In the past few decades scholars have learned more about the ancient world than previously thought possible. This, in part, is due to new technologies and the codification and implementation of systematic research and archaeological methods. Art Historians, for example, can team up with geologists to explain the disappearance of ancient lakes and harbors, date the age of rocks, determine when natural disasters have occurred in the geological record, etc. A great deal of research too has been conducted on the people themselves who populated the ancient societies in our studies. Many scholars have grappled with questions concerning constructions and perceptions of gender, race, and sexuality in antiquity and how these infrastructures might be understood in comparison to our own conceptions of the aforementioned identities including Natalie Kampen, Eve D’Ambra, Sue Blundell, and of course Michel Foucault, whose History of Sexuality is in all likelihood as widely known as it is critiqued. No other author to my knowledge, however, has discussed the intersectionality of these marginalized identities and treated the subjects of their work with such a high degree of respect and nuance than Roland Betancourt in Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages.[i]
In this rather ground-breaking approach to writing late antique history, Betancourt stresses the magnetism between marginalized identities. Rather than perceiving peripheral identities and social groups as acting in a way that is autonomous from one another yet simultaneously divergent from the stage directions prescribed by contemporary monolithic institutions, we should instead focus on drawing radial connections between these identities that previously lay isolated on the circumference of defined normativity.[ii] The main thrust of Betancourt’s argument is that marginalized identities intersect and, “...overlap with another - not as distinct identities but as enmeshed conditions that radically alter the lives of figures, both real and imagined.”[iii] In this approach he seeks to confer reality on subjects who so frequently are denied it and subjected to violence instead.[iv] In considering the intersectionality of those pushed to the margins by predominantly late antique male authors and artists we may begin to re-present (as Donald Preziosi puts it) late antique personalities, and historical figures more generally, in a way that is both critical and nuanced.[v] Roland Betancourt is a Professor of Art History and Director of Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Betancourt has written extensively on gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages in addition to the workings of the imagination in the perception Byzantine art. He also has researched and written on the role of Byzantium in modern/contemporary art and theme parks. Byzantine Intersectionality by all means and purposes is a significant contribution to the field at large. Drawing from decades of earlier scholarship, Betancourt has sewn together identities previously viewed as piecemeal into a complicated and colorful patchwork of lived experiences knit and bound together literally by their margins and theoretically by their marginality and subsequent demarginalization. The first chapter of Byzantine Intersectionality discusses sexual consent in visual and textual sources depicting the Annunciation - the moment when the Archangel Gabriel delivers to Mary news that she will bear the son of God. The next few sentences may be triggering for some readers as they include descriptions of sexual assault in artistic portrayals of the Annunciation. Betancourt navigates the reader through capacious late antique legal codes and theological thought on rape and also elaborates on the iconography of rape in scenes of the Annunciation. In such scenes we often see a frightened and contorted Mary, reacting to the Archangel’s sudden and miraculous intrusion.[vi] The primary concerns of this chapter revolve around how texts and works of art depict an interest, even struggle, in Byzantine thought on the issuance of consent; even God had to receive Mary’s approval.[vii] The second chapter of this book provides an analysis of Procopius’ Secret History, a vehement and vicious attack against the Empress Theodora’s reputation. In his discussion of Procopius' slut-shaming Betancourt remarks on women’s, especially midwives’, knowledge of contraceptives and abortive (self) procedures in antiquity.[viii] Throughout the chapter the reader is exposed to the many moving parts of Byzantine legal (imperial) and religious sentiment towards abortion. Within these dialogic writings we also discover that class is a particularly important determinant for attempting to answer what kinds of stigmas, if any, were attached to having an abortion and who had access to the most effective remedies.[ix] Ultimately though, late antique medical texts reveal that while Byzantine physicians were familiar with abortive procedures they were incredibly dangerous and often resulted in the woman’s death.[x] Additionally, Betancourt places authority into the hands of late antique women in disclosing that male authors, at times, deferred to midwives when writing gynecological texts.[xi] This focus of this chapter is on revealing the different experiences women of different social classes had in dealing with sexual stigmas, the type of care they received for abortive procedures, and that despite varying religious and imperial views, the choice to give birth or have an abortion “seems to rest solely in the woman’s hands.”[xii] Chapter three pertains to the lives of transgender monks and others living in the late antique east. This chapter is arguably one of the most beautiful scholarly articles I’ve yet read. Betancourt treats the people in his study with the same degree of reverence that they were held to in their own time. He also addresses people by the pronouns they identified with, i.e., referring to the Emperor Elagabalus, quite radically, as she/her.[xiii] There are, moreover, commentaries on eunuchs as non-binary, trans figures in late antiquity, the correlation between transmasculine women and blackness, and Byzantine physicians’ knowledge of gender affirming surgical procedures. In this chapter, rather than trying to prove or disprove hagiographical texts, Betancourt takes the step to simply make room for the possibility that these stories, at the very least, represented and supplied models for a transgender viewership to express their own identities.[xiv] The fourth chapter of Betancourt’s monograph details queerness in a way that presents LGBTQIA+ relationships as an entity in late antiquity that exists beyond typical ascriptions of “deviance” or carnal desire. Throughout this process of recovery, Betancourt also shows how modern authors who, repulsed by Byzantium’s “queerness”, privileged certain sources that communicate only one facet of late antique attitudes towards same-sex, same-gender relationships.[xv] The two main articles of evidence presented in this chapter concern monasticism as an inextricably queer practice and homoeroticism in artistic and literary depictions of the Doubting Thomas scene. In his commentary on queer relationships Betancourt states, “...Queer desire and intimacy need not be affirmed or confirmed via sexual intercourse. In this way we can also count, demisexual, asexual, aromantic, and antisexual subjectivities.”[xvi] Just in typing this statement Betancourt enables these omitted identities to hold space and ontology, even if just momentarily. The last chapter of the book is devoted to an artistic rendering of an Ethiopian eunuch on the Menologion of Basil II, c. 1000 CE. Betancourt critically analyzes Byzantine conceptions of racial and ethnic differences in art and literature in comparison to conceptions of contemporary westerners and also reserves space for an examination of iconographically black demons.What appears in the literature and in art is that the eunuch, regardless of the fact that our modern eyes are attracted primarily to their blackness, is depicted with many of the archetypal traits of a eunuch.[xvii] Byzantine viewers, in all likelihood, would have understood the figure to be a eunuch before racializing them (if they did at all). In fact, Betancourt explains that Byzantine authors were particularly proud of how ethnically and racially diverse Constantinople and the empire as a whole were.[xviii] White Europeans, in contrast, frequently racially other Byzantines and black people more generally.[xix] Betancourt’s choice to conclude the book with a methodical interpretation of a eunuch is really quite clever. The eunuch, with their many identities, appears to be the personification of intersectionality, and so a final, weighty discussion, therefore, is clearly warranted. Betancourt’s book is radically different from most other publications on late antiquity. He competently validates and gives utterance to voices and people who historically have been brutalized, silenced, and written out of existence. There is a passage in chapter four, “Queer Sensations”, that captures what it means to live at the margins of society and in the heart of intersectionality’s web. Betancourt articulately states, “This is the practice of queerness: to find refuge amid likeness; to seek, uncover, encounter those who, like you, have been marginalized and oppressed, and to set out together to construct space for the inclusion of others who are placed in opposition to the normative forces of a monolithic, political, religious, social or sexual majority.”[xx] There was one concern, however, that came up in my reading of Byzantine Intersectionality but before I continue I would like to make note of the fact that I am currently a Senior Art History undergraduate. Being fully aware of the knowledge and power differentials between myself, my readers, the author, and of course the impact that book reviews can have on the trajectory of a young academic’s career, I felt compelled to make the point clear that there is much I do not know and, therefore, as a reviewer, I have my shortcomings, this being one of the reasons I opted out of any discussion on Betancourt’s choice of sources and selection of Greek-English translations. While reading the chapter, “Transgender Lives”, I began to wonder if we, in sharing and using these hagiographical accounts as evidence, truly were doing justice to those who explicitly stated in their last wishes that their birth assigned sex not be revealed after they died.[xxi] In this case, are we honoring Anastasius’ wishes by outing him to modern audiences when he adamantly wished not to be revealed even to his other monastic brothers (apart from Daniel of Sketis)? Should we, as modern historians, be allowed to freely absolve ourselves of betraying the wishes of the figures in our studies for the good of scholarly output or modern audiences? If not, who then has the authority to make these decisions? Clearly, the outing of historical subjects who chose or “felt compelled” in their own time to not disclose their identities and/or sexualities is a particularly difficult path to navigate.[xxii] Considering that a later author most likely “outed” Anastasius, Betancourt cannot and should not be blamed for this, however, he as writer, and we, as readers (myself included), certainly have played a role in disseminating further the one thing Anastasius wished for us not to know.[xxiii] Roland Betancourt’s Byzantine Intersectionality is pioneering both in its scope and methodology. This book is deserving of further review, discussion, and use in any undergraduate course pertaining to late antiquity. In recognizing the monumentality hidden within marginality, we may begin, starting with Betancourt, to draw nearer to a more nuanced and capacious Art History. Notes: [i] Roland Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). [ii] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67; Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 207. [iii] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 2. [iv] Betancourt, 17. [v] Donald Preziosi, “The Art of Art History,” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 507. [vi] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 44–46. [vii] Betancourt, 30. [viii] Betancourt, 64. [ix] Betancourt, 75,79. [x] Betancourt, 66. [xi] Betancourt, 69–70. [xii] Betancourt, 80. [xiii] Betancourt, 106. [xiv] Betancourt, 120. [xv] Betancourt, 122–23. [xvi] Betancourt, 130. [xvii] Betancourt, 164. [xviii] Betancourt, 173. [xix] Betancourt, 175–76. [xx] Betancourt, 159. [xxi] Betancourt, 103. [xxii] Anne D’Alleva, Methods & Theories of Art History, Second (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012), 72. [xxiii] Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality, 103–4. Bibliography: Betancourt, Roland. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67. D’Alleva, Anne. Methods & Theories of Art History. Second. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2012. Preziosi, Donald. “The Art of Art History.” In The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, edited by Donald Preziosi, 507–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz Comments are closed.
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Contributors:Ryan Abramowitz, Senior Art History Major at The College of New Jersey |