Speculatio, Medieval and Modern
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Material Collective
Organizer Name
Beate Fricke, Niklaus Largier
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of California-Berkeley, Univ. of California-Berkeley
Presider Name
Maggie M. Williams
Presider Affiliation
William Paterson Univ.
Paper Title 1
A Rose by Any Other Name: Speculating about the Rose Window
Presenter 1 Name
Elizabeth Carson Pastan
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Emory Univ.
Paper Title 2
Resisting Speculation/Embracing Speculation
Presenter 2 Name
Jennifer Borland
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Oklahoma State Univ.
Paper Title 3
Medieval Tupperware
Presenter 3 Name
Ittai Weinryb
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Bard Graduate Center
Start Date
12-5-2016 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1140
Description
Medievalists regularly deal with fragmented or partially recorded material evidence, e.g., in the case of a mosaic or a manuscript where some parts are still visible and others are lost and hard to reconstruct. The published results of our research often reassemble such fragmentary evidence and provide only the convincing, conclusive arguments. We rarely elaborate further on the dead ends, the ambivalence of the evidence and the gaps in our knowledge, like missing or lost written records from archives. Thus, speculation comes into play in multiple ways and occurs on several levels – we imagine what the missing pieces might have been, we try to consider lost connections between bits of “hard evidence,” we speculate about links among written, oral, visual, and material cultures and about networks in various parts of the medieval world. In doing so, our work often mirrors our own contemporary interests and agendas.
This panel takes the medieval connotations of “speculatio” (exploration, observation, spying out - contemplation, rethinking, speculation) seriously and brings light to the moments of decision-making in reading partial evidence, in interpreting ambivalence in the meaning of objects from the past, and in drawing conclusions from a scattered set of clues or contradictory materialities. The session highlights the recent rediscovery of the concept of speculation as it is articulated in the desire of “speculative realism” to produce a “wager on the possible returns from a renewed attention to reality itself” and to formulate a new program of discovery. Speakers will consider the relationship between such contemporary approaches and medieval notions of “speculatio” as a negotiation of the impossibility to know the absolute or the divine. Seen as a practice both of thought and of the production of artifacts, speculation can thus be seen a specific juncture where medieval culture (art, literature, sciences) and modern desires for and forms of understanding meet.
Speculatio, Medieval and Modern
Schneider 1140
Medievalists regularly deal with fragmented or partially recorded material evidence, e.g., in the case of a mosaic or a manuscript where some parts are still visible and others are lost and hard to reconstruct. The published results of our research often reassemble such fragmentary evidence and provide only the convincing, conclusive arguments. We rarely elaborate further on the dead ends, the ambivalence of the evidence and the gaps in our knowledge, like missing or lost written records from archives. Thus, speculation comes into play in multiple ways and occurs on several levels – we imagine what the missing pieces might have been, we try to consider lost connections between bits of “hard evidence,” we speculate about links among written, oral, visual, and material cultures and about networks in various parts of the medieval world. In doing so, our work often mirrors our own contemporary interests and agendas.
This panel takes the medieval connotations of “speculatio” (exploration, observation, spying out - contemplation, rethinking, speculation) seriously and brings light to the moments of decision-making in reading partial evidence, in interpreting ambivalence in the meaning of objects from the past, and in drawing conclusions from a scattered set of clues or contradictory materialities. The session highlights the recent rediscovery of the concept of speculation as it is articulated in the desire of “speculative realism” to produce a “wager on the possible returns from a renewed attention to reality itself” and to formulate a new program of discovery. Speakers will consider the relationship between such contemporary approaches and medieval notions of “speculatio” as a negotiation of the impossibility to know the absolute or the divine. Seen as a practice both of thought and of the production of artifacts, speculation can thus be seen a specific juncture where medieval culture (art, literature, sciences) and modern desires for and forms of understanding meet.