Politics, Identities and the Contemporary Medieval

This essay seeks to draw attention to the central place of the medieval in both the production of knowledge in the broader social sciences and in contemporary politics. Specifically, I do so through a series of examples that show how a concept of ‘the medieval’ is central in both the production of analytical notions of community, and in contemporary political debates about community and identity formation. Both in the social sciences and modern politics, this uniformized and monolithic concept of ‘the medieval’ works not only to constrain how we understand the period but also to limit our ability to imagine and understand politics beyond the nation-state. This centrality, I argue, calls for increased dialogue between scholars of medieval studies and those in other humanities and social science disciplines.