Oana Cojocaru (Relevance of the Humanities Fellow, Oct ‘24 – Feb ‘25) will give a talk on:

A Latourian approach to hope and healing in Medieval Byzantium (9th – 10th centuries)

30 January 2025 (Thursday), at 16:30.

Moderated by Mariana Malinova

Abstract: Since Early Christianity, saints’ cults have played a crucial role in shaping emotional and social experiences, offering avenues for individuals and communities to seek help, express their hopes, fears, and anxieties, and voice their emotions in a culturally sanctioned way. The project explores how various local communities in medieval Byzantium engaged with hope through the veneration of saints, which provided a performative space for negotiating life crises, disability, and illness.

The project analyses the miracle accounts included in several hagiographical texts of the 9th and 10th centuries, which not only reflect these experiences but also serve as catalysts for shaping various discourses of hope within Byzantine society. By framing hope as an emotional practice within the context of lived religion – conceiving religion not only as a belief system but as a set of actions and behaviors embedded in daily life, I employ Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a guiding theoretical framework, treating miraculous healings as an evolving repertoire of collaborative practices within social-material actor-networks, where the cure-seeker, the saints, their relics, substances, clergy, and community members interact to foster hope and enable healing.

This approach sheds light onto the dynamics and heterogeneity of these complex networks of human and non-human actors where agency is distributed, and healing emerges as an ongoing negotiation among all participants.