Reviewed by:

• Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages by Roland Betancourt
• Luis Josué Salés

Byzantine Intersectionality is driven by the author's commitment that "as historians we can use the privilege of recorded historical figures to excavate interstitial subjectivities that were denied to those less privileged" (207). Betancourt succeeds in laying the groundwork of this endeavor, producing a methodologically complex and analytically nuanced study of Roman intersectional identities that adroitly draws on material culture, sacred art, and textual corpora that few scholars can navigate with such sophistication and dexterity. On purely academic merits, Byzantine Intersectionality is a great service to scholars sympathetic to matters of social justice in relation to the excavation of the past, but who are unfamiliar with intersectional historiography.

What distinguishes this book further, however, is a leveraged intervention by speaking in the interstices of its findings to contemporary power dynamics in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Benjamin Dunning's Specters of Paul (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Betancourt's book takes calculated shots at an internationally growing movement among white patriarchal supremacists to appropriate the medieval Roman empire as a symbolic imaginary of a past that, the book incontrovertibly shows, never in fact existed. Indeed, critics have questioned how truly "intersectional" this book is (seemingly with little awareness of how the application of the term has developed since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined it), while failing to notice that Betancourt demands of his readers the critical self-reflection that their own intersecting positionalities are never neutral or innocent, even in relation to this content. From this perspective, Byzantine Intersectionality doubles as a handbook for those inclined to contest imaginary lines of continuity between the Romans and those who want to appropriate them for a patriarchal white supremacist dystopia.

These ethical motivations are apparent from Chapter One, "The Virgin's Consent," which examines changing Roman attitudes to sexual consent surrounding Mary's response to Gabriel's annunciation. Purely as a history of culture, the chapter is riveting in its exegesis of consent as a legal, moral, and religious category before and after Iconoclasm. Betancourt highlights differing attitudes [End Page 253] to consent, from Germanos of Constantinople's appalling suggestion that Mary would be impregnated whether willing or not (26–27), to Photios of Constantinople's belief that Mary's consenting words "enacted the Incarnation" (35), to Nikolaos Kabasilas, whose words on the matter Betancourt equates with "a modern defense of sexual and reproductive consent" (39). Indeed, the Romans were concerned about involuntary marriage and marital rape (30–31), instances where consent was "fundamentally impossible" (29), and how terminological slippage surrounding fornication, rape, and adultery had to be clarified during the Isaurian dynasty (28). So, while consent was contested in early Roman culture, in the latter centuries opinion congealed around the belief that because "humanity is remade through consent," therefore "consent is fundamental to the nature of humanity itself" (57).

This discussion is closely linked to Chapter Two, "Slut-Shaming an Empress," which focuses on Prokopios's invective against Theodora in the Secret History. This chapter compellingly excavates the subjectivities it set out to find by demonstrating how technologies of reproductive self-determination were accessible in proportion to class. Contrary to public opinion, in cities like Constantinople, "we find . . . a grasp, understanding, and promotion of what we might call a woman's right to choose in reproductive and sexual matters" (78). Certainly, ecclesial and civil Roman law unambiguously condemned reproductive technologies in principle, but that hardly means they did not flourish, even under Christian physicians, such as Aetios of Amida (sixth century) and Paulos of Aigina (seventh century). Thus, Betancourt undercuts contemporary beliefs that premodern Christians categorically and unambiguously opposed reproductive self-determination.

Chapter Four, "Queer Sensations," primarily develops from an art history perspective the groundwork laid by Derek Krueger and others in reference to same-gender intimacies, particularly in monastic texts. Even as a non-specialist in art history, I found the chapter compelling and accessible, but I leave further review of it to others better suited to assess it.

Conversely...

审核人：

• 拜占庭交叉性：中世纪的性、性别和种族罗兰·贝当古 (Roland Betancourt)
• 路易斯·若苏埃·萨莱斯

拜占庭的交叉性是由作者的承诺驱动的，即“作为历史学家，我们可以利用有记录的历史人物的特权来挖掘那些特权较低的人被拒绝的间隙主观性”（207）。贝当古成功地奠定了这一努力的基础，对罗马的交叉身份进行了方法论复杂且分析细致的研究，巧妙地利用了物质文化、神圣艺术和文本语料库，很少有学者能够以如此复杂和灵巧的方式驾驭。就纯粹的学术价值而言，拜占庭交叉性对那些同情与挖掘过去有关的社会正义问题但不熟悉交叉史学的学者来说是一项伟大的服务。

然而，这本书的进一步区别在于一种杠杆干预，它在其发现的间隙中以一种模糊地让人联想到本杰明邓宁的保罗幽灵的方式谈论当代权力动态（费城：宾夕法尼亚大学出版社，2011 年）。贝当古的书对白人父权至上主义者在国际上日益增长的运动进行了有计划的射击，该运动将中世纪的罗马帝国用作过去的象征性想象，该书无可争议地表明，实际上从未存在过。事实上，评论家质疑这本书有多真正的“交叉”（似乎很少意识到自金伯利·克伦肖创造该术语以来该术语的应用是如何发展的），同时没有注意到贝当古要求他的读者进行批判性的自我反省他们自己的交叉立场从来都不是中立或无辜的，即使是与这些内容有关。从这个角度来看，拜占庭交叉性对于那些倾向于争论罗马人之间想象的连续性线的人和那些想要将它们用于父权制白人至上主义反乌托邦的人来说，这本书兼作手册。

这些道德动机在第一章“圣母的同意”中显而易见，该章探讨了罗马人对围绕玛丽对加百列报喜的反应的性同意态度的变化。作为一部纯粹的文化史，本章引人入胜的是，它对圣像破坏前后作为法律、道德和宗教范畴的同意进行了解释。Betancourt 强调了不同的态度[End Page 253]同意，从君士坦丁堡的 Germanos 令人震惊的建议，即无论是否愿意，玛丽都会受孕（26-27），到君士坦丁堡的 Photios 相信玛丽同意的话“实施了化身”（35），到 Nikolaos Kabasilas，他在matter Betancourt 等同于“对性和生殖同意的现代辩护”（39）。事实上，罗马人担心非自愿婚姻和婚内强奸 (30-31)，同意“根本不可能”的情况 (29)，以及在伊索里亚王朝期间必须澄清有关通奸、强奸和通奸的术语滑误（ 28). 因此，虽然同意在早期罗马文化中受到质疑，但在后来的几个世纪中，舆论却围绕着这样一种信念，即因为“人性是通过同意重塑的”，

这一讨论与第二章“荡妇羞辱女皇”密切相关，该章着重于普罗科皮奥斯在《秘史》中对西奥多拉的谩骂. 本章通过展示生殖自决技术如何按阶级比例获得，从而有力地挖掘了它要寻找的主观性。与公众舆论相反，在君士坦丁堡这样的城市，“我们发现……掌握、理解和促进我们称之为妇女在生育和性问题上的选择权”（78）。当然，教会法和罗马民法在原则上明确谴责生殖技术，但这并不意味着它们没有蓬勃发展，即使在基督教医生的统治下，如阿米达的埃蒂奥斯（六世纪）和埃伊纳的保罗（七世纪）也是如此。因此，贝当古削弱了当代的信念，即前现代基督徒断然和毫不含糊地反对生殖自决。

第四章“Queer Sensations”主要从艺术史的角度发展了 Derek Krueger 和其他人在提及同性亲密关系时所奠定的基础，尤其是在修道院文本中。即使作为艺术史的非专业人士，我也发现该章引人入胜且易于理解，但我将对它的进一步审查留给更适合评估它的其他人。

反过来...