WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.020 Welcome back to Adelaide's Festival of Ideas and to Late Night Live. 2 00:00:06.580 --> 00:00:11.500 Well, the world has no shortage of radicals, whether religious or political, 3 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:17.060 all confident about their right to express themselves however they choose. 4 00:00:17.700 --> 00:00:21.640 But is the world actually a bit short of revolutionaries? 5 00:00:21.900 --> 00:00:26.240 Today's guest argues that if you take the life of Joan of Arc as an example, 6 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:31.100 putting aside the various ways in which she's been cast as a hero and a martyr, 7 00:00:32.080 --> 00:00:35.960 she's a very useful muse as a true radical. 8 00:00:37.140 --> 00:00:42.560 Dr Ali Al-Azadi is a Melbourne writer of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, literary criticism. 9 00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:47.280 He's a lecturer in creative writing and literary studies at Monash 10 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:53.440 and his latest book is called The Last Days of Joan of Arc and it will be published next year. 11 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:56.100 You argue that the... 12 00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:59.780 The contemporary individual is too caught up in the anxieties of identity 13 00:01:00.620 --> 00:01:03.540 to become a genuine agent of change. 14 00:01:05.160 --> 00:01:06.680 The anxieties of identity. 15 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:08.640 The anxieties of identity, yeah, yeah, definitely. 16 00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:11.460 Look, just before, when people said they couldn't hear you, 17 00:01:11.460 --> 00:01:13.320 I was hoping that they hadn't heard that question. 18 00:01:13.880 --> 00:01:16.200 Because it is a very controversial question. 19 00:01:16.380 --> 00:01:21.360 People, other speakers at writers' events and so on have been... 20 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:24.300 Now, is that the term non-platformed? Is that what it's called? 21 00:01:24.440 --> 00:01:26.080 When people who disagree with them, 22 00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:27.260 they just get up and leave. 23 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:31.340 Because they have said things that are long to do with identity 24 00:01:31.340 --> 00:01:32.880 that people don't like hearing. 25 00:01:33.220 --> 00:01:37.100 And some of these people who are kind of assuming these roles of activism 26 00:01:37.800 --> 00:01:40.400 proclaim to be on the left, apparently. 27 00:01:40.520 --> 00:01:45.620 I'm not sure if the left really is about being intolerant towards other people's point of view, 28 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:47.040 especially around the question of identity. 29 00:01:47.640 --> 00:01:49.700 Now, identity is a very modern phenomenon. 30 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:52.420 It is kind of... 31 00:01:52.420 --> 00:01:56.020 It's, of course, socially constructed, you know, such as gender identity or nationalism. 32 00:01:56.240 --> 00:01:57.360 No one has a... 33 00:01:57.360 --> 00:02:01.220 You know, no one has an Australian or French or Iranian gene. 34 00:02:01.440 --> 00:02:03.940 You know, it's something that we become later as we grow up. 35 00:02:04.040 --> 00:02:06.140 So national identity, gender identity and so on, 36 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:08.300 they're clearly sort of culturally constructed. 37 00:02:08.380 --> 00:02:11.600 But what worries me today is that on top of it, 38 00:02:11.640 --> 00:02:16.020 in order, I guess, to address some of the anxieties 39 00:02:16.020 --> 00:02:19.380 about how culturally and socially constructed it is, 40 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:20.880 how artificial all of this is, 41 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:22.520 we now are going... 42 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:24.040 Returning to the biological, 43 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:25.960 or to some kind of a biological determinant, 44 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:29.340 to talk about racial identity and gender identity 45 00:02:29.340 --> 00:02:31.880 and even sexual identity and so on, 46 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:36.980 or to do with ability or disability or age or whatever, 47 00:02:37.220 --> 00:02:39.900 as though it is completely posited in our bodies. 48 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:43.640 Now, that, to me, is a very dangerous direction to go, 49 00:02:43.700 --> 00:02:45.900 especially for those of us who want to be on the left, 50 00:02:45.940 --> 00:02:47.080 who want to transform society. 51 00:02:47.440 --> 00:02:50.520 And myself, I think that true revolution 52 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:53.940 will have to be a universalist phenomenon that brings us together. 53 00:02:54.180 --> 00:02:55.360 So to me, identity, 54 00:02:55.360 --> 00:02:56.420 the notion of identity, 55 00:02:56.560 --> 00:02:58.260 has a whole range of philosophical problems 56 00:02:58.260 --> 00:02:59.360 and biological determinism, 57 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:01.900 but ultimately it divides people. 58 00:03:02.100 --> 00:03:05.060 It doesn't result in solidarity and unity. 59 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:08.740 How does Joan head us in the right direction? 60 00:03:09.100 --> 00:03:11.900 Well, that's a great thing. 61 00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:15.380 I think that she, you know, 62 00:03:15.480 --> 00:03:17.880 I mean, her story, her general outline of the story 63 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:18.820 is quite well known. 64 00:03:19.140 --> 00:03:19.900 She's a... 65 00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:22.660 Don't hesitate to repeat it. 66 00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:23.340 Okay, great. 67 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:25.340 I'd love to talk about it. 68 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:27.320 So we kind of, I mean, I'll just kind of... 69 00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:28.780 In terms of the context, 70 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:34.420 she happens in the context of the longest war in human history, 71 00:03:34.500 --> 00:03:35.660 the so-called Hundred Years' War, 72 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:38.380 which is not just a war between France and England, 73 00:03:38.420 --> 00:03:39.440 although that's how it's remembered, 74 00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:43.540 primarily in an Anglophone country like Australia 75 00:03:43.540 --> 00:03:46.440 because of the cultural significance of Shakespeare and Coe 76 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:49.240 and Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt and so on, 77 00:03:49.300 --> 00:03:51.440 but it's actually longer than 100 years 78 00:03:51.440 --> 00:03:54.840 and it involves just about all of Western Europe in some capacity. 79 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:57.440 So, for example, the Italian bankers, 80 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:01.020 the burgeoning new bourgeois centres in Italy are involved. 81 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:02.560 They're betting money on the English. 82 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:04.960 The Flemish especially are involved. 83 00:04:05.260 --> 00:04:07.560 The new sort of burgeoning mercantile industrial 84 00:04:08.920 --> 00:04:11.300 and capitalist powers are involved as well. 85 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:13.160 It is a war that involves everybody. 86 00:04:14.220 --> 00:04:16.860 And nation states as such, of course, don't exist. 87 00:04:16.940 --> 00:04:18.920 There is no such a thing as a quote-unquote France. 88 00:04:20.060 --> 00:04:21.640 There is a kingdom of France, 89 00:04:21.860 --> 00:04:24.380 but that's a very loose amalgam of duchies. 90 00:04:24.380 --> 00:04:25.340 At times, they don't... 91 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:26.360 They submit to the king. 92 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:27.360 At times, they don't. 93 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:31.960 Jeanne herself is an important element 94 00:04:31.960 --> 00:04:34.740 in constructing the notion of the nation state, 95 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:35.960 which is yet to come. 96 00:04:36.200 --> 00:04:38.000 She is, if you like, a nationalist, 97 00:04:38.120 --> 00:04:41.360 but I would say that she is what we would call a civic nationalist, 98 00:04:41.740 --> 00:04:45.020 somebody who believes in the notion of a centralised sovereign power 99 00:04:45.020 --> 00:04:47.400 in order to protect the people, 100 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:51.820 especially the peasantry, from war, pillage, brigands, 101 00:04:52.020 --> 00:04:54.180 and the dukes and the warring feudal powers. 102 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:55.420 How does she happen? 103 00:04:56.340 --> 00:04:57.200 Excellent question. 104 00:04:57.440 --> 00:04:59.240 I think, for one thing, I would say, 105 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.700 everything we know about her seems so unlikely and unusual 106 00:05:02.700 --> 00:05:04.880 that there are a number of conspiracy theories. 107 00:05:05.140 --> 00:05:06.500 And they're pretty intriguing. 108 00:05:06.760 --> 00:05:08.640 I think you have some interest in them. 109 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:11.940 Conspiracy theories in general, they try to rationalise, 110 00:05:11.940 --> 00:05:14.380 but at the same time, they're completely off the mark. 111 00:05:14.460 --> 00:05:16.960 So one of them is that she's actually the bastard daughter 112 00:05:16.960 --> 00:05:18.900 of the Royal House of France, 113 00:05:19.080 --> 00:05:21.800 that she's actually the sister of the king 114 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:23.080 that she will later proclaim, 115 00:05:23.320 --> 00:05:24.160 and that's... 116 00:05:24.180 --> 00:05:25.820 She doesn't get burnt at their stake anyway. 117 00:05:26.060 --> 00:05:27.980 So another woman gets burnt in her place. 118 00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:29.740 She goes on to get married and have children. 119 00:05:30.620 --> 00:05:34.160 It's pretty crazy, but you can kind of see that they say, 120 00:05:34.220 --> 00:05:36.960 look, how could this absolutely unlikely event happen? 121 00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:39.340 Well, of course, there are parallels with Jesus, 122 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.940 who, as we all know, got married and ended up living in India. 123 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:44.180 India, is it? 124 00:05:44.360 --> 00:05:45.160 Right, OK. 125 00:05:45.700 --> 00:05:46.380 Yep, yep. 126 00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:47.320 I mean, who knows where? 127 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:50.320 Maybe Jeanne ended up in Australia somehow, I don't know. 128 00:05:50.880 --> 00:05:52.040 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 129 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:54.160 Well, that's the conspiracy theory. 130 00:05:54.180 --> 00:05:54.760 What's yours? 131 00:05:55.300 --> 00:06:00.200 My conspiracy theory is actually that the basic accounts are correct, 132 00:06:00.360 --> 00:06:05.240 that she is a peasant woman who's born in a village of Dongremi, 133 00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:06.680 possibly in 1412, 134 00:06:07.520 --> 00:06:11.260 probably not necessarily on the night of Epiphany, 135 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:12.840 which is what the tradition tells us. 136 00:06:12.860 --> 00:06:14.380 I think that's too good to be true 137 00:06:14.380 --> 00:06:17.040 for her to have been born on that sort of important day 138 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:18.220 of the Christian calendar. 139 00:06:19.280 --> 00:06:20.180 She is... 140 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:23.140 The village itself is on the border between two duchies, 141 00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:24.100 the Duchy of Lorraine, 142 00:06:24.180 --> 00:06:25.020 and the Duchy of Bars. 143 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:31.240 Her political affinity is with the French royal house Valois, 144 00:06:31.340 --> 00:06:32.540 because that's where her village is. 145 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:35.460 However, within the village, there are people who support the other side, 146 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:36.880 which is the Duchy of Burgundy, 147 00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:38.840 and that's who the English are allied with. 148 00:06:40.580 --> 00:06:42.240 She is an ordinary girl. 149 00:06:42.320 --> 00:06:44.440 Her family are tenant farmers. 150 00:06:44.620 --> 00:06:45.400 They're free farmers. 151 00:06:45.540 --> 00:06:47.100 That is to say, they're not serfs anymore. 152 00:06:47.340 --> 00:06:49.660 Serfdom has been abolished in France by this point, 153 00:06:49.900 --> 00:06:52.620 but they nevertheless don't own the land they work on. 154 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:54.040 They own their own house, 155 00:06:54.180 --> 00:06:56.040 but they have to work on the land of the dukes. 156 00:06:56.380 --> 00:06:59.340 So the dukes, in return, let them keep some of their product, 157 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:03.320 but extract bulk of it as a form of kind of exploitation, 158 00:07:03.660 --> 00:07:05.180 and that's how the nobles live. 159 00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:06.400 They live off the work of others, 160 00:07:06.460 --> 00:07:07.700 and that hasn't changed. 161 00:07:07.780 --> 00:07:08.800 That's still the case today. 162 00:07:08.900 --> 00:07:09.640 So little by little, 163 00:07:09.760 --> 00:07:11.060 I'm going to tease out the similarities 164 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:12.300 between her time and ours, 165 00:07:12.380 --> 00:07:15.240 but clearly the fact that the overwhelming majority of people 166 00:07:15.240 --> 00:07:17.560 work for others is a kind of... 167 00:07:18.080 --> 00:07:20.500 something that hasn't changed from late Middle Ages to today. 168 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:21.920 She... 169 00:07:22.340 --> 00:07:23.900 We know that something happens. 170 00:07:24.180 --> 00:07:25.640 She's a little bit of a... 171 00:07:25.640 --> 00:07:25.980 She's a little bit of a... 172 00:07:25.980 --> 00:07:27.040 She hears the so-called voices, 173 00:07:27.140 --> 00:07:29.340 and we can talk more about that later, 174 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:31.880 but that's over the next four... 175 00:07:31.880 --> 00:07:33.240 three or four years, 176 00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:36.280 she gets compelled by her voices to leave her village 177 00:07:36.280 --> 00:07:38.260 to basically run away from home 178 00:07:38.260 --> 00:07:42.920 and to go and see the captain of a nearby fortress 179 00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:44.380 called Robert de Bourricourt 180 00:07:44.380 --> 00:07:47.500 and convinces him to send her to meet the king, 181 00:07:47.760 --> 00:07:49.060 who is the French king, 182 00:07:49.240 --> 00:07:50.960 who is now being besieged 183 00:07:50.960 --> 00:07:53.940 and is about to be toppled by the English and the Burgundians. 184 00:07:54.180 --> 00:07:55.940 And when she arrives there, 185 00:07:56.020 --> 00:07:57.560 she is wearing a clothes of a man. 186 00:07:57.860 --> 00:08:00.180 She is disguised as a man for the journey, 187 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:02.840 but she hangs on to her masculine outfit, 188 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:08.000 and she repeats to the king of the French, 189 00:08:08.220 --> 00:08:08.880 the Charles, 190 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:09.280 she says, 191 00:08:09.300 --> 00:08:10.140 I've heard voices, 192 00:08:10.180 --> 00:08:12.760 I'm here to expel the English, 193 00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:13.840 end the war, 194 00:08:13.980 --> 00:08:16.800 and explicitly end the great misery of France. 195 00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:19.480 It beats Cinderella, doesn't it? 196 00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:21.080 I think so. 197 00:08:21.180 --> 00:08:21.760 I think so. 198 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:22.220 I mean... 199 00:08:22.880 --> 00:08:23.780 But these are transformations. 200 00:08:24.180 --> 00:08:24.760 There's a special fashion element there. 201 00:08:24.880 --> 00:08:25.860 I mean, you're absolutely... 202 00:08:25.860 --> 00:08:27.020 It's so similar in a way 203 00:08:27.020 --> 00:08:28.680 that we have this, you know, peasant girl 204 00:08:28.680 --> 00:08:31.900 who becomes a knight for a period 205 00:08:31.900 --> 00:08:34.040 and has to put on a special outfit, 206 00:08:34.260 --> 00:08:36.960 and there's a supernatural element in common. 207 00:08:37.020 --> 00:08:39.380 Well, here we are sitting in the 21st century 208 00:08:39.380 --> 00:08:42.700 when the armies, the mighty armies of the West, 209 00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:45.740 are still very reluctant to allow women into the ranks, 210 00:08:45.860 --> 00:08:48.140 let alone into senior roles. 211 00:08:48.380 --> 00:08:50.760 One of the gobsmacking aspects of this 212 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:52.880 is a young woman becomes... 213 00:08:55.460 --> 00:08:56.600 Well, the heavy. 214 00:08:56.800 --> 00:08:57.220 Yeah. 215 00:08:58.000 --> 00:08:58.620 It's amazing. 216 00:08:58.880 --> 00:08:59.840 I mean, this is the sort of, 217 00:09:00.300 --> 00:09:01.900 I guess, the answer to the question 218 00:09:01.900 --> 00:09:03.480 about how does she break with identity. 219 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:07.140 I mean, she breaks with that in a strong way 220 00:09:07.140 --> 00:09:08.160 by saying that, yes, 221 00:09:08.860 --> 00:09:10.520 she at no point denies the fact 222 00:09:10.520 --> 00:09:11.880 that she's biologically a woman. 223 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:15.120 The title she chooses for herself is La Pucelle, 224 00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:17.480 which doesn't really have an equivalent in English, 225 00:09:17.540 --> 00:09:19.700 but maybe the maid is one, 226 00:09:19.820 --> 00:09:21.580 but a young maid, a young virgin. 227 00:09:22.560 --> 00:09:23.940 So it's very feminine. 228 00:09:24.180 --> 00:09:26.080 You can only be a female Pucelle. 229 00:09:26.160 --> 00:09:27.140 But at the same time, 230 00:09:27.900 --> 00:09:30.200 she is sort of blocking or breaking 231 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:31.740 with her identity as a woman 232 00:09:31.740 --> 00:09:34.760 through her clothes that she wears, 233 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:35.980 through this title. 234 00:09:36.160 --> 00:09:38.140 I mean, Pucelle is not, you know, 235 00:09:38.180 --> 00:09:40.940 a woman who doesn't become a woman, 236 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:43.740 a woman who doesn't, you know, get married and have children, 237 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:46.240 which was what women did in late Middle Ages primarily, 238 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:47.920 unless they were nuns. 239 00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:50.380 A Hundred Years' War, 240 00:09:50.620 --> 00:09:53.540 we now live in an era of history wars 241 00:09:53.540 --> 00:09:54.060 when... 242 00:09:54.180 --> 00:09:57.840 the various narratives are bitterly contested. 243 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:00.560 And we all know of examples in Australia. 244 00:10:00.740 --> 00:10:03.540 I have a feeling that she's also contested, 245 00:10:03.540 --> 00:10:07.660 that various sides of politics claim her as their own. 246 00:10:08.020 --> 00:10:09.360 Oh, big time, big time. 247 00:10:09.480 --> 00:10:10.760 I mean, in France, definitely. 248 00:10:11.220 --> 00:10:12.540 But it's also... 249 00:10:12.540 --> 00:10:15.360 Interestingly, she's kind of entered Australia as well. 250 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:16.840 You know, there's a big statue of her 251 00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:18.460 outside of the Melbourne State Library, 252 00:10:18.860 --> 00:10:20.700 which has always struck me as curious. 253 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:23.820 And I found out recently that, 254 00:10:24.180 --> 00:10:26.240 it actually was a controversial decision to have made 255 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:28.720 in early 20th century to put her statue there, 256 00:10:28.860 --> 00:10:30.080 because at the time, 257 00:10:30.600 --> 00:10:33.560 France was still sort of seen as an enemy of the British Empire. 258 00:10:33.720 --> 00:10:36.040 But luckily for everyone, the Great War happened, 259 00:10:36.060 --> 00:10:36.880 and they joined forces. 260 00:10:37.180 --> 00:10:38.520 So the French became good. 261 00:10:38.620 --> 00:10:39.780 But it was kind of controversial. 262 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.740 I think in France itself, I mean, she's gone from basically... 263 00:10:43.740 --> 00:10:47.380 So she's, you know, after her amazing sort of military campaign, 264 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:50.440 she's arrested by the Burgundians and the English. 265 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:51.680 She's charged with heresy. 266 00:10:51.740 --> 00:10:53.960 They eventually managed to found her guilty of heresy. 267 00:10:54.180 --> 00:10:54.960 They burn her. 268 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:57.060 For about 20 years, she's a non-person. 269 00:10:57.280 --> 00:10:58.660 Nobody wants to touch her. 270 00:10:59.220 --> 00:11:01.280 It's kind of the charge of heresy back then. 271 00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:02.420 It's a very serious charge. 272 00:11:02.540 --> 00:11:05.100 Perhaps a bit like terrorism or pedophilia today. 273 00:11:05.340 --> 00:11:07.520 Once you're stuck with it, you're tainted. 274 00:11:07.720 --> 00:11:11.320 So the king has to stage an elaborate trial of rehabilitation 275 00:11:11.320 --> 00:11:14.280 20 years later, around 20 years later, 276 00:11:14.340 --> 00:11:15.680 when they've kicked the English out, 277 00:11:15.820 --> 00:11:18.060 and Rouen, the capital of Normandy, 278 00:11:18.180 --> 00:11:19.300 which is where Jeanne was burnt, 279 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.000 has been recaptured by the French. 280 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:22.540 They have a retrial. 281 00:11:22.780 --> 00:11:24.080 They bring people from... 282 00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:26.820 I mean, childhood, the soldiers who fought with her, 283 00:11:26.860 --> 00:11:28.400 the judges who sentenced her to death. 284 00:11:28.520 --> 00:11:31.400 It's a massive source of information about her. 285 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:34.640 That's the reason we know so much about her, 286 00:11:34.680 --> 00:11:37.120 are the testimonies of people in the trial of rehabilitation. 287 00:11:38.220 --> 00:11:40.260 And they sort of rehabilitated her. 288 00:11:40.280 --> 00:11:41.880 They proved that, no, she was not a heretic. 289 00:11:42.580 --> 00:11:45.440 Little by little, she becomes a sort of a saintly figure 290 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:49.240 that justifies the French ruler's divine right to rule, 291 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:52.020 because she's a Christian, even though she's burnt by the church. 292 00:11:52.380 --> 00:11:53.820 She gives the king... 293 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.080 She gives the king a sort of an aura of sanctity. 294 00:11:56.640 --> 00:11:57.880 Until the French Revolution, 295 00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:00.320 the French revolutionaries are very split about her, 296 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:02.560 because they're absolutely against clergy and monarchy, 297 00:12:02.820 --> 00:12:04.640 but she's a peasant warrior. 298 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:06.860 So how do you reconcile that? 299 00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:07.640 During the French Revolution, 300 00:12:07.880 --> 00:12:09.500 the first wave of French revolutionaries, 301 00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:10.960 they dechristianize her, 302 00:12:10.980 --> 00:12:13.100 they burn her relics. 303 00:12:13.180 --> 00:12:16.100 They completely say she's a relic of monarchy. 304 00:12:16.200 --> 00:12:17.680 We don't want to have anything to do with her. 305 00:12:17.960 --> 00:12:19.600 Early 19th century, 306 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:21.200 especially the historian Jules Michelet, 307 00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:23.360 who was a Republican, reclaims her. 308 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:25.460 And he says, look, look at the documents. 309 00:12:25.940 --> 00:12:28.300 What we find in there is not a royalist, 310 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:31.200 but we find a brave, ordinary peasant girl, 311 00:12:31.320 --> 00:12:32.440 a hero of the people, 312 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:35.180 who fights for what she really believes in. 313 00:12:35.280 --> 00:12:37.240 And that sort of takes her back to the left. 314 00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:39.360 But that concentration between left and right, 315 00:12:39.460 --> 00:12:41.800 especially the far right today in France, 316 00:12:41.860 --> 00:12:44.760 the, you know, proto-fascists of the Front National, 317 00:12:44.900 --> 00:12:46.160 they've reclaimed her. 318 00:12:46.200 --> 00:12:51.140 Le Pan, you know, Marine Le Pan always carries her flag everywhere she goes. 319 00:12:51.420 --> 00:12:51.860 Yeah. 320 00:12:51.860 --> 00:12:55.720 There are many fine writers and a couple of filmmakers, 321 00:12:55.800 --> 00:12:58.160 at least, who've embraced her. 322 00:12:58.640 --> 00:13:03.980 You mentioned elsewhere the Mary Gordon biography, 323 00:13:04.660 --> 00:13:08.040 Marina Warner's very good study of Joan of Arc. 324 00:13:08.120 --> 00:13:09.200 There was the Dreher film. 325 00:13:09.920 --> 00:13:12.820 And more recently, an American director 326 00:13:12.820 --> 00:13:15.300 starred Jean Seberg in the role. 327 00:13:15.880 --> 00:13:18.600 Oh, and of course, I'm forgetting, George Bernard Shaw. 328 00:13:18.880 --> 00:13:19.600 Yes, yes. 329 00:13:19.900 --> 00:13:21.840 But they all use her for different purposes. 330 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:22.580 Definitely. 331 00:13:22.900 --> 00:13:24.680 I mean, I really love Bernard Shaw, 332 00:13:24.820 --> 00:13:26.680 and that's sort of early 20th century. 333 00:13:26.840 --> 00:13:30.240 And I think that has something in common with the Carl Dreher movie, 334 00:13:30.400 --> 00:13:36.080 where they sort of see her as a naive but innocent Christian woman 335 00:13:36.080 --> 00:13:39.860 who is being tormented and bullied and ultimately murdered 336 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:41.380 by a patriarchal clergy. 337 00:13:41.720 --> 00:13:43.380 And they both kind of have this view. 338 00:13:43.500 --> 00:13:46.220 But that happened precisely at the time where she's canonized. 339 00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:49.640 So the far right in France finally managed to convince the Vatican, 340 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:51.280 I think there might be bribery, 341 00:13:51.280 --> 00:13:52.480 bribery involved, I'm not sure, 342 00:13:52.600 --> 00:13:54.620 to saint her, to canonize her. 343 00:13:54.860 --> 00:13:56.680 And when she is made a saint, 344 00:13:56.780 --> 00:13:58.800 they have this response from people from the left, 345 00:13:58.820 --> 00:14:00.140 like Bernard Shaw and Dreher, 346 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:03.120 who say, actually, she was a victim of the church. 347 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:06.880 Our guest is Ali El-Azizajah, 348 00:14:07.060 --> 00:14:10.660 a Melbourne writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, literary criticism. 349 00:14:10.960 --> 00:14:14.320 As a writer, what about the quality of her prose? 350 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:16.140 Of Joan's statements? 351 00:14:16.680 --> 00:14:18.320 Well, that's a really good question. 352 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:18.780 It's quite a bit, it's recorded. 353 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:20.860 Yeah, look, I mean, she's not, 354 00:14:20.860 --> 00:14:23.940 she's a silent and strong type, I would say. 355 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:25.500 I think she's a woman of few words. 356 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:28.280 When she assumes the role as a soldier and knight, 357 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:29.380 she really takes to it. 358 00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:33.240 She's a very tough kind of person. 359 00:14:33.500 --> 00:14:35.860 She doesn't like to express herself in words. 360 00:14:35.900 --> 00:14:39.300 When people force her to speak about her voices, for example, 361 00:14:39.300 --> 00:14:40.380 she gets very irate. 362 00:14:40.460 --> 00:14:41.260 It's very personal. 363 00:14:41.300 --> 00:14:42.700 She doesn't want to talk about it. 364 00:14:42.900 --> 00:14:46.780 The few things she does say reflect the sort of figurative 365 00:14:46.780 --> 00:14:49.040 and allegorical way of speaking at the time. 366 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:50.740 So, for example, about the 367 00:14:50.740 --> 00:14:53.720 voices or seeing an angel or receiving a sign, 368 00:14:53.880 --> 00:14:56.200 it could be that she's speaking figuratively. 369 00:14:56.420 --> 00:14:59.760 I don't really think personally that she actually heard voices. 370 00:14:59.960 --> 00:15:02.540 I don't think her eardrums reverberated. 371 00:15:03.160 --> 00:15:06.520 You know, there's a lot of question of what her voices were. 372 00:15:07.060 --> 00:15:11.080 My view is that they were the voices in her head for sure. 373 00:15:11.100 --> 00:15:12.480 She really believed in them. 374 00:15:12.700 --> 00:15:14.580 I'm confident she saw the angels. 375 00:15:14.660 --> 00:15:15.920 She was a very devout Christian. 376 00:15:16.140 --> 00:15:18.000 These are real things to her. 377 00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:19.820 And of course, these days, 378 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:25.560 we tend to retrospectively diagnose many saints and their voices 379 00:15:25.560 --> 00:15:27.340 as being schizophrenics. 380 00:15:27.340 --> 00:15:30.160 But you detect no sign of mental illness? 381 00:15:30.400 --> 00:15:31.480 Not at all. Not at all. 382 00:15:31.560 --> 00:15:32.560 I mean, I mean, that's... 383 00:15:33.220 --> 00:15:35.960 I have no bias against mental illnesses at all. 384 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.260 But when we look at Vajranth, what Vajranth does, 385 00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:40.540 especially when she arrives in the historical scene, 386 00:15:40.680 --> 00:15:41.980 you know, she's a lot... 387 00:15:41.980 --> 00:15:44.300 At first, she's just a flag bearer for the army. 388 00:15:44.380 --> 00:15:48.000 She's just this young, you know, spiritual woman 389 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:49.500 who's supposed to inspire the soldiers 390 00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:50.920 to go and die for God, basically. 391 00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:53.900 But when she arrives on the battlefield, she changes her mind. 392 00:15:53.980 --> 00:15:55.340 She says, no, I want to lead the soldiers. 393 00:15:55.500 --> 00:15:59.280 She probably sees how pathetic the generals of the French army are, 394 00:15:59.380 --> 00:16:02.140 and they are completely being routed by the English. 395 00:16:02.300 --> 00:16:04.040 And she says, well, why don't you do this differently? 396 00:16:04.380 --> 00:16:05.980 And she throws herself into the battle. 397 00:16:06.940 --> 00:16:09.120 From then onward, she leads the French army. 398 00:16:09.280 --> 00:16:11.400 Her strategies, the way she conducts herself, 399 00:16:11.560 --> 00:16:16.180 are completely 100% rational and extremely intelligent. 400 00:16:16.420 --> 00:16:19.400 I would go as far as saying she's some sort of a military genius. 401 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:22.300