeing
those placed in the category to the right as excluded. I want to refocus the analysis, so to speak,
on the colon itself. That is to say that
I wish primarily to discuss not the categories
but the relationships between them,
seeing the latter as constant, contingent work,
continually, retroactively, defining or redefining the content of the terms on
either side.
The conference
rationale mentions the debate over the ‘creation of the individual’ and the
counter-view that early medieval people did not see themselves as such, but as
members of groups.[3] In my view, both opinions are, mistaken. While someone may identify with a particular
group, that person will be a member of any number of other, different groupings:
sex/gender, age, ethnicity, kindred or family, religion, profession and so
on. Everyone stands at a very
particular, probably unique intersection of them.[4] That conception of the social actor as
standing at the intersection of different identities forces us to reject the term
individual, for the very reason that
a specific persona can indeed be divided.
It is made up of component parts.
It is not individual. It is, furthermore, a category error to
confuse the notion of the self with that of the individual. Even in basic psychoanalysis, the ‘self’ is
divided into conscious and unconscious and, in Lacanian terms, the subject is
always split upon its entry into the world of the symbolic.[5] In recognition of this, the British
philosopher Simon Critchley coins the term ‘dividual’.[6]
Miguel
Benasayag has seen the different dimensions of a persona as ‘arms’ reaching out
to identify with others, making that social actor a part of others.[7] This compels us to perceive identities as
contingent, ever-changing creations produced from specific interactions between
particular people. This is vital to
remember whenever we speak of concepts like ‘Frankish ethnicity’ or
‘aristocratic identity’, ‘the free’, or even ‘child’ or ‘woman’. These are not fixed categories with historical
lives and trajectories of their own. I
hope to demonstrate that this has profound implications for our understanding of
early medieval society and politics.
The concept of
the individual is, then, problematic, and to equate it with the self or the
subject is an error. To equate it
historically with Reason, freedom, democracy and choice, as in one recent book,[8]
is an even bigger mistake. Indeed it
seems to me that, as a basis for social analysis, the very notion of the
individual have difficulty in standing up badly to close scrutiny, without
losing the key elements that supposedly differentiate it from its alternatives.
The key point is that the individual, so
far from being natural, is, as Michel Clouscard put it, a contingent product.[9]
It is the political creation of specific
circumstances. It subordinates composite
identity to the idea of a whole, self-present, unique entity. What the obsession with the individual does –
ironically – is to create a single category
or class: of individuals. The acts of denying the subject’s ‘dividuality’ and of
valorising societies which allegedly conceive of people as individuals in opposition
to those which, supposedly, do not, produces the very unidimensional
categorisation that it claims to oppose.
The creation of ‘individuals’ is a matter of power. Where a social actor wishes to be considered individual, that inextricably suppresses
those identities, or dimensions of identity, which might call into question what
that agent considers as their fundamental (individual)
identity. The establishment of others as individuals, that is to say as persons
defined by a single (individual) identity,
is also an act of power and exclusion, negating shared dimensions of identity
or those which stress commonality.[10]
It is
important to see identity or identification not
as a simple, inherent or inherited essence but as a ‘motion towards’ an
ideal. In life, such a ‘motion towards’
is never complete. The subject
constantly asks what ‘they’ want of me – in Lacanian parlance, ‘che vuoi?’[11]
Am ‘I’, ‘ego’, this signifier for a
specific conjunction of social roles or positions, each with a recognised meaning, correctly
living up to that symbolic content? The
subject always stands in the imagined gaze of others, or of the Lacanian ‘big
Other’, which you might think of as ‘society’ in the imaginary register.[12] Lacan memorably said ‘a man who thinks he is
a king is no crazier than a king who thinks he is a king’.[13] He meant that the subject is constantly
shaped by what he or she, as someone in that particular role, thinks others
expect of it, how that person is supposed to act, and so on. The rationale for
the Padova conference correctly pointed out how every identification carries
with it an exclusion. Crucially, however,
exclusion is inherent even within the
notion of identity itself; the libidinal motion of identification is always
driven by a sense of not being ‘that
thing’.
In my early
work, based around my research on the Merovingian region of Metz, I discussed
social interactions in terms of the deployment of identities.[14] I proposed that, in social interactions with other
persons, a social actor chooses from a set of identities, as though playing a
game of cards, selecting either those which stress a shared, inclusive
identity, or those highlighting difference and thus exclude. [15]
Let us
consider the example of Gregory of Tours and his count, Leudast.[16] Gregory was male, a mature adult – I suggest that,
according to normal late antique Gallic age-rounding, at the time of his
dealings with Leudast he probably thought of himself as ‘forty’[17]
– a cleric, celibate, in his eyes a nobilis
of senatorial status, from the Auvergne and owing his appointment to king
Sigibert.[18] Leudast (although, admittedly, we have only
Gregory’s account to draw upon) was certainly male, perhaps about the same age
as Gregory, of (in Gregory’s view) low birth, a Poitevin, in secular royal
service and thus, perhaps, also self-identifying as a Frank, who owed his
position to kings Charibert and Chilperic.[19] Gregory chose to highlight the many
dimensions of their identities that raised barriers, or differences, between
the two men but he could hypothetically,
had he been so inclined, have downplayed them by stressing those things they
had in common : their gender and age, religion, common service of King
Chilperic and shared residence in Tours.
Thus the two acted as though to exclude one another not because of any monolithic identities and their inherent opposites
but because of the contingent situation in which they found themselves and
their own personal desires.
Insights from Pierre
Bourdieu and the British sociologist Anthony Giddens suggest that the social
value of any identity is not fixed but always constituted by the collective,
shared knowledge of correct and incorrect behaviour.[20] Every action, whether exaggerating,
confirming or infringing previous norms, infinitesimally affects those values,
what is held to be appropriate and what is not.
This makes change dynamic. If we
compare sources from the sixth and seventh centuries it is possible to see
changes occurring even within relationships which, in theory, were fixed –
governed by the law. J.Y. Okamura’s study
of ethnicity uses the term ‘setting’ for the broader context within which an interaction
takes place and ‘situation’ for the precise interaction or set of related
interactions.[21] The setting in the example above is later
sixth-century Gaul, or even Tours, and the various identities listed earlier in
that place and time, but the situation would be Gregory’s and Leudast’s
interactions, meetings and precise employment of those identities.
I may previously
have given too great a sense of a free choice but, other than that, I wish to refine
this approach, not reject it. The social
deployment of an identity, rather than being akin to playing a card with – at least
in a specific time and place – a fixed value, should be seen as more uncertain,
more of a wager, a wager on the other
person accepting that you have such a card to play and on acting towards you in
accordance with expected fashion as a result.
Agents do not actually possess
identities as finite objects.
I suggest,
too, that the symbolic value of an identity was constituted as much by what it
was not as by what it was. An identity, just like any other signifier, is
perceived within a chain of signification and difference. Thus, when one takes a stance in social
interaction through performing a
particular identity, there is always the risk of misunderstanding or
miscommunication.[22] An identity is never a self-present reality,
but functions as a sign composed of a set of relational differences. In choosing to deploy one identity over
another, or to see a person in terms of one identity rather than another, a
social actor makes a decision based not upon self-evident data but upon
political or ethical choice. Like any other sign, therefore, identities operate
within a space of Derridean différance. In
analysing social and political interaction, in the past or present, then, we
undertake an operation akin to deconstruction, in its correct, Derridean sense,
to uncover and scrutinise these choices.[23]
*
There are of
course means of slowing the inevitable dynamism of social relations, and
reducing the possibility of slippage and miscommunication. One is the management of space. People defined by particular identities – an
operation of power – might be physically separated to fix them within the
bounds of that identity. We might think of
the effort spent by the Roman élite, even at local levels, on creating imposing
avenues of approach to their villas, and on entrance and reception rooms often
more elaborately decorated than more private spaces.[24] Even the fencing off of different units
within a village has an analogous effect by making the passage into someone
else’s property formal, visible and something experienced bodily. The removal from the settlement of the
dwellings of the more powerful members of society reduces the scope for chance
encounters wherein it is more difficult to perform that specific identity which
separation is meant to prioritise.[25] Within buildings, male and female quarters
may be separated; the decision to house animals in separate structures might
have been motivated by analogous concerns.[26] Finally space might be used to create areas
within which all conduct and behaviour is governed by particular rules. Sites of religious ritual are the obvious
examples but it may be worth considering more secular governmental spaces, like
the Roman city or at least its monumental centre, as another.
Our knowledge
of sixth- and seventh-century archaeology does not allow us to make confident
statements in this sphere, although this has surely been one of the areas of
most dramatic progress in Merovingian studies over the past twenty years.[27]
Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to
suggest that, in northern Gaul, the use of space to demarcate – physically – particular
dimensions of social organisation was not especially pronounced. Separate élite settlements may have been
beginning to develop around 600, but not until the latter half of that century
is it possible to discuss more established settlement structures in detail.[28] Even in the south, where a greater continuity
from the Roman settlement pattern can be demonstrated, sometimes into the
seventh century, we must concede that this aspect of social relations had
undergone significant change.[29] We might, however, suspect that space was
used to restrict the forms of interaction between different agents, and place
it within a formal register, in the building of churches. Gregory’s interactions with Leudast are
moderated to some extent by their location.[30] This possibly sheds a slightly different
light upon the construction of religious edifices on villa-sites, widespread
across southern Europe, and the foundation of churches within towns.[31] The royal palace would be the secular
equivalent, another delineated area within which behaviour might be effectively
kept more or less within defined parameters.[32] A final such space, I suggest, is the
communal cemetery, the scene for the staging of certain social identities – and
perhaps for the playing down of others.
On the whole, however,
I suggest that, especially in the sixth century, in the absence of the
architectural and spatial means of limiting interaction, heavy investment in
costume was intended to perform a similar function. Costume defined and created particular social
categories –young man, child, married woman.
Such costume used the body and its adornment, sometimes advertising its concealment
or highlighting excluded areas, to create
a social demarcation, suggesting the right and wrong forms of interaction, some
of which is enshrined in Salic Law.[33]
It is important to underline
that the content of the archaeologically-visible signs of identity is, like
that of other signs, composed partly of its opposed terms. As I have argued elsewhere,
the elaborate attention devoted to covering or pinning up a woman's hair, not only
manifests the ideal category of the betrothed or married woman; by drawing
attention to the (concealed) hair it emphasises the taboo involved in touching
it, referred to in the Law, as well as referencing different categories, young
girl (or boy), woman in mourning, sexual impropriety or madness.[34]
The differences in belt-sets between men and women reference their opposites.
The presence or absence of particular forms of jewellery makes a similar point,
and so on.
An element of
power was clearly involved here too. Social
norms define those dimensions of a person’s identity which are held to be
appropriate for marking in costume, when and how. If we can reliably read such things from northern
Gaulish cemeterial data, the norms of formal sixth-century costume laid primary
stress on age and sex. What we might
consider as signs of class or wealth distinctions were laid out within those
bounds. This says important things about
the nature of community in sixth-century Northern Gaul and its role in social
organisation. The imagery of the ideal
occupant of a social category created by costume is, furthermore, as external
to the person choosing to play that identity as it is to the person choosing to
deploy a different one in response. Social
dynamics, moreover, forever modify what that ideal might be. One important change that had occurred
since the Roman period concerned the conception of gender. In an as yet unpublished paper I argued, on
the basis of a polarity in the grave-goods, that post-imperial gender, unlike that
in the late Roman Empire, was conceived in terms of two sets of ideals, feminine and masculine, rather than the single
masculine ideal that dominated in the classical era.[35]
I conceive of
the subject, then, as something fundamentally ‘unworked’ or ‘désoeuvré’, to use
a term that I think originated with Maurice Blanchot,[36]
and, in important senses, always already excluded. This has important implications for how we
view early medieval political communities, allowing us to challenge the
problematic ‘consensus model’.[37] To pursue this, we must consider late antique
and early medieval processes of subjectification. Following a series of philosophers from Hegel
onwards, in this chapter I have presented the case that the formation of the
subject is fundamentally bound up with desire, with an attempted move to an
ideal. Herein lies a vitally important
difference between the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages.
In the Roman
world, the very process of subject-formation was closely bound up with the
existence of the Empire. The civic masculine ideal lay at the centre of the
whole signifying system. It was a master
signifier: in Lacanian terms, a point de
capiton or quilting point.[38] Other signifiers received their precise
content from their relationship with this concept. In the Roman context, that libidinal motion
of subjectification was shaped by the masculine ideal. This was not true only of men; the Roman
concept of sex/gender was one in which the female was defined qualitatively by
a nearness to or distance from the masculine ideal. By the late Roman period, we should not underestimate
the extent to which this was the case even beyond the frontiers of the Empire.[39] The Roman masculine ideal was, of course,
inextricable from the concepts of lawful authority, or legitimate participation
in government.[40] This, clearly, brought all kinds of people
towards a common ideal, which was in part delineated by a relationship to the
Roman state. This was surely one reason
for the imperial state’s resilience.[41] It created a real ground for the working of political community.
For fifty to
seventy-five years immediately after the Western Empire’s political demise,
something like this continued to be the case, thanks partly to the emergence of
another, martial model of masculinity.[42] The ‘barbarised’ martial and the ‘Roman’
civic models stood in relationship to each other via a shared link to the
Emperor, who in some ways embodied both ideals.
Something equivalent to this situation existed in the earlier sixth
century, when a distinction between ‘barbarian’ soldier and ‘Roman’ taxpayer or
churchman persisted. I suggest that that
changed crucially at the end of the sixth century. Justinian’s ‘Wars of Reconquest’ surely made
it clear to anyone living outside the areas of direct imperial administration in
the West that they could no longer, legitimately claim to be living within the
Roman Empire and with an automatic, legitimate link to the emperor. This, I propose, made a huge difference,
which profoundly affects the way we envisage early medieval society and
political community. The Roman situation
had meant that people of all sorts saw their ideals and felt themselves judged,
or in the gaze of others, according to the same ‘master signifier’: the Roman
male. This, as noted, was intimately
connected to the imperial state. By the middle
quarters of the seventh century, any possible master signifiers that might have
fulfilled a similar role were not identifiable with the political units in
which people found themselves. Christian
ideals were not specific to any particular kingdom, especially with the
disappearance of earlier doctrinal differences in the West around 600.[43]
Ethnic
identity was, by the seventh century, very different from what it had been in
the sixth century. By the time that Lex Ribvaria was issued, in northern Gaul
Roman status had deteriorated to dependent semi-freedom and Frankish identity
had become more or less the norm among the free.[44]
Consequently, the military organisation
that had underpinned the distinction between Franks and Roman evaporated. Armies came to be raised primarily down lines
of aristocratic patronage and dependence.[45] The appearance of the concept of the
‘personality of the law’,[46]
which finds no support in sixth-century data, has two important
implications. One is that I suspect
that, in practice, the demand to be tried by the law of one’s own people was
only open to aristocrats. The other is
that a multiplicity of ethnic identities existed within the Frankish
kingdom. Ethnic identity, therefore, may
have come to be more restricted to the aristocracy, at least in its effective,
political performance. Simultaneously, however,
there was no ethnic identity that was coterminous with the Frankish
kingdom. The regnum francorum manifestly was not simply ‘the kingdom of the Franks’. It never had been, but my point is that the
different ethnic identities of the sixth century took their definition and
ideals from a set of relationships to the throne and the state, in a way that
was no longer the case in the seventh century.
As aristocrats
were distinguished with increasing security from the remainder of the free
population it seems that even the communally-held notions or master signifiers,
connected with gender and the life-cycle, which may have underpinned local
political communities in the sixth century, were now moderated and undermined
by wealth and class.[47] In some cases, differences were demonstrable
from one class to another; in others, what had been generally-adopted norms may
have become restricted.[48] Gender may have come back to being structured
around a central masculine model, albeit a different one.[49]
In all cases, though, the nature or
existence of the Frankish kingdom was now no longer commensurate with these
norms or ideals. If anything, gendered
and age-based ideals increasingly focused on the biological family. Therefore, without the underpinning of a
master-signifier directly related to the kingdom, I contend that seventh-century
and later Frankish political community – and politics – differed profoundly
from their Roman and sixth-century Frankish precursors.
To borrow a
term from Jean-Luc Nancy, this was, was fundamentally an unworked community. [50]
Nancy’s communauté désoeuvrée is essentially community in its true or natural form, wherein people
present themselves to and accept each other, in such a way as to stress no
overriding shared identity – for this, he has developed the term comparution, which has no English
translation: compearance has been used.
The location
for such meetings changed in line with this.
My sense is that political gatherings now, increasingly took place
mostly on more private locations, especially in or around churches or
monasteries.[51] A network of administrative loci connected
with the state rather than individual families is hardly suggested in seventh-century
or later sources. Episcopal centres have
superseded it. Often, even the churches were
in some way private. That apart, the
only vestige of a general ‘public’ space of the old sort is the royal palace,
again a curious mixture of public and private.
The locations for the production and storing of documents change in
similarly.
Nancy’s view is
that the unworked community is an ideal; its working through should be avoided,
precisely because inclusion inevitably implies exclusion.[52] Clearly this view was not shared by early
medieval people. Seventh-century and
later politics demonstrate attempts of all kinds to create community from the
bases I have discussed.[53] The value of the notions of the unworked
individual or community is that they compel us to see politics in terms of
attempted workings, recognising their
lack of any solid basis in subject-formation, and thus to see the contingency
of such communities as were (allegedly) created. It prevents us, above all,
from accepting that the early medieval rhetoric of consensus described the
actual bases of political action.
The rhetoric
of consensus – then as now – is insidious.
Like that of communion and excommunication, it works by portraying those
who have actively been excluded as
having excluded themselves.[54] It was the excommunicate’s choice, wilfully, to sin; it was the
excluded’s choice, wilfully, to refuse to agree with everyone else. As we all know, though, sin is defined by
those with the authority to pronounce on social and moral norms; what is
described as the ‘consensus view’ also results from the operations of power.
We must,
therefore, be careful about how we understand political references to the regnum francorum or to laws and other
actions being made with the consent of ‘all the Franks’.[55] These are very clear signs of active
political work to create a community,
by certain agents, excluding others
in the process – such as the Ibbo who was fined a huge 600 solidi for failing to serve in the Neustrian army during a
factional war against the Austrasians in 677.[56] It is not a passive description of a cosy
harmonic state of affairs; it is an active statement of relations of power, the
inescapable partner of all attempts
to establish – to work – a political community. It is, in yet other words, the practical
working out of one the maxims set out in the rationale of the Padova conference,
that there is no inclusion without exclusion.
[1] G.
Halsall, Settlement and Social
Organisation. The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge 1995).
[2] On
the (in the UK) bitter hostility between ‘Continental’ and ‘Anglo-American’ or
‘Analytic’ philosophy see S. Critchley, Continental
Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford).
[3]
Crucial in this discussion was C. Walker Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century
discover the individual?’ in ead. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality
of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1982), pp.82-109. The recent discussion of the topic by L.
Siedentop, Inventing the Individual
(London 2014). The Origins of Western Liberalism
is deeply problematic and historically badly informed. See the review by D. Abulafia in the Financial Times, 24 Jan., 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/26722be8-81f1-11e3-87d5-00144feab7de.html#axzz3JWuX0Omk
(accessed 19 Nov., 2014).
[4]
Halsall, Settlement and Social
Organisation, pp.21-24
[5] On
Lacanian psychoanalysis, see L. Bailly, Lacan (Oxford, 2009); A. Eidelzstein, The
Graph of Desire (London, 2009); D. Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of
Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Hove, 1996); B. Fink, The Lacanian Subject (Princeton
NJ, 1995); S. Homer, Jacques Lacan (London, 2005); J. Lacan, Les
quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, (Le Séminaire vol. 11: 1964)
(Paris, 1973) [Eng. Trans.: J. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psycho-analysis (New York, 1994)]; S. Žižek, How to Read Lacan (London,
2006) .
[6] S.
Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of Commitment, Politics of
Resistance (London, 2007), p.11
[7] M. Benasayag (trans. A. Weinfeld), Le Mythe de L’Individu (Paris,
1998).
[8] Siedentop, Inventing the Individual.
[9] M. Clouscard, La Production de l’ « Individu » (Paris 2011). This
work was originally published in 1972.
[10] On
this issue, see G. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita
(Torino, 1995) [English translation: Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and
Bare Life (Stanford, Cal., 1998).
[11]
J. Lacan, Écrits vol.2 (Paris, 1999),
pp.295-7 [Eng. Trans. A. Sheridan, Écrits:
A Selection (London, 1989), pp.345-8]; Eidelstein, The Graph of Desire, pp.125-40; Fink, The Lacanian Subject, pp.49-68; S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (2nd edition: London,
2008), pp.95-144 (esp.pp.123-35).
[12]
Evans, Dictionary of Lacanian
Psychoanalysis, pp.132-3.
[13]
J. Lacan, Écrits, vol.1 (Paris 1999),
p.170; Žižek, Sublime Object of Ideology, pp.20-21.
[14]
Halsall, Settlement and Social
Organisation. G. Halsall, ‘Social identities
and social relationships in Merovingian Gaul.’ Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic
Perspective, ed. I.N. Wood (Woodbridge, 1998), pp.141-65 (with discussion
at pp.165-75)
[15]
Halsall, Settlement and Social
Organisation, pp.21-22; Halsall, ‘Social identities and social
relationships’, pp.141-3.
[16]
See Gregory of Tours, Histories,
5.47-49. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.1,
ed. B. Krusch & W. Levison (Hanover, 1951); English translation: Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks trans. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1974).
[17]
On age-rounding, see M. Handley, Death, Society and Culture: Inscriptions
and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300-750 (British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 1135;
Oxford, 2003). Gregory’s age is usually calculated on the basis of a claim that
he was born in 538/9. See, for example,
I.N. Wood, Gregory of Tours (Bangor,
1994), p.4. This statement is based upon
Gregory, Miracles of Martin 3.10,
where he says that his mother, visiting him shortly after his election to the
see of Tours in 573, had suffered from a pain in her shins ever since he was
born and that, said Gregory meant she had been in pain for thirty-four
years. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.2
ed. B. Krusch & W. Levison (Hanover, 1969), p.185 English translation: R. Van Dam, Saints and
Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ, 1993), p.264. If, however, Gregory meant ‘in the
thirty-fifth year’ by this, then it may be that that estimate comes within
normal Merovingian ‘age-rounding tendencies and should be given appropriate
latitude.
[18]
For biographies of Gregory see: A. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul. The Histories of Gregory of Tours interpreted
in their historical context (Göttingen, 1994); M. Heinzelmann (Eng. trans.
C. Carroll), Gregory of Tours. History and Society in the Sixth Century (Cambridge,
2001), R. Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul
(Princeton, NJ, 1993), ch.2; Wood, Gregory of Tours; id., ‘The individuality of Gregory of
Tours’ in K. Mitchell, & I.N. Wood, (ed.) The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden, 2002), pp.29-46.
[19]
Gregory’s biography of Leudast can be found in Histories V.48.
[20] P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d'une théorie de la
pratique, précédé de trois études d'éthnologie kabyle (Paris, 2000)
[English translation R. Nice, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge,
1977)]. A. Giddens, Social Theory and Modern
Sociology (Cambridge, 1987).
[21]
J.Y. Okamura, ‘Situational ethnicity.’ Ethnic
and Racial Studies 4.4 (1981): 452-65.
[22]
J. Loxley, Performativity (London, 2007), pp.62-111.
[23]
On Derrida’s philosophy, the following are very helpful: M. Dooley & L.
Kavanagh, The philosophy of Derrida (Stocksfield 2007); S. Glendinning, Derrida:
A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2011); C. Howells, Derrida:
Deconstruction from phenomenology to ethics (Cambridge, 1998); B. Stocker, Routledge
Philosophy Guidebook To Derrida on Deconstruction (London, 2006).
[24]
E. Scott, Romano-British villas and the social construction of space’, in The Social Archaeology of Houses ed., R.
Samson (Edinburgh, 1990), pp.149-72.
[25]
Such strategies are well attested in the settlement archaeology of the
period. An excellent overview, with
valuable bibliography up to c.2000, is H. Hamerow, Early Medieval
Settlements. The Archaeology of Rural Communities in North-West Europe 400-900
(Oxford, 2002). See also C. Loveluck, Northwest
Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c.AD 600-1150. A Comparative Archaeology
(Cambridge, 2013), pp.33-97.
[26]
The presence or absence of Wohnstallhäuser
on rural settlements is an indication of changes in this sort of thinking. Hamerow, Early Medieval Settlements,
pp.14-26.
[27]
See, for example, E. Peytremann, Archéologie de l'habitat rural dans le nord
de la France du IVe au XIIe siècle (2 vols) (St-Germain-en-Laye, 2003); La
datation des structures et des objets du Haut Moyen Âge: Méthodes et Résultats
(Actes des XVe Journées d'Archéologie Mérovingienne. Rouen, Musée des
Antiquités de la Seine-Maritime 4-6 Février 1994) ed. X. Delestre & P.
Périn (St-Germain-en-Laye, 1998); L’Habitat
rural du haut moyen âge (France, Pays-Bas, Danemark et Grande Bretagne): Actes
du XIVe Journées Internationales d’Archéologie Mérovingienne. Guiry-en-Vexin et
Paris, 4-8 Février, 1993 ed. C. Lorren & P. Périn (Condé sur Noireau,
1995); L'Austrasie. Sociétés, Économies, Territoires, Christianisation (Actes
des XXVIe Journées Internationales d'Archéologie Mérovingienne, Nancy 22-25
Septembre 2005, ed. J. Guillaume & E. Peytremann (Nancy 2008),
pp.25-120.
[28]
Peytremann, Archéologie de l'habitat rural, esp.pp345-6, 355-7
[29]
See, for example: M.G. Colin, Christianisation
et peuplement des campagnes entre Garonne et Pyrenées, IVe-Xe siècles
(Archéologie du Midi Médiéval, Supplément 5) (Carcassonne, 2008), esp.
pp.214-7; La Méditerranée et le monde
mérovingien: témoins archéologiques (Actes du XXIIIe Journées Internationales
d’Archéologie Mérovingienne. Arles, 11-13 Octobre 2002), ed. X. Delestre,
P. Périn & M. Kazanski (Aix-en-Provence, 2005), esp. pp.129-76, 219-24 Les
Campagnes de la France Méditerranéenne dans l’antiquité et le haut moyen âge:
Études microrégionales, ed. F. Favory & J.-L. Fiches (Gap, 1994); Colloque: Gaule Mérovingienne et Monde
Méditerranéen. Exposition “Les Derniers Romains en Spetimanie, IVe-VIIIe Siecles,ed.
C. Landes, E. Dally & V. Kramérovskis (Lattes, 1988), esp. pp.125-41; Nouveaux regards sur les villae d’Aquitaine:
bâtiments de vie et d’exploitation, domains et postérités médiévales
(Archéologie des Pyrénées Occidentales et des Landes, Hors Série 2), ed. F.
Réchin (Pau, 2006). Some observations
and descriptions in English can be found in Loveluck, Northwest Europe in
the Early Middle Ages, pp.46-48.
[30]
Eg. Histories, 5.48-49.
[31]
A. Chavarría Arnau, ‘Interpreting the transformation of the late Roman villa:
the case of Hispania’ in Landscapes of Change:
Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. N. Christie (Aldershot, 2004),
pp.67-102; ead. 'Churches and
aristocracies in seventh-century Spain: some thoughts on the debate on
Visigothic churches.' Early Medieval Europe 18.2 (2010):160-74; A.
Chavarría Arnau & T. Lewit, ‘Archaeological research on the late antique
countryside: a bibliographic essay’, in Recent
Research on the Late Antique Countryside ed. W. Bowden, L. Lavan & C.
Machado (Leiden, 2004), pp.3-51; )G. Ripoll and J. Arce, ‘The Transformation
and End of Roman villae in the West (Fourth–Seventh Centuries): Problems
and Perspectives’, in Towns and their Territories between Late Antiquity and
the Early Middle Ages, ed. G. P.
Brogiolo, N. Christie and N. Gauthier (Leiden, 2000), pp.63–114; T.
Lewit, ‘“Vanishing villas”: What happened to élite rural habitation in the West
in the 5th-6th century?’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003):260-74; ead. 'Pigs, presses and pastoralism: farming in the fifth to sixth
centuries AD.' Early Medieval
Europe 17.1 (2009):77-91.
[32]
Early Frankish lawcodes, unlike the Lombard, seem to contain no specific
legislation about conduct in the royal palace or the king’s presence. Perhaps this was deemed to be covered as an
extension of the legislation about courts of law.
[33] Pactus Legis Salicae 20.1-4; 104. Monumenta
Germaniae Historica: Legum, Section 1, Vol.4, Pt 1, Pactus Legis Salicae ed. K.-A. Eckhardt (Hanover, 1962); The Laws of the Salian Franks, trans. K.
Fischer Drew (Philadelphia 1991). Halsall, Cemeteries
and Society in Merovingian Gaul, pp.349-54.
[34]
Halsall, Cemeteries and Society in
Merovingian Gaul, pp.351-3.
[35]
G. Halsall, ‘Classical gender in deconstruction’, presented to the VI
Congresso della Società Italiana delle Storiche, Padova February 2013.
The text is available on-line at http://600transformer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/classical-gender-in-deconstruction.html
(accessed 08/11/2014).
[36] M. Blanchot, L'espace littéraire (Paris, 1955) [Eng. Trans.: A.
Smock, The Space of Literature (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1982).
[37] For discussion, see, e.g., S.
Airlie, ‘The aristocracy in the service of the state in the Carolingian period’
in Staat im frühen Mittelalter
(Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 11), ed. S. Airlie, W. Pohl &
H. Reimitz (Vienna, 2006), pp.93-111, at pp.93-95.
[38]
Lacan on the point de capiton. Lacan,
Écrits vol.2, pp.285-6 [Eng. Trans. Sheridan,
Écrits: A Selection, pp.335-6];
Eidelstein, The Graph of Desire, pp.75-77;
S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology,
pp.95, 109, 111-6.
[39]
G. Halsall, ‘‘Two worlds become one: a ‘counter-intuitive’ view of the Roman
Empire and ‘Germanic’ Migration’. German
History 32 (2014), pp.515-32, esp. pp.521-8.
[40]
G. Halsall, ‘Gender and the end of empire’, Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies 34.1 (Winter, 2004), pp.17-39.; id. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-567 (Cambridge
2007), pp.96-99.
[41]
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations,
pp.470-1.
[42]
Halsall, Barbarian Migrations,
pp.109-110.
[43]
Such as the Visigothic kingdom’s abandonment of Arianism at the III Council of
Toledo in 589. The conversion of the
Anglo-Saxon kings to Christianity from their ancestral paganism should perhaps
be seen in this context, as a removal of an earlier religious ‘sign of
distinction’. G. Halsall, Worlds of Arthur. Facts and Fictions of the
Dark Ages (Oxford, 2013), p.280.
[44]
E.g. Lex Ribvaria 61.10-11; 61.19;
68.2-3; 69.2: Monumenta Germaniae
Historica. Legum, Sect.1, Vol.3, ed. F. Beyerle & R. Buchner (Hanover,
1951); Engl. Trans. T.J. Rivers, The Laws
of the Ripuarian Franks (New York, 1987).
G. Halsall, ‘Transformations of Romanness’ in Transformations of Romanness, ed. W. Pohl (Vienna, forthcoming,
2015)
[45]
G. Halsall, Warfare and Society in the
Barbarian West, 450-900 (London, 2003), pp.53-57.
[46] Lex Ribvaria, 35.3
[47]
This can be suggested from study of the cemetery evidence. E.g. G. Halsall, Settlement and Social Organisation, pp.264-5.
[48]
Some aspects of the typical sixth-century male career-path may have become
restricted to the aristocracy: Halsall, Cemeteries
and Society, pp.408-9.
[49]
See, provisionally, Halsall, ‘Classical gender in deconstruction’ (above, n.35).
[50] Nancy, J. (1990) La communauté
désoeuvrée (2nd edn.; Paris, 1990) [Eng. trans. P. Connor, L.
Garbus, M. Holland & S. Sawhney, The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis, 1991]; id., La communauté affrontée (Paris, 2001) ; id. La Communauté désavouée.
(Paris, 2014) ; J. Nancy & J.-C. Bailly, La comparution
(Paris, 1991).
[51] I
hope to deal with this issue in a separate paper.
[52]
Above, n.50
[53]
See, for example, P. Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (Harlow, 2000);
R.A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the "Liber
Historiae Francorum" (Oxford, 1987); H. Reimitz, ‘The art of truth.
Historiography and identity in the Frankish world’, in texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Forschungen zur
Geschichte des Mittelalters 12)
ed. R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Pössel & P. Shaw (Vienna, 2006), pp.87-103.
[54] See
also A. Badiou (Engl. trans. A. Toscano), The
Century (Cambridge, 2007), esp. pp.111-30.
[55]
E.g. PLS Capitulary 2, preamble; 106;
Capitulary 6, preamble.
[56] Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Diplomata Regum
Francorum e Stirpe Merovingica, ed. T. Kölzer (Hanover, 2001), no.143 (Compiègne,
23 Dec., 694)
