Impressions from The 61st Annual Meeting of the RSA in Berlin, March 26–28, 2015. Part 2: Politics (wersja polska poniżej)

I wrote here before about contemporary politics vs. academic study in the field of early modern culture. It strikes me every now and then how often these seemingly distant areas intertwine. Recent Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America supplied me with some new examples of this phenomenon.

One of them was the exhibition named ‘Das verschwundene Museum’ (The Lost Museum) officially accompanying the conference and displayed in the Bode Museum where the opening reception took place. Here Germany’s war losses were presented, together with issues of conservation and retribution of the artworks. This can obviously be considered as an example of modern-day German politics of memory, or at least of one of its currents – one focused on presenting the German nation as victims of war, without necessarily stressing their role in starting it. As such, the exhibition was not taken well by some of my Polish colleagues. While I agree that the chosen topic was not politically neutral, I do not sympathize with some of the opinions I heard during the reception which can be summarized as follows: ‘I don’t pity Germany neither for their lost artworks, nor for their civilian victims of war, as Germans did the same to us’. I couldn’t agree less. I am strongly against destroying any works of art, anywhere, as they all belong to common heritage of mankind. I am strongly against killing civilian population on purpose, anywhere and of any nation. I also expressed these opinions openly to my colleagues during the reception, being only surprised how quickly we switched to this quite heated exchange from discussing our studies on early modern era.

 

‘Das verschwundene Museum’ - exhibition poster

The issue of politics in renaissance studies came back in yet another form on the final day of the conference. A statement of junior members of the RSA was read aloud by professor Lisa Jardine. The anonymous authors expressed their concern that in the recent years only two women were invited to hold a key-note speech on the meeting. While the male-female disproportion was evident, reasons for it, in my opinion, may vary. For instance, in the earlier generations more men than women pursued academic career. Whatever the case, I did not join the audience in enthusiastic applause after professor Jardine had finished. I even regret that I did not stand up and say, as a woman, junior researcher, and, on the top of that, a person coming from Central Europe, that I never felt discriminated within the organisation. And also that I would like to be judged based solely on my academic achievements, rather than other qualities such as gender or perhaps yet other.

While the two events described above have seemingly little in common, they are both interesting as case studies of how politics pervade areas where one would rather expect to find a shelter from it.