And so the great wheel turns and it is time to celebrate St Ken’s Day again.
Time for the annual pilgrimage that is the start of this Happy New Year for people in the formal cycle of learning, from crèche and kindergarten to university; and for people outside it as learning, a life of learning, and a meaningful life are for all.
From 2020: time for the annual pilgrimage … (not to be confused with the homonymous Canadian politician, Canadian fundamentalist Baptist evangelist, Canadian swimmer, assorted other sportsmen, etc.) It is time for the annual pilgrimage. As is traditional, this post is a “sticky” one for a whole academic term, all the way to its end and […]
This essay is based on a talk given in January 2020 at the Modern Language Association Convention in Seattle, whose Presidential Theme was “Being Human.”
While sorting through some old files, I came across something that I wrote in November 2020 that seems relevant and worth sharing. I’ve edited it very slightly. It’s a prologue of sorts to the next posts, on European identity (not in the icky sense that immediately comes to some minds) and haunting, ghosts and glowing. I thought that I’d throw them away; what was the point, or the point of anything. Anything that I might write or be thinking was trivial. But: Tomorrow could be death. So: write. Anything. Good, bad, indifferent; personal, embarrassing, absurd; useless, useful, disregarding and regardless of anyone else’s use-value it might have some human value in its very triviality. Write to live. In solidarity with Ukraine and Ukrainians. In hope for peace on earth, goodwill to all, life, and love.
(related: “about the blog”) Dr Juliet Ó Brien is a medievalist in Vancouver, Canada. She has previously spent time in Ireland, the USA, and the UK; prior to all these, she grew up as an exile and migrant in Belgium, where she was weaned on Belgian (and other) medieval/ish things like bande dessinée / comix, cinema, Proper […]
= consent in and around and through medieval Occitan poetry. From the original project description when I applied for “professional development” / sabbatical leave back in October 2020: Consent is an ever more pressing topic, usually appearing in its negative form: silence as assumed consent, lack of consent, individual defensiveness, fear, alienation. This project looks to medieval Occitan poetry for other models of consent that may offer hope and help to the here and now, reaffirming the con- and the -sent that are the roots and core of the word and its meaning, and advocating collaborative consensual community. Through shifting the terms from the nominal to the verbal form of “consent,” medieval Occitan poetry and medievalism can help us to move from rape culture to consent culture; from passion to compassion, towards thinking anarchically and ecocritically, in transformative sustainable convivencia.
Juliet O’Brien 