On the uses of social segregation ...

Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 1:35pm

I was just going through some leaves from "Histoire du Costume" by Albert Racinet. It happens to be pretty rich in peasant costumes from the 1880's. It happens that something struck me after looking at about 4 or 5 of the plates.

The Galego's in the 1880's wore hats that to my knowledge resembled very little any hat worn by any non peasant ever. It was more like the hats grandpa taught me to fold from paper. The rest had a costume where the details were XVII or up to XVIII C. upper classes, down to and including poorer bourgeoisie.

The peasant trousers, notably, were the culottes of pre-revolutionary everyone else. It was just that European peasants in the 1880's had still not become sans-culottes (that was true for galegos as well).

The men's hats, in Scania (Sweden) as well as Brittany (France) - but, as said: not in Galicia - were about one century older in their fashion. Take a hat off one of the three musceteers, strip it of plumes, and you have a typical peasant hat from the European 1880's.

Sorry: actually the Scanian (and Dahlecarlian) hats come from the "Swedish costume" imposed by Gustav III - the one killed at the Ballo di maschera, in 1792 or 1793, as Opera lovers will know. They are too rounded and cut off conical to look like top hats from XIX C., and yet absolutely too stiffly upward to come anywhere near the bowler hat. Other places to find the musceteers' hat without the plumes would be Tyrol (Sarnthal), on the head of a Maragato (León region of Spain), Majorque or Portugal. But neither Scania, nor Dahlecarlia, as far as these illustrations go.

Because peasants, in Europe, were generally socially separate from the bourgeoisie, they were able to indulge in fantasy (like men's hats of Galicia), archaism (like the culottes, or the hats outside Galicia) or anachronism (like the relationship between XVIII C. culottes and XVII C. hats).

Fantasy, archaism, and anachronism are of course as seen relatively to bourgeois / noble costume. Inherently there is nothing fantastic about the hat of the Galego - unless it be fantastic to wear a hat. Inherently there is nothing archaic about a 1880's peasant wearing the hats and culottes of a 1880's peasant, even if they happen to be the hats and culottes also of XVII C. Musceteers or XVIII C. Composers. And therefore there is nothing inherently anachronistic about the relationship between an 1880' peasant's hat and an 1880's peasant's culottes.

U.S. American farmers would look much more like U.S. American bourgeois - because they were often enough bourgeois who had settled down to farm, rather than peasants since times immemorial. As they were less segregated socially, they were also less distinct in their costumes. In the 1920's (which is after all 40 years after the 1880's I've been considering) the Appalachian yokels could be recognised mainly by having less costume than townspeople. Witness: Al Capp's immortal series Li'l Abner.

Now, the peasants who wore the costumes of the European 1880's and the farmers in Al Capp's world, they would share the feature of being sufficiently distinct from townspeople to be recognisably outsiders to them. What would distinguish them is: the farmers and farmers' sons like Li'l Abner are mainly "yokels" i e outsider to townspeople, to people such as (the even later) Archie. But peasants of the 1880's were also insiders to themselves - their costumes could raise not only ridicule, but even more typically nostalgia. They reached nearly the distnctness of the Highlanders and Cossacs, whose costumes undisputedly are admired by everyone who has some taste. And that again has something to do with them being nearly as separate from other Scotsmen and Russians as to be nations on their own.

I believe most of them would have wanted their priests to wear correct traditional liturgic vestments during Holy Mass or Divine Liturgy. And that is one reason why I cannot feel alright with priests who innovate in order to seem poorer than their parish or diocese really is.

What makes me feel queasy about Traditional Catholics or Anglican Catholics is this: I get the feeling that for them, being a priest is the only excuse for not being a bourgeois. I get a feeling - not least here in France - of "soutane ou cravate - autrement t'es pas un chrétien"! In other words: the social quality of segregation can get you the smile accorded to Li'l Abner, but it must not go far enough to give you the sigh accorded to 1880's peasants. They are willing to accept you are poorly clad - but not that you have the hair like a hippie or a punk. And that is where I clash with them. "There is no excuse to sacrifice a good work for keeping a mohawk ..." (not that that happens to be my particular haircut, but still) - Hey, hold it!

You work in order to rest, you do not rest in order to work. Otherwise you are a slave, who works merely for the rest of other men. You have your hair style both on work and on rest, and, as just said: the rest is more important. I might enjoy a tea party with people in cravate - or I might not enjoy it, but sincerely: what is the dogmatic level of a priest (notably in moral theology) who says that a man who renounces some tea parties (like the Boston Tea Party) must be either a very virtuous or a very sinful man, either a monk or a scoundrel? Keeping a social segregation out of vanity is of course not a Christian virtue, it is a vanity, which is one of the main sins. But on the other hand: St John Cassian (the patron of my Roumainian Orthodox parish as well as God knows how many Roman Catholic ones) does not identify it with the sin of Pride. It is not per se a mortal sin to keep somewhat segregated in order to remain yourself. It is rather a mortal sin to condemn someone for not segregating himself like and along with you.

Hans Lundahl
Aix en Provence
1-III/17-II-2008

Explaining comment:

Superbia=Pride (sinful version)
Cenodoxia=Vanity

March 1, 2008 at 5:03pm