Dostoevsky may dabble in the carnivalesque, but I think it's
Rabelais that Bakhtin mostly had in mind in developing the
concept which is described in the quote on carnival.
Carnival is _dangerous_, but framed. Many carnivals turned into
riots historically, and the authorities often decreed in advance
that no King of Carnival should be chosen, lest the Beast find a
head. Carnival was a kind of release of pent-up tensions, social
and political as well as sexual. In the medieval carnival there
were pretty much only two social classes, until quite late, and
while the nobles could go incognito among the plebs, the main
levelling was that the commons could dress as nobles, usually in
farcical fashion. There was very little distinction by age in
that period to begin with, so that mixing is unusual only to us.
I really don't know about gender mixing in carnival; it does seem
hard to believe that unwed women participated freely and without
supervision in all aspects of carnival, especially those of the
nobility. Who knows?
There was a lot of mockery: of the church, of the state, of the
nobility. Disrespect was tolerated, grudgingly, briefly, and up
to a point. It was perhaps the origin of our modern notion of
freedom of expression. It was not, I think, symmetrical, however:
Marie Antoinette and her shepherd girls were not an aspect of
carnival.
Some schools do perpetuate aspects of this tradition. There are
days when the dress-codes are suspended (and de facto reversed)
for example, or turn-about days when students take the roles of
teachers, or extensions of Halloween (our nearest general
American facsimile) into the classroom where more latitude in
behavior is tolerated than ordinarily would be. Masks help, not
so much to level social distinctions, as to protect the
identities of the mockers (after all, carnival ends, power
relations do not).
I don't think one should confuse carnival with modern democratic
ideals, and while carnival in the classroom would be interesting
to observe, I wonder how well power could continue to conceal
itself after a good bout of real carnival had woken the Beast. I
don't think our modern social order, in schools or elsewhere,
could tolerate the carnival tradition. We rely on power that
dresses itself in neutral, democratic, altruistic guise. Carnival
stands in tension with a brutally authoritarian social order;
each requires the other, the one for release, the other to put
and keep the lid back on. Orgies in the gym? giant graffitti on
every wall? the mother of all food-fights? burning the principal
in effigy? football coaches in drag? police cars overturned
outside the building? feces and piss liberally spread around?
Students with weapons? And one and all high as kites and/or
falling down drunk?
Hey, that's _carnival_! JAY.
PS. Read Rabelais. I'm not exaggerating.
----------------------
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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