The Normal, the Queer, and the Middle Ages

Abstract

Carolyn Dinshaw's GettingMedieval:Sexualitiesand Communi? ties, Preand Postmodern book of such complexity and richness that it only after two readings (and numerous runs through sections of par? ticular interest to me in context of my own current research) that I'm beginning to glimpse how it all, quite wonderfully, comes together. For me, perhaps most striking and exciting aspect ofthe book its articulation of queer desire partial, affective connection, for community, for even touch across time.1 In her assessment ofthe queer historian's task, Dinshaw argues persuasively that choices are not limited simply to mimetic with past or blanket alteritism, two mutually exclusive positions that have come to be associated with [John] Boswell and [Michel] Foucault.2 Rather, following Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, Dinshaw argues that there always an alterity within mimesis itself, never-perfect aspect of identification that engenders both historical difference (and at times pleasure in that difference) and connections, queer relations between these incommensurate lives and phenomena (another source of possible pleasure).3 With the new pieces of that she explores in Getting Medieval, Dinshaw shows that queers can make new relations, new identifications, new communities with past figures who elude resemblance to us but with whom we can be connected partially by virtue of shared marginality, queer positionality.4 What specifically queer about these partial connections:' Dinshaw ar? gues that queerness itself contingent and historical; queerness is not hard and fast quality that I know in advance, but relation to norm, and both norm and particular queer lack of fit will vary according to specific instances.5 She goes on to argue that a queer history will be about