An Interminable Work? The Openness of Augustine’s Confessions, Symposium "Openness in Medieval Culture", organized by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (ICI Berlin, 27-28 June 2019) (original) (raw)

This interdisciplinary symposium interrogates the presuppositions of open/closed distinctions in Medieval culture with a view to exploring the semantic field of openness through such related notions as inclusivity, vulnerability, unfinishedness, permeability, excess, profanity. These conceptualizations of openness in the period have had profound influence in a wide array of disciplines such as literature, material culture, hermeneutics, religion, linguistics, history, and history of art. What does it mean to speak of an open text, an open body, an open mind, an open cosmos in the period? What kind of creative tension was there between the privileged spaces of the monastic cloister, the walled city, the moated castle, and their environments? What role did images of fluidity play in conceptualizing non-binary frames of reference? How did high medieval literature negotiate the exclusive experiences of the court, mystical excess, and sexuality with rhetorical strategies of inclusion toward a broader audience? How did manuscript culture and scholastic hermeneutics contribute to opening up texts to interpretation? How did texts themselves welcome uncertainty, open-endedness, and unfinishedness in their materiality and form? Interdisciplinary conversations will aim to open up channels of communication between the Middle Ages and present discourse. Can such present ideas as open source, open access, open education, open society, and open relationship be brought into productive dialogue with conceptualizations and practices of Medieval Studies? Can openness be constituted as critical method?