Foucault on grave robbing and dissection

Constantin Rauer devotes a very long foot note to Michel Foucault's views on the construction of a myth regarding grave robbing in the 18th Century for medical research. Unfortunately, I only own Foucault's book on the birth of the clinic in a Danish translation, so I am unable to quote from an English translation, but in a chapter on 'opening cadavers' to paraphrase the Danish translation he contends the conception of 18th Century physicians having to secretly and illegally dig up corpses to dissect them. Actually, when you consider the report on Arnod Paole, Flückinger's Visum et Repertum, it should be obvious that even Catholic field surgeons were allowed to exhume and examine corpses in the 1730'ies.

In an earlier post I have quoted from Foucault's book on punishment and prison. Like Philippe Aries in his famous essays on death, Foucault is always interesting for new ways of understanding concepts and institutions.

Post Scriptum: I found an interactive web site about The Birth of the Clinic, which also has a section devoted to the chapter Open up a few corpses.

From the enlightenment of vampirism to the vampirism of enlightenment

The June 2008 issue of Ethic@, an International Journal for Moral Philosophy, contains an interesting paper by Constantin Rauer: Von der Aufklärung des Vampirismus zum Vampirismus der Aufklärung: Eine West-Östliche Debatte zwischen Einst und Heute (From the enlightenment of vampirism to the vampirism of enlightenment: A West-East debate between then and now).

The paper is in German, but Rauer has supplied an abstract in English:

In the first part of this essay, I shall sketch the debate about vampirism during the age of Enlightenment historically, while in the second part, I will interpret this debate philosophically. The historical reconstruction mainly relies on Gábor Klaniczay’s brilliant essay The Decline of Witches and the Rise of Vampires in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy. My purpose, however, is different from that of Klaniczay. While he is interested in the connection between the decline of witches and the rise of vampires in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg monarchy, I am interested in the relationship between the performances of vampirism in Eastern European countries, and their theoretical responses in Western Europe. In the second, philosophical part of this essay, I shall read this whole phenomenon of vampirism, both in the Western European theoretical debate and in Eastern European performances, as a symptom, behind which I see an entirely different discourse at work: the power struggle between the old faculty of theology, and the new faculty of medicine. I argue here that Western European Enlightenment vampirism transforms into medical Enlightenment vampirism, and that the Eastern European peoples criticized precisely this through their actual performances of vampirism. Thus, the debate about vampirism actually conceals the dialectics of the Enlightenment. Looking back from the present, we are surprised to find that perhaps Western European scholars with their allegedly enlightened knowledge were not the ones who had the final say, but, on the contrary, the Eastern European peoples with their popular beliefs.

Rauer relies heavily on Gabor Klaniczay's seminal paper on vampires (the most recent and up to date version can be found in Bertschik and Tuczay's anthology Poetische Wiedergänger) and quotes copiously from it. As he says in the abstract, his aim differs from Klaniczay's, but I need to read the second part of his paper to really understand and evaluate his conclusions. So although there are some inaccuracies, some of which probably originate from Klaniczay, I will refrain from commenting on the paper before I have read the second part.

As Rauer should have easy access to Hamberger's anthology as well as other important German books on the subject, I am a bit worried by the fact that Rauer doesn't mention the Commercii litterarii which played an important role in the medical debate on vampires in 1732. I agree on the importance of Klaniczay's paper, but in my opinion it is necessary to study source material like that reprinted in Hamberger's Mortuus non mordet to fully understand the nature of the 18th Century vampire debate.

A reality no one doubted

The ever industrious Sorbonne professor Claude Lecouteux has compiled an anthology on lycanthropy in collaboration with a few other people that was published earlier this year, Elle courait le garou : Lycanthropes, hommes-ours, hommes-tigres (José Corti Editions). The book is a companion volume to a similar anthology on revenants published in 2006, Elle mangeait son linceul : Fantômes, revenants, vampires et esprits frappeurs Une anthologie.

'En appendice, des actes de procès des XVIe et XVIIe siècles apportent la preuve que le loup-garou fut autrefois une réalité que nul ne mettait en doute.' I.e. in the appendix the acts of the processes of the 16th and 17th Centuries prove that the werewolf was once a reality that no one doubted.

Living on top of the past

Living in a Danish town that has existed for centuries and next to a cemetery can lead to some curious finds when digging in the garden. Today these bones were found along with a stick of iron. The bones we find are usually from animals like dogs or perhaps even garbage from a butcher's shop. These bones, however, are pretty large...

Grenze Troops

In an earlier post I quoted from a standard work on the Austrian army, but a number of other books are dedicated to this subject, e.g. a few of the books in the well-known series Men-at-arms published by Osprey. Shown above is the cover of number 413 on troops serving on the frontier zone between the Habsburg Empire and the Turks. On the right is a pandur from the Karlstadt Generalcy:

'Already active in the Turkish wars, which had concluded in 1739 with the Peace of Belgrade, these bands of local troops first appear in variations of local civilian costume. The headgear was usually a red Mütze (small round cap), recorded among the Warasdin troops in 1741, or a taller felt/sheepskin tubular hat, the Klobuk. This also often appeared outside the existing Districts as the Czakelhaube, which had a plain or sometimes decorated tail. The men wore white or blue shirts, pulled together by a wide natural leather belt, which supported pistols and knives, usually of local manufacture, and a black leather cartridge box. On top they wore a simple brown or black Gunjac jacket; sometimes sleeveless and with just a low collar, this garment was secured by cords linking the buttons on each side. The trousers, again usually white or blue, were loose-fitting in the thigh although often tight below the knee. Most preferred the local Opanken leather footwear (similar to moccasins). These reached just above the ankle, with long leather thongs securing them around the calves over thick white socks usually decorated in various colours. The more affluent wore the Hungarian Tschismen calf-length boots. Few men wore beards, but most sported a wide, thin moustache and often plaited sidelocks. Armed with Turkish muskets and long Balkan knives and, from about 1742, universally attired in the famous red cloak (the Abba-Mantel), they struck fear into European armies and civilian populations alike.'

The other two soldiers are a Hussar from the Karlstadt regiment (on the left), and a corporal from the Siebenburgen regiment, i.e. from Transylvania (in the middle).

Els casos de vampirisme citats per Calmet

I just noticed that Jordi Ardanuy published a paper in the Spanish magazine L'Upir number 15 earlier this year on the vampire cases mentioned by Calmet. Unfortunately, the paper is in Catalan, so I am unable to read it, but it contains e.g. a tabular overview of cases, and I can see that there are a couple of references to this blog. The paper is available as a 39 page pdf file download.

The systematical approach to Calmet's work is most welcome, but it's a shame that it isn't available in e.g. English, consequently prohibiting a larger audience from benefiting from the paper.

Support the Vampire Rights Amendment

I find it hard not to be amused by this recent development in vampire fiction. It is an incredible fact that a few reports on the exhumation of dead people suspected of haunting the living in villages in 18th Century Serbia over the past 300 years have turned into the vampires of modern culture. For further examples go to Blood Copy.

The Devil deceives the people

Having recently mentioned Luther's comments about the mastication of the dead, I will show you the cover of Thomas Schürmann's book Nachzehrerglauben in Mitteleuropa, which adresses the topic of masticating dead and other revenants. On the cover is a reprint of some of Luther's comments on recognizing the deceiving Devil. It's the first paragraph that is printed in Sturm and Völker's Von den Vampiren oder Menschensaugern.

Rebekka

While browsing some old newspaper articles, I found one from spring 1994 concerning a 25-30 year old female who was buried in the Dresden suburb Cotta about 7.500 years ago. Called DD-04 Cotta-find 277 or simply Rebekka by the archaeologists, her corpse had been beheaded post mortem, and a stone had been placed in front of her genitals. The archaeologists led by Rengert Elburg believed that the stone may have been placed there to prevent her unborn child from returning as a revenant. Elburg, in fact, believed that Rebekka had haunted people, and consequently had been excavated and beheaded. Furthermore, she was buried face down! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find more information about Rebekka on the internet.

A quartering from the Wickiana

This has nothing to do with magia posthuma, but is a sort of late post scriptum to an earlier post, in which I mentioned the method of quartering for torturing and executing a man. Some time ago, while browsing a collection of excerpts from the Wickiana, Die Wickiana (Raggi Verlag Küsnacht-Zürich, 1975), I noticed the illustration below, which vividly depicts a quartering, and I thought I would share it with those of you who are interested in - to paraphrase the title of Equiamicus's blog - the darker aspects of cultural history.