Joe Moshenska
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780804798501
- eISBN:
- 9781503608740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804798501.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter opens with a father in Cologne in the 1590s who snapped the arms from a crucifix and gave it to his children as a toy. Returning to the sermon by Edgeworth discussed in the preface, the ...
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This chapter opens with a father in Cologne in the 1590s who snapped the arms from a crucifix and gave it to his children as a toy. Returning to the sermon by Edgeworth discussed in the preface, the chapter considers this broken object as what Edgeworth calls an “idoll”--a hybridization of doll and idoll. This possibility is linked to the wider presence of “holy dolls” in medieval Christianity, but ultimately the doll is explored not as a stable and readily identifiable category but as a way of conceiving of ambiguous objects that may be more or less human at different moments and subjected alternatingly to violence and care. The implications of this possibility are explored in relation to a medieval Christ child, a broken crucifix, and a contemporary representation of a shattered doll.Less
This chapter opens with a father in Cologne in the 1590s who snapped the arms from a crucifix and gave it to his children as a toy. Returning to the sermon by Edgeworth discussed in the preface, the chapter considers this broken object as what Edgeworth calls an “idoll”--a hybridization of doll and idoll. This possibility is linked to the wider presence of “holy dolls” in medieval Christianity, but ultimately the doll is explored not as a stable and readily identifiable category but as a way of conceiving of ambiguous objects that may be more or less human at different moments and subjected alternatingly to violence and care. The implications of this possibility are explored in relation to a medieval Christ child, a broken crucifix, and a contemporary representation of a shattered doll.
Mary Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199245413
- eISBN:
- 9780191697463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245413.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
A well-entrenched habit regards hierarchy as the natural organisational solution to adopt when a community has grown beyond a certain size. This is a mistaken idea. Scale has many influences on ...
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A well-entrenched habit regards hierarchy as the natural organisational solution to adopt when a community has grown beyond a certain size. This is a mistaken idea. Scale has many influences on organisation but it does not necessarily affect cultural type. There can as well be massive enclave cultures as small hierarchies. Likewise, scale is important for many organisational questions, but not for indicating cultural bias. The heart of hierarchy is a distinctive pattern of accountability. In the old Christian usage the word meant the order of holy things, for example the episcopate or the angelic host. Hierarchy has its own recognisable and complex project of bringing space, time, and all the materials of living within the same pattern that governs the relations between persons, and making that pattern conform to the laws of the cosmos. Inevitably then it has a different pattern of responsibility than prevails in enclave culture.Less
A well-entrenched habit regards hierarchy as the natural organisational solution to adopt when a community has grown beyond a certain size. This is a mistaken idea. Scale has many influences on organisation but it does not necessarily affect cultural type. There can as well be massive enclave cultures as small hierarchies. Likewise, scale is important for many organisational questions, but not for indicating cultural bias. The heart of hierarchy is a distinctive pattern of accountability. In the old Christian usage the word meant the order of holy things, for example the episcopate or the angelic host. Hierarchy has its own recognisable and complex project of bringing space, time, and all the materials of living within the same pattern that governs the relations between persons, and making that pattern conform to the laws of the cosmos. Inevitably then it has a different pattern of responsibility than prevails in enclave culture.
