Premodern studies? Studying the Burgundian late Medieval political ideology through a postcolonial lens

Abstract

Based on my doctoral thesis, defended on December 16th, 2024, at the UCLouvain and titled “D’Istanbul à Grenade, fabrique des altérités musulmanes en pays bourguignons (1363-1483). Représentations, pouvoir, idéologie”, I aim to present both the methodological and epistemological reflections, as well as some results and recommendations regarding what could be called “Premodern Studies”. Indeed, while studying to fabric of Muslim alterities in the collective imaginaries of the Burgundian political elites of the 15th century and the connection of this fabric with the Burgundian political ideology, I have sought to understand the process of otherness in a more global context : the ongoing construction of a West European identity, which will soon weave relationships of colonization and racial hierarchy around the world, and the progressive othering of specific communities in relation to a situated reading of the world. More precisely, I propose to explain, based on the case study of the collective imaginaries of the Burgundian political elites, how the epistemology of the Cultural and Postcolonial Studies allow us to recognize what has so far been blind spots in the late medieval narrative sources (e.g., travel tales, romances, and chronicles): specific collective memory selections and constructions, exonyms to designate Muslim communities, the performativity of the discourse, etc. Furthermore, such an articulation between Medieval Studies and Cultural and Postcolonial Studies sheds light on the coloniality, even unconscious, of a large portion of the contemporary historiography on the Middle Ages. A close attention to its rhetoric quickly makes this clear. In other words, I aim to show, through my presentation based on this specific case study, how my doctoral dissertation contributes to remove the Middle Ages and its study from its presumed innocence