"Par transition on désigne aujourd’hui une phase très particulière de l’évolution d’une société, la phase où celle-ci recontre de plus en plus de difficultés, internes et/ou externes, à reproduire le système économique et social sur lequel elle se fonde et commence à se réorganiser, plus ou moins vite ou plus ou moins violemment, sur la base d’un autre système qui finalement devient à son tour la forme générale des conditions nouvelles d’existence."

— Maurice Godelier, La théorie de la transition chez Marx. (The theory of transition in Marx)

"One of the most important aspects of the text is its insistence on the importance of individual agency. Characters in apparently impossible situations shape make their own fates through the exercise of wit, and resourcefulness is almost always rewarded in the novella. Moreover, many of the tales portray women whose intelligence allows them to successfully transgress social mores. This striking fact suggests that Boccaccio may have intended his work to serve as a practical handbook for life, serving the general populace in ways analogous to how Machiavelli’s Prince or Castiglione’s Courtier provide practical advice about ruling. This kind of transgressive stance was undoubtedly the result of the ravages of the plague, and it may even have been possible only because a calamity of such colossal proportions as the Black Death must have disturbed to the core Italian social and religious assumptions and conventions."

— REALE, Nancy M. Boccaccio’s Decameron: A Fictional Effort to Grapple with Chaos.

"A brief review of the principal points in their [the medieval middle class] program will be enough to show that they did not go beyond an indispensable minimum. What they wanted, first of all, was personal liberty, which would assure to the merchant or the artisan the possibility of going and coming, of living where he wished and of putting his own person as well as that of his children under the protection of the seigniorial power. Next came the creation of a special tribunal by means of which the burgher would at one stroke escape the multiplicity of jurisdictions to which he was amenable and the inconveniences which the formalistic procedure of ancient law imposed upon his social and economic activity. Then came the instituting in the city of a “peace” – that is to say, of a penal code – which would guarantee security. And then came the abolition of those prestations most incompatible with the carrying on of trade and industry, and with the possession and acquisition of land. What they wanted, in fine, was a more or less extensive degree of political autonomy and local self-government."

— PIRENNE, Henri. The Municipal Institutions. In: Medieval Cities - Their Origins and the Revival of Trade.

"The analysis of the medieval Portuguese city inevitably includes the confrontation between two different cultures and urban patterns: the Islamic, which dominated the territory for five centuries (711-1249), and the Christian which, from North to South and following the Reconquista progression, imposed a new socio-political organization with obvious repercussions for urban space.
Within this process, of all the urban sections, the alcáçova [from qasaba, the centre of political and administrative power, always strategically located] was the one which immediately changed hands due to its strategic location and symbolism. In contrast, in the Medina [from Madinat, signifying the area within the walls], subjugation took different forms. If the town capitulated without offering effective resistance, the previous inhabitants were allowed to keep, amongst other privileges, their properties. Differently – and in the most common situation in the Portuguese Reconquista – military conquest implied the expulsion of the defeated population from the city walls while their possessions were distributed amongst the conquerors, as Raul, the English crusader, described in relation to the fall of Lisbon."

— Luisa Trindade - From Islam to Christianity: Urban Changes in Medieval Portuguese Cities.

sayegh:

Marxist Medievalist: sayegh replied to your post: Por que Medievalista Marxista? Sou…

marxistmedievalist:

Sou estudante de História e hoje, numa das aulas de Medieval, a professora tocou no assunto Materialismo Histórico. Ela mostrou-se de certa forma contrária ao uso dessa forma de análise no entendimento e na Historiografia. O argumento veio da seguinte forma: com esse tipo de análise nós podemos perder muito da extrema complexidade social do período. Nos fechamos em um fato, validando o desenvolvimento a partir dele, e deixamos de estudar o período histórico em si para relacioná-lo com outros, esquecendo a própria realidade histórica do momento, desprezando características. (foi mais ou menos isso que escrevi da última vez, acho que agora exagerei um pouco e deixei ainda mais confuso)
Enfim, agora preciso de uma segunda opinião. Como esse Materialismo Histórico pode ser contundente para o entendimento da complexidade de um período histórico sem a necessidade da relação/comparação de desenvolvimento a outro período?
A pergunta pode parecer um tanto confusa porque ela vai contra a essência do que é mesmo o Materialismo Histórico, mas acho que você poderá dar uma resposta interessante :}

Eu acho que ela está distorcendo o que significa o Materialismo Histórico. Ele não é anacrônico, porque toda teoria a ser aplicada a um período histórico deve vir da própria evidência, e não de concepções aplicadas a processos posteriores.

A questão é: devemos usar o conhecimento que formamos na História, de QUALQUER PERÍODO, nos dias de hoje. Ou seja, a prática historiográfica forma uma teoria histórica (não necessariamente baseada em LEIS históricas, isso já foi quebrado) que necessariamente ajuda-nos a compreender o mundo atual. Gosto muito quando Lukacs fala sobre o Materialismo Histórico, porque se retirarmos toda a carga conceitual dele (seja ela relevante ou não, dependendo de cada espaço-tempo que o aplicamos), o que sobra é uma questão de método. Esse método relaciona-se à ideia, exposta no livro “A Ideologia Alemã” de Marx e Engels de que o ser social determina a consciência.

Pois bem, por muito tempo os historiadores, cientistas sociais, filósofos, críticos literários… discutiram o que significa isso, e, devido ao debruçar dos fundadores do marxismo nos aspectos econômicos (discussão em voga em sua época, o século XIX), interpretaram reducionisticamente que o ser social, o material, é a economia. Assim, estudando a economia enquanto uma base, podemos entender como toda a superestrutura jurídica, cultural, política, artística funciona. Há muito essa perspectiva não é mais utilizada, principalmente a partir da década de 60 com a renovação do marxismo encabeçada pelo movimento da New Left Britânica.

Voltando à questão da sua professora e tentando ser sucinto, não creio que o Materialismo Histórico fique tentando moldar o passado para encontrar paralelos possíveis na sociedade atual (ou posteriores), nem que esse seja o seu método característico. O Materialismo Histórico é composto, como está implícito no título, pelo conhecimento histórico, em si, como ela mesma expressou. O que os marxistas fazem é aplicar os conceitos de Marx, sempre adaptados em sua teoria, ao período histórico correspondente (eu não vou tratar a classe de nobres do século XII como se fosse uma classe do século XIX, mas posso muito bem usar o conceito de classes para compreendê-la, contanto que refletida e expressamente colocada). A comparação com outras épocas históricas, em perspectiva, é um movimento posterior à construção do conhecimento da própria evidência mesma. Portanto, a complexidade social, como ela disse, do período deve ser observada em toda a sua PRÓPRIA complexidade social.

Isso leva-nos a outra discussão: pode o historiador conhecer toda a complexidade social em si de um período, sem referir-se ao que o próprio historiador pertence? Óbvio que não. Não somos seres sem história, vivendo em um mundo paralelo que olha para os homens de um determinado tempo de maneira neutra e retirando dele todas as informações. Nosso conhecimento é perene, porque nossas questões aplicadas aos corpus documentais são historicamente construídas. Isso não significa que o produto final seja falseador, ou uma pura narrativa ficcional (como gostam de defender os pós-modernos). Significa somente que o conhecimento produzido ao fim da aplicação de um método hipotético-dedutivo a um objeto é parcial e sujeito a críticas e posições múltiplas, o que enriquece a construção de uma ciência histórica.

E é isso aí, não sei se é bem isso que você gostaria de saber, mas essa é a minha posição :)

(via sayegh)

Eric Hobsbawm talking about his life, in BBC, interviewed by Simon Schama.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01g4f87

Por que Medievalista Marxista?

Bem, porque eu estudo a Idade Média a partir de um olhar teórico baseado no marxismo.

Medievalista, em primeiro lugar, porque gosto (não vou ser hipócrita de colocar a importância do período como prioridade na escolha). Em segundo lugar, porque tem muito a dizer sobre como é o mundo em que vivemos hoje, inclusive o processo histórico que viveu o Brasil colonial. 

Marxista porque penso que o Materialismo Histórico foi o corpo teórico-epistemológico mais coerente produzido, com um quadro conceitual rico que nos oferece bases para análises que podem levar a uma compreensão efetiva (e transformadora) do mundo em que vivemos atualmente.

Hey!

You can send me questions about marxism or middle ages here:

http://marxistmedievalist.tumblr.com/ask

And you can, too, submit your opinions and positions about both subjects:

http://marxistmedievalist.tumblr.com/submit

Let’s make this blog a place of dialogue :)

Jacques Le Goff - Time, work and culture in the middle ages

In this book, Jacques Le Goff, one of the most importants historians of the medieval period of all time, put together a good number of articles he produced in his life, including his positions about historical anthropology, the concepts of time in the middle ages and popular culture.

He’s not properly marxist, but his works can be used by any scholar that would like to stay related to the historical materialism.

http://pt.scribd.com/doc/57969369/Le-Goff-Jacques-Time-Work-And-Culture-in-the-Middle-Ages

"Among the principal criticisms leveled against the merchants was the charge that their profit implied a mortgage on time, which was supported to belong to God alone. For exemple, we have the following remarks of a lector-general of the Franciscan order in the fourteenth century concerning a disputed question: ‘Question: is a merchant entitled, in a given type of business transaction, to demand a greater paymant from one who cannot settle his account immediately than from one who can? The answer argued for is no, because in doing so he qould be selling time and would be commiting usury by selling what does not belong to him.’"

— Jacques Le Goff - Merchant’s time and Church’s time in the Middle Ages. (via brunomarconi)

"The feudal mode of production that emerged in Western Europe was characterized by a complex unity. Traditional definitions of it have often rendered this partially, with the result that it has become difficult to construct any account of the dynamic of feudal development It was a mode of production dominated by the land and a natural economy, in which neither labour nor the products of labour were commodities. The immediate producer — the peasant — was united to the means of production — the soil — by a specific social relationship. The literal formula of this relationship was provided by the legal definition of serfdom — glebae adscripti or bound to the earth: serfs had juridically restricted mobility. The peasants who occupied and tilled the land were not its owners. Agrarian property was privately controlled by a class of feudal lords, who extracted a surplus from the peasants by politico-legal relations of compulsion. This extra-economic coercion, taking the form of labour services, rents in kind or customary dues owed to the individual lord by the peasant, was exercised both on the manorial demesne attached directly to the person of the lord, and on the strip tenancies or virgates cultivated by the peasant. Its necessary result was a juridical amalgamation of economic exploitation with political authority."

— Perry Anderson, “The feudal mode of production”, In: Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism.

"The concept of class as relationship and process stresses that objective relations to the means of production are significant because they establish antagonisms and generate conflicts and struggles; that these conflicts and struggles shape social experience ‘in class ways’, even when they do not express themselves in class consciousness or in clearly visible formations; and that over time we can discern how these relationships impose their logic, their pattern, on social processes. Purely ‘structural’ conceptions of class do not require us to look for the ways in which class actually imposes its logic, since classes are simply there by definition."

Ellen M. Wood, Class as a process and relationship. In: Democracy against Capitalism.

If we are to think about the concept of class aplied to the middle ages, I think this is the first way to go. To think the formation of classes is to think about their relation within the historical-situated mode of production, in its process of continual modification, understanding mode of production not only as an economic concept, but historical, that implies society as a whole (as thought by Pierre Vilar). That means that we can’t understand nobility without understanding its relationship (of domination and exploitation) with the serfs. We can’t understand the rise of the medieval bourgoisie without its antagonisms and approaches with the land-owner aristocratic class.

With that, we overcome the crude idea of the Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hither to existing society is the history of class struggle” into a more complex and analytical concept of class. This quote from Ellen Wood (based in E. P. Thompson works) helps us to understand that classes before Industrial Revolution didn’t see themselves as classes (strictly), but eventuates in ‘class ways’.

One of the most importants marxists scholars these days that isn’t known by most of the mainstream intelectuality is Ellen M. Wood. She uses the theorical contributions of E. P. Thompson against determinism and structuralism to create a renewal of the Historical Materialism.

I strongly recomend this book. It’s a colection of articles about historical materialism and how the idea of capitalism is totally incompatible with the practice of democracy.

http://www.ebooksdownloadfree.com/Business-Finance-Jobs/Democracy-against-Capitalism-Renewing-Historical-Materialis-BI6717.html

medievalthedas:

“Shaping dough and baking bread; Flemish, 1320-30.”

medievalthedas:

“Shaping dough and baking bread; Flemish, 1320-30.”

Tags: middle ages

introversions:

Cantigas de Santa María
Performers: Malandança (Unha noite na corte do rei Alfonso X)
Language: Galician-Portuguese

English translation:

Rose of roses and flower of flowers, 
Lady of ladies, Lord of lords.

Rose of beauty and fine appearance
And flower of happiness and pleasure, 
lady of most merciful bearing, 
And Lord for relieving all woes and cares;

Such a Mistress everybody should love, 
For she can ward away any evil
And she can pardon any sinner
To create a better savor in this world.

We should love and serve her loyally,
For she can guard us from falling; 
She makes us repent the errors
That we have committed as sinners:

This lady whom I acknowledge as my Master
And whose troubadour I’d gladly be,
If I could in any way possess her love,
I’d give up all my other lovers.