The Gilmore Girls & The Visigoths: Are the Visigoths Still Networking?[a] (pdf)
Abstract:
This essay makes the case that each reference to the Visigoths in popular culture is a localized actualization of the Visigothic Idea and therefore that any reading of its history should be firstly an analysis of its kinetic properties and not an evaluation relative to one specific actualization of the Idea or another. The Visigothic Idea is a non-absolute universal referent constituted by perpetually electric boundaries. From this perspective, we can, I think, uncover the memeness of Visigoth and Visigothic – and of Visigothic history – whether in their mnemonic functions, emotional purposes, or as virtue signaling (intended and unintended), as perhaps is the case in the Gilmore Girls episode below as much as in the writings of late-antique and early medieval authors. From the fragmented and scattered nodes that are manifestations of the Visigothic Idea, we can see – in part thanks to its memeness – how and why the Visigoths are alive and real beyond the abstract (the past) when they appear in discursive reality, whether in the Gilmore Girls or in the texts, videos, games, and works of art discussed in the other essays in the first part of this symposium.
Essay:
In the opening scene of the Gilmore Girls episode, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” the mother-daughter, Vladimir-and-Estragon-type duo fire rapid responses at one another about the Kennedys, namely, their family intrigues, history of odd, unfortunate and even bizarre occurrences, and yet also their inherent chic, charm, beauty, independence, happiness, and memorability… they are memorable.[1] It is something in their – in the words of Crazy’s Ex’s Rebecca Bunch – “sexy French depression,” the mysterious Catholic Irish-French otherness, Kennedy and Jackie, in contrast to the suburban Connecticut background of our mother-daughter Lorelai and Rory.[2] Who is this wrong-Christian political network challenging the proper-Protestant hegemony? Who are these outsider-insiders? Who are these disturbers of the status quo who have reached the highest offices in the land, these modern-day Ardaburii? Or, Visigoths?[3]
The Beckettian-form dialogue ends as immediately as it proceeded, and the scene moves to the opening credits, allowing a few moments for audience reflection, or transcending us into another time via space. We re-actualize now in another location, the kitchen of Lorelai’s “Independence Inn,” at a point in which her chef Sookie is mid-food-prep and virtually shouting out orders: “[…] run it through the sieve again, I want it smooth as glass. Don’t cut corners, people!”[4] Reminiscent of my own time as a sous-chef in a proper Harrogate establishment, and for anyone else who’s worked in a professional kitchen, this is reflective simply of the intensity of the moment mixed with the drive for perfection. Yet, Sookie’s opening line is met by Lorelai’s sarcastic aside to her ever-sarcastic-sardonic, clichéd French inn manager, Michel, “Is she melting?” to which he responds, “Like butter on a skillet.”[5] Lorelai turns then to Sookie for a classic Lorelai-Rory repartee, the show’s style, but Sookie disrupts her with a couple of critical remarks to her sous-chefs, insulting them with innuendos related to their lack of sex lives and frustration taken out on the food, their inabilities to (have the opportunity) to perform, take control of their desires, and so aggressively acting out, not unlike Isidore’s critique of the Visigothic sexual violence (rapio) against Hispania in the De Origine Gothorum (or, for that matter, apropos Michel’s retort, Sidonius Apollinaris’s disgust of the Burgundians spreading smelly butter through their hair).[6]
But what sign is there really of early medieval figures, beyond the manifestations of my own gaze? What is actually happening in the kitchen? “Chaos” Sookie tells us, and, she says, “a travesty,” a space now contaminated by the likes of “Bob” the sous-chef. But there is hope because Bob is trained in the master’s (Sookie’s) image, not a mere simulacrum but ex Patre Filioque procedit, or Matre in this case. But what to do when the other nature of the Son is imperfect while [the] Creation is still associated with the Mother/Father? Does that make the Mother/Father less perfect? The imperfections manifest in the creation, in the meal, and so there must be a symbolic meal, beyond imperfection, which can [be] serve[d] as perpetual perfection consumed. An everlasting bread. Lorelai tells Sookie she’s [self-]tortured, submitting herself willingly to suffering for her creation (in contrast to the “silent sufferer” Lorelai). At this point, in walks the more-than-emulative savior, the elegant Mother of the mother, Emily, Amalasuintha, offspring of the Great Amal, who will sustain the master’s [culturary culinary] ways, Amelia connecting the Valley to the Sea, whose partner will conquer Hannibal and deliver a truly saving meal. Lorelai, in rhetorical monologue, asks the resurrected commander, Emily, “back from the dead, J…?”[7]
Suddenly revealing herself, the Mother of mothers devours whole the imperfect/perfect, eternal/ephemeral mother, as the latter relates, and as the Mother and the Father, it is announced, will not be in their hometown for the birth of Christ, we are told. As such, the Feast of Family must be at the Thanks-Giving. At the behest of the Four, Lorelai-Rory are now committed to an apocalyptic (“our finest” nay “final hour,” they quip) – or Evangelical? – Feast Day: Of canonical Luke, of whom they cannot disappoint; Of the Mother Emily, preserving the salvation of the Empire; Of Lane, lana, the innocent covering and product of the Lord’s Sheep, the Christian figure; and Of Sookie, Shoshana molested in oil, saved from the elders by the young Righteous, from the old judges by the new yet Everlasting. Covered in oil. Hosanna in the Highest, 118, Sukkot, the feast of the autumn, the bringing together of the family, the clan, the Kennedys, the community, Stars Hollow.[8] The Eve over, Lorelai-Rory in the morning gather, compile the cornucopia. The arrival at Shoshana’s, and her response “Thank God, civilization has arrived.”[9] Look at all that oil, she demands, a vat of oil, being prepared to de-civilize the cooking of a “beautiful, expensive, organically grown turkey,” a symbol of upper-middle-class guilt satiated by the prevailing ideology’s primary act, consumption, more expense is more morality, the how over the what of food preparation, remarkably akin to thinking inside a different ideological dimension, the Sidonius admiring the Visigothic Theoderic in Toulouse and admonishing generic Burgundians as well as the Vandal Geiseric, the early medieval culinary world and its relation to culture, and ultimately to a [Romano-]Christianity and the latter parts food-feast-divinity trinity.[10] The oil of anointing, the oil of salvation, the Shoshana preserving civilization and all that is good. What is the oil at Shoshana’s for? Lorelai: it’s “For pouring on Visigoths.”[11]
The Visigoths here represent an eclectic knowledge tied to religious imagery and the Dark Ages, vs civilization. As it was for Sidonius, “Visigoth” as an identifier was purified or rather nullified by Theoderic’s attention to proper, civilized banqueting, whereas identities like Burgundian were amplified by distasteful, uncivilized dining. As Sidonius would agree, Sookie is right to equate a poorly prepared meal with chaos, early in the episode, and then later, directly with the collapse of civilization. And this early medieval connection or association is evident, it would appear, to the writers who, in the latter scene, equate the Visigoths to uncivilized dining – deep-fried turkey – to the eating of the plebs or barbarians or rustici – I mean, same thing, after all. The oil not only typifies this, but it is also said to be poured on the Visigoths, an anointing of the Visigoths, as the subsequent Catholic political leaders, with a vulgar version of the classical world, a Bob-simulacrum, not an Emily-Lorelai reproduction, Emily with her – we’d go on to see – perfectly prepared, civilized meal. But this false anointing horrifies Sookie, the oil being salvific, leading to suffering that ultimately ends with encountering the prophetic and the very hand of God. This is not the role played by the Visigoths in the narrative.
More than a nostalgic flashback to an annjoyable show, what this reading of the Visigoths in Gilmore Girls reveals is, what I call, the “Visigothic Idea,” a universal truth with unlimited networking capacity, engendering infinitely the signifier “Visigoth” which oscillates between immanence and transcendence, which can serve as, as in the case of the Gilmore Girls episode, a non-actualized object of the Real which, as the sublimated fabric of that present world (situation), appears momentarily as a confirmation of actually-existing truths, just as “communist” tends to appear in Western discourse today not as a rebirth of the Communist Idea but as a confirmation of the capitalist truth, that is, as the foil which confirms the “obvious” righteousness of capitalist ideology, i.e., the present world. In this case, “Visigothic” confirms the barbaric nature of deep-frying a “beautiful, expensive, organically grown turkey,” that is, of using popular, “low-culture” working-class food preparation techniques to prepare what is a quintessentially mainstream middle-class food item. In order words, Lorelai and Sookie do not reveal the Visigothic (or medieval or barbarian, etc.) idea but rather promote, using both a functioning trope, barbaric, and a comedy that appeals to their middle-class (or middle-class admiring) audience, something that is awful within the prevailing logic, the capitalist truth, that is, the breaking through the walls of the traditional, elite customs by alternative, barbarian, ways of life. This presents then not only an analysis of the meaning of Visigoth in the present, but also, more importantly I think, serves also as an example of the universal truth “Visigoth[ic]” as un-actualized or transcendent. This specific actualization, or historical realization, of the Visigothic Idea stands in stark contrast to the Visigothic Idea as it was actualized in, for instance, 7th-century Hispania, when “Visigoth” represented a prevailing logic and appeared as an immanent truth. When Goth or Visigoth was used, whether by Isidore or in the Councils or in the formularies or inscriptions, it represented Visigoth as in itself an object of ideology, as opposed to a sublimated unter-trope.
Thus, what we see presented to us in the Gilmore Girls episode is a popular (middle-class) American vision of the Visigoths, not a representation of a once-and-only-once-been historical subjectivity now only imaginable as an object out of time, nor simply of inauthentic and authentic Daseins coexisting in and over space-time, but rather a continuous network of Visigoths from Liuvigild to Lorelai, from Recciberga to Rory, from Floresinda to Sookie, from Isidore sitting down to compose the Etymologies, to anonymous editors in 655 redacting its Book 6 computistics, to the Longleat House fragment, to Paris BnF lat. 5543, to Vat. Reg. Lat. 1024, to the scribe of Paris BnF lat. 1557 who added Isidore to Sisebut’s reign, to the scribe Sisebut of the Codex Aemelianensis, to the first “Isidorian Renaissance” discussions, to Jean-Luc Picard’s wondering if “Honorius watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill truly realized the Roman Empire was about to fall,”[12] to Americans’ thoughts on the Visigoths as their own Senate was overrun, to “Quicumque igitur a nobis vel totius Spaniae populis qualibet coniuratione vel studio sacramentum fidei suae, quod pro patriae gentisque Gothorum statu vel observatione regiae salutis pollicitus est, temeraverit aut regem nece attractaverit aut potestate regni exuerit, aut praesumtione tyrannica regni fastigium usurpaverit …],”[13] to “Insigni merito et Geticae de stirpe senatus,”[14] to “Eius interventu quidam vir nobilis ex Visegothorum propagine, clarus genere, Agapius nomine […],”[15] to “La loi des Wisigoths voulait que […],[16] to the scenes of Isidore completing the De Origine Gothorum or Reccared II fatefully ascending the throne received as the present (in 2021) on the exoplanet Kepler-452b.
What unites all of these “Visigoths” is the Visigothic Idea.[17] Through it, the Visigoths in Gilmore Girls, as all of these Visigoths, are part of a living network, with its materialist-dialectical origins in some evental “Visigoth” or “Visigothic” moment, and, as such, the Visigoths in Fontaine are effectively the same as those sitting in Seville in 619, or Toledo in 672, or at Covadonga in 722, or even those in the undelivered graduation speech of New York University’s late Professor of Communication Arts, Neil Postman:
“The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders—ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics.”[18]
When in the episode (or, logical set) “Kill-Switch,” Dana Scully asks “Invisigoth?” about an electronic address and Fox Mulder inquires to a character standing nearby “Are you Invisigoth?” they establish another node “Visigoth” in a continuous and universal network, they splice the sprawling plateau of the Visigothic Idea’s ontological infinity.[19] The success of this splicing, this reterritorialization of the Visigothic Idea, depends on the capital that an actor has within a network. When Gilmore Girls, for instance, rebirths Visigoth and presents the idea in a certain way, that brings or sustains an actualization of Visigoth in a more concrete way across a wide chain of actors (viewers) inside of a specific, historical, popular network, as opposed to a historian eliciting the Visigoths, as the historian typically has less networking capital than a Hollywood actor. Yet, the historian holds the power of radicality.
Historiography is effective by revealing hidden knowledge and meaning in the present by way of the past broken through into it, while language and scenes in the narrative operate as nodes for alternative historical paths, as ways for the historian to expose the logics, or defining features, of the present situation. As a category, then, history should preserve fidelity to this event, the Event. The evental as historical category reflects a fidelity to an alternative truth, but also serves as a reminder that genuine fidelity to it – to the evental truth, e.g., the Visigothic Idea – should never reach completion (hence Isidore’s theological commitments to historiography as form and the open process of conversion[20]). The event of radical change engendered by the historian is a perpetual, universal process that is never completed: full conversion would equal the end of the Idea’s presence. If and when it is forced and becomes a declared meaning – when the historian performs as the actors in our series do, confirming the ideology of the present by reaching into the Visigothic network – it retreats as a truth. This reduction of the universal to a particular situation transcends the referent Idea without diminishing its universality or, as such, its networking capacities. The Visigothic Idea, like the Communist Idea or the Trinitarian Truth, as a universal can never be permanently reduced to the singular, whether it is the 7th-century Hispanian or the 21st-century American or the chronologically independent Kepler-452b.
And yet, each of these historical events – like the conversion process, hence the early medieval Christian anxiety – opens up the present to alternative existence and meaning: Lorelai’s Visigoths are a potential caesura, a true historical event resulting from of a logic within a situation (here American capitalist ideology) reaching an event horizon followed by the indeterminate announcement of the excess (that knowledge which does not fit into the logic of the present, i.e., the Visigoths as monstrous to the logic of the present and that as being their admirable quality). The emergence of the excess, what I call elsewhere refer to as the Antihistorical act, historically awakens the political subject and ties history formally to the pre-political and the political.[21] The subject is an exception to the situation, in a relationship to something in its world as also to something outside of it, an alternative truth, and it is at this level that history is interesting, relevant and progressive regardless of whether it is pre-modern or modern, Eurocentric or not, because it is here that the subject can touch the infinite and elicit alterity. Political solutions emerge from beyond history, yet history is fundamental to their creation. Historiography is a perpetual dialectic – between history and politics – and this is why it is entangled with politics and necessary for alterity: History is radical potential; the historical is, as Lorelai shows, the confirmative.
NOTES
[a] A version of this essay was first published as Michael J. Kelly, “The Visigothic Idea: Are the Visigoths still Networking?,” in Social and Intellectual Networking in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Michael J. Kelly and K. Patrick Fazioli (Gracchi Books, 2023), 13–26.
[1] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” Season 3, Episode 9, dir. Kenny Ortega, writ. Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, first aired Nov. 26, 2002; Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (New York: Grove Press, 2011).
[2] Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, “I’m so Happy that Josh is Happy,” Season 1, Episode 7, dir. Lawrence Trilling, writ. Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna, first aired Nov. 23, 2015.
[3] On the Ardaburii see Aleksander Paradziński, “Inclusion and Exclusion of ‘Barbarians’ in the Roman Elites of the Fifth Century: The Case of Aspar’s Family,” in Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, ed. Erica Buchberger and Yaniv Fox (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 259–78.
[4] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” at 2 min.
[5] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” at 2 min.
[6] On this reading of Isidore’s De Origine Gothorum (Historia Gothorum) see Michael J. Kelly, Isidore of Seville and the “Liber Iudiciorum”: The Struggle for the Past in the Visigothic Kingdom,The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 80 (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2021), 114–17. For his expressed distaste of the Burgundians, see Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm. 12, ls. 1-8, ed. and trans. W.B. Anderson, Loeb Classic Library 296 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 212.
[7] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” at 3:30 min.
[8] See the Book of Daniel 13.
[9] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” at 19 min.
[10] For discussion on Sidonius and culinary culture in the period see Emmanuelle Raga, “Romans and Barbarians at the Table: Banquets and Food as Tools of Distinction according to Sidonius Apollinaris (Fifth-Century Gaul),” in Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, ed. Erica Buchberger and Yaniv Fox (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 239–58.
[11] Gilmore Girls, “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” at 19 min.
[12] Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,” Season 3, Episode 26, dir. Cliff Bole, writ. Gene Roddenberry, first aired June 16, 1990, at 20 min.
[13] IV Toledo’s canon 75, ed. Gonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez, La Colección Canónica Hispana 5(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992), 252.
[14] Form. Wis. 20, ed. Edorta Córcoles Olaitz, Las “Formulae Wisigothicae:” Aproximación a la práctica jurídica visigoda (Lecce: Edizioni Grifio, 2010), 105–12.
[15] Inventionis Zoili, 4, ls, 8-10, ed. Ángel Fábrega Grau, Pasionario Hispánico (Siglos VII-XII) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), 380.
[16] Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois, 16, ch. 25.
[17] For a theoretical grounding of the Kantian “Idea” see Alain Badiou, “The Communist Hypothesis,” New Left Review 49 (2008): np, and, of course, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, especially on the transcendental aesthetic.
[18] Neil Postman, “My Graduation Speech,” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 107, no. 2 (2008): 161–64, at 162.
[19] The X-Files, “Kill Switch,” Season 5, Episode 11, dir. Rob Bowman, writ. Chris Carter, William Gibson, and Tom Maddox, first aired February 15, 1998, at 12 min.
[20] Conversion is the continual process of preparing for Judgment Day: Revelations 20. On Isidore’s views of conversion, including as a gradual process of learning, see his Sent., 2.8 and DVI, 28. In the secondary literature, see Henriette-Rika Benveniste, “On the Language of Conversion, Visigothic Spain Revisited,” Historein 6 (2006): 72–87, and Wolfram Drews (The Unknown Neighbour: The Jew in the Thought of Isidore of Seville [Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2006], 224, n. 134), who argues that Isidore “regards the daily conversion of a Christian as a voluntary act. Every Christian is called upon to convert, which is understood as an active process […]. The conversion is brought about and made by God’s grace.” Also, Jacques Fontaine calls the Isidorian Renaissance Isidore’s “continuous conversion” of the Visigoths (Jacques Fontaine, “Conversion et culture chez les Wisigoths d’Espagne,” Settimane di Studio 14 [1967]: 87–147, at 132). Isidore’s theological position is mediated through Pope Gregory the Great who said, in a 591 letter to Virgilius and the bishops in Arles and Marseilles, “adhibendus ergo illis est sermo, qui et errorum in ipsis spinas urere debeat et praedicando quod in his tenebrascit inluminet.” (Gregorii I papae Registrum Epistolarum, Libri I-VII, ed. Paul Ewald and Ludovic M. Hartmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica[Berlin: Weidmann, 1891], I, 45, 71–72). There were multiple occasions on which Pope Gregory demanded kind treatment of Jews, about which see Solomon Grayzel, “The Papal Bull Sicut Judeis,” in Studies in Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman, ed. Meir Ben-Horin, Bernard D. Weinryb, and Solomon Zeitlin (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1962), 243–80. For Isidore’s Sententiae see Pierre Cazier, Isidorus Hispalensis Sententiae, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 111 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), and for his DVI, Carmen Codoñer Merino, El “De Viris Illustribus” de Isidoro de Sevilla: Estudio y Edición crítica (Salamanca: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1964).
[21] On my notion of “Antihistory,” see Michael J. Kelly, “Approaching a Non-Modern Historical Theory: Catholic Theology, Alain Badiou, and Antihistory,” in Understanding Badiou, Understanding Modernism, ed. Arka Chattopadhyay and Arthur Rose (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 153–67.
Bibliography
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Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 1557. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b100324392
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Primary / Reference
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 2011.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. “I’m so Happy that Josh is Happy.” Season 1, Episode 7. Directed by Lawrence Trilling. Written by Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna. First aired November 23, 2015.
Córcoles Olaitz, Edorta, ed. Las “Formulae Wisigothicae:” Aproximación a la práctica jurídica visigoda. Lecce: Edizioni Grifio, 2010.
Gilmore Girls. “A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving,” Season 3, Episode 9. Directed by Kenny Ortega. Written by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. First aired November 26, 2002.
Inventionis Zoili. In Pasionario Hispánico (Siglos VII-XII), edited by Ángel Fábrega Grau, 379–81. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953.
Isidore of Seville. De Viris Illustribus. Carmen Codoñer Merino. El “De Viris Illustribus” de Isidoro de Sevilla: Estudio y Edición crítica. Salamanca: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1964.
Isidore of Seville. Sententiae. Pierre Cazier. Isidorus Hispalensis Sententiae. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 111. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998.
Martínez Díez, Gonzalo, and Félix Rodríguez, eds. La Colección Canónica Hispana 5. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992.
Montesquieu. De l’Esprit des Lois. Paris, 1748.
Pope Gregory I. Gregorii I papae Registrum Epistolarum, Libri I-VII, edited Paul Ewald and Ludovic M. Hartmann. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Berlin: Weidmann, 1891.
Sidonius Apollinaris. Letters and Poems. Edited and translated by W. B. Anderson. Loeb Classic Library 296. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1.” Season 3, Episode 26. Directed by Cliff Bole. Written by Gene Roddenberry. First aired June 16, 1990.
The X-Files. “Kill Switch.” Season 5, Episode 11. Directed by Rob Bowman. Written by Chris Carter, William Gibson, and Tom Maddox. First aired February 15, 1998.
Secondary
Badiou, Alain. “The Communist Hypothesis.” New Left Review 49 (2008): np.
Benveniste, Henriette-Rika. “On the Language of Conversion, Visigothic Spain Revisited.” Historein 6 (2006): 72–87.
Drews, Wolfram. The Unknown Neighbour: The Jew in the Thought of Isidore of Seville. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Fontaine, Jacques. “Conversion et culture chez les Wisigoths d’Espagne.” Settimane di Studio 14 (1967): 87–147.
Grayzel, Solomon. “The Papal Bull Sicut Judeis.” In Studies in Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman, edited by Meir Ben-Horin, Bernard D. Weinryb, and Solomon Zeitlin, 243–80. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1962.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Kelly, Michael J. Alain Badiou: A Graphic Guide. London: Icon Books, 2014.
Kelly, Michael J.“Approaching a Non-Modern Historical Theory: Catholic Theology, Alain Badiou, and Antihistory.” In Understanding Badiou, Understanding Modernism, edited by Arka Chattopadhyay and Arthur Rose, 153–67. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.
Kelly, Michael J. Isidore of Seville and the “Liber Iudiciorum”: The Struggle for the Past in the Visigothic Kingdom,The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 80. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Paradziński, Aleksander. “Inclusion and Exclusion of ‘Barbarians’ in the Roman Elites of the Fifth Century: The Case of Aspar’s Family.” In Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, edited by Erica Buchberger and Yaniv Fax, 259–78. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
Postman, Neil. “My Graduation Speech.” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 107, no. 2 (2008): 161–64.
Raga, Emmanuelle. “Romans and Barbarians at the Table: Banquets and Food as Tools of Distinction according to Sidonius Apollinaris (Fifth-Century Gaul).” In Inclusion and Exclusion in Mediterranean Christianities, 400-800, edited by Erica Buchberger and Yaniv Fax, 239–58. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019.
Visigothic Symposia 