Excommunication

Always connect—that is the imperative of today’s media. But what about those moments when media cease to function properly, when messages go beyond the sender and receiver to become excluded from the world of communication itself—those messages that state: “There will be no more messages”? In this book, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark turn our usual understanding of media and mediation on its head by arguing that these moments reveal the ways the impossibility of communication is integral to communication itself—instances they call excommunication. In three linked essays, Excommunication pursues this elusive topic by looking at mediation in the face of banishment, exclusion, and heresy, and by contemplating the possibilities of communication with the great beyond. First, Galloway proposes an original theory of mediation based on classical literature and philosophy, using Hermes, Iris, and the Furies to map out three of the most prevalent modes of mediation today—mediation as exchange, as illumination, and as network. Then, Thacker goes boldly beyond Galloway’s classification scheme by examining the concept of excommunication through the secret link between the modern horror genre and medieval mysticism. Charting a trajectory of examples from H. P. Lovecraft to Meister Eckhart, Thacker explores those instances when one communicates or connects with the inaccessible, dubbing such modes of mediation “haunted” or “weird” to underscore their inaccessibility. Finally, Wark evokes the poetics of the infuriated swarm as a queer politics of heresy that deviates from both media theory and the traditional left. He posits a critical theory that celebrates heresy and that is distinct from those that now venerate Saint Paul. Reexamining commonplace definitions of media, mediation, and communication, Excommunication offers a glimpse into the realm of the nonhuman to find a theory of mediation adequate to our present condition.

This book focuses on excommunication, outlawry, and the connections between them in medieval Icelandic legal and literary sources. It argues that outlawry was a punishment shaped by the conventions and structures of excommunication as it developed in canon law.

Excommunication was the medieval churchâs most severe sanction, used against people at all levels of society. It was a spiritual, social, and legal penalty. Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England offers a fresh perspective on medieval excommunication by taking a multi-dimensional approach to discussion of the sanction. Using England as a case study, Felicity Hill analyzes the intentions behind excommunication; how it was perceived and received, at both national and local level; the effects it had upon individuals and society. The study is structured thematically to argue that our understanding of excommunication should be shaped by how it was received within the community as well as the intentions of canon law and clerics. Challenging past assumptions about the inefficacy of excommunication, Hill argues that the sanction remained a useful weapon for the clerical elite: bringing into dialogue a wide range of source material allows âeffectivenessâ to be judged within a broader context. The complexity of political communication and action are revealed through public, conflicting, accepted and rejected excommunications. Excommunication could be manipulated to great effect in political conflicts and was an important means by which political events were communicated down the social strata of medieval society. Through its exploration of excommunication, the book reveals much about medieval cursing, pastoral care, fears about the afterlife, social ostracism, shame and reputation, and mass communication.

In The Excommunication of Elizabeth I, Aislinn Muller examines the excommunication and deposition of Queen Elizabeth I of England by the Roman Catholic Church, and its political afterlife during her reign.

“Excommunication.” To our modern ears, the very word evokes something dark and foreboding, something out-of-place in contemporary society. Many associate excommunication with the medieval Church, with the Inquisition and witch-hunts, and think it has no place in our more enlightened, tolerant times. Yet this ecclesiastical discipline is as relevant today as it was five hundred or a thousand years ago, an unfortunate last resort in combating the rebellion the Church faces in every age from some of her members. In this intriguing book, canon and civil lawyer Edward N. Peters offers a compelling presentation of excommunication based on the current Code of Canon Law, answering some of the most commonly-asked questions about this most serious canonical penalty. Among the questions considered here: What is excommunication? How is a person excommunicated? Isn’t excommunication an offense against Christian charity? Is there any support in the Bible for excommunication? Can Catholic politicians be excommunicated for defying Church teaching, especially on abortion? This book is an especially timely resource. It will help you understand the larger role excommunication may soon play in promoting greater fidelity to the truths of the Catholic faith.

A re-evaluation of late medieval church courts' role in the enforcement of minor credit through the widespread, frequent excommunication of debtors.