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Latin American voices of international affairs

Latin American voices of international affairs

In the field of International Relations (IR), voices from Latin America have long been underrepresented—overshadowed by dominant Western perspectives, particularly those from the United States and Britain. This blog post aims to spotlight some of the contributions of Latin American thinkers to IR, showcasing how these perspectives challenge established norms and offer unique insights into both regional and global dynamics. By bringing these voices to the forefront, it is possible to foster more inclusive and comprehensive discourses in IR.

Latin American thinkers have significantly contributed to IR by questioning long-standing norms and introducing diverse theoretical frameworks. Concepts such as centre, periphery, development, dependency, autonomy, viability, permissibility, and peripheral realism are crucial for understanding the political and economic dynamics within Latin America. These ideas not only reflect the region’s unique experiences, but also provide valuable perspectives to understand international affairs in general. By scrutinizing these established norms, Latin American thinkers push the boundaries of traditional IR, encouraging a more critical and reflective approach to international studies.

By examining how theoretical ideas are translated into practical policies, we gain a better understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by Latin American countries in the international arena.

Prominent figures like Hélio Jaguaribe and Juan Carlos Puig have laid foundational work in Latin American International Relations. Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping autonomous foreign policies, especially among left-wing governments in the late 20th and early 21st century. Understanding their work and influence helps to illuminate the evolving foreign policy dynamics and debates within the region over the past few decades, while ignoring them, on the other hand, risks overlooking critical insights that are essential for understanding Latin American international relations. These pioneering thinkers have advocated for a more self-reliant and independent approach to foreign policy, challenging the dominance of external powers and promoting regional solidarity and cooperation.

The interplay between theory and practice in Latin American foreign policy is a critical area of exploration. The often-neglected dynamics of peripheral countries reveal much about how policy decisions are formulated and how states in the region interact on both internal and global stages. This scholar-practitioner relationship offers deep insights into the real-world application of theoretical concepts. By examining how theoretical ideas are translated into practical policies, we gain a better understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities faced by Latin American countries in the international arena.

Latin American scholars have also made significant, yet often overlooked, contributions to the subfield of International Political Economy (IPE). Over the past two decades, their work has shed light on economic development, international engagement, and policy responses unique to the region’s challenges. These perspectives may enrich the intellectual discourse within IPE, providing a more nuanced understanding of global economic interactions. By highlighting the distinctive economic strategies and responses of Latin American countries, these scholars can offer valuable insights into the complexities of regional and global economic governance and development.

Latin American countries face numerous challenges in the global political arena, from navigating economic dependencies to engaging in cultural exchanges. The region’s strategic manoeuvring within global governance structures offers interesting studies on how less powerful nations assert themselves in a world often dominated by stronger states. By analysing the strategies and tactics employed by Latin American states, we can better appreciate their resilience and ingenuity in pursuing Global South national interests and promoting regional cooperation in an increasingly interconnected world.

By highlighting the distinctive economic strategies and responses of Latin American countries, these scholars can offer valuable insights into the complexities of regional and global economic governance and development.

Now, highlighting the contributions of women in the histories of IR and international thought is also crucial for gaining more inclusive narratives. Some Latin-American women have played significant roles in shaping IR in the region, demonstrating resilience and intellectual prowess in global politics. Their stories emphasize the need for diverse voices and perspectives in the field. By uncovering the often-overlooked contributions of women from the Global South, and in particular from Latin America, we not only enrich our understanding of IR, but also challenge the gender biases that have historically marginalised women’s voices in the region.

Alicia Moreau is an example of an Argentinian thinker from the early 20th century who provides a nuanced perspective on war, peace, and the quest for a more egalitarian society. Her non-violent approach, emphasising equality, education, and democracy, is relevant today. Moreau’s ideas resonate with contemporary challenges; including her in the histories of international thought and IR would contribute to creating more inclusive narratives. In addition, by revisiting her contributions, we can draw valuable lessons for addressing current global issues, emphasising the importance of non-violence, social justice, women, and democratic governance.

This blog post hopes to serve as an invitation to academics and practitioners worldwide to engage with some of the intellectual contributions of Latin America to understand international affairs. By bringing these voices to the forefront, we could have more inclusive and holistic understandings of international relations. Their perspectives often challenge the status quo and urge readers to reconsider preconceived notions, appreciating the diverse insights Latin American thinkers bring in understanding the world. This endeavour not only showcases Latin American contributions, but also sets the stage for further exploration and collaboration, making International Relations —as well as other fields such as the history of international thought and IPE— truly international. Only through an inclusive approach, we will be able to attain a more equitable and diverse understanding of world affairs.

Featured image by Lara Jameson via Pexels.

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How to edit your writing: tips to perfect your journal article

How to edit your writing: tips to perfect your journal article 

Editing plays a significant role in improving the quality of your journal article and builds the bridge between the first draft and a submission-ready manuscript.

You might picture grammatical corrections when you think of editing, but this process also improves the clarity, coherence, and accuracy of your writing. Editing allows authors to critique their ideas, refine their arguments, and address the weaker aspects of their manuscript. In this blog post, we share tips and advice from on how to edit your journal article and what to consider when doing so. 

Why bother? The power of editing

“Most of the time, our first draft is for ourselves”, says A. Foster. “We write what we have been thinking about most, which means the article reflects our questions, our knowledge, and our interests. A round or two of editing and refining before submission to the journal is valuable.”

H. Broman advises that editing can help your article be accepted and save time in the long run. “Editing does yourself a favour by minimizing distractions, annoyances, or cosmetic points that a reviewer can criticize. Why give reviewers things to criticize when you can eliminate them by submitting a carefully prepared manuscript?”

Editing, copyediting, or proofreading? Understanding the difference

Editing, copyediting, and proofreading are distinct stages in preparing written content. Editing improves the overall content, structure, and clarity, ensuring the writing communicates its message effectively. Copyediting is often provided by most journals and focuses on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and consistency, correcting errors and adhering to a style guide. Proofreading is the final review, checking for minor errors, typos, and formatting issues to ensure the text is polished and error-free before publication. 

It’s important to note the difference specifically between editing and proofreading. An author should edit a journal article early on to improve content and clarity. Proofreading should be done at the final stage to catch minor errors and ensure the manuscript is polished before submission. 

Editing tools and services

Consider having your manuscript professionally edited before submission, especially if English is not your first language. This step, while optional, can help ensure your paper’s content is clearly understood by editors and reviewers. A newer development, AI tools for language editing are becoming more widespread—our survey of more than 2,000 researchers showed that 38% had used AI to help with editing. Popular tools like Microsoft Word Editor and Turnitin Revision Assistant can help authors enhance the readability and quality of their manuscripts before submission. However, as the landscape around AI and its technical capabilities continues to evolve, many publishers are introducing guidelines and restrictions about the use of AI tools. Check your chosen publisher’s or journal’s policy before proceeding.

Refining your writing: Questions to ask yourself

Is your writing clear and easy to understand? 

Clarity is essential, to make sure that you are communicating your ideas effectively. E. Franco’s advice is to “wait 2-3 days and then reread your draft. You will be surprised to see how many passages in your great paper are too complicated and inscrutable even for you. And you wrote it!”

Do you repeat yourself?

Eliminate redundancy. It detracts from your point and dilutes the impact of your argument. It can be tempting to use wordy language to seem more professional or to lengthen your papers, but this can obscure messages and undermine objectivity. 

Is your writing style consistent? 

Maintaining a uniform style and format in your journal article enhances its presentation. Consistency in writing style and tone improves narrative understanding and ensures clear communication of your research. While style is crucial, striking a balance is key to keeping readers engaged without compromising accuracy. 

Could your argument be made more persuasive or could your key findings be emphasised? 

Strengthening your argument is crucial, as this can improve the persuasiveness of the article and enhances its credibility. 

Are your references and citations comprehensive and accurate? 

Have you proofread your article carefully? 

Attention to grammar, punctuation, and spelling reflects a commitment to excellence and professionalism. Whilst perfect written English is often not expected, typos throughout the manuscript are not a good reflection on you.

Is your data accurate and properly formatted? 

Verify the accuracy of all data and information presented in your article. If you have supplementary materials, such as datasets or additional figures, make sure these are organised as required by the journal. 

Does your chosen journal have formatting requirements?

Is your article the correct length? 

“Do not submit an article which is already at or above the word limit for articles in the journal. The review process rarely asks for cuts; usually, you will be asked to clarify or add material. If you are at the maximum word count in the initial submission, you then must cut something during the revision process.” – A. Foster 

Do you need a second opinion? 

It can be helpful to get feedback from a peer who isn’t a co-author. A peer represents a reader, and they can provide a different perspective as someone who is removed from the project. Accepting feedback can be difficult, but ultimately it can help to strengthen your writing. 

Do your edits all make sense together? 

With all your careful edits it can be easy to lose sight of the overall picture. Seth J. Schwartz recommends revisiting your planned outline to ensure that your additions, modifications, or deletions have not unintentionally changed your structure. 

Editing is an essential part of transforming your initial draft into a polished, submission-ready manuscript. By focusing on clarity, coherence, and accuracy, authors can enhance their arguments and ensure their research is effectively communicated.

Now it is time to review the journal and publisher’s submission guidelines thoroughly to ensure that your article adheres to their formatting requirements. See our list of essential checks for preparing your manuscript. 

Featured image by Suzy Hazelwood via Pexels. Public domain.

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How race shapes American Christian solidarities in Palestine [long read]

How race shapes American Christian solidarities in Palestine [long read]

Since the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, race and religion have loomed large in debates over appropriate solidarities linking the United States with Israel and Palestine, with the breakdown and reorientation of durable Black-Jewish U.S. civil rights alliances, mounting pressure coming from African American Christian clergy for a ceasefire in Gaza, and even organized Black clergy denunciations of U.S. military aid for the State of Israel as enabling “mass genocide.”

These trends illustrate a shift in U.S. Black religious politics in global terms and in its potential to disrupt long-standing coalitions in American electoral politics, as Black churchgoers—a historically reliable demographic for the Democratic Party—were increasingly less enthusiastic about President Biden’s prior candidacy in 2024 in key electoral states like Michigan. And this was in line with Biden’s plummeting approval ratings among African Americans in general, with a poll showing a drop from 81% approval among all African American adults in 2021 to 50% in December 2023.

In this context, we ask how race matters when progressive U.S. Christians travel abroad to forge solidarities with Palestinians in overlapping religious, racial, and political terms. Between 2015 and 2018, we traveled separately with different American Protestant Christian solidarity tours of Palestine and Israel—some primarily white (Sara Williams) and some primarily Black (Roger Baumann). We conceptualize these kinds of tours as either “journeys to the margins” or “journeys among the margins.” Journeys to the margins are solidarity tours grounded in liberation theologies that take the form of packed experiences and promise ethical and spiritual transformation through encounters with marginalized people and groups. Journeys among the margins are tours aimed at linking the struggles of marginalized groups across national borders.

So, how does race matter in each?

In comparing majority-white and white-led American Christian Palestinian solidarity tours with majority-Black and Black-led tours, we point out that race and racial identity are important to both kinds of trips, but manifest in different ways that matter for understanding transnational religious and racial solidarities. For white participants on white-led journeys to the margins, appeals to race and racial identity offer opportunities to reckon with inequitable power arrangements in conversation with progressive Christian values like social justice and inclusivity. For Black participants on Black-led journeys among the margins, overlapping experiences of racial marginalization and discrimination afford the cultivation of empathy, offer new transnational perspectives on racial identity, and forge new bonds of solidarity with Palestinians.

These outcomes, however, are far from determined. Journeys to and among the margins not only have the capacity to conscientize, but also to reinforce the paternalistic and asymmetrical “humanitarian reason” that animates white engagement with Black and Brown communities in the United States and abroad. And bonds of solidarity can come into tension with participants’ religious schemas that place values such as reconciliation and dialogue over justice and accountability, particularly among evangelicals.

Journey among the margins

Consider the following experiences of African American participants on evangelical solidarity tours of Palestine that involved a guided tour and discussion with an organization called Roots. Roots is a dialogue group founded by an Israeli-American Orthodox Rabbi and a Palestinian activist. It affirms both Jewish and Palestinian claims to the land as well as civil, political, and national rights for each group. Baumann visited Roots in 2015 with an all-Black group of pastors and lay leaders from The Perfecting Church (TPC), a large independent majority-Black evangelical congregation in the South New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia that travels to Palestine regularly with an evangelical theological mandate of peacebuilding and reconciliation. The TPC group began its ten-day trip to the Holy Land with a walking tour in the Judean hills (the Palestinian West Bank) guided by Shimon, a Jewish settler and spokesperson for Roots. TPC’s founding pastor, Kevin Brown, shared his hope that Roots would help TPC members understand a Jewish settler perspective on the land so they might relate to “both sides” in Palestine and Israel.

The TPC Roots tour began with a drive from Bethlehem to the Gush Etzion settlement bloc about five miles southwest, where the Palestinian van driver dropped the group off for a walking tour of a Jewish settlement area. Following that tour, the group visited a plot of land the organization maintains, gathering on a concrete platform under a tent in a semi-circle of plastic chairs. Shimon introduced the group to Bassem, a Palestinian Christian who also works with Roots. They took turns telling personal stories of how the organization’s work had become important to them, followed by a shared lunch of lentils, salad, and roasted chicken. Over lunch, Baumann talked with Don, a return visitor from TPC and a pastor in training who was preparing to plant a satellite branch of the church in his hometown of Camden, New Jersey. Don candidly shared that his younger brother had been murdered as a teenager. He also described how common police harassment of Black men is in Camden.

“I’m mindful when I’m in a neighborhood where there aren’t a lot of people who look like me,” he said. “And I’m praying that I won’t appear as a threat.”

When asked if he saw that kind of situation in the Holy Land, Don responded, “I saw it with our bus driver when Shimon got on the bus.”

Recognizing racialized experiences and power imbalances linking African Americans and Palestinians was a common theme of the trip. Participants shared frequently that their experiences of being Black in a white-dominated society conditioned how they interpreted the lives and experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Journey to the margins

A year later in 2016, Williams visited Roots with a tour organized by progressive evangelical peacemaking organization, The Global Immersion Project (TGIP). Twenty of the participants were white; the remaining two were young Black evangelical leaders. The visit was led by Noam, a Jewish man originally from Minneapolis who had made Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) almost half a century earlier.

The group made its way to Beit Zakariyyah, a Palestinian village made up of makeshift tin-roofed cement structures lacking electricity and running water. Noam was quick to point out the disparities between Beit Zakariyyah and the neighboring Jewish settlement of Alon Svut, with its gleaming stone buildings and lush farmland. To underscore his point, Noam called over Munir, a Palestinian man from a nearby village accompanying us. Noam asked him,

“When you go from your village into [the settlement] … and you see the way they live [and] the way you live, does it feel like there’s something wrong?”

“It’s very different,” Munir responded. “There’s a big difference between the Arab life and the Jewish life. We don’t have 10 percent [of] what they have.”

A few minutes later, Williams noticed Munir whispering in hushed tones with Derek, one of the two Black participants in the group. After a while, one of the TGIP group leaders asked Derek whether he wanted to share their discussion with the group. He politely declined.

The next morning, in a small group debriefing, Derek shared about this encounter:

“I had a really hard moment when [Munir]… came and sought me out in the midst of everybody talking. [Munir asked me], ‘Why are you here? You came all the way here to learn about this tension between the two groups?’ He was just taken aback by that. [And] I was like, ‘Tell me a little bit about what it’s like to be you here in terms of the military occupation and stuff… Are the officers violent?’ And [Munir] said, ‘Yeah, all the time…I just worry about getting shot for no reason.’ And I was like, ‘You should tell the group that.’ And [Munir] said, ‘My Israeli friend [Noam] doesn’t like when I talk like that.’”

Reflecting on this conversation, Derek said,

“I don’t even know if [Noam] knew that the power dynamic of their relationship [was] inhibiting [Munir] from being fully honest with him. I can’t fault people, but I think when you’re in a position of privilege, oftentimes you’re blinded to how those relational dynamics function.”

After Derek spoke, a white member of the group, Sue, asked him whether he thought Munir had approached him because he is Black. When Derek responded with an unequivocal “yes,” she replied in a didactic tone,

“There’s another area people don’t understand. Probably from the outside he views you as the stereotypical — may I say? — and to be honest, you’re not. You’re highly educated, you have huge visions and plans. But he automatically stereotyped you, that’s what I find interesting.”

Derek gently redirected Sue’s interpretation of the encounter.

“I figure either he stereotyped me or he said, ‘He will get what I’m going through.’ It was one of the two.”

What can we learn from these journeys?

These two encounters between American evangelicals and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories share several common features. First, the evangelical theological imperative for reconciliation and peacemaking dominate the framework for participant meaning making. Second, Black evangelicals experience particular points of connection with Palestinians based on what the religious historian Judith Weisenfeld calls “religio-racial identity,” where some marginalized group identities function at the conjunction of religion and race, which takes on additional significance as Black religious politics shift from the national level to the transnational level. Third, the religio-racial frameworks Black evangelicals brought to their meaning-making processes functioned for them as ethical affordances, anthropologist Webb Keane’s term for aspects and perceptions of an experience that people may draw on in making ethical evaluations.

But we also see important differences that lead us to think of the majority white TGIP trip as a journey to the margins and the majority Black TPC trip as a journey among the margins.

Derek’s conversation with Munir suggests the limits of a “both sides” reconciliation paradigm. Yet the racial experiences of white participants like Sue did not afford them the same attunement to this dynamic. For Sue, Munir’s overture was the result of racial stereotyping; ironically this exposed her own racism in posturing Derek as a “model minority” Black man. Derek, by contrast, adeptly read this encounter as a kind of clandestine solidarity. It was the admission of what the reconciliation paradigm renders unspeakable: when structural power imbalances persist, reconciliation can actually become a tool for reproduction of those imbalances.

On journeys to the margins, like the TGIP trip, Black religio-racial experiences exist as whispers on the peripheries of the overall meaning making framework of the trip, where it is difficult for them to interrupt or destabilize white progressive Christian racial frameworks. Even with an attempt to contextualize his connection with Munir, Derek’s explanation didn’t register with Sue. This suggests limits to the reach of racialized perspectives into theologies and rhetorics of “both sides” engagement so central to American evangelicalism. For Black evangelicals on journeys among the margins, there are more opportunities for the limits of symmetrical “both sides” theological and ethical imperatives to become disrupted and reworked in a context where Black religio-racial experiences are more centered, more openly discussed, and more available to participants.

Featured image by Ian Scott via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.

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How the body reshapes our understanding of biblical prophecy

How the body reshapes our understanding of biblical prophecy

In common parlance, a “prophecy” is a special kind of utterance. Perhaps an oracle about the future, words of approval or condemnation, critique or consolation. Scholars often define prophecy as a kind of message, issued from a deity to their people and mediated through an individual called a prophet. The books of the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament preserve numerous writings considered “prophetic”. Some of these writings record words attributed to prophets. Some tell stories about prophets. When we attend closely to those stories, we begin to notice that prophecy is more than words. It always also involves the body.

…[p]rophetic word and body act in synergy.

Scholars have long studied the words of the prophets. Expanding our focus to include the body reshapes our very understanding of prophecy. But it is not either/or. To say that prophecy involves the body is not to deny the importance of words, both spoken and written. Instead, prophetic word and body act in synergy. The call of Moses—a narrative that was paradigmatic for other prophetic call stories—emphasizes this synergy by focusing attention on two parts of his body, his mouth and hand. This programmatic pairing places the prophet’s words and actions on equal footing.

Indeed, if “prophecy” is the mode of mediation performed by prophets, it quickly becomes evident that prophecy takes many forms. It is often a form of speech. But sometimes it is not an utterance at all. Sometimes a prophecy is an act of healing. Sometimes a meal. The prophet may be a mime or a dancer. The diverse forms of prophecy correspond to a diversity of functions. Like other forms of divination, prophecy—and the prophetic body—mediates knowledge. But they also mediate divine power, presence, provision, and relationship.

The body of the prophet is not incidental to this work, but necessary. That is because the prophet does not mediate between two disembodied parties. The prophetic body mediates between an embodied God and embodied people. Detailed written descriptions of the prophet’s bodily encounter with divine realities help to facilitate the audience’s own religious experience. Although biblical writers understood divine bodies to be different from human (or other animal) bodies, they conceived of a deity that could see and hear, speak and touch. The body of the prophet does not simply stand between God and people but makes possible their encounter and ongoing relationship.

This mediating work does not leave the prophet’s body unchanged. The mediating prophetic body undergoes transformations that mark it as other and help it to bridge divine and human realms and modes of being. Sometimes these transformations are visible. After his encounter with the deity, Moses’ face shines so brightly he must wear a veil; in some traditions, he becomes more monstrous, horns now protruding from his face. In punishment for her challenge to Moses’ prophetic authority, Miriam’s body is afflicted with a visible skin disease that requires her exclusion from the camp. Prophets also transformed their bodies through askesis, practices such as fasting, abstention from water, and isolation, that could prepare them to receive revelation or contribute to their mediatory power. In a more temporary transformation, music and other triggers could elicit altered states of consciousness. Such religious ecstasy was a further pathway for the prophet’s body to bridge divine and human realms.

The movements of the prophet’s body mirror the movements of the deity.

The mediating body of the prophet was rarely static. It was, instead, a body in motion. If the deity often instructed the prophet to speak, the deity also often instructed the prophet to “go.” To places, yes, but more importantly, to people. The prophetic body in motion catalyzes movements of people and links deity and people across boundaries of space and time. The movements of the prophet’s body mirror the movements of the deity; they also help set the people in motion toward the future God has planned for them. The converse was also true. The immobilized prophetic body could be a portent of siege, captivity, or exile. In this way, too, the body prophesied.

Related to motion are emotion and affect. These embodied phenomena are not the property of one body alone. Affect and emotion are social phenomena that circulate. And they are vital components in decision-making, action-readiness, and relationship. Study of prophetic literature quickly reveals the centrality of affect and emotion to biblical prophecy. Ezekiel ingests words of woe and embodies the people’s devastation. Jeremiah instructs the people to lament and cry out. He also paints future consolation and joy. The book of Daniel aims to replace fear with wonder, exhaustion with hope. Affect emerges as both a means of mediation (how the prophet mediates) and its object (what the prophet mediates); it is vital to prophetic persuasion and to the transformation of the prophet’s audience.

Asking new questions about the body’s role in biblical prophecy helps to expand and reshape our understanding of prophecy itself. There is yet more work to do, sounding the body’s role in prophecy’s reception, charting the role of an embodied creation, or mapping the materiality of prophetic power through the agency of “things”. The prophetic body is a great place to start.

Featured image by Carolingian book illuminator circa 840 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Love your friend as yourself

Love your friend as yourself

Perhaps the most popular command in the Bible is to “love your friend”—or “neighbor,” as it’s commonly translated— “as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Less popular today are the preceding verses, which command friends to rebuke each other if one has sinned. In ancient Judaism, a good rebuke was a mark of friendship, although it had to be done the right way.

In the book of Leviticus, the commands to love and rebuke your friend are given in the context of the justice system. A loving friend will rebuke the sinning party in a lawsuit. In the biblical legal system, cases were sometimes judged by friends, village elders, and witnesses who saw neighbors in need of resolution (Gen 31:36–37; Job 29:7–16). The crucial responsibility of such a judge, according to Leviticus, is to remain impartial, a stipulation emphasized by repetition and Hebrew wordplay. Showing favoritism toward the powerful, or even the weak, is not an act of love.

Over time, the imperative to rebuke a friend became associated with wisdom, and it is frequently found in texts like Proverbs (Prov 9:7–8; 10:17; 19:25; 25:9–12; 27:5; 28:23). According to these texts, a loving friend tells someone when they’ve erred, so they can get their life back on track.

While the biblical book of Job is often considered wisdom literature, it frequently subverts genre expectations. Job is righteous, and yet his sacrifices fail to protect his children. In other books, if someone makes a sacrifice that is rejected, or if their children suddenly die, it is usually because of sin (1 Sam 13:8–14; Prov 11:21).

Three “friends” visit to comfort Job after the death of his children, and they try to be the best friends they can be by rebuking him for whatever sin he committed. He’ll be restored once he repents—or so they think. In this case, however, the expectations are flipped. Job’s suffering is not punishment for sin. Instead of a mark of friendship, the friends’ rebuke comes across like self-righteous presumption toward a friend in need.

Job recognizes that his friends are following wisdom protocols, but he raises the stakes and holds them to legal protocols. Job talks about his situation as one who is embroiled in legal troubles. His accuser, as he sees it, is God, who applied punishment too swiftly and with a heavy hand. He says the friends neglect the legal definition of a proper rebuke according to Leviticus 19:

Lev 19:15, 17Job 13:7–1015 You shall not cause perversity in judgment
You shall not show favoritism toward the poor
And you shall not offer favoritism toward the powerful
With justice you shall judge your neighbor . . .

17 You shall not show hate toward your companion in your heart
Seriously rebuke your neighbor
So you do not show guilt on your neighbor’s behalf.

18 You shall not take vengeance or hold a grudge against one of your people
But you shall love your friend as yourself
I am LORD7 Will you speak perversity for God?
And will you speak deceit for him?

8 Will you show favoritism toward him
When you conduct litigation for God?

9 Will it do you any favors when he examines you?
When you (try to) trick him like a trickster?

10 You will be the ones he seriously rebukes
If you secretly show favoritism!

Job accuses his friends of showing favoritism toward the most powerful disputant—God! If they are truly friends, they will remain impartial when they judge his case. Job wants to prove his innocence in court—but he wants an unbiased judge who is willing to say, “God, you are wrong! Job, you are right!” Job imagines a true friend who would rise up and bring justice to his trial (9:32–33; 16:19–21; 19:25; 31:35).

An imaginary friend is a way of loving yourself as a friend, especially when your friends don’t love you as themselves. Job is not the only character who relies on imaginary friends.

Image by Sir John Tenniel via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), shares affinities with the book of Job. Like Job, Alice’s story is told within a frame tale that opens on an ordinary day when suddenly nothing works the way it should. Like Job’s friends, the citizens of Wonderland become increasingly antagonistic, engaging Alice in a series of debates about logic, meaning, existence, and morality. Children’s literature of the time preached heavy-handed morals, but Wonderland subverts genre expectations and makes the self-righteous characters look silly.

The Cheshire Cat is an ephemeral character who appears and disappears suddenly between Alice’s arguments. The Cat is technically an imaginary character—in fact, everyone in Wonderland is part of Alice’s dream. The enigmatic Cat does not overtly take Alice’s side or help her win debates, but it is the only Wonderlandian that Alice calls a “friend.”

What sets the Cat apart is its objectivity. While other characters insist that there is logic in the chaos, the Cat readily admits, “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” This genuine acknowledgement of reality seems to be where Alice finds friendship, and it is the kind of authenticity that Job sought from his friends.

“Love your friend as yourself.” It seems like an easy rule. But it means we must acknowledge when the world doesn’t make sense and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sometimes being a friend means going against the grain—providing objective judgement even when the world’s rules point in the opposite direction.

Featured image: ‘Job and his Friends’ by Ilya Repin via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

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Why are lips called lips?

Why are lips called lips?

A reader asked me to explain how I choose words for my essays. It is a long story, but I will try to make it short. When more than thirty years ago I began working on a new etymological dictionary of English, I compiled a list of words about which dictionaries say “origin unknown” and came up with about a thousand items. My other list contains “words of uncertain origin.” It is those outcasts of English etymology that interested and still interest me most of all. The blog was launched on March 1, 2006, and during all those years, I tried to discuss just such problematic words if, of course, I had something of interest to say about them.

My main resource was the huge bibliography of English etymology (published in book form by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010) I amassed with the help of numerous assistants. In stray articles and notes, written in a dozen languages, I found many worthwhile suggestions that dictionary makers had missed. Clever comparisons and non-trivial facts often surfaced in sources one can discover only by opening every page in those runaway volumes, that is, by chance. Also, entries in English etymological dictionaries are short, while I could discuss various hypotheses at length. Some of my posts have been inspired by questions from readers.

There is no system in my choice of subjects, but from time to time, I develop a certain theme. For instance, I once devoted a series of posts to all kinds of refuse: rubbish, garbage, dregs, and trash. Deplorable waste, but interesting words. Animal names and body parts have figured prominently in the blog. Initially, I hoped that I would be inundated with questions and suggestions from the readership. Though queries and objections reach me from time to time, the flood did not materialize, and I am more or less on my own when it comes to the subjects for inclusion. A richer exchange would have been of great use, but the number of “interesting” words is inexhaustible, and I am never short of riddles.

A question from a student made me aware of how many words designate “lip” in the languages of the world, and I decided to devote today’s post to it. The puzzling thing is that in the Old Germanic languages, two dissimilar words designated “lips.” Who, we may wonder, needs synonyms for “lip”? One of the Old English names for “lip” was, apparently, werula. It came down to us in the plural form weleras and weoleras, with l and r playing leapfrog (the technical term for this common change is metathesis). The word was known widely. Its cognate occurs in the fourth-century Gothic translation of the New Testament. In Mark VII: 6 (as it appears in the Revised Version), we read: “This people honoureth me with their lips [that is, pays only lip service to me], but their heart is far from me” (the same form, but in a slightly different context, in IC XIV: 21).

The Gothic noun showed up only in the dative plural. The singular must have been wairilo or wairila (Gothic ai has here the value of e in English wen). Also, Old Icelandic had vörr (Modern Icelandic vör), and in Old Frisian (a West Germanic language, like Old English), were “lip” occurred. We notice that warilo ~ warila contains the diminutive suffix il (thus, little lips, “lipkins, liplets” as it were; the same diminutive suffix is extant in English girl, whatever gir– may have meant). Those English speakers who said weleras no longer recognized the ancient suffix, just as we no longer realize that –kin is a suffix in names like Watkins (= “little Wat or Walter”).

Lips are good for pouting
Image 1 by Thgusstavo Santana via Pexels. Image 2 by HONG SON via Pexels.

The origin of the Gothic word and its cognates is obscure and will therefore throw no light on lip. Greek kheîlos “lip” is from an etymological point of view isolated, but it seems to have meant “mouth” before it came to designate “lip.” The same, apparently, holds for the Slavic noun guba (the place of stress varies from language to language). Neither throws any sidelight on lip. The English word has hardly changed over the centuries: Old English lippa has only lost its ending. We do not know how more than a thousand years ago speakers differentiated between werula and lippa. When one tries to discover the origin of any word, especially of a concrete noun, the first and most natural question is about the function of the thing it designates. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing, and so forth. Surprisingly, this way of discovery rarely helps in finding the etymology of the names of body parts. Eye and see ~ look are not related. Neither are probably ear and hear, despite the almost total coincidence of the forms. And what is the function of the lips? One can think of quite a few. They are the borders of the mouth, and they are essential in producing some sounds.

Lip has cognates in Dutch and Frisian. German Lippe is a loan from Dutch, but Old High German had lefs(e) and lefs, recognizable today as Lefze “an animal’s lip.” The interaction between those forms sheds no light on the origin of lip. The only obvious non-Germanic cognate of lip is Latin labia, still another word without a recognized etymology. Yet something can be said about it and about its Old English cognate. Above, I asked: “Who needs synonyms for the word lips?” Well, in the past, someone did. Apparently, once upon a time, people had a fixation on lips, reminiscent of our fixation on sex.

Notker Labeo, a man with conspicuous lips, a great scholar and teacher.
Image by Andreas Praefcke via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Was the Gothic form a coy diminutive? Did Goths constantly purse or twist their lips to challenge opponents? Speakers of Old English no longer recognized the suffix but had two words for “lips.” One neutral and one slangy? Or both “playful”? Old English lippe had double p (a long consonant, a geminate). Pronounce it in an Italian way, and you will know how it sounded. Long consonants were all but non-existent in Old English, so that this geminate reveals the word’s expressive coloring. The German scholar Notker (c. 950-1027) was known as Notker Labeo. Everybody had nicknames in those days, but what was so conspicuous about Notker? Was he thick-lipped? If he was, so what?

Labeo reminds us of Latin labia, the only cognate of lip outside Germanic. Yet labia was also a so-called popular word, an illegitimate relative of Latin labra “lip.” The root vowel in both (!) labia ~ labra is “wrong,” because Germanic e (the source of i in lippe) alternated with o, rather than a. I suspect that we cannot discover the origin of lip, because it was probably part of ancient Italo-Germanic slang. Even yesterday’s slang is often impenetrable to an etymologist.

Lip has often been compared with lap and slap, and this comparison is still mentioned in some good dictionaries. Both lap and slap are sound-imitative. So is perhaps lip (lip-lip-lip), but as The Century Dictionary says with a touch of irritation: “The phonetic conditions do not agree, and it is not the lip but the tongue, that ‘laps.’” Very true. However, the way from “mouth” and “tongue” to “lips” is short.

An etymologist seeking for answers.
Image by anettszin via PxHere. Public domain.

Most of my essays are like this one. We travel along a winding path, pick up a few bright pebbles, but the sought-for treasure usually remains out of reach.

Featured image by Pixabay via Picryl. CC0 1.0.  

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Charles Darwin the geologist

Charles Darwin the geologist

Who was Charles Darwin the geologist? Was he a nephew, or maybe a cousin, of the illustrious naturalist, who first published the theory of evolution by natural selection? I know they had big families… But no, this is the one and the same. It is often forgotten that, early in his career, Charles Darwin was a ‘card-carrying’ geologist.

It did not start well. Aged 17, he assessed the Edinburgh University geology lectures he dropped in on, while studying Medicine, so ‘incredibly dull’, that he would ‘never attend to the subject of geology’.

His lecturer was Robert Jameson, who was on the wrong side in the dispute about the origin of dolerite. As dolerite could be found as a layer among strata of sandstone and limestone, he believed it had somehow precipitated out of water. It turned out a sill could be intruded between the layers as red-hot basaltic magma.

In the spirit of student rebellion Charles also assessed all but one of his lecturers in medicine as ‘intolerably dull’. Squeamish about anatomy, he ostensibly switched to the University of Cambridge to study theology. By the summer of 1831 he needed to prove some rapid geological acumen in applying to become the geologist/naturalist on a round-the-world voyage on the survey ship HMS Beagle.

Charles convinced Cambridge Professor Adam Sedgwick to allow him to spend a few weeks as a field assistant while the professor mapped the geology of North Wales. The learning was intensive, but it worked.

While on the Beagle, Darwin’s notes on geology were four times longer than those reporting natural history. He wrote to his sister that ’the pleasure of the first day’s partridge shooting …. cannot be compared to finding a fine group of fossil bones’—there were some great bones to be found in Patagonia.

On returning after almost five years away on the Beagle, Darwin became the society secretary to the Geological Society of London where he remained for three years. He published four scientific papers on geology, including how coral reefs formed above sinking volcanoes.

Less known was Darwin’s solo expedition to investigate the ‘parallel roads’ contouring Glen Roy in the Scottish Highlands. This was a real adventure. From London one could only get as far as Liverpool by train. Like the raised beach deposits he had mapped on the coast of Chile, he visited Glen Roy to record former sea levels.

Another facet of Darwin’s geology emerged on the long walks he took around his wife’s family’s house at Maer near Stoke on Trent. (His own family life was hectic, with ten children.) On one of these walks he discovered an igneous dyke, now named Butterton Dyke, which intruded around the time of the Hebridean volcanoes (one date gives 54 million years ago) but which chemically and by orientation is of mystery origin. To commemorate Darwin, again as a geologist, a fragment of the dyke was sent into orbit on the Mir space station and then flown to a last resting place on the Moon.

Although no longer collecting bones, or dolerite samples, after the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, he summoned geological evidence to manifest the time needed to allow for evolution. He proposed sluggish rates of erosion of 500-foot-tall Sussex cliffs, such as an inch per century, to explain how much geological time had passed to enable evolution. His estimates for erosion have proved to be perhaps a hundred times too slow and he came under much criticism from physicists who calculated the age of the habitable earth from simple thermal decay. However, by the beginning of a new century, twenty years after his death, the discovery of heating accompanying radioactive decay vindicated his projection of the duration of geological time.

If you were scoring Charles Darwin as a geologist the results would be mixed. Always concocting hypotheses, he was ready to change his theories as new evidence arrived. He admitted there was only one such area of theorizing (the explanation for coral reefs) where he hadn’t had to change his mind. And it was Darwin the geologist who could give Darwin the evolutionist the eons of time required to realise his theory of natural selection.

Featured image via © Getty Images; iStock.com

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The real existential threat of AI

The real existential threat of AI

How does Artificial Intelligence (AI) affect climate change? This is one of the unprecedented questions AI raises for societies, challenging traditional perspectives of fairness, trust, safety, and environmental protection. While AI, to a certain extent, follows a trajectory similar to past disruptive technologies, such as the steam engine or the computer, the scope and depth of its influence necessitate a thorough examination of its various impacts across society. In particular, we can see the transformative potential and the complex dilemmas AI introduces when we consider it in the context of climate change.

While much ink has been spilled on the “existential risk”, AI may or may not pose to humankind via rogue actors or rogue AI—and this is definitely an area for regulation and foresight—the “real existential threat of AI” is its effect on the climate and the environment. Research indicates that AI and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can both mitigate and contribute to climate change.

On the positive side, AI can reduce energy, water, and material consumption through optimization in project planning and implementation. For example, AI optimization can significantly cut the energy needed for cooling data centers. Additionally, AI can enhance the efficiency of low-carbon energy systems and aid in the integration of renewable energy sources. These applications demonstrate AI’s potential to contribute positively to environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation.

Conversely, AI and ICT are notable contributors to climate change, with ICT alone responsible for up to 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to approximately 2.5% from global air travel. The training and deployment of AI models, especially large ones, are particularly resource intensive, consuming substantial amounts of energy and water. Recent studies reveal that creating a single image with a leading image generation AI consumes as much energy as charging a standard smartphone. Usage of large AI models consumes, within one year, usually much more energy than was needed for training. By 2027, AI’s total energy consumption is projected to rival that of some countries, like Argentina or the Netherlands. Indeed, Google has just announced that the increase in energy demand for data centers due to AI puts its entire 2030 “carbon zero” target at risk.

These statistics highlight the pressing need for regulatory measures to ensure that AI and ICT practices become more environmentally sustainable. While there is some leeway to interpret the GDPR in an environmentally aware fashion, the most obvious sources for immediately tackling the climate effects of AI is the EU AI Act and the Biden Executive Order on AI. The latter, however, looks primarily at the potential of AI to help with “resilience against climate change impacts and building an equitable clean energy economy for the future,” not at the energy costs of AI itself. The AI Act, in turn, focuses on reporting energy consumption, but only for development and training, not for the actual use of the model (inference)—which actually generates, by far, the most emissions. In addition, the AI Act forces providers of certain AI models (in high-risk sectors and for large foundation models like ChatGPT) to assess and mitigate risks to fundamental rights. From a legal perspective, environmental protection is not a fundamental right in the EU. However, the AI Act explicitly, and wrongly, names environmental protection as a key example of “fundamental rights” the Act cares about.

Significantly, this language arguably introduces a ‘Trojan horse’ into the Act—an element that smuggles environmental protection into the AI Act risk assessment. While an explicit Sustainability Impact Assessment for AI did not make it into the final version of the Act, the reference to fundamental rights implicitly introduces a hard requirement to take environmental effects, including energy and water consumption, into effect for both training and usage (see also the Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment requirement for deployers).

Finally, one might also think about including AI processes and, in particular, data centers, in emissions trading systems (ETS) to cap total energy consumption. These would have to be adapted beyond the current structure: the reason for including AI processes, or data centers, in ETS would not be that they directly emit (large amounts of) GHG emissions. Rather, at least some of the energy used by AI will already be subject to carbon pricing schemes (e.g. at the source in carbon-emitting power plants). However, many data centers are actually located in countries that significantly use non-renewable energy but do not have any effective carbon pricing strategy; so this carbon leakage might justify additional caps or constraints on data centers, beyond existing ETS.

Overall, new approaches are needed to responsibly and effectively tackle the dual societal transformations of AI and climate change, both on a national and international scale. Interdisciplinary research is indispensable in this endeavor: it can help us chart this little-known territory, and map a path to a future in which pressing normative and societal questions are addressed based on scientific evidence and cross-disciplinary reflection. As we navigate the AI-driven future, it is imperative to engage in these thoughtful dialogues and proactive policymaking to harness the benefits of AI while addressing its challenges responsibly.

Featured image by by Markus Distelrath via Pexels.

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Scholastic textualities in early modernity

Scholastic textualities in early modernity

Approaching present-day Paris from the south, the ‘rue-Saint-Jacques’ passes through the Latin quarter near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne (Paris IV) on its way to the Petit Pont bridge that crosses to Île de la Cité near Notre Dame Cathedral. For many centuries, this was the avenue of approach to the city for travelers from all points south. The Romans included this street in the original design of the ancient city of Paris (Lutetia) as early as the 1st century BCE; during the Middle Ages it became part of the pilgrimage route to Compostela, and a chapel to St. James the Great was established along the road close to the medieval wall to serve the pilgrims that passed that way.

The eventual name ‘Saint-Jacques’ not only reflected the association between this Parisian road and its eventual destination at the Shrine of St. James in the northwest corner of Spain, but also with the Dominican community that established a home there. Beginning in 1217, the Dominicans settled in Paris, and soon took possession of the chapel of St. James. Known more recently for its association with the Jacobite revolution at the close of the eighteenth century, during the medieval and early modern periods the ‘Couvent Saint-Jacques’ served as an important link between the Dominicans and intellectual life of the University of Paris.

Quickly becoming an international center, Saint-Jacques would draw students from across Europe for centuries. Arriving in Paris to begin his studies in 1507, Francisco de Vitoria would have likely traveled north along sections of the same medieval pilgrimage route, eventually approaching Paris from Spain along the ‘rue Saint-Jacques’ to take up residence at the Dominican convent of the same name. For Vitoria, the draw of Saint-Jacques was found not only in the access it provided to the wider university, but also in the inner academic life cultivated inside the convent. During the thirteenth century, Saint-Jacques hosted figures like Albert the Great, Hugh of St. Cher, and Thomas Aquinas. In the centuries following, it continued to provide a home for those studying to be Masters of theology at the university. During these same years, however, Saint-Jacques also consistently functioned as a studium—a house for the formation of clerical and religious students, the model for which was adopted in part from those similar forms of clerical formation found in Cathedral and monastic schools, and those clerical studia more recently established in Italy and in some other parts of Europe.

During Vitoria’s time at Saint-Jacques, he experienced a pedagogical revival within the Dominican studium, which emphasized the use of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae as a basic text of instruction for the course in theology. Although perhaps surprising from a modern perspective, Aquinas’s Summa was not often used in classroom instruction before this time, and was not the subject of widespread commentary until the sixteenth century. Although a thoroughly medieval text, in many ways the reception history of the Summa theologiae is decidedly early modern. Although Aquinas himself seems to have designed the text in part to suit the needs of his own teaching in Dominican formational context, the widespread use of Peter Lombard’s Sentences in universities throughout Europe forestalled the broader adoption of the Summa. Although certainly not unknown to scholastics working in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, scholars engaged with Aquinas primarily through his Sentences commentary rather than the Summa. Because the Sentences continued to serve as a medium for scholastic discourse, even conversations between Aquinas’s critics and his defenders used commentary on the Sentences as the space in which their academic conversations took place. Even within the Dominican Order, several chapters throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries forbade the use of the Summa as an instructional text within the Order’s studia, proscribing instead the use of the Sentences in order to conform to the wider university practice. With tacit permission, however, at the beginning of the sixteenth century the studium faculty at Saint-Jacques implemented the Summa as a pedagogical text, programmatic for the course of theology offered there. During his time at Saint-Jacques, Vitoria was influenced extensively by the Flemish Dominican Peter Crockaert, and eventually by John Fenario as well. The emphasis placed by Crockaert especially on the ‘second part’ (Secunda pars) of the Summa would also leave a lasting impression on Vitoria, who was deeply influenced by the unique approach to virtue, the moral life, and Christian sanctification that can be found in this section of Aquinas’s text.

Contemporary scholarship has done much to uncover the original historical influences that shaped the Summatheologiae during the thirteenth century. The influx of Arabic Aristotelian texts in the Latin West provided a unique set of philosophical and theological challenges for scholastics of Aquinas’s generation; during this same period, the Dominican presence in the Byzantine East also began to yield a new set of questions and texts. Aquinas’s predecessor at Paris Hugh of St. Cher visited Byzantium personally in 1230 and, by the time Aquinas began work on the Summa in the mid-1260s, a wealth of new Greek patristic and Byzantine sources were newly available in the West. Although removed from this original context, as a received text in early modernity, the Summa retained many of these influences as intrinsic features of its textual structure, even as new questions and sources came to be woven into its interpretive fabric.

During the 1520s when Vitoria returned to Spain and began to teach first at Valladolid and then at Salamanca, he began to implement the practice of teaching from Aquinas’s Summa directly in class. At Salamanca, the Summa formally replaced the Sentences by the mid-sixteenth century, and many other universities throughout the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere began to formally adopt this practice as well. Originally emerging at the University of Paris in the 1530s, during the 1540s the Society of Jesus began to found a number of important colleges throughout Europe that would adopt the Summa as the foundational text of instruction; this practice would subsequently be enshrined in the editions of the Society’s Ratio Studiorum that appeared between 1586 and 1599.

As an academic methodology, the early modern practice of textual commentary often united classroom teaching and engagement with other scholars and with issues of contemporary significance. During this period, Iberian scholasticism would experience a number of important intellectual revolutions that would have expansive implications for the development of early modern thought. From the influence of the late-sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Jesuits at La Flèsche and Coimbra on René Descartes to the developing tradition of international law that traced its roots to the sixteenth-century Salamanca school, many of the developments that took place during this period provide important context for the conceptual innovations that shaped later modernity. As a result of the attention paid by twentieth-century historical scholarship to thirteenth-century scholasticism and medieval thought more generally, contemporary scholars find themselves in possession of a great wealth of information about the medieval historical context of a text like the Summa theologiae. Extant work on the subsequent reception history of this text in modernity is significantly less expansive by comparison, however. Yet as a structural feature of university life during this period, the early modern textuality of the Summa theologiae is intrinsically entwined with the intellectual history of this period—and therefore invites the attention of contemporary scholars who wish to better understand the complex reception history of this medieval text and its original sources within the spaces of modernity.

Featured image by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

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Seduction French-style—why read Colette?

Seduction French-style—why read Colette?

If I met you at a party and we started chatting and telling each other about our favourite authors, and I mentioned Colette, you might look blank. “Who?” I might ask you if you’d seen the recent 2018 Hollywood film about Colette’s youthful marriage to an older man, a roguish entrepreneur and hack journalist who got his teenager wife writing—a series of saucy, racy stories about the goings-on in a girls’ school in the provinces—and then published the pieces under his own name. I might ask you if you’d seen the earlier 1958 film Gigi, based on one of Colette’s most famous (infamous) novels, concerning a young woman being groomed for high-end prostitution by her courtesan aunts, and featuring Maurice Chevalier throatily groaning “Thank Heaven for Little Girls”… You might have an image of Colette’s work as being all fin-de-siècle frou-frou naughtiness, rather dated surely: a mix of can-can, cream cakes, and kittens. Colette was terribly keen on her pets, as her second husband once grumpily observed.

The Colette whose books I’ve been re-reading certainly wrote fascinatingly about animals. Her appetite for writing about her pleasure in their company links to her appetite for writing about other sorts of pleasure; all aspects of sensuality. She explored the lure of food, love, sex, erotic adventures, taboo experiences, war, violence…the list goes on. She wrote exactly and unsentimentally about women’s secret lives and thoughts, about male codes and vulnerabilities, and about the power play between the sexes. She wrote about homosexual love and had lesbian love affairs herself. Her relationship with the woman everyone called Missy was tender and serious and got her back on her feet after depression and illness. She took a scalpel to the misogyny of the early twentieth century in France, exposing the contradictions of a culture that glorified exaggerated femininity while denying women the vote, controlling their social power and minimising their capacity to earn decent livings. She didn’t live above this culture but plunged into it. She lived out her own conflicts. She wasn’t a feminist but had beloved female friends. She wrote adoringly about her mother but neglected her own daughter. She examined perversion in her novels but in life sometimes got stuck in the victim position.

She took a scalpel to the misogyny of the early twentieth century in France.

In Colette’s day, men were named as masters, wielding phallic pens, and women as silent muses perched on pedestals. Colette broke free of this trap and got down to work. If she learned writerly discipline from her first husband, she certainly went on perfecting it once she had left him. She became a prolific author who published over seventy books. She earned her living all her life. When necessary, she also worked in the theatre as a mime, notably performing posh stripteases on the music-hall stage; she toured dramatic versions of her novels, playing the starring roles; she worked as a journalist for Le Monde, reporting on the First World War; she even (briefly) opened and ran a beauty salon. She went on writing until she died: novels, short stories, plays, film scripts, newspaper and magazine articles—plus hundreds of letters to her gang of dear friends. Her work was widely popular. Her novels were bestsellers. The literary world caught up with her eventually. At her death she was given a state funeral.

Colette acting in the pantomime Rêve d’Egypte (Egyptian Dream) in 1907
Image by Léopold-Émile Reutlinger via Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]

For me Colette remains exhilaratingly modern even though she died halfway through the twentieth century. Partly that’s because she invented new forms for her books that express the originality of her subject matter. For example, we may think that we invented autofiction in the twenty-first century, but Colette got there a hundred years ago. She put herself into her fictions, teasing us: do you imagine this is my self-portrait? No: it’s just a model. So, in Birth of Day (La Naissance du Jour) we encounter a Madame Colette dallying with a man thirty years younger than she is. Mixed into the pleasure of their encounters are the pleasures of swimming in an amethyst sea (St Tropez), lowering bottles of amber wine into the well to cool for lunch, planting tangerine trees and mulching them with seaweed, and waking early to watch the dawn come up and the dew glitter on the tamarisk trees. The novel is certainly an enchanting, dreamy evocation of heat, desire, and sensual joy, but what makes it so startling is the way Colette constantly turns aside from the plot to insert memories of her mother Sido into the narrative. Sido is dead, yet simultaneously vibrantly alive, a beloved figure who interrupts the story to tease and admonish her daughter. Colette quotes Sido’s letters, listens to her voice. Sido is just as important as the beautiful young man lolling in Colette’s bedroom wanting sex. Sido seems a mother goddess, walking with her daughter in the radiant garden; with her, paradise is re-found and can be re-lived in the present. 

Paradise is a key word in thinking about Colette’s writing. Another reason I find Colette’s work so original and so modern is the way that it takes that Christian trope of the fallen world—paradise lost and paradise redeemed and paradise awaiting us in heaven—and resists and re-works it. Colette re-combines the body and spirit cut apart by Christian theology. She writes as a pagan, celebrating the natural world and giving us a place within it not as lords of creation but as ensouled animals connected to all that there is. She shows us a shimmering vision of paradise existing now, in this life, on this planet—a paradise we may, as humans, have damaged and exploited, and must now learn to love and to repair. If the body of the mother is paradise (paradise remembered, re-imagined, escaped from, yearned for, wounded, mended), then we can map that image onto the world around us and learn to care for it. Flesh is sacred. Dirt is holy. Desire is to be trusted, also examined. Colette never preaches. She seduces. I’m very happy to be seduced by her.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

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