Joan of Arc in America

Joan of Arc as cultural phenomenon is surprisingly present during this millennial era. The fascination with Joan's story reveals, I believe, a nostalgia for certainty in what is frequently (and loosely) called the postmodern era. There is something about Joan of Arc that appeals to the present obsession with blurred boundaries, and thus with the collapse of "clear" categories (of subjectivity, gender, power, the historical Church, and so on). At the same time, however, Joan's story tantalizes us today because of its unexplained passion and conviction. It seems to presuppose an unacknowledged apodictic which, for secular writers of contemporary theory, both confounds and attracts us. In this essay, I would like to contextualize aspects of Joan as instances of what might be called the "vestigial" traces of the issues she complicates. Metaphor and historical context are here to be understood as symbiotic.

On October 13th 1996, the Associated Press ran the following article:

A fiery reenactment of Joan of Arc's death— complete with a black-robed executioner burning a statue of the saint— prompted protests along with somber contemplation at Marquette University (in Milwaukee). "In the name of justice, I demand you stop!" a woman shouted as the "executioner" walked up and torched the statue. The burning Sunday night was the culmination of a two-week long commemoration of Joan of Arc's canonization at the private Catholic school. Joan of Arc is a revered figure at the campus, which has a chapel, brought stone by stone from overseas, where the teen-aged girl was said to have prayed for guidance before leading the armies of the dauphin Charles into battle against the English in 1429.

The ceremony sparked debate in part because the papier-maché statue was holding a cross. Some called it blasphemous while others objected to the anti-women aspect of the funeral pyre. The school gospel choir refused to participate in the ceremony for "personal and religious reasons." One teacher noted, "I can't believe the things we do at this university in the name of Christianity."

In the ceremony, several corollary events had been organized: an iron cross emerged from inside the papier-maché effigy as it burned; there followed a sprinkling of water from the baptismal font on the embers; and finally, a dove was released "to symbolize Joan's soul."

Upon looking more closely at this rather intriguing "happening," one learns that the protests were motivated by four main reasons. In the words of the director of the closing ceremony (Fr. Grant Garinger, S.J.), the reasons are as follows:

1. There is a connection between burning crosses and the Ku Klux Klan.
2. Some people equated the burning of the statue with the burning of Southern churches in the United States.
3. By burning a female statue, some people defined this as a symbol of violence toward women.
4. Some people had the idea that the statue was for idolizing.

"Some people," it seems, had a great deal of negative feelings toward this event. The organizers, on the other hand, felt that the burning was properly very emotional. One organizer said, "It was remarkable to see us all with tears pouring down our faces." She added, "We knew what was going to happen, we planned it."

Lurking beneath the four reasons for protest in Milwaukee is a series of assumptions having as much to do with the millennium culture in North America as with (of course) Joan of Arc herself.

After having been nearly forgotten during several centuries (except for a ribald and notoriously outrageous mock-epic by Voltaire), Joan was revived as an icon by, strangely enough, Schiller. His Jungfrau von Orleans (1801) brought praise even from the French historian Michelet, who saw that play as the source of Joan's cultural resurrection. After that, the cumulative effect in France was astounding. In the nineteenth century, Michelet obsessed on Joan — particularly in the fifth volume of his History of France (1840s). At the same time, a young and skeptical scholar...