Neo-medievalism

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For the intellectual movement in Medieval Studies called 'New Medievalism', see New philology (medieval studies).

Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism, new medievalism) is a term with a long history

globalized world as analogous to high-medieval Europe, where neither states nor the Church, nor other territorial powers, exercised full sovereignty, but instead participated in complex, overlapping and incomplete sovereignties.[2]

In literary theory regarding the use and abuse of texts and tropes from the Middle Ages in postmodernity, the term neomedieval was popularized by the Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1983 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages".[3]

Political theory

The idea of neomedievalism in political theory was first discussed in 1977 by theorist

national sovereignty. He proposed that such a system might help "avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping structures and cross-cutting loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society while at the same time avoiding the concentration inherent in a world government", though "if it were anything like the precedent of Western Christendom, it would contain more ubiquitous and continuous violence and insecurity than does the modern states system".[5]

In this reading,

multinational corporations and the resurgence of worldwide religious movements (e.g. political Islam
) similarly indicate a reduction in the role of the state and a decentralisation of power and authority.

Stephen J. Kobrin in 1998 added the forces of the digital world economy to the picture of neomedievalism. In an article entitled "Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy" in the Journal of International Affairs,[2] he argued that the sovereign state as we know it – defined within certain territorial borders – is about to change profoundly, if not to wither away, due in part to the digital world economy created by the Internet, suggesting that cyberspace is a trans-territorial domain operating outside of the jurisdiction of national law.

Anthony Clark Arend also argued in his 1999 book Legal Rules and International Society that the international system is moving toward a "neo-medieval" system. He claimed that the trends that Bull noted in 1977 had become even more pronounced by the end of the twentieth century. Arend argues that the emergence of a "neo-medieval" system would have profound implications for the creation and operation of international law.

Although Bull originally envisioned neomedievalism as a positive trend, it has its critics.

neoconservatives "have exploited neomedievalism's conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends."[6] Similarly, Philip G. Cerny's "Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma" (1998) also sees neomedievalism as a negative development and claims that the forces of globalization increasingly undermine nation-states and interstate forms of governance "by cross-cutting linkages among different economic sectors and social bonds,"[7]
calling globalization a "durable disorder" which eventually leads to the emergence of the new security dilemmas that had analogies in the Middle Ages. Cerny identifies six characteristics of a neomedieval world that contribute to this disorder: multiple competing institutions; lack of exogenous territorializing pressures both on sub-national and international levels; uneven consolidation of new spaces, cleavages, conflicts and inequalities; fragmented loyalties and identities; extensive entrenchment of property rights; and spread of the "grey zones" outside the law as well as black economy.

Medieval studies

See also: Medievalism

An early use of the term neo-medievalism in a sense like Umberto Eco's was in

post-modern study of medieval history.[10]

The widespread interest in medieval themes in

MMORPGs, films and television, neo-medieval music, and popular literature, has been called neomedieval. Critics have discussed why medieval themes continue to fascinate audiences in a modern, heavily technological world. A possible explanation is the need for a romanticized historical narrative to clarify the confusing panorama of current political and cultural events.[11]

Intersection of neomedievalism in political theory and medieval studies

Some commentators have used the terminological overlap between Hedley Bull's political theory of 'neomedievalism' and Umberto Eco's postmodernist theory of 'neomedievalism' to discuss how cultural discourses about the Middle Ages are used to political ends in the changing international order of the twenty-first century. A key proponent of this argument was Bruce Holsinger, who studied the use of

9/11 'war on terror', arguing that American neoconservatives had harnessed medievalism to win popular support for foreign policy and military actions that undermined state sovereignty and the international rule of law.[12][13]
: 67–69 

Working in Holsinger's wake, others have argued that neomedievalist popular culture, such as the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, represents and so in turn helps to normalise a neomedievalist political order,[13]: 70–87  and that states other than the US, for example Iceland, have also used medievalism as a source of soft power to help secure their place in the shifting post-9/11 world order.[14]: 131–95 

In 2018 Jorge Majfud published the book Neomedievalism. Reflections on the Post-Enlightenment Era, in which he discussed the political and cultural aspects arising from the economy and finances of Neo-feudalism in the United States.[15]

Studies

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "neo-medieval", s.v. "neo-, comb. form." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017. Web. 27 August 2017.
  2. ^ a b Stephen J. Kobrin. "Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy".
  3. ^ a b Umberto Eco, "Dreaming of the Middle Ages," in Travels in Hyperreality, transl. by W. Weaver, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1986, pp. 61–72.
  4. ^ Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 245–46 [first publ. London: Macmillan, 1977].
  5. ^ Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 246 [first publ. London: Macmillan, 1977].
  6. ^ Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror. University of Chicago Press Books. Archived from the original on 2017-01-02. Retrieved 2017-12-05. While international-relations theorists promote neomedievalism as a model for understanding emergent modes of global sovereignty, neoconservatives exploit its conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends.
  7. doi:10.1080/13698249808402366
    .
  8. ^ Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953), p.76.
  9. ^ David Ketterer (2004). "Chapter 18: Fantastic Neomedievalism" by Kim Selling, in Flashes of the Fantastic.
  10. ^ Cary John Lenehan. "Postmodern Medievalism", University of Tasmania, November 1994.
  11. ^ Eddo Stern. "A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games". Tampre University Press 2002. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  12. ^ Bruce Holsinger, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror, Paradigm, 29 (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007).
  13. ^ a b Victoria Elizabeth Cooper, 'Fantasies of the North: Medievalism and Identity in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 2016).
  14. doi:10.21983/P3.0272.1.00
    .
  15. ISBN 978-84-9134-246-5
    .
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