{"title":"Derek Jarman's medieval blood: Queer devotion, affective medicine, and the AIDS Crisis.","authors":"Eleanor Myerson","doi":"10.1057/s41280-022-00260-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article I consider medieval blood imagery in the paintings, films and journals of Derek Jarman, focusing on works made between 1989-1993. Taking a transhistorical comparative approach, I analyse Jarman's images alongside his medieval sources, primarily Julian of Norwich's Revelations and Gerard of Cremona's translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna's) al-Qa'n ū n fī al-tibb (Canon of Medicine). In addition, I find my own commonalities between Jarman and the medieval, for example, juxtaposing his Queer series of paintings with MS Egerton 1821. Critics have explored the medieval as a site of historical precedent for the stigmatisation of disease, providing a reservoir of images of leprosy and plague which inform the discourse of AIDS as immoral pollution. However I follow Jarman's lead in seeking new avenues through the medieval in relation to the AIDS crisis. Refusing to accept the discourses which cast his HIV+ blood as the ultimate symbol of pollution and death, Jarman mobilised the aesthetics and imagery of medieval affective devotion as a powerful alternative. Through the deployment of these traditions, HIV+ blood becomes holy blood, the source of salvation, desire, community and healing.</p>","PeriodicalId":43108,"journal":{"name":"Postmedieval-A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11116092/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Postmedieval-A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-022-00260-0","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/1/24 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this article I consider medieval blood imagery in the paintings, films and journals of Derek Jarman, focusing on works made between 1989-1993. Taking a transhistorical comparative approach, I analyse Jarman's images alongside his medieval sources, primarily Julian of Norwich's Revelations and Gerard of Cremona's translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna's) al-Qa'n ū n fī al-tibb (Canon of Medicine). In addition, I find my own commonalities between Jarman and the medieval, for example, juxtaposing his Queer series of paintings with MS Egerton 1821. Critics have explored the medieval as a site of historical precedent for the stigmatisation of disease, providing a reservoir of images of leprosy and plague which inform the discourse of AIDS as immoral pollution. However I follow Jarman's lead in seeking new avenues through the medieval in relation to the AIDS crisis. Refusing to accept the discourses which cast his HIV+ blood as the ultimate symbol of pollution and death, Jarman mobilised the aesthetics and imagery of medieval affective devotion as a powerful alternative. Through the deployment of these traditions, HIV+ blood becomes holy blood, the source of salvation, desire, community and healing.
期刊介绍:
postmedieval publishes theoretically driven scholarship on premodernity and its ongoing reverberations. Contributions are characterized by conceptual adventure, stylistic experiment, political urgency, or surprising encounter. The editors are committed to expanding the fields of knowledge and geography represented in the journal, by showcasing scholarship that reaches across disciplines, language traditions, locales, modes of inquiry, and levels of access. Our aim is to facilitate collaborative, ethical, and experimental engagements with the medieval – with its archives and art, its thought and practices, its traces and its enduring possibilities.
In general, postmedieval is published four times a year. Some of these are themed, guest-edited issues; others are open-topic. The journal’s editors will consider submissions of individual essays as well as proposals for themed issues. If accepted, individual essays will be published as Online First publications, appearing first as independent articles on the journal website and later in one of the print issues. We will also entertain small, themed clusters of essays to be included in open issues as well as commissioned book-review essays.