The Gender of Historicism

Abstract

Recent work in medieval literary studies emerging after and in response to the dominant historicism of the last two decades offers various historical approaches to medieval texts, a variety of historicisms where formerly there was one. Insofar as “post-historicism” can be defined in terms of such response, getting beyond historicism does not mean getting rid of history so much as it means transcending “historicism as usual.”1 In this effort scholars have brought feminist, postcolonialist, queer, and psychoanalytic concerns to the very center of historicist claims on the past. Yet as with much else, recognizing multiple forms of historicism is not the same thing as creating all historicisms equally. Thus where a recent contribution to Blackwell’s Literature Compass calls for an end to the “Theory Wars” in medieval literary studies by castigating its polemics as unnecessary, I believe that simple rapprochements are neither desirable nor practical. To take an Olympian position “above” the fray is to imply that all disputes have been resolved, where clearly they have not. Calling for a truce is easy when the status quo works to one’s benefit. But there is still much in need of dis-covery about our historical engagements with the past as well as the past’s claims upon us.