I love the academic world. It is certainly not due to the politics and competition, nor the library fines and perpetual holds on that-book-you-needed, nor the damage it does to my bank account. It is the potential hope it holds. The academic world has its own creed - that of the uninhibited attaining of knowledge and the open sphere of free debate. Too often, universities propagate exactly the opposite. A lecturer stands at the front of a room and simply speaks to the empty vessels sitting in front of them, communicating knowledge directly, and without question. Too often, I have been guilty of sitting in lectures and simply absorbing, blindly, the knowledge that is thrown towards me. I am that tabula rasa, that clay pot into which knowledge is poured, and promptly deposited back out. For those who have read Charles Dickens's Hard Times, this reference will be even stronger.
But there are some lectures that, when I leave the room, have completely shaken up my whole worldview, and shown me a complete new world. This wonderful teacher noted the potential links between medieval mystics, who were predominately female, and people of all sexes who suffer from anorexia nervosa.
I need to think about this further before I complete this post.
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25th March:
To a completion of this - it has taken me far too long, I realise.
For women in the medieval times, at least as far as Caroline Banyum can see, food was their primary source of power, in more ways than one. They had control over food in their households and over their husbands, meaning that they had increased authority over their own eating, but also over the threat of poisoned food for their husbands. There are many recorded allegations of wives poisoning or medicating the food of their husbands to serve their own ends, although to what degree this is the case is another matter. As such, food was where their authority lay. Also, restriction of food and charity were ways in which women could overcome the standard misogynistic perceptions of male as spirit and female as flesh in an emulation of Christ. Further, the Eucharist held an increased significance for many women, particularly mystics, as when fasting, it held a nourishing quality that then led to the notion of a nourishing, feminised God, thus allowing women to place themselves beyond the 'flesh' and literally in the same spirit of God.
Certainly not all cases of fasting were classed as mystical; Catherine of Siena referred to her own condition as an "infirmity". It all depends on definitions: if one takes the classical Catholic distinctions between "natural" (psychological / physiological / sociological) and "mystical" (supernaturally-caused) fasting, female activity becomes fully polarised. I am not sure if I agree; some mystics may have indeed suffered from physiological ailments and yet perceived their own conditions as spiritual, increasing their power and subverting the male gaze. The alternative (and somewhat problematically, more modern) definitions fit better: modern scholars note a difference between "a strong desire for thinness" and "the self-restriction of food when food is plentiful" - the latter definition is divorced from direct links to anorexia, whilst still allowing for genuine mystical choice.
These women viewed spirituality as their way of holding on to control - their requirement to be faithful and pious was still present, but there was still active liberation allowed within this. In a modern study (Pandolfo) of women in Egypt turning to wearing the hijab as an expression of faith, a distinction is noted between "negative" and "positive" freedom, "negative" freedom requiring each choice to be made free of any forms of coercion, as opposed to "positive" freedom, in which choices must be made with a sense of "universal reason", thus inherently allowing for their choice to wear the veil, despite challenges, to be deemed free. Many criticise this choice as upholding a dominant male superiority view - yet for many of these women, their choice is the will of God and they are trained into pious behavior out of choice to worship.
In the modern West, as I have often noted, we experience emotion or passion, which then leads to action. If I am hungry, I eat. If I am tired, I sleep. In the medieval West, and in areas beyond European boundaries, there is often a greater focus on self-education; an action, e.g. the wearing of the hijab is deemed necessary and the passion and emotion associated with this action is built up slowly, out of conscious action. This is no less freedom - it is merely different freedom.
This all causes me to wonder at the lengths we go to to keep control, to hold on to our steady views of how the world should be. Our concepts of freedom are distorted - in the medieval times, women would have certainly acknowledged the requirement of self-education and the development of passion from action. Our freedom is no less worthy than theirs. For medieval women, their authority was exercised by drawing the other, the strange and the uncomfortable into themselves, and expressing it for all the world to see - indeed, their restriction was their liberation. This was happening even a hundred years ago within the Catholic faith, as Saint Gemma Galgani's worthiness was doubted by a diagnosis of hysteria. Her actions were no less worthy, and to prove this, she embraced her illness saying that this would make her a better lover of God and better loved by God. She embraced the definition others gave her, and turned it into her strength.
I need to do this more often too. It is a wonderful strength, to be able to absorb the challenges of others, accept them and use them to form a better self. When people dismiss me, or harm me, if only I had the ability to form that hatred into love. Perhaps that is where her sanctity resided - not in her illness, but in her hope despite it.
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