Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1177/03058298221146592
A. Niang
The paper argues that the dominant geopolitical analysis draws from a tradition of thought that privileges a geographical approach to space. The process that extends such impetus most compellingly can be found in security intervention. Interventionism, specifically under the War on Terrorism (WoT) thinking projects a cartography of (in)security and threat that disrupts on the one hand existing dynamics of space production and on another redefines space as geography with violent consequences for a variety of life-forms. The question that guides my endeavor is the following: how does a rethinking of the geographical question in international relations (IR), particularly with regards to intervention and the WoT enable us to expand an understanding of geopolitics beyond power struggles over space? Thinking from the Sahel-Sahara region, I wish to offer an alternative view of space where life, government, intellectual representations, commerce, culture, landscape, and belief lead to different kinds of relationships. This view is meant to suggest the beginning of the sketching of different systems of thought and morals through which to apprehend more productively a notion of space in IR.
{"title":"Space and the Geopolitical","authors":"A. Niang","doi":"10.1177/03058298221146592","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221146592","url":null,"abstract":"The paper argues that the dominant geopolitical analysis draws from a tradition of thought that privileges a geographical approach to space. The process that extends such impetus most compellingly can be found in security intervention. Interventionism, specifically under the War on Terrorism (WoT) thinking projects a cartography of (in)security and threat that disrupts on the one hand existing dynamics of space production and on another redefines space as geography with violent consequences for a variety of life-forms. The question that guides my endeavor is the following: how does a rethinking of the geographical question in international relations (IR), particularly with regards to intervention and the WoT enable us to expand an understanding of geopolitics beyond power struggles over space? Thinking from the Sahel-Sahara region, I wish to offer an alternative view of space where life, government, intellectual representations, commerce, culture, landscape, and belief lead to different kinds of relationships. This view is meant to suggest the beginning of the sketching of different systems of thought and morals through which to apprehend more productively a notion of space in IR.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82140336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1177/03058298221142947
Philip R. Conway
‘Critical’ international relations (IR) is usually understood to have originated in the early 1980s. However, a close reading of Vithal Rajan’s ‘An Epitaph for Detached Scholarship’, published in the inaugural issue of Millennium in 1971, tells another story. Rajan’s article was not a work of critical theory per se, but it was in tune with demands, at this time, for establishing a ‘critical university’. Promising to open up university education to all, dispensing with traditional curricula and authoritarian modes of teaching, the critical university, like Rajan’s article, has long since been forgotten. Nevertheless, this moment set the scene for the professionalised establishment of ‘critical’ academia in the decades to come. Rediscovering Rajan’s ‘Epitaph’ thus offers to reconnect critical IR with an earlier, and perhaps more generative, moment of inception. Indeed, even today, Rajan’s creative, provocative, playful text stands out as a rewardingly undisciplined contribution to the discipline.
{"title":"‘The Citadel of Scholarship’: Rediscovering Critical IR in Millennium 1:1","authors":"Philip R. Conway","doi":"10.1177/03058298221142947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221142947","url":null,"abstract":"‘Critical’ international relations (IR) is usually understood to have originated in the early 1980s. However, a close reading of Vithal Rajan’s ‘An Epitaph for Detached Scholarship’, published in the inaugural issue of Millennium in 1971, tells another story. Rajan’s article was not a work of critical theory per se, but it was in tune with demands, at this time, for establishing a ‘critical university’. Promising to open up university education to all, dispensing with traditional curricula and authoritarian modes of teaching, the critical university, like Rajan’s article, has long since been forgotten. Nevertheless, this moment set the scene for the professionalised establishment of ‘critical’ academia in the decades to come. Rediscovering Rajan’s ‘Epitaph’ thus offers to reconnect critical IR with an earlier, and perhaps more generative, moment of inception. Indeed, even today, Rajan’s creative, provocative, playful text stands out as a rewardingly undisciplined contribution to the discipline.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86533338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1177/03058298221144769
Daniela Osorio Michel, B. Ackerly
This article demonstrates the import of feminist reflexivity for the decolonial project. At its best, the decolonial project reveals the form and extent to which contemporary ideas and power structures are imbued with generations of power structures whose foundations were laid during colonialism. However, some power dynamics can be lost in reified forms of decolonial critique. Feminist methodologies, especially reflexivity, remind us to revisit the particulars of the constructions of power within dominant power structures and, as importantly, within resistant power structures. We revisit the decolonial stance within an Indigenous cosmology, Aymaridad, ‘the’ Aymara worldview as constructed for the second largest Indigenous population in Bolivia. Aymaridad is an important site for feminists to revisit the relationship between feminism and decoloniality because over a decade ago, María Lugones charted a course for decolonial feminism that drew on an Aymaran approach to decolonizing gender. By revisiting the coloniality embedded in the construction of Aymara (in academe and in politics), we reveal that feminism’s persistent reflexive methodology, even more than its attention to gender specifically, makes it an essential part of the decolonial theory.
{"title":"Feminism and Decolonizing Decoloniality: Decolonizing the Coloniality of Power in Aymara Cosmology","authors":"Daniela Osorio Michel, B. Ackerly","doi":"10.1177/03058298221144769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221144769","url":null,"abstract":"This article demonstrates the import of feminist reflexivity for the decolonial project. At its best, the decolonial project reveals the form and extent to which contemporary ideas and power structures are imbued with generations of power structures whose foundations were laid during colonialism. However, some power dynamics can be lost in reified forms of decolonial critique. Feminist methodologies, especially reflexivity, remind us to revisit the particulars of the constructions of power within dominant power structures and, as importantly, within resistant power structures. We revisit the decolonial stance within an Indigenous cosmology, Aymaridad, ‘the’ Aymara worldview as constructed for the second largest Indigenous population in Bolivia. Aymaridad is an important site for feminists to revisit the relationship between feminism and decoloniality because over a decade ago, María Lugones charted a course for decolonial feminism that drew on an Aymaran approach to decolonizing gender. By revisiting the coloniality embedded in the construction of Aymara (in academe and in politics), we reveal that feminism’s persistent reflexive methodology, even more than its attention to gender specifically, makes it an essential part of the decolonial theory.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76832070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1177/03058298221139330
Antonia Witt, Felix Anderl, Amitav Acharya, Deepshikha Shahi, Isaac Kamola, S. Cornelissen
International Relations (IR) has long been criticized for taking a particular (Western) experience as basis for formulating theories with claim to universal validity. In response, recent discussions have therefore centered on making IR ‘truly global’, that is, more inclusive and less parochial in its language and substance. But the concept of the global underpinning this discussion is both illusive and strongly contested. It requires problematization. But how? In this Forum, scholars discuss this question with a forward-looking agenda. Building on recent critical engagements with the question of the global as a concept in general and Global IR specifically, the authors ask how the global should be problematized in order to achieve a (more) progressive agenda for IR. They draw on different regional and disciplinary perspectives to both further the agenda of a less exclusive and racist discipline without falling into the trap of shallow inclusivity, and to discuss ways of problematizing the global without falling back into nativism or nationalism.
{"title":"How to Problematize the Global?","authors":"Antonia Witt, Felix Anderl, Amitav Acharya, Deepshikha Shahi, Isaac Kamola, S. Cornelissen","doi":"10.1177/03058298221139330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221139330","url":null,"abstract":"International Relations (IR) has long been criticized for taking a particular (Western) experience as basis for formulating theories with claim to universal validity. In response, recent discussions have therefore centered on making IR ‘truly global’, that is, more inclusive and less parochial in its language and substance. But the concept of the global underpinning this discussion is both illusive and strongly contested. It requires problematization. But how? In this Forum, scholars discuss this question with a forward-looking agenda. Building on recent critical engagements with the question of the global as a concept in general and Global IR specifically, the authors ask how the global should be problematized in order to achieve a (more) progressive agenda for IR. They draw on different regional and disciplinary perspectives to both further the agenda of a less exclusive and racist discipline without falling into the trap of shallow inclusivity, and to discuss ways of problematizing the global without falling back into nativism or nationalism.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88763377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1177/03058298221131359
Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal
The article attempts to empirically identify how the concept of Indigenous refusal helps us understand growing Palestinian political discourse and practices. It aims to develop Critical Indigenous Studies’ potentialities vis à vis the study of historic Palestine. The article puts a particular emphasis on new visions of Palestinian resistance that take aim at the different ways the Global North has tried to impose specific models and narratives on the Palestinian cause through liberal politics of recognition. Those spatio-political arrangements are enmeshed in the so-called ‘Oslo paradigm’ but also concern the portrayal of Israel as a liberal multicultural society, as well as the neoliberal dynamics that continuously shape the different fragments of the Palestinian people. In this regard, Indigenous Palestinian refusal also presents an international dimension that has progressively led to the articulation of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist imaginaries that would contribute to shaping radical Palestinian – and transnational – futures.
{"title":"On Indigenous Refusal against Externally-Imposed Frameworks in Historic Palestine","authors":"Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal","doi":"10.1177/03058298221131359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221131359","url":null,"abstract":"The article attempts to empirically identify how the concept of Indigenous refusal helps us understand growing Palestinian political discourse and practices. It aims to develop Critical Indigenous Studies’ potentialities vis à vis the study of historic Palestine. The article puts a particular emphasis on new visions of Palestinian resistance that take aim at the different ways the Global North has tried to impose specific models and narratives on the Palestinian cause through liberal politics of recognition. Those spatio-political arrangements are enmeshed in the so-called ‘Oslo paradigm’ but also concern the portrayal of Israel as a liberal multicultural society, as well as the neoliberal dynamics that continuously shape the different fragments of the Palestinian people. In this regard, Indigenous Palestinian refusal also presents an international dimension that has progressively led to the articulation of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist imaginaries that would contribute to shaping radical Palestinian – and transnational – futures.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87944767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract From 802 to 811, we encounter several diplomatic missions beween Byzantium and the Carolingians with the scope to secure or confirm peace, although in 798 such an agreement had been reached. The real target behind such negotiations was a recognition of the coronation and imperial title of Charlemagne since 800, denied by Byzantium for years. It was only in 810 that Nicephorus I yielded due to military/ political difficulties in Northern Italy with Pepin/Pippin, son of Charlemagne, and against the Bulgarians. A treaty defined spheres of interest and Byzantine representatives acclaimed Charlemagne as basileus in 812. The present article tries to clarify the different stages and elements of the whole process. When the power of the Carolingian state diminished in the ongoing 9th century, Byzantium step by step deviated from full recognition of the Western emperor, a process clearly visible during the (initially) joint venture against Arab Bari from 869 to 871. An appendix deals with the question, if Empress Eirene had offered a kind of junior-emperorship to Charlemagne in 798/799, as already Paul Speck proposed more than forty years ago, without finding much approval. Now it seems probable that he was right.
{"title":"Diskretion bis Verschleierung. Der Weg zur byzantinischen Anerkennung des Kaisertums von Karl dem Großen, vor allem im Spiegel diplomatischer Aktivitäten 802–812","authors":"E. Kislinger","doi":"10.1515/mill-2021-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2021-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract From 802 to 811, we encounter several diplomatic missions beween Byzantium and the Carolingians with the scope to secure or confirm peace, although in 798 such an agreement had been reached. The real target behind such negotiations was a recognition of the coronation and imperial title of Charlemagne since 800, denied by Byzantium for years. It was only in 810 that Nicephorus I yielded due to military/ political difficulties in Northern Italy with Pepin/Pippin, son of Charlemagne, and against the Bulgarians. A treaty defined spheres of interest and Byzantine representatives acclaimed Charlemagne as basileus in 812. The present article tries to clarify the different stages and elements of the whole process. When the power of the Carolingian state diminished in the ongoing 9th century, Byzantium step by step deviated from full recognition of the Western emperor, a process clearly visible during the (initially) joint venture against Arab Bari from 869 to 871. An appendix deals with the question, if Empress Eirene had offered a kind of junior-emperorship to Charlemagne in 798/799, as already Paul Speck proposed more than forty years ago, without finding much approval. Now it seems probable that he was right.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78753022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This contribution analyzes the rhetoric surrounding natural disasters in historiographic sources, challenging our assumptions about the eschatological nature of late antique and medieval historical consciousness. Contrary to modern expectations, a large number of late antique and medieval sources indicate that earthquakes and other natural disasters were understood as signs from God, relating to theophanic encounters or divine wrath in the present time. Building on recent research on premodern concepts of time and historical consciousness, the article underscores the fact that eschatological models of time and history-that is, the relentless linear, teleological progression of time towards the End of Days-was not how premodern people perceived the relationship between past, present, and future. The textual evidence presented here is supported by a fragmented and littleknown illuminated historiographic text, the Ravennater Annalen, housed today in the cathedral library in Merseburg. This copy of a sixth-century illustrated calendar from Ravenna contains unique depictions of earthquakes in the form of giants breathing fire. Like the textual sources, this visual document should not be read as a premonition of the End of Days, rather it visualizes the belief that divine agency and wrath caused natural disasters.
{"title":"Natural Disasters and Time: Non-eschatological Perceptions of Earthquakes in Late Antique and Medieval Historiography","authors":"Armin Bergmeier","doi":"10.1515/mill-2021-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2021-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This contribution analyzes the rhetoric surrounding natural disasters in historiographic sources, challenging our assumptions about the eschatological nature of late antique and medieval historical consciousness. Contrary to modern expectations, a large number of late antique and medieval sources indicate that earthquakes and other natural disasters were understood as signs from God, relating to theophanic encounters or divine wrath in the present time. Building on recent research on premodern concepts of time and historical consciousness, the article underscores the fact that eschatological models of time and history-that is, the relentless linear, teleological progression of time towards the End of Days-was not how premodern people perceived the relationship between past, present, and future. The textual evidence presented here is supported by a fragmented and littleknown illuminated historiographic text, the Ravennater Annalen, housed today in the cathedral library in Merseburg. This copy of a sixth-century illustrated calendar from Ravenna contains unique depictions of earthquakes in the form of giants breathing fire. Like the textual sources, this visual document should not be read as a premonition of the End of Days, rather it visualizes the belief that divine agency and wrath caused natural disasters.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84466095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article will formulate an explanatory model in which all the specifics of the controversy between Rome and Constantinople in the schism of 1054 will be considered in theological and ecclesiastical-political terms. Thus, both the complexity of the historical context and the diversity of the motives of its protagonists will be taken into account. In a first step, the current state of research on the events of 1054 will be presented, before confronting it with open questions in a second step. They are derived partly from the historical context, partly from the ambivalent information conveyed by Latin and Greek sources. The latter entails several source-critical problems, but thereby offers a chance to pose new questions to „old“ sources. Based on these open questions, the sources will be re-read and re-interpreted in terms of determining the course of events in 1054 and the motives of the protagonists of the 1054 schism.
{"title":"Das ‚Schisma von 1054‘ als mikro- und makrohistorisches Ereignis. Überlegungen zu einem theologisch-kirchenpolitischen Erklärungsmodell","authors":"Grigori Khislavski","doi":"10.1515/mill-2021-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2021-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article will formulate an explanatory model in which all the specifics of the controversy between Rome and Constantinople in the schism of 1054 will be considered in theological and ecclesiastical-political terms. Thus, both the complexity of the historical context and the diversity of the motives of its protagonists will be taken into account. In a first step, the current state of research on the events of 1054 will be presented, before confronting it with open questions in a second step. They are derived partly from the historical context, partly from the ambivalent information conveyed by Latin and Greek sources. The latter entails several source-critical problems, but thereby offers a chance to pose new questions to „old“ sources. Based on these open questions, the sources will be re-read and re-interpreted in terms of determining the course of events in 1054 and the motives of the protagonists of the 1054 schism.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87607667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The paper establishes connections between funerary art in the Eastern (Cappadocia) and the Western Mediterranean (Lombard kingdom in Northern Italy) during the seventh century. Jewelry pendants and gemstone decorations are also covered. The similarities of the image concepts suggest common design principles, with the cross as a symbol of the Son of Man when God returns on Judgment Day (Mt 24, 30). As celestial signs in the midst of stars and planets, these forms of the cross, which may also have influenced the Baiuvarian and Alemannic gold-leaf crosses, have a cosmic character. Under the sign of the concentric cross, according to Mt 24, 31, the angels gather together the elect (Christians) from the four directions of the world.
{"title":"Frühbyzantinische Kreuzdiskurse des 6. und 7. Jahrhunderts und ihre Rezeption in Konstantinopel, Kappadokien und im Westen","authors":"Rainer Warland","doi":"10.1515/mill-2021-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2021-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper establishes connections between funerary art in the Eastern (Cappadocia) and the Western Mediterranean (Lombard kingdom in Northern Italy) during the seventh century. Jewelry pendants and gemstone decorations are also covered. The similarities of the image concepts suggest common design principles, with the cross as a symbol of the Son of Man when God returns on Judgment Day (Mt 24, 30). As celestial signs in the midst of stars and planets, these forms of the cross, which may also have influenced the Baiuvarian and Alemannic gold-leaf crosses, have a cosmic character. Under the sign of the concentric cross, according to Mt 24, 31, the angels gather together the elect (Christians) from the four directions of the world.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86807102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract According to the written sources, the Iconoclast controversy was all about the veneration of icons. It started in the late seventh century, after most iconodule provinces had been lost to Byzantine rule, and lasted until the turn of the millennium or so, when icon veneration became generally established in the remaining parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, as far as material evidence and actual images are concerned, the Iconoclast controversy centred on apse images and other, equally large and monumental representations, none of which were ever venerated. Prior to Iconoclasm, such images had not been customary at Constantinople, where the early Christian tradition had been largely aniconic and focused on the symbol of the cross. Thus, the introduction of monumental Christian imagery to Constantinople appears to have been a major aspect of the Iconoclast controversy. This paper asks why and finds that the images in question, whilst not for veneration and therefore not essential to the theological debate, stood out for imperial propaganda. They led to close visual integration of the emperor and the church that had previously been kept apart, because aniconic traditions used to limit imperial presence inside Constantinopolitan church buildings. It seems, then, that the Iconoclast controversy, although conducted in religious terms, was partly driven by a hidden agenda of imperial appropriation and power play.
{"title":"A Hidden Agenda of Imperial Appropriation and Power Play? Iconological Considerations Concerning Apse Images and Their Role in the Iconoclast Controversy","authors":"P. Niewöhner","doi":"10.1515/mill-2021-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mill-2021-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to the written sources, the Iconoclast controversy was all about the veneration of icons. It started in the late seventh century, after most iconodule provinces had been lost to Byzantine rule, and lasted until the turn of the millennium or so, when icon veneration became generally established in the remaining parts of the Byzantine Empire. However, as far as material evidence and actual images are concerned, the Iconoclast controversy centred on apse images and other, equally large and monumental representations, none of which were ever venerated. Prior to Iconoclasm, such images had not been customary at Constantinople, where the early Christian tradition had been largely aniconic and focused on the symbol of the cross. Thus, the introduction of monumental Christian imagery to Constantinople appears to have been a major aspect of the Iconoclast controversy. This paper asks why and finds that the images in question, whilst not for veneration and therefore not essential to the theological debate, stood out for imperial propaganda. They led to close visual integration of the emperor and the church that had previously been kept apart, because aniconic traditions used to limit imperial presence inside Constantinopolitan church buildings. It seems, then, that the Iconoclast controversy, although conducted in religious terms, was partly driven by a hidden agenda of imperial appropriation and power play.","PeriodicalId":36600,"journal":{"name":"Millennium DIPr","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75522552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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