Joan of Arc in America

Joan of Arc as cultural phenomenon is surprisingly present during this millennial era. The fascination with Joan’s story reveals, I believe, a nostalgia for certainty in what is frequently (and loosely) called the postmodern era. There is something about Joan of Arc that appeals to the present obsession with blurred boundaries, and thus with the collapse of “clear” categories (of subjectivity, gender, power, the historical Church, and so on). At the same time, however, Joan’s story tantalizes us today because of its unexplained passion and conviction. It seems to presuppose an unacknowledged apodictic which, for secular writers of contemporary theory, both confounds and attracts us. In this essay, I would like to contextualize aspects of Joan as instances of what might be called the “vestigial” traces of the issues she complicates. Metaphor and historical context are here to be understood as symbiotic.