Spoiled History: Leprosy and the Lessons of Queer Medieval Historiography

Abstract

White supremacists fetishize the crusading knight; queer theorists claim an identification with the generative secret of the premodern sodomite. This essay attends to the epistemological circuits of transhistorical identification, examining the claims of recursive history and the theories of attachment betrayed by identification with the medieval past. Turning away from the solicitations of the crusader and the sodomite, the essay excavates histories of emotional attachment to the leper, a medieval figure whose status as abject incarnation of historical distance helps reconfigure transhistoric emotional identification. In medieval texts, the leper's ruined face scripts styles of recognition. In the medical writings of nineteenth-century imperial physicians, the medieval leper is used in negotiating fears of disease outbreaks in various colonies. The leper therefore comes to assume the status of reassuring historical distance as a result of imperial ideological needs. Attention to the circuits of desire that animate claims to the past on the basis of identification and personal attachment can account for the attraction the Middle Ages exerts on both medievalists and white supremacists.