Hypatia's Politico-Philosophical Parrhesia: A Foucauldian Analysis of Kingsley's Hypatia

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Published: Aug 21, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.9053
Keywords:
Foucault Hypatia parrhesia power relations Kingsley
Nasser Maleki
Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6379-3114
Mohammad Javad Haj'jari
Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2704-4930
Abstract
Using the model of the early Christian Church in his novel Hypatia, Charles Kingsley criticised mid-nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism for its bigotry. As such, his historiographic rendering of Hypatia's life highlights the power relations between the early Christian Church and Hellenistic philosophy as a politico-religious allegory against mid-nineteenth-century Catholicism and its intolerance of female intellectuality and personal faith. Highlighting Kingsley's views accordingly, a Foucauldian analysis of Hypatia's politico-philosophical parrhesia, that is, speaking the truth in the light of political philosophy before Cyril's early Christian theocracy, seems intriguing. Hypatia represents an illuminating world of power struggles between Hypatia's peaceful intellectuality and the early Christian bigotry, a fact represented in Hypatia's virtue and knowledge before the blind fundamentalism of the religious oligarchy and the outrageous extremism of the early Christian mob, only to culminate in the lynching of the innocent Hypatia. Kingsley's historiographic novel thus tries to historicise his attacks against nineteenth-century Tractarian Catholic extremes regarding the practice of religion and gender issues.
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Author Biographies
Nasser Maleki, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Associate Professor in English Literature, Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Mohammad Javad Haj'jari, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

PhD Candidate in English Literature, Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

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