Bodies of Suffering

Discourse and Power in the Martyrs of Hagiography

Abstract

The intention of this essay is to explore the relationship between body discourse and power in the accounts the martyrs of early hagiography that were the precursors to and influential upon the prolific hagiographies of Medieval Europe: the mother and her seven sons of 2 Maccabees, The Scillitan Martyrs, and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. These narratives provide a modality of opposition to domination and subjectivization in which the body, through the performance non-performance of public rituals, is represented as having the capacity to resist the assimilation of community and self by hegemonic discourse and power.