We went to a Greek Orthodox christening at the weekend: interesting theologically as well as moving. Because most of the congregation were not Orthodox, they had a fair proportion of the service in English, so we could follow some of it. I was listening out during the Nicene Creed, for example, and spotted some of the great theological controversies. No ‘filoque’ clause, the Holy Spirit proceeds just from the Father, not the Son. (It says something about changing religious priorities that once churches split on the arcane details of the relations between the three persons of the Trinity. Nowadays in the Church of England it barely seems to matter what views you hold on God, the key is what you think about homosexuality).
The emphasis of the service was also very different from a modern Anglican one. The Anglican baptism service has become increasingly (and I think positively) about welcoming a child into the church family. This service was in a far older tradition in its stress on dedicating the child to God and protecting him from the forces of evil. There were a number of invocations against demons, devils and even dragons. (Some of the liturgy may have sounded better in Greek, like the bit about wanting the child to become a ‘rational sheep’. I could follow the thought, of reasoned obedience, but it does sound odd). There was even a bit where a piece of his hair was symbolically clipped and put in the font as a kind of micro-tonsure. Not my specific style or understanding of Christianity, but still saying something significant.
I felt the same strangeness and yet also possibly insight in the whole way the baby being baptised was treated. At first I was vaguely feeling it wasn’t quite right when he started crying and the priest just carried on, completely ignoring this. I think in an Anglican service there’d be a pause, while everyone tried to soothe the child. On the other hand, given how much the baby in an orthodox christening has to put up with (anointing, full immersion etc), maybe it’s more realistic just to treat his/her crying as a natural reaction, and not be embarrassed about it (which is often the real emotion in C of E services). On a historical note, I now also understand more the circumstances in which the eighth-century Byzantine emperor Constantine V acquired his ill-omened nickname of ‘Copronymus’ at his baptism. Since the child is stripped naked for the immersion, you do get the excruciatingly humiliating risk for all concerned of him doing a poo in the font. There are some practical advantages at least to the more token Anglican way of doing things.

There’s a lot of discussion in the Guardian at the moment about the government’s proposed law against inciting religious hatred. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1510829,00.html, and links from that. This is a difficult one for UK liberals, as it balances their frequent dislike (or even hatred) for religion against the protection of minorities. Unlike in the US, there isn’t a tradition of unlimited free speech: incitement to racial hatred is already a crime. The argument that most liberals who oppose the law seem to be making (as well as disproportion) is that people are not free to choose their race, but they are free to choose their religion and thus can be validly criticised (and indeed hated) for this. The problem with this view is seen by considering the following statements of hatred:

1) Jews are the scum of the earth and should all be shot.
2) Muslims are the scum of the earth and should all be shot.
3) Orthodox Jews are the scum of the earth and should all be shot.
4) Zionists are the scum of the earth and should all be shot.
5) Gays are the scum of the earth and should all be shot.

According to the ‘choice’ view, only statement 1 should be banned, and the other statements are presumably seen as acceptable criticism. Statements 2 and 3 are about chosen religion and so acceptable. Statement 4 is about chosen political views and so acceptable. The tricky one is statement 5. According to the choice theory, unless you can prove that sexual orientation is innate and unchangeable, it’s OK to hate people who have chosen to live a gay lifestyle. I’m sure that’s not what many liberals want, but that’s the logic of this argument.
To complicate this matter further, statements 3 and 4 would probably already fall foul of the current laws against racial hatred, since Jews (and Sikhs, but not Muslims) are seen as members of a racial group. In practice, it seems clear that what a number of liberals (and some libertarian right-wingers) are fighting for is the right to offend Muslims: whenever they get to specific examples of statements they fear would be banned, it’s always Islam they want to criticise, often in the most extreme ways. (They are used to being able to hate Christianity and Christian denominations, and this is largely tolerated by the churches.)
I’m in favour of the law at the moment, since I haven’t yet seen a convincing argument against it, and it does seem to be needed. But it does raise a more difficult general question: Who is it OK to hate and why?

The last seminar of the term was a very good one: Barbara Rosenwein on ‘Merovingian passions’. She’s been working on the history of the emotions for some time and argues specifically for three different ‘emotional communities’ visible in Merovingian court culture of the late 6th to late 7th centuries. Particularly interesting is that she sees the first community, around King Sigibert, represented textually by Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours as having a particularly strong emphasis on familial love, and by extension, other forms of love. As she points out, this is very unlike general views of the Merovingians. (Unlike the Carolingian moral texts, this emphasis on love also wasn’t linked to a need for discipline).
There was a lot of discussion about the extent to which ‘emotional communities’ did really exist, and whether they were ‘rhetorical communities’ or not, but I think her central point did stand up: there are clusters of texts which share a particular emotional style and vocabulary, and which differ from one another noticeably.
It would be very interesting to take some of her work and combine it with something I’m interested in: lay masculinity and self-control. Conrad Leyser has done studies of how the focus of male religious asceticism changes in the fifth and sixth centuries from control of the genitals to control of the tongue. I’d like to look at how Stoic/Stoic derived Christian ideas of apathia are taken up (or not) for laymen in the successor states. There’s stuff in the mirrors for princes, but it hasn’t been looked at from that angle. But it would be a major piece of work.
Meanwhile, from the ‘mater’ side, there was some interesting material about the current research thinking on emotions. This no longer sees them as bubbling under rational thoughts, so that the civilizing process means learning to control them. Instead Barbara was using a model drawing on cognitive psychology and social construction. The cognitive psychology side is that emotions work in a two stage process: an emotional assessment of a situation (a lion has come into the room, this is frightening) and then a reaction (hide under the table). The social construction side is that both the assessment and the reaction are culturally-determined: a Masai warrior who saw the lion as a chance to demonstrate his warrior prowess would assess the situation and react differently.
All this suggests that when trying to teach toddlers to cope with emotions, it isn’t just a matter of teaching them ‘to control their emotions’, i.e. alter their reactions. Possibly more important is trying to get them to assess the situation differently. In other words, when the toddler falls over and yells, maybe ‘you’re not really hurt’ needs to come before ‘don’t cry’. On the other hand, how you do this in practice is a different matter. Once when my husband was trying to comfort L after a tumble and telling her ‘It’s OK’, she turned round to him and replied: ‘No, it’s not OK.’ Any parenting experts: what does the adult say then? Answers in the comment field to the Magistra.

At the playground today with L, there were a number of other families there, including one woman (middle-class by her accent) with 2 girls called Storm and Poppy. I thought this was rather tough on them, since such names seem to close off so many options. Storm, for example, can only really be the heroine of a romantic novel, and probably has to have grey eyes, which change to reflect her passionate nature. Poppy, meanwhile, has no option but to be sunny and a little flamboyant. She can’t be shy or depressive, let alone tragic. My rule of thumb for choosing a girl’s name (before L was born) was that it had to sound OK with ‘Professor’ in front of it, but equally could be abbreviated/adapted suitably if she wanted to become a pop star or just be informal. That way, L could imprint her personality on her name rather than vice-versa. This is far trickier for girls’ names than boys’. Just a look at the current British favourites (see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=184) shows how much fancier girls’ names tend to be than boys, with far more change over time. Presumably, a woman’s name is intended to be part of her feminine attractiveness, while boys’ name have shown slower developments over time, because of a tendency to inherit family names. What I’m not sure is when this began (in Britain, at least). My immediate thought would be the eighteenth century, when I know some invented names that are still popular developed, such as Vanessa and Stella. But maybe it’s an Elizabethan idea, since at least some female names of Greek origin seem to have been popularised by the Renaissance. If anyone knows, I’d be interested to hear more…

One of the authors I read while looking at theoretical issues of gender for my thesis was Judith Butler. It was not a pleasant experience. While some theorists, such as Foucault, gradually grew on me, Butler remained obscure and largely uninspiring. One section of hers, in particular, wound me up and I've long meant to analyse just what is wrong with it. Finally, I've got around to this. This is a quote from the Preface to Judith's Butler 1999 reissue of Gender Trouble p xviii-xix, with my comments.)

Both critics and friends of Gender Trouble have drawn attention to the difficulty of its style. It is no doubt strange, and maddening to some, to find a book that is not easily consumed to be “popular” according to academic standards. The surprise over this is perhaps attributable to the way we underestimate the reading public, its capacity and desire for reading complicated and challenging texts, when the complication is not gratuitous, when the challenge is in the service of calling taken-for granted truths into question, when the taken for grantedness of these truths is, indeed oppressive. (1)
I think that style is a complicated terrain and not one that we unilaterally choose or control with the purposes we consciously intend. Fredric Jameson made this clear in his early book on Sartre. (2) Certainly, one can practice styles, but the styles that become available to you are not entirely a matter of choice. Moreover, neither grammar nor style are politically neutral. Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself. (3) As Drucilla Cornell, in the tradition of Adorno, reminds me: there is nothing radical about common sense. (4) It would be a mistake to think that received grammar is the best vehicle for expressing radical views, given the constraints that grammar imposes upon thought, indeed upon the thinkable itself. (5) But formulations that twist grammar or that implicitly call into question the subject-verb requirements of propositional sense are clearly irritating for some. (6) They produce more work for their readers, and sometimes their readers are offended by such demands. Are those who are offended making a legitimate request for “plain speaking” or does their complaint emerge from a consumer expectation of intellectual life? Is there, perhaps a value to be derived from such experiences of linguistic difficulty? (7) If gender itself is naturalized through grammatical norms, as Monique Wittig has argues, then the alteration of gender at the most fundamental epistemic level will be conducted, in part, through contesting the grammar in which gender is given. (8)
The demand for lucidity forgets the ruses that motor the ostensibly “clear” view. Avital Ronell recalls the moment in which Nixon looked into the eyes of the nation and said, “let me make one thing perfectly clear” and then proceeded to lie. (9) What travels under the sign of “clarity” and what would be the price of failing to deploy a certain critical suspicion when the arrival of lucidity is announced? (10) Who devises the protocols of “clarity” and whose interests do they serve? (11) What is foreclosed by the insistence on parochial standards of transparency as requisite for all communication? (12) What does “transparency” keep obscure?

My comments

(1) This sentence shows one of the problems with Butler’s style: not the complexity of her thoughts, but the sloppy and long-winded way in which they are expressed. The end of the sentence could be more succinctly put as ‘when the complication is not gratuitous, but intended to call into question
oppressive “truths” which are taken for granted.’ This cuts out one clause, 50% of the words and none of the sense.

(2) What is the purpose of this sentence? It doesn’t clarify or extend the previous thought about style. It gives no specific reference to the book, so it’s no help if you want to follow up what Jameson said about Sartre. Its only purpose is academic name-dropping, to show that she knows their work. (This is one of the things that is off-putting about Butler’s style - the feeling that if you haven’t read what’s she read, she’s not going to bother to explain).

(3) She is basically saying that if you don’t follow the rules of intelligible language you aren’t intelligible. She then dresses up this statement of the blindingly obvious with fancy language to make it seem more profound.

(4) Another example of pointless academic name-dropping: see note 2.

(5) Most radical writers have been able to use received grammar to express their views: indeed, some have tried to use a deliberately simple style, in order to reach the widest possible audience, including those normally excluded from academic and political discourse. Butler also never gives examples of how grammar constrains thought, which would provide useful clarity. (But then, she doesn’t like clarity, as she discusses later).

(6) I doubt whether any of Butler’s sentences are formally grammatically incorrect, so her comments about grammar are a red herring. Why she is difficult to read is not a question of grammar, but complex vocabulary (I understand only roughly what the ‘subject-verb requirements of propositional sense’ means and I have an academic education) and also convoluted word order.

(7) These two sentences show Butler’s habit of using questions to half-make statements, without committing herself to them and thus allowing argument against her point of view. If she said that demands for plain speaking were due to a consumer expectation about intellectual life, then a reader could agree or disagree or be willing to be convinced by further argument. When she leaves this as a question, although it is implicit what side she comes down on, she slides away from this intellectual engagement.

(8) This statement ignores the fact that Wittig wrote in a different language with different grammatical rules. Wittig wrote in French, where every noun has a gender. Butler is writing (notionally) in English, which has lost 99% of its grammatical gender. Provided you find/devise some neutral alternative to the pronouns him/her and his/hers then there are no other grammatical markings of gender (unlike, for example, languages where adjectives agree in gender or where there is no gender-neutral translation of the pronoun ‘they’). There are still some difficulties of vocabulary, but that’s not the same thing.

(9) This section really irritates me. What Butler is explicitly saying is that clarity can be used by liars, which is a true but fairly trivial statement. Implicitly, however, there is a subtext arising from the dragging in of Nixon. If you are an American in 1999, then Nixon is surely not the most obvious candidate to use as an example of lying presidents. But Bill Clinton wouldn’t have the same impact, because what Butler wants to imply is that if you are in favour of clear speech you are siding with right-wing republicans like Richard Nixon. Put as bluntly as that, it’s a stupid statement and one that many left-wing academics would disagree with, so Butler wraps this up to so as to give a vague feeling to the reader that she’s reactionary if she disagrees.

(10) I’m quite happy to be sceptical about clarity in writing, but I’m even more sceptical of difficulty/obscurity in a writer who’s aiming in some way to inform/instruct. Lack of clarity often means at best lack of clear thought and at worst deliberate attempts to mislead. Which is clearer, after all, ‘collateral damage’ or ‘accidentally killing innocent civilians’?

(11) Butler (in the form of a question again) seems to be making vague allegations that some (presumably sinister) force decides what is clear writing and what is not. Again, if put this bluntly, it’s a debatable statement at best, which is why it has to be wrapped up.

(12) Butler’s misuse of ‘parochial’ here shows considerable confusion. If you insist that all writing is clear it potentially opens all writing up to a wider audience, the very opposite of parochialism. It may be philistine to insist that all writing is clear, but it’s not parochial in any normal meaning of the word.

Our attempts to do intensive toilet training on L this week foundered on her refusal to co-operate, specifically to sit on the potty. She has obviously not been reading the same book on toilet-training that we have. This is despite the fact that we have recently bought her a book on potties, a ‘feed and wet’ doll (to help her work out the rough anatomy of where things come out), and ‘The Story of the Little Mole who Knew it was None of his Business’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856024407/qid=1117693727/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-8565937-5354816). (This is a story about animal poo, now I believe also a play (which I guess I will skip)). Whether this is the correct approach to training a bright toddler, but one completely lacking in common sense, we will have to see.

This should have probably have been the first bit of the blog, but a linear narrative is surely too pre-modern for words. In case anyone ever chances on this work, a brief introduction to who I am and why I am writing. I am a British woman in her very late 30s (actually half-American by birth, but wholly English by upbringing and culture). I have just submitted a PhD on early medieval masculinity, so I may yet become a doctrix. At the moment, however, I am only a magistra, having (improbably) three masters’ degrees, in mathematics, librarianship and history. I am married to Edward, ex-solicitor and now an editorial manager with a firm of legal publisher, who combines an unhealthy concern about the correct positioning of semi-colons with the useful skill of managing stubborn and over-intellectual subordinates and academic writers. During my PhD I also became the mother of L, now two and half and marked by charm, talkativeness and a firm belief in her own (frequently incorrect) decisions. This blog is intended as a reflection on academic and maternal life and other matters loosely connected to them. If you don’t like liberal intellectuals, I suggest you stop reading now…