"There is great unity
between man and woman,
because the two
are of one substance"
Roman de Silence
Heldris of Cornwall
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The following is a transcript of a paper,
"Transvestite Metaphysics: Quantum Entanglement and Natural Philosophy in 13th century Literature," delivered at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
in Orlando, Florida. March 18-22, 2015.
"Transvestite Metaphysics: Quantum Entanglement and Natural Philosophy in 13th century Literature," delivered at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
in Orlando, Florida. March 18-22, 2015.
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Transvestite Metaphysics
What is the alternative to a modern Scientism that doesn't account for the gender implications of its ideologies and excludes transgender from its theory of everything? Towards this goal of thinking science and biopolitics together, we need to turn to a period before science was industrialized and institutionalized as a distinct discipline from other university fields like philosophy, literature and politics. Looking at the 13th century, science may look starkly different on the surface, astronomy was astrology, chemistry was alchemy, but this lack of modern disciplinarity meant that scientists did more than how we would narrowly consider science. I argue that a critical return to medieval quantum physics of the 13th century, through the metaphysical thought of John Duns Scotus and the trans ontology in Roman de Silence, offers a pre-modern approach to science and biopolitics where matter and meaning, body and clothing, science and culture are not essentially divided but fundamentally entangled at a quantum level.
Medieval scientists knew their Aristotle and practiced metaphysics, poetics, politics, alongside their physics. Indeed, some may be surprised to learn that quantum physics not only existed but grew up in the medieval period, stemming back to Artistotle’s metaphysical treatises where he defined a quantum object as "that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts of which is by nature a 'one' and a 'this'" (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, ch. 13, 1020a 8-10). This theory became fundamental to medieval theories of everything where thinkers like Duns Scotus were trying to bring together physical observations of a world of diverse gender and genus with the physical and metaphysical assertion that all matter derives from a single substance – be it the atom, energy, or God - wherein “the whole time and the parts of motion are joined to some ‘mutated being’ which is not one in the same motion” (Scotus, V.X). In his Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Book VII, Question XIII, Duns Scotus proposes the following theory of everything: each body shares a common “that-ness” (quiddity) or substance but manifests a distinct “this-ness” (haecceity) where body (such as clothing) can become entangled with other bodies (such as the skin) on a quantum level so that attributes of the one can be "transferred to other things also" (Aristotle, V, ch. 13, 1020a 8-10).
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Duns Scotus's Quantum Realism
What does Duns Scotus’s quantum theory mean and how does it marry a scientific theory of everything with medieval gender politics? Turning to a contemporary Chivalric romance, the Roman de Silence, we find the author of this highly literate genre writing a text for a highly educated audience that would have known their Aristotle and Duns Scotus and been paying attention for how unique individuals can co-exist within wider theories of everything. Silence is a romance about a child born female in a time when English law forbade women from inheriting property, so the parents raise Silence as a man, putting him in armor and training him to be a knight. This text, often noted for its so called transvestism, demonstrates how medieval literature was not distinct from physical and metaphysical treatises by introducing the characters of Nature and Nurture into the plot in order to debate and affect Silence as he/she transforms not only his body but society’s sense of body and clothes, matter and meaning, thing and everything.
Nature arrives in two key moments in the narrative when Silence undergoes substantial changes to his/her body, during which time the concept of “Tolte” (Totalness) becomes critical to the debate between gender and genus over the transgender body. The first occurs at Silence’s birth, when Nature takes undifferentiated quantum “matter” that is “beautiful and pure" [Li matere est et biele er pure], then “goes to her coffer [secre va] and opens it up. / She has at least a million molds there, / and she has very great need of them, / for if she had only one form / everyone would be alike [la samblance estroit si commune / de tolte gente] / that no one would ever be able to tell / who was who or what their name was" (1865-1892). This idea of “tolte” invoked here, where a single substance with many molds fits well with Duns Scotus’s theory of entanglement where every “this” (individual) co-exists at a quantum level with “that” essential substance. "Nothing," states Duns Scotus, "is itself one greater than a unity proper to it" (Duns Scotus VII. QXIII.209). This univocality of being, put into contemporary language means that 'everything equally exists but not everything exists equally.' The 'tolte' of everything only exists as the sum of all differences plus the single unifying substance. It is emphatically positive / additive. There is no universal without particulars but nor are there particulars without a unifying quantum essence.
Nature arrives in two key moments in the narrative when Silence undergoes substantial changes to his/her body, during which time the concept of “Tolte” (Totalness) becomes critical to the debate between gender and genus over the transgender body. The first occurs at Silence’s birth, when Nature takes undifferentiated quantum “matter” that is “beautiful and pure" [Li matere est et biele er pure], then “goes to her coffer [secre va] and opens it up. / She has at least a million molds there, / and she has very great need of them, / for if she had only one form / everyone would be alike [la samblance estroit si commune / de tolte gente] / that no one would ever be able to tell / who was who or what their name was" (1865-1892). This idea of “tolte” invoked here, where a single substance with many molds fits well with Duns Scotus’s theory of entanglement where every “this” (individual) co-exists at a quantum level with “that” essential substance. "Nothing," states Duns Scotus, "is itself one greater than a unity proper to it" (Duns Scotus VII. QXIII.209). This univocality of being, put into contemporary language means that 'everything equally exists but not everything exists equally.' The 'tolte' of everything only exists as the sum of all differences plus the single unifying substance. It is emphatically positive / additive. There is no universal without particulars but nor are there particulars without a unifying quantum essence.
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Theories of Tolte
The medieval theory of “tolte” relates to the theory of everything but is distinctly conscious to the “this-ness” and the “thatness” for embodiment and biopolitics. In English totle means Total but comes from the “Old French total, from Medieval Latin totalis "entire, total" (as in summa totalis "sum total"), from Latin totus "all, all at once, the whole, entire, altogether," of unknown origin.” (Online Etymological Dictionary). It is critical then that Nature puts her single pure substance into diverse forms "both big and little [grans et petites] / ugly, misshapen, and perfect [laides contrefaites, parfites[, / for thus all people [tolte gent] are fashioned, / big and little, handsome and fine [grant et petit, et biel, et gent], / she has so many different [diverse] forms,/ but one mold she [Nature] has kept aside / she has never used yet." (1895-1901). The idea that Nature has molds for “tolte gents” means that the medieval quantum theory of totle gives critical attention to singularity, diversity, politics of embodiment when it theorizes everything. This means that not only the trans(vestite) body is an artificial construct, even when Nature is doing the constructing, because all bodies are objects of specific subjective choices. Nature falls from the station of a transcendent signifier (i.e. God as Creator) because each person "grant et petit" are made with reference to the "tolte gents." Particular persons are only particular because they exist in a state of exception from everyone else. The everything being referenced is formed by adding up each particular into the universal.
In particular, Roman de Silence looks to understand the place of trans bodies in their theories of tolte by establishing Nature’s quantum approach to gender from the start. "Jesus the pious, true, and good / created Adam [Adan], thus we know to be true,” we learn from the text, “and right away created Eve [Evain] from his rib. / And here is the hidden reason, / why he made her from his rib: / so that they would be of one mind [voellance], / as they are made of one substance. / Both should be of one mind [voloir], / united in joy and sorrow [a l'esjoir, et al doloir]. / There is great unity [grant commune] between man and woman, / because the two are of one substance" (1701-1712). Here the one quantum substance can take the form of multiple genders with political implications, suggesting the formation of distinctly transgender bodies but also calling for ontological solidarity across gender where we fight for each other, “united in joy and sorrow.” Trans bodies cannot be considered mere "accidents" or "particular" exceptions that can be thought separate from universal metaphysical questions. The relation of the one to the all remains as critical as ever. Rather, the trans body becomes the embodiment of an ontological solidarity. By examining the "tolte gents" through the story of a trans body, universal theories become more important. Furthermore, through this common cause in the "tolte," each particular becomes implicated in the existence and politics of each other particular. Power and knowledge (i.e. "voellance") over individual persons or subgroups, like transgender, is necessarily bound to understandings of the "tolte" universe.
In particular, Roman de Silence looks to understand the place of trans bodies in their theories of tolte by establishing Nature’s quantum approach to gender from the start. "Jesus the pious, true, and good / created Adam [Adan], thus we know to be true,” we learn from the text, “and right away created Eve [Evain] from his rib. / And here is the hidden reason, / why he made her from his rib: / so that they would be of one mind [voellance], / as they are made of one substance. / Both should be of one mind [voloir], / united in joy and sorrow [a l'esjoir, et al doloir]. / There is great unity [grant commune] between man and woman, / because the two are of one substance" (1701-1712). Here the one quantum substance can take the form of multiple genders with political implications, suggesting the formation of distinctly transgender bodies but also calling for ontological solidarity across gender where we fight for each other, “united in joy and sorrow.” Trans bodies cannot be considered mere "accidents" or "particular" exceptions that can be thought separate from universal metaphysical questions. The relation of the one to the all remains as critical as ever. Rather, the trans body becomes the embodiment of an ontological solidarity. By examining the "tolte gents" through the story of a trans body, universal theories become more important. Furthermore, through this common cause in the "tolte," each particular becomes implicated in the existence and politics of each other particular. Power and knowledge (i.e. "voellance") over individual persons or subgroups, like transgender, is necessarily bound to understandings of the "tolte" universe.
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Is the answer then to look to medieval philosophy for our science? Should poets, literary critics, and gender studies scholars take over the grants reserved for theoretical physics? The answer is not so simple as deconstruction the artifice of naturalism or scientism to return to a naked truth. The work of construction and re-construction is ever present. This is the haunting lack of resolution at the end of the horrifying stripping of the trans knight in Roman de Silence. While this movement of power/knowledge is supposed to fix theories of Silence's body and gender, it only adds to the insufficiency of Nature as solitary authority. "After Nature / had recovered her rights," concludes Le Roman, "she spent the next three days refinishing [repolit]/ Silence's entire body, removing every trace / of anything that being a man left there [le cors de malle]." (6669-6673). Removing the clothes does not reveal a pure truth of the body. The effects of the clothes remain entangled on the body. Silence can return to the form Nature made her, but it is not merely a deconstruction (de-polit) but a reconstruction (repolit). Indeed, the emphasis on the need to remake the whole body, "Par tolt le cors et a tolir," emphasizes how the work of Nurture never leaves the "tolt" being considered. Masculinity is not a part of the whole which can be nullified as not-real but a pervasive methodology which effects every part of every body, "tolt quanque ot sot le corse de malle." The pun at the end of the line suggesting that the masculine body, "le corse de malle," is also the wrong body, "le corse de mal," plays at this tension set up from the statement that men and women share a common substance. Masculinity cannot be expunged from femininity, just like reality of womanhood cannot be fully distinguished from the non-reality of the transvestite. The "tolt le cors" cannot be understood without reference to the sum of all participating realities of Silence's gender. The feminine now is not longer the single authorial Silence, it exists as a product or re-production from a trans masculine.
The desire to strip down the universe or transvestites in particular is implicit in many attempts at scripting a theory of everything where the final word can be given on knowledge and with it the power forever fixed in the hands of he who holds it. Yet there is no naked science. There ever remains something excludes from out theories of everything, no theory nor theorist can account for "tolte" everything and everything constantly changes as new particulars come into being, so we must embrace, unlike Sheldon our entanglement and dependency in other bodies and other disciplines, be they theoretical physics, geologists, poets, literary critics, and gender studies, modern and medieval, asking who or what are we leaving out now, if we look to bridge matter and meaning, body and clothes, nature and nurture, this and that, real and unreal in our transvestite metaphysics. Transvestism always looks to add things together rather than make everything naked. A transvestite metaphysics is a science of the tolte which takes its own power-knowledge production into account and looks towards what it excludes to add more and more to the productive contact of coextenstivity. The fundamental quantum move becomes one of reaching out to other genders, time periods, and departments to share ideas, methodologies, authorities, products, and funding if one is to truly claim a desire to construct a "tolte" theory of everything.
De-Natured Reality
By Nature’s final reappearance in Roman de Silence it is evident that there are problems in any theory of everything insofar as it attempts to root authority in Nature and the natural sciences in ways that can produce the Scientism of Cooper, becoming trained to think in terms of fixed universals that they take the forms of gender they know as the single authoritative realness. Nature, although she knows that Nurture or other forms may craft bodies, when Silence begins to age and be transformed into a man, she complains, "When I heaped all the beauty I had stored up upon you alone … I used a special mold for you / when I created you with my own hands" (2505-2508) [et la bialtet qu'ai tant cele ai tolte en toi amoncelee… car une special forme ai / dont a mes ii mains te formai]. The claim that she put all the beauty in the universe in Silence, “tolte en toi,” reflects Duns Scotus’s claims about all of the “that-ness” of the universe in any specific “this.” "As one is coextensive with being," writes Duns Scotus, "so each mode of 'one' is coextensive with some grade of being, to which grade this mode of unity is proper" (VII.xiii). Contrary to the Nominalists of late medieval metaphysics or individualists of modern politics, no particular body can exist without being formed by, of, and with the "tolte en toi." While that coextensive being manifests particular modes of relation to each body, the work of that mode (or grade) to substantiate each thing with unity is necessary.
Over the course of Roman de Silence, the trans man puts on masculine attire, armor and shields transforming his cultural signification but also his humoral biology. The tournaments and training that goes with armor, “took him out often in the scorching heat / in order to make a man of him. / He was so used to men's usage / and had so rejected women's ways" (2472-2474). The French here is key: rhyming “heat” (“halle”) with “man” (“malle”) and female behavior (“use”) with refuse (“feme refuse”). Beyond performatively re-aligning his gender it is also physically reconstructing. "I have a mouth too hard for kisses / and arms too tough for embraces,” notes Silence, “One could easily make a fool of me / in any games under the covers, / for I'm a young man, not a girl" (2646-2650). Medieval science of the body regarded gender as more than about genitals, including facial features, skin, body frame and humors (what we may now call hormones) as equally key in determining gender and equally available for sexual reconstruction. According to Duns Scotus's quantum principle of the univocality of being, While the power of each may exist unequally, both equally exist. The particulars of these attributes linked with transvestism cannot be discounted as non-real. The particular masculinity of Silence, like skin, is coextensive with other attributes of his gender, like genitals. Nature is coextensive with Nurture. Through the work of Nurture, Silence can refuse and de-nature Nature's work, but cannot exist outside of dialog with the tolte that forms him.
Over the course of Roman de Silence, the trans man puts on masculine attire, armor and shields transforming his cultural signification but also his humoral biology. The tournaments and training that goes with armor, “took him out often in the scorching heat / in order to make a man of him. / He was so used to men's usage / and had so rejected women's ways" (2472-2474). The French here is key: rhyming “heat” (“halle”) with “man” (“malle”) and female behavior (“use”) with refuse (“feme refuse”). Beyond performatively re-aligning his gender it is also physically reconstructing. "I have a mouth too hard for kisses / and arms too tough for embraces,” notes Silence, “One could easily make a fool of me / in any games under the covers, / for I'm a young man, not a girl" (2646-2650). Medieval science of the body regarded gender as more than about genitals, including facial features, skin, body frame and humors (what we may now call hormones) as equally key in determining gender and equally available for sexual reconstruction. According to Duns Scotus's quantum principle of the univocality of being, While the power of each may exist unequally, both equally exist. The particulars of these attributes linked with transvestism cannot be discounted as non-real. The particular masculinity of Silence, like skin, is coextensive with other attributes of his gender, like genitals. Nature is coextensive with Nurture. Through the work of Nurture, Silence can refuse and de-nature Nature's work, but cannot exist outside of dialog with the tolte that forms him.
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Nurture's Entanglement
What we end up with in Roman de Silence, is a medieval quantum theory of tolte (everything) that at once includes gender in its considerations but leaves room for the dissent of other authorities, including those of Nurture, representing, among others, the word of clothes, culture, literature and the humanities. Unlike the modern debate, the divide is not between constructionism and essentialism but between two different forms of essentialism: the fixed forms of Nature and the reconstructed bodies of Nurture. "I have completely denatured her,” claims Nurture, “She will always resist you." (2594-2595). [Jo l'ai tolte desnaturee. / N'avra ja voir o vus duree]. Nurture is still speaking of metaphysical quantum theories of “tolte.” She is “tolte desnaturee,” connected with everything but it no longer is under the lone authority of Nature (or the Natural Sciences). This is how metaphysics becomes biopolitical. Who and what gets to count as "real" is inextricable from political subjectivity. There are benefits for certain people for certain things to be considered real or proper to a certain form, while other alternative forms of reality may challenge their claim over bodies, properties, and power. Whether it is Nature claiming control over a body, or Sheldon Cooper claiming power-knowledge over a body in the name of natural science, there are things which parties can gain or lose by affirming these versions of reality and discounting alternative realities. In both the 21st and 13th century, the trans woman become metaphysically real while resisting tyrannical authorities of gender.
Resistance is not the same as power, however, as Nature then, as Natural sciences today still possess overwhelming authority over how bodies are managed and understood. After a successful life as a trans man, the knight is undone by the King of England. "He ordered Silence to be undressed [despollier]. / It was just as Merlin had said: / he found everything in its proper place” (6571-6574). This traumatic violence of stripping a trans person naked in public in order to humiliate them into submitting to natural forms of gender is powerful but is also resisted. The final like “tolt issi l'a trove par tolt" may mean, total is there is for total, affirming a naturalistic theory of everything, but in French we see nurture’s alternative suggested in the pun in Medieval Latin “tolta,” the act of taking away (Merriam Webster) or classic Latin “tolta,” wrong (Latin Dictionary). The line may read, “wrong is there for wrong” or “taken away is that which is taken away.” Nature asserts what is real so as to exclude things when defining its theory of everything. This is the fundamental claim of Duns Scotus's univocal quantum being. "For if one removed from A [Silence] only that whereby it would be divisible (i.e. its haecceity)," writes Duns Scotus, "what remains (i.e. the nature) would be repugnant to being divided" (VII, xiii). In other words, to attempt to return the particulars of Silence's life back into an original quantum unity cannot occur without taking away what makes Silence particular . Silence, as a particular "this," cannot exist without the universe of gender, a real "that," but neither can "that" universe exist without the particular "this" of Silence.
Resistance is not the same as power, however, as Nature then, as Natural sciences today still possess overwhelming authority over how bodies are managed and understood. After a successful life as a trans man, the knight is undone by the King of England. "He ordered Silence to be undressed [despollier]. / It was just as Merlin had said: / he found everything in its proper place” (6571-6574). This traumatic violence of stripping a trans person naked in public in order to humiliate them into submitting to natural forms of gender is powerful but is also resisted. The final like “tolt issi l'a trove par tolt" may mean, total is there is for total, affirming a naturalistic theory of everything, but in French we see nurture’s alternative suggested in the pun in Medieval Latin “tolta,” the act of taking away (Merriam Webster) or classic Latin “tolta,” wrong (Latin Dictionary). The line may read, “wrong is there for wrong” or “taken away is that which is taken away.” Nature asserts what is real so as to exclude things when defining its theory of everything. This is the fundamental claim of Duns Scotus's univocal quantum being. "For if one removed from A [Silence] only that whereby it would be divisible (i.e. its haecceity)," writes Duns Scotus, "what remains (i.e. the nature) would be repugnant to being divided" (VII, xiii). In other words, to attempt to return the particulars of Silence's life back into an original quantum unity cannot occur without taking away what makes Silence particular . Silence, as a particular "this," cannot exist without the universe of gender, a real "that," but neither can "that" universe exist without the particular "this" of Silence.
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Naked Science?
Is the answer then to look to medieval philosophy for our science? Should poets, literary critics, and gender studies scholars take over the grants reserved for theoretical physics? The answer is not so simple as deconstruction the artifice of naturalism or scientism to return to a naked truth. The work of construction and re-construction is ever present. This is the haunting lack of resolution at the end of the horrifying stripping of the trans knight in Roman de Silence. While this movement of power/knowledge is supposed to fix theories of Silence's body and gender, it only adds to the insufficiency of Nature as solitary authority. "After Nature / had recovered her rights," concludes Le Roman, "she spent the next three days refinishing [repolit]/ Silence's entire body, removing every trace / of anything that being a man left there [le cors de malle]." (6669-6673). Removing the clothes does not reveal a pure truth of the body. The effects of the clothes remain entangled on the body. Silence can return to the form Nature made her, but it is not merely a deconstruction (de-polit) but a reconstruction (repolit). Indeed, the emphasis on the need to remake the whole body, "Par tolt le cors et a tolir," emphasizes how the work of Nurture never leaves the "tolt" being considered. Masculinity is not a part of the whole which can be nullified as not-real but a pervasive methodology which effects every part of every body, "tolt quanque ot sot le corse de malle." The pun at the end of the line suggesting that the masculine body, "le corse de malle," is also the wrong body, "le corse de mal," plays at this tension set up from the statement that men and women share a common substance. Masculinity cannot be expunged from femininity, just like reality of womanhood cannot be fully distinguished from the non-reality of the transvestite. The "tolt le cors" cannot be understood without reference to the sum of all participating realities of Silence's gender. The feminine now is not longer the single authorial Silence, it exists as a product or re-production from a trans masculine.
The desire to strip down the universe or transvestites in particular is implicit in many attempts at scripting a theory of everything where the final word can be given on knowledge and with it the power forever fixed in the hands of he who holds it. Yet there is no naked science. There ever remains something excludes from out theories of everything, no theory nor theorist can account for "tolte" everything and everything constantly changes as new particulars come into being, so we must embrace, unlike Sheldon our entanglement and dependency in other bodies and other disciplines, be they theoretical physics, geologists, poets, literary critics, and gender studies, modern and medieval, asking who or what are we leaving out now, if we look to bridge matter and meaning, body and clothes, nature and nurture, this and that, real and unreal in our transvestite metaphysics. Transvestism always looks to add things together rather than make everything naked. A transvestite metaphysics is a science of the tolte which takes its own power-knowledge production into account and looks towards what it excludes to add more and more to the productive contact of coextenstivity. The fundamental quantum move becomes one of reaching out to other genders, time periods, and departments to share ideas, methodologies, authorities, products, and funding if one is to truly claim a desire to construct a "tolte" theory of everything.
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