For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity by Françoise Meltzer (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS143 Circumcision homily. These distinctions chart the significatory process ofChristian typology. (121) I cannot know what 'chart the significatory process of should express to me that 'illustrate' would not. Unraveled from its difficult composition, the point is not new or distinctive, nor is the point of any part of the surrounding paragraph, but Lees's stilted and estranged style suggests novelty or discovery while rehearsing the familiar. The project as a whole suffers from a similar obfuscation. The conclusion, something short of two printed pages, asserts that 'each chapter of Tradition and Beliefopens up new avenues ofinvestigation into the Anglo-Saxon cultural record' and 'offers a way of thinking about cultural power as a dynamic network of interconnecting practices and discourses' (155). That sentence is a fair measure of the clarity, new contribution, and valuable insight offered in this work. SHEARLE FURNISH West Texas A&M University Françoise meltzer. For Fear ofthe Fire:Joan ofArc and the Limits ofSubjectivity. The University ofChicago Press, 2001. Pp. x, 248. isbn: 0-226-51982-1. $52. (cloth), $20. (paper). This compelling book investigates the 'epistemologica! baggage' behind the continual resuscitation ofJoan ofArc in art, literature, and philosophical meditation. Meltzer elucidates in exquisite depth what I imagine anyscholar initiallyponders in launching a study ofthe Maid. The strength ofthis book lies in the author's determination to struggle with the tenacious hold ofthe story until she arrives at some answers. The impetus behind the book is the author's awareness ofan increasing attraction to the religious texts of the Middle Ages, in which body and mind are one. Of course, postmodern thought also envisions itselfas thoroughly outside faith, except as a cultural or historical phenomenon. As a result ofthis contradiction, the otherness offaith has given rise to nostalgia for embodiment and presence. As Meltzer writes, we have become intrigued with a paradoxical 'will to knowledge and, at the same time, the hope that there may be something beyond human knowledge.' Our particular fascination with Joan of Arc, whose bodily sacrifice for her faith gave absolute evidence ofa pre-Cartesian unity, is 'an attempt to witness the witnessing ofrevelation, to try to see how such a totality was experienced.' The issues that the book explores are not necessarily new. What is new is the depth of exploration, along with the gathering of a remarkable array of thinkers around the notion ofgendered subjectivity and a briefmoment in history when it was put at risk. The range of material that Meltzer brings to bear on her subject includes Althusser's nostalgia for unity ofmind and body, Kristeva and the cult of the Virgin Mary, Irigaray and gender utopia, Derrida and the hymen, as well as concepts in Freud, Lacan, Lévinas, Bataille, Bachelard, and others. While the book 144ARTHURIANA demands some familiarity with these writers and ideas, Meltzer explores and integrates them all cogently if not always smoothly. Meltzer's argument is focused by the notion that female virginity, the crux of Joan ofArc's power, is a 'site both ofgynophobia and ofthe articulation ofgender difference.' Virginityis represented byveiling, darkness, and mystery, which indicate a place both sacred and dangerous. It reminds us that woman is always a subject to come, an 'eternal futurity,' closely connected to death. In fact, the male horror of death, a place where subjectivity is no more, is enmeshed in metaphors around the mysteries of femininity. Here is where Joan of Arc interrupts the gendering of subjectivity. Joan ofArc's very real trial revealed that the structures ofthe Church, which domesticated, silenced, or masculinized women, did not holdwhen challenged by a female who burned to assert knowledge outside ofits boundaries. Ifa woman had achieved agency, as Joan of Arc threatened, the dominant discourse of the exclusively masculine subject would have crumbled. For all ofour contemporary enlightenment about gender and subjectivity, Meltzer suggests that not much has changed. Postmodern nostalgia returns us to Joan of Arc regularly for a glimpse ofthe mystery ofcertainty itself.' Joan ofArc, however, serves a double purpose, as Meltzer elucidates in observing that, 'the so-called postmodern dismantling of the subject is the logical corollary of an age that puts subjectivity into question without wishing to endanger the male subject. For...