Abstract
It has become increasingly common to see medieval texts read alongside postmodern theories. Methodologically speaking, these engagements can take several forms, but are often framed within metaphors of ‘applying’ postmodern theories or ‘imposing’ frameworks on medieval sources, introducing a certain danger that the medieval source comes across as incidental to a theoretically performative reading, whether or not this is the scholar’s intention. It may be more accurate and more methodologically helpful when reading medieval texts and postmodern theories to consider each of these encounters as a conversation between past and postmodern, triangulated by the present of the researcher or reader, rather than using metaphors of superimposition. This paper presents one such conversation between fourteenth-century English anchorite Julian of Norwich and twentieth-century postmodern theorist Judith Butler. I argue that Julian and Butler both reject a strict and mutually exclusive gender binary because they both subscribe to an ontology which is queerer than human categories of language, and that the body as a site of discourse is the point at which Butler and Julian meet. This essay shows not only that postmodern theory is a useful tool when reading medieval texts, but also that the medieval has something to say to the postmodern—and will continue to talk back to theory in an unending and continually transformative exchange of perspectives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
My approach owes much to Carolyn Dinshaw’s methodology of ‘touching across time’ (Dinshaw, 1999).
‘You will never receive me apart from the grammar that establishes my availability to you’ (Butler, 1990, xxvi).
‘My agency [. . .] is opened up by the fact that I am constituted by a social world I never chose. That my agency is riven with paradox does not make it impossible’ (Butler, 2003, 3).
In this approximate dating of the Revelation ‘The Long Text,’ I follow Watson (1993, 637–83).
See Revelations, 18:22–25, p. 187, which shows that Julian was familiar with Pseudo-Dionysius and the concept of apophatic language. (All citations of Revelations are to Watson and Jenkins’ edition [2006] and list chapter, line, and page.) She is also likely to have known The Cloud of Unknowing and possibly other Middle English apophatic works (Holloway, 2016).
See Julian of Norwich (6:25–37, p. 143–5).
‘Gender proves to be performative – that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed’ (Butler, 1990, 34).
For an overview, see Krylova (2016).
See the preface to Bodies that Matter (1993).
References
Aers, D. 2009. Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Aquinas, T. [c.255] 1961. On Being and Essence, trans. A. A. Maurer. Toronto, ON: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
Albertus, M. 2008. Fathers of the Church: Questions Concerning Aristotle’s On Animals, trans. and ed. I. Resnick and K.F. Kitchell, Jr. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Augustine of Hippo. [c.398] 1991. Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Augustine of Hippo. [c. 417] 1995. De Trinitate. In Opera Omnia CAG Electronic Edition, ed. C. Mayer. http://library.nlx.com.qe2a-proxy.mun.ca/xtf/view?docId=augustine_la/augustine_la.00.xml;chunk.id=div.augustine_la.pmpreface.1;toc.depth=2;toc.id=div.augustine_la.pmpreface.1;hit.rank=0;brand=default.
Augustine of Hippo. [c. 417] 1956. On the Holy Trinity, trans. ed. A. W. Haddan. In Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church Vol III: St Augustin, 2–228. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Bonaventure. 1978. ‘The Soul’s Journey Into God,’ trans. E. Cousins. In Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey Into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St Francis. New York: Ramsey.
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1994. Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism. In The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory, ed. S. Seidman, 153–70. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1991. Imitation and Gender Insubordination. In Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, 13–31. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. 2003. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Bynum, C.W. 1991. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.
Bynum, C.W. 1982. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the Middle Ages. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Cadden, J. 1993. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Colledge, E. and J. Walsh, trans. 1978. Julian of Norwich’s Showings. New York: Paulist Press.
Dinshaw, C. 1999. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Gillespie, V. and M. Ross. 2011. The Apophatic image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich. In Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England, 277–305. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Holloway, J.B. 2016. Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Julian of Norwich. [c. 1380] 2006. The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and a Revelation of Love, eds. N. Watson and J. Jenkins. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
Julian of Norwich. [c.1380] 1978. Showings, trans. E. Colledge and J. Walsh. New York: Paulist Press.
Krylova, A. 2016. Gender Binary and the Limits of Poststructuralist Method. Gender and History 28(2): 307–23.
McAvoy, L.H. 2004. Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press.
McNamer, S. 1989. The Exploratory Image: God as Mother in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. Mystics Quarterly 15(1): 21–28.
Meijer, I.C. and B. Prins. 1998. How Bodies Come to Matter: An Interview with Judith Butler. Signs 23(2): 275–86.
Peterson, C. 2006. The Return of the Body: Judith Butler’s Dialectical Corporealism. Discourse 28(2/3): 153–77.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. [c. 500] 1980. The Divine Names and Mystical Theology, trans. J. D. Jones. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
Salih, S. 2008. Julian’s Afterlives. In A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. L.H. McAvoy, 208–18. Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
Sinfield, A. 1994. Cultural Politics – Queer Reading. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Tauler, J. 1985. Sermons, trans. M. Shrady. New York: Ramsey.
Turner, D. 2011. Julian of Norwich: Theologian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Watson, N. 1993. The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love. Speculum 68(3): 637–83.
Watson, N. 1996. ‘Yf Women Be Double Naturally’: Remaking ‘Woman’ in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love. Exemplaria 8(1): 1–34.
Wogan-Browne, J. 1994. Chaste Bodies: Frames and Experiences. In Framing Medieval Bodies, eds. S. Kay and M. Rubin, 24–42. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moncion, L. Bodies that talk: Julian of Norwich and Judith Butler in conversation. Postmedieval 9, 216–230 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0075-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-018-0075-5