From Saint to Patient : The Russian Holy Fool as a Figure for Political Usage

Ming-Hui HUANG — 2014-03-11T18:07:12Z

People living in this world carry a stigma ; to a certain extent, this stigma remains for a period of time and exists in a kind of constructed space. Social stigma often emerges in the situation when visual experience helps to translate the stigma in favour of the stigmatised. The eyes which observe are like a double-edged sword ; it can slash the stigmatised with its judgemental perception, or cut through judgements to perceive a sacred vision of the person. The visibility of a certain distinctiveness can be
emphasized as a divine gift which is beyond our general understanding or as a taboo which should be avoided for the sake of social order. The holy fool in Russia bears a stigma which has been defined in various ways and has been explained as the condition when there is a necessity.

The aim of this article is to take the holy fool as a figure to examine the rule for distinction and to question the issue of ‘otherness' in an atmosphere where every individual (bearing more or less a stigma) should have his/her right of survival.
Abnormality may be a threat to the stability of system, but can be an alternative to new invention. Stigma happens in fluid and relative situations. In multinational Russia, an impulse to show emotional hostility to irrationality has been reduced to a certain level for the sake of adjusting one's political act upon non-Russians and further of evoking one's awareness of equality within the Empire. Regardless of linguistic
identity, the changing conceptions of ‘otherness' which are applied to the
understanding of the non-Russians as ‘natural subjects' under the juridical sense and/or allegorically medical fables, became an alternative reference to the holy fool whose murky utterances, incoherent phrases and seemly provocative acts may not be considered as the most ‘foreign elements in the “body politic” of the Russian Empire.

Ming-Hui HUANG is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Russian and Slavonic
Studies at the University of Sheffield (the UK).

Dilemma of Distinction : Making Inorodets an Inseparable ‘Us'

Ming-Hui HUANG — 2014-02-10T22:06:38Z

The definition of inorodtsy(1) evolved over the course of the nineteenth century along with Russia's eastward expansion and encounter with native peoples including Finno-Ugric, Samoedic, Turkic, Tungusic, Mongolian and Palosiberian language groups. As far as the Russian state was concerned, an inorodets, a person ‘of other origin' (ino = other, rod = birth, origin), was generally supposed to become more like a Russian who in fact, associated inorodets with a referent who is a ‘congenital and apparently perennial outsider.' The ‘way of life' (sedentary or nomadic) was insufficient to function as the essential criterion of differentiation between Russians
and non-Russians on the eastern frontier. For the sake of creating a new mode of categorisation for the population, the administration demanded a more discriminating classification.

My interest lies in looking at the closing metaphor which serves to shed light on the perception of the holy fool, the most ‘alien' (inorodets) and/or ‘alien body' (inorodcheskie tely) of the Orthodox tradition, together with ‘all the permutation of meaning and role' attached to the newly invented term inorodtsy. Regardless of linguistic identity, the changing conceptions of ‘otherness' which are applied to the understanding of inorodtsy as ‘natural subjects' under the juridical sense and/or allegorically medical fables, became an alternative reference to the holy fool (and/or shaman) whose murky utterances, incoherent phrases and seemly provocative acts may not be considered as the most ‘foreign elements in the “body politic” of the
Russian Empire.'

1 Inorodtsy is the plural of inorodets which can be translated as a non-Russian alien.

Ming-Hui HUANG is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield (the UK).

Ici et ailleurs

From Saint to Patient : The Russian Holy Fool as a Figure for Political Usage

Dilemma of Distinction : Making Inorodets an Inseparable ‘Us'