Haven't seen the current ep, but
Oct. 24th, 2009 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI would be fascinated to see an analysis of historical race - as opposed to historiographic race - then-thoughts, not now-looking-back-at-then-thoughts - in Merlin. Using the non-genetic theories of skin pigmentation - anyone who lived in a hot place would look like that eventually! - and maybe even looking at Celtic Fringe stuff.
I'd even love to see a historiographic reading from someone in the UK re: the Celtic Fringe thing. How does the Irish Morgana look through contemporary UK pop culture? And what would her status as an oppressed person be, historically speaking, in relation to Gwen's?
(Obviously, I'm a white girl living in the US. Race here has a particularly, um, hardcore history here. And also obviously, a lot of the people in this fandom are both chromatic and white people living State-side, so our historiography of Gwen and Morgan sort of has to come from the viewpoint of our history. But I know enough about medieval European race theory to know that I don't know much, and I do think it would be cool to read the show through that lens, as well as the one drawn from our own contemporary culture/life experience.)
eta: if this is problematic wittering, feel free to tell me off. I'm pretty much pulling this out of nowhere, and that subconscious nowherespace does tend to be where the icky programming resides.
I'd even love to see a historiographic reading from someone in the UK re: the Celtic Fringe thing. How does the Irish Morgana look through contemporary UK pop culture? And what would her status as an oppressed person be, historically speaking, in relation to Gwen's?
(Obviously, I'm a white girl living in the US. Race here has a particularly, um, hardcore history here. And also obviously, a lot of the people in this fandom are both chromatic and white people living State-side, so our historiography of Gwen and Morgan sort of has to come from the viewpoint of our history. But I know enough about medieval European race theory to know that I don't know much, and I do think it would be cool to read the show through that lens, as well as the one drawn from our own contemporary culture/life experience.)
eta: if this is problematic wittering, feel free to tell me off. I'm pretty much pulling this out of nowhere, and that subconscious nowherespace does tend to be where the icky programming resides.
almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 03:27 am (UTC)Towards the end of the seventeenth/eighteenth century (Henry VIII onwards, but especially Elizabeth I), she'd probably lose a lot of her status, since Ireland was subjugated by England and local chieftans and landlords were ousted and replaced by English and Scottish loyalists. If she was of English stock (i.e. a settler), she'd be part of the aristocracy/ruling class. If she were of Irish stock, she wouldn't be considered to be "civilized"- so. It all depends! :)
The problem is, Merlin isn't set in any historical era. Frustrating! As far as early medieval Ireland goes, I think that the Gaelic aristocracy were pretty powerful in Scotland and Ireland (especially the Scottish Highlands), and I imagine they'd have been respected by the English. The French certainly did.
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 04:01 am (UTC)Is it? One of my current profs at Uni is a medievalist, and she keeps going on about it - one of the reasons why it's been on my mind. Certainly there is a history of colony and empire, at least later on .. right?
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 04:09 am (UTC)Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 04:13 am (UTC)But I'd be reluctant to use it before that. And I'm not sure the Scots and Irish, etc, would have called themselves Celts or identified overmuch with the Welsh and Bretons. They called themselves "Gaels", but they weren't a Unified!Celtic!Front! That's much more modern. :)
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 04:34 am (UTC)If that's the case, then I do think it's a relevant lens in terms of historicity, i.e. the text through the eyes of the contemporary viewer. It's not like the US (as the US, not Native Americans/First Nations, that is) has a whole lot of history before the 17th century!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 04:40 am (UTC)seriously though, it'd be fascinating, yeah.
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 05:47 am (UTC)As I understand it (!):
the whole imperial/subaltern thing is a modern concept
Well, there was an empire, and Ireland was a subject of the English (British) empire (not getting into modern Northern Ireland, that's too squirrely for me) stating around the 1600s. AFAIK, Ireland was pretty much left to it's own business up until then. To really give you some idea of what the "fringe" is and how the "empire" ties into it (and they're inextricable, IMO), I need to start waaaaaaaaay back when, in the Iron Age.
The "Celts", as defined by archaeologists and modern historians, were a Celtic-speaking people who stretched from eastern Europe (around Romania) to Ireland (and from Germany down to Spain/Northern Italy). They may not have called themselves Celts or even identified as a homogenous group (it'd be like saying an Italian and an Frenchman were one and the same, because they were both from "the old world")- there were possibly six different Celtic languages spoken on the continent, and another six or so on the islands (modern UK and Ireland) - but, anyways, they were definitely there. Britain and Ireland were Celtic, but they were cut off from the mainland, which meant that they both developed their own "insular" culture. The Irish spoke Goidelic, which eventually became Old Irish, and that became Irish/Gaelic. In Britain, people spoke an early form of Welsh, and Pictish. When the Romans conquered Britain in 44 BC, they didn't bother to conquer Ireland. (No, really. It was "too easy".) So the Irish had their own society, language, culture and so on, without the disruption that the rest of Britain had. The Irish were seen as nasty, uncultivated brutes, etc. etc. and it was a pretty rough world, but there wasn't much crossover. It wasn't an issue. (I think)
Language is REALLY important. That's why I'm so fixated on it. Trust me, here. :D
After the Romans left Britain, the Saxons invaded and British warlords carved out their own little kingdoms. Some Irish settlers took over what is now southwestern Scotland (Strathclyde), and the Vikings bagged the top of the country. By the early medieval era, England was overwhelmingly Saxon/Norman (the Welsh kingdoms were reduced to mountain strongholds, and they were too weakened by infighting and geographical problems to pose a serious threat to the Anglo-Saxon/Norman majority). One of the dominant languages (cultures) in Scotland was Classical Gaelic, which the Gaels shared with Ireland. Basically Scotland and Ireland were one big Gaelic nation, separated by the Irish Sea. They were separate countries, but they shared a culture.
Ireland had it's own legal system (God, did it ever. *headache*) and political system, which was basically feudal and kinship-based. There were kings and high kings (but no definitive High King, just people who claimed the title) and dependents and all that good stuff, yadda yadda yadda. In Scotland, there were clans, and clan chieftans held power. In both countries, people were dependent on their clan chieftan or the local king for defense and justice, and the kings and cheiftans were traditionally more concerned with the good of the clan than their own wealth/comfort. (Descent wasn't neccessarily father-to-son, btw. It was usually uncle to nephew!)
So you have this Gaelic-speaking, Catholic, essentially subsistence-level society that had been that way since after the Romans left Britain. Vikings and English kings made the occasional forays into Scotland and Ireland, but it was never very serious until Edward III got sword-happy (seen Braveheart? Yeah. Like that, except not). [Irish and Scottish nobles would have probably been treated with due respect in English courts, I think, but I haven't looked into it. I should do that.] In the later middle ages and the Renaissance, England began trying to take over Ireland in earnest. (Scotland was allied with France, so nobody was messing with them!) I think Henry VIII sent the first invaders/settlers to Ireland. They ousted the local kings and partitioned the land between themselves. Gaelic was banned. Within two generations, they were speaking Gaelic and running their courts in grand Gaelic fashion.
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 05:48 am (UTC)Throughout the 1800s, Gaels (Irish and Scottish) were seen as "subhuman" and "colored" undesirables, and treated accordingly.The Highland Clearances (1725-1850) were part of the effort to stamp out Gaelic culture, and the Potato Famine in Ireland pretty much finished the job over there. Entire villages were emptied out, by starvation or migration, and left to moulder in the highlands. Sheep overran the pastures and hills where Highlanders used to live.
Having rid themselves of those pesky Gaels, the English looked at the empty villages and the tragic, downtrodden survivors, and thought "Oh, how tragic! How Romantic! How primitive!" (These are the bastards who invented Heathcliff. Remember that.) The idea of a Celtic "fringe" of Noble Savages, clinging to the edges of the modern world, was very appealing. It had some basis in reality, but the label still came from the society that had stamped out the Celts in the first place. Out of that movement came the Celtic Revival in the '20s, which had an emphasis on languages- Gaelic, Old Irish, Welsh- and which was the beginning of modern Celtic studies, etc. The taint of Romanticism hasn't quite faded, and I doubt if it ever will, but there you have it.
Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 05:51 am (UTC)Caveat: the sources for this are post-Clearance, I think. I'd have to check my notes. There's no reason a chieftan couldn't screw his clan over. ;p
no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 03:14 pm (UTC)Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: almostinstinct: bottled history, may contain glaring errors!
Date: 2009-10-25 09:43 pm (UTC)