Critiquing privileged spaces: Seeing and (re)envisioning the ‘technologies’ of “Beowulf” and Anglo -Saxon studies

This dissertation examines the disciplinary practices of Anglo-Saxon studies and the modes of operation it has practiced as a modern, technical academic discipline, and analyzes these in terms of recent philosophical developments in critical theory of technology. It shows Anglo-Saxon studies has become a self-isolating field, and applies critical theory of technology as a means of addressing the field\u27s conception of its focus, audiences, and purposes. Thanks to the work of J. R. R. Tolkien and a generation of science-fiction and fantasy literature, Anglo-Saxon studies holds a fair of amount of popular interest in western cultures. Yet this interest is largely escapist, and thus is as far from applied as possible. In addition, the modern and technological functioning of the field of Anglo-Saxon studies works to wall off the field from social and political connection. Indeed the modern philosophical epistemology broadly accepted in the field deems all political involvement contaminating. In response post-modern philosophy has suggested that the latter position is itself political, and thus we cannot be apolitical. Therefore the approaches that have effectively critiqued the continuing development of our technological world can be brought to bear on the development of the field of Anglo-Saxon studies. Chapter One explains this problem as explained by Allen Frantzen but develops and connects it to the issues of technological development more broadly. Chapter Two explores and explains Andrew Feenberg\u27s Critical Theory of Technology and its relationships to Anglo-Saxon studies. Chapter Three examines some of the practices of research in Anglo-Saxon studies and shows how socio-technical forces effect practice, and suggests ways scholars are working at these problems, but how we still can go further. Chapter Four suggests ways we can apply the perspective developed in the preceding chapters to teaching and researching Beowulf