Tuesday is, of course, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. There is by now a considerable body of pirate historiography. But is the field of piracy studies sufficiently well theorized?
Aye, often have I axed myself, only to be distracted by the plundering of booty.
Fortunately the Piracy Studies Institute has taken up the slack:
Scholars of Piracy Studies explore and develop theoretical models to analyze, critique, and plunder cultural forms and social relations in order to create geographically transgressive symbolic categories of race, gender, and ethnic identity. The goal of the Piracy Studies Institute is to promote the study of shared assumptions, problems, and commitments of the various piratanical discourses. Begun largely in response to extraordinary changes in the ‘humane sciences,’ both in terms of methodological complexity and interdisciplinary orientation, the PSI seeks to bring about a confrontation among the disciplines with the aim of furthering the figurative and literal rape of all land-locked peoples irrespective of race, class, or gender. The PSI sanctions methodological and murderological diversity in the critical reconsideration of the rearticulations and recombinations of all them put to the knife. The PSI also sponsors two mini-seminars each year, given by scholars from outside the PSI who invite students to participate in their raids-in-progress in a series of a one- to two-week seminars at undisclosed locations up-and-down the Eastern Seaboard.
I almost regret having to say that this is satirical. But maybe that should be clarified, lest it end up in a speech by Lynne Cheney.
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Timothy Burke 09.15.06 at 4:24 pm
Pirate theory.
otto 09.15.06 at 5:56 pm
George Macdonald Fraser’s immortal The Pyrates would supply suitable vocabulary.
Scott Eric Kaufman 09.15.06 at 6:01 pm
Just say “no” to clarification. I would love nothing more than a rousing condemnation from Lynne Cheney.
Richard 09.15.06 at 6:18 pm
I do absolutely regret that it’s satirical, and not an institute I could be employed by.
Like all good satire, it’s scarily close to the truth of much recent pirate-focused literature, which tends to be heavily laden with wishful thinking about “geographically transgressive symbolic categories of race, gender, and ethnic identity.” Jo Stanley’s paper in Journal of Transport History says it all: “And after the cross-dressing cabin boys and whaling wives?”
bad Jim 09.16.06 at 3:11 am
A pirate flag: argent, text gules: “Pour dieu et la liberte”
Steve 09.16.06 at 11:10 pm
Like all good satire, it’s scarily close to the truth of much recent pirate-focused literature, which tends to be heavily laden with wishful thinking about “geographically transgressive symbolic categories of race, gender, and ethnic identity.
But there’s more than a grain of truth in that, at least as regards racial and ethnic identity. (Ann Bonny, wherever she ended up, could never have guessed how examplary her story as recounted in the General History would one day be.) I’m just an interested layman, but Marcus Rediker’s book on the subject seemed pretty solidly grounded, and he strongly suggests that the urge to sign the articles was pretty universal among the common sailors of the day (and that the racial tolerance of pirates may be frequently overstated but was probably more of a fair shake than could be obtained in, say, London or Madrid).
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