Harry Potter would be Sociocultural
Law and Order: Wizarding World
For me, talking about order in a study on humans (fictional or otherwise) is like talking about snow in a New England winter–it’s everywhere and completely necessary, but often overlooked because of its ever-presence. Rules, rules, rules! Let’s get to the juicy head stuff! That touchy-feely symbolic hoodoo! BRING IT!
But you can’t make a snowman without a couple feet of snow much like you can’t glean meaning without a nice structure of methodological order. So! That being said, we’re starting out this crazy dual sovereignty analysis of the Harry Potter series with a nice little layout of the rules. How do wizards feel about non-wizards? How do they define themselves? Who cares if you mingle with half-breeds or chat up a squib? And what the hell is a Hufflepuff?
Coincidentally, JK Rowling is a smart and socially-conscious lady, as the first four books establish the law of the land of wizards. As ickle Harry Potter is introduced to the fabulous and very often odd world of wizards, so are we, and the more quotidian it becomes for him, the more established is the wizarding world order (the gravitas). The first four books set up the walls so they can be torn down in the subsequent ones–the return of Voldemort, the introduction of chaos (celeritas) as the Ministry is made ineffectual, and the desperate bid for the authority of the Minister seat–and rebuilt by the end of the series (the restoration of gravitas).
Did you get all that? We can stop right here? No? Oh, good, ’cause there’s a whole ton of text left to be typed on the subject! So stay tuned Quibbler readers as for the next few weeks as we break down the order of the wizarding world for your reading pleasure!
It’s a Potter World 1
This is part one of a four part story arc full of friendship, heartbreak, and betrayal. If I like the way they turn out. I’ll continue the silly adventures of Potter World.
Note: I apologize for the quality. I drew the first version a napkin at work and hobbled it together from there.
Wordless Wednesdays–The Best of PotterPuppetPals
O.W.L.s got you down? Have some useless trivia!
Hullo netizens! We’re planning up a serious mustache post that should go up some time this week, but in the meantime, here’s some fun Harry Potter trivia I snagged off of mental_floss, this fun Internet emporium of weird, useless, and interesting knowledge. Enjoy!
1. Hermione’s name was almost “Hermione Puckle.”
It has a sour tone to it, doesn’t it? J.K. Rowling thought so, too, and changed to something that suited the character better. Rowling has said that Hermione has a healthy dose of herself in there, as she was quite the know-it-all herself as a child. Hermione was originally going to have a younger sister, but Rowling never found the right moment to stick her into the books.
2. Gilderoy Lockhart, the insufferably vain professor and celebrity from The Chamber of Secrets, was based on someone Rowling knows in real life. The rumor is that she based him on her ex-husband, but she has been quite adamant about denying that. “He used to tell whopping great fibs about his past life, all of them designed to demonstrate what a wonderful, brave and brilliant person he was. Perhaps he didn’t really believe he was all that great and wanted to compensate, but I’m afraid I never dug that deep,” she has said. “He’s probably out there now telling everybody that he inspired the character of Albus Dumbledore. Or that he wrote the books and lets me take the credit out of kindness.”
3. Hedwig, Harry’s Snowy Owl, isn’t entirely accurate. After the first book was accepted for publication, she found out Snowy Owls are diurnal. And it was during the writing of book two that she realized that Snowy Owls are silent, meaning that Hedwig’s knowing hoots and conversational noises weren’t quite true-to-life. She admits this was just a research hole on her part, but says readers should feel free to assume that her unusual talents are just part of her magical ability. Incidentally, although Hedwig is female, she is played by a male in the movies because females aren’t wholly white like males are.
4. Collecting unusual and interesting names and words has been a lifelong habit for Rowling. She has said that she loves reading lists of them, from war memorials to baby name books, and made it a point to remember her favorites. Some of them found a new home in the Harry Potter books. She makes up some of the words too – “quidditch” is a Rowling original. She filled up five pages of made-up words that started with “Q” before she hit on one that sounded right. “Voldemort” and “Malfoy” were also invented.
5. If a muggle were to happen across Hogwarts, all they would see is nothing but a ruined castle with large signs on it saying ‘keep out, dangerous building.’ This might sound a bit suspicious to those of us in the States, but it seems like the U.K. is rife with castle ruins.
6. Fred and George Weasley were born on April Fool’s Day. Go figure. While we’re talking about the Weasleys, there was a Weasley cousin named Mafalda who got edited out of The Goblet of Fire in order to make room for the love-to-hate-her invasive “journalist” Rita Skeeter. That’s probably best – Ginny Weasley is supposed to have been the first girl born to the Weasley family for several generations, so scrapping Malfalda supports that backstory.
7. Harry, Ron and Hermione all have wand cores based on their birthdays: the Celt assigned trees to people based on that kind of like we assign gemstones today. She had already assigned Harry’s holly-based wand when she discovered the Celt tree calendar and found that she had accidentally assigned him the “right” type of wood. She did the same thing with Draco Malfoy (Hawthorn wood). But Ron and Hermione both purposefully received wands based on their birthdays – ash for Ron and vine wood for Hermione. She didn’t carry this convention out for all of the characters, though.
8. Filch’s cat, Mrs. Norris, takes her name from the Jane Austen book Mansfield Park. Fittingly, Austen’s Mrs. Norris is also rather sour and bitter.
9. Snape was partially based on a teacher J.K. Rowling once had. She likes to write him, though, because she finds him such a pathetic creature.
10. As you probably know, King’s Cross station is where young wizards hop on the Hogwarts Express to get to school. What you might not know is that the station holds special meaning for J.K. Rowling: it’s where her parents met. They were coincidentally both headed to Arbroath in Scotland when they met on the train. King’s Cross was intentionally chosen as the gateway to Hogwarts in homage to Rowling’s parents.
Wordless Wednesdays–the World’s Biggest Harry Potter Fan
Upcoming News from the Quibbler!!
Dear Wizardly Readers,
We are contacting you about renewing your subscription to the Quibbler. To entice your sensibilities we have a preview of the March edition titled: Harry Potter and the Dual Sovereigns. In it the authors discuss the real interworking of the wizarding world, how certain events led to the rise and fall of He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named, the Second Wizarding War, and the Ministry of Magic failed to maintain order that allowed our world to fall into chaos. Meanwhile two well know but opposing figures, the honorable Dumbledore and the cruel villain that was previously mentioned, power their way to the seat of authority.
Peril! Action! Romance! Comedy!
All can be your in the renewing of your subscription of six Sickles and 1 Knut. FREE Nargal Net and Spectrepecs with your subscription!
Dual Sovereignty: Chutes and Ladders Edition
Dual sovereignty is the theoretical idea that all forms of ruling need to incorporate Authority and Power (Williamson 2003). Authority is telling individuals to do things. Power is the doing. From here some scholars develop the idea authority trumps power and is the real “true power”. They ignore the distinction of Authority from Power and vice versa. The establish the game of sovereignty as a zero sum game with winner take all swagger. A group must be controlling another group. And thus they err. Sovereignty is not a simple minded game of dominance but a seesawing affair of mutual gain. The chutes cannot exist without the ladders. Both authority and power are needed in a form of sovereignty (Williamson 2003). Authority needs the power to get things done, while power needs authority to give it direction. They are equals.
I will use three theorists to discuss the idea of dual sovereignty. The first two, Rodney Needham and Rene Guenon, actual talk about dual sovereignty in the forms of power and authority (Guenon 1929, Needham 1980). The third theorist, Georges Dumezil, never actually uses those terms but his ideas are compatible with dual sovereignty to the point that Needham actually based a portion of his work on Dual Sovereignty on Dumezil’s work (Dumezil 1948, Needham 1980).
Although Guenon deals more directly with authority and power than Needham, both discuss them in spiritual and temporal terms ( Guenon 1929, Needham 1980). They equate spiritual to authority and temporal to power. Dual sovereignty suggests that authority tends to be on the shoulders of the religious power in a given society and the power lies with the head of the state (Guenon 1929, Needham 1980). For example, this was done in the Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor (Power) held the control over the military and the other state functions, but he gained the legitimacy to wear that crown from the Pope(Authority) (Guenon 1929, Needham 1980). The Pope set the tone of what is right and what is wrong. The King carried out those laws. This also crops up in India between the Brahmins(Authority) and the Kshatriyans(Power) (Guenon 1929, Dumezil 1948). The Brahmins are a priest caste that set the tone and goals of the Indian peoples. It is the Kshatriyans’ job to enforce those tones and protect the Brahmins.
The examples given are a very Guenonian version of Dual Sovereignty. He gives more credence to the authority side of the divide. He claims that the relationship between authority and power is a subordinate one with authority bowing to power (Guenon 1929). Needham’s dual sovereignty continues in the spirit of Guenon’s, but fine tunes it (Needham 1980). He still ties authority and power to examples of spiritual authority and temporal power, but believes it is tied more to a binary established by Dumezil, order and chaos. In Dumezil’s book Mitra-Varuna, he uses examples from around the world that show the balance of order and chaos in what he calls celeritas and gravitas (1948, Needham 1980)). Celeritas is chaos and the energy to create while gravitas is the order necessary to maintain. Neither side can exist without the other. Celeritas is too wild to continue very long in the real world and gravitas would eventually burn itself out unless given a jump start every now and then. He relates this to the Roman kings, the first of whom was Romulus (Dumezil 1948). Romulus was wild. He killed his brother and he participated in the rape of the Sabine women. At no point did he quantify any laws. Numa, Romulus’s successor, is credited with bringing reason to Rome by introducing the systems of laws and religions that made Rome a civilization. Romulus is still considered the founder of Rome, though, and Numa more of the quantifier. Romulus was the celeritas that created Roman rule and Numa was the gravitas that brought control and maintained Roman rule (Dumezil 1948). As shown here celeritas can create, while gravitas can only maintain.
Rodney Needham connected celeritas and chaos to power and gravitas and order to authority (Needham 1980). This means that both sides are important and need each other to survive. This idea of equality runs contrary to Guenon’s version, which has an emphasis on the Authority part. Guenon would agree that both are necessary, but still sees an unequal relationship in which power is beneath authority. Needham does not have the subordination clause in his dual sovereignty (Needham 1980). Authority can tell individuals what to do but cannot enforce those demands, so power steps in and completes the job.
I would like to stress one other point about dual sovereignty; the fluidity of the concept. Once something is labeled power or authority does not mean it must stay in that category permanently. Power and authority are relational and situational. To elaborate and clarity, what is defined as power and what is defined as authority in a given situation will not hold true if the situation were to change. Guenon states power and authority are within the spiritual authority and the temporal power (1929). The Emperor in the Holy Roman Empire is power while the Pope is authority. If you shift the situation and included the masses, then the Emperor and the Pope become authority and the people are the power. So dual sovereignty is contingent on the situation of the relationship being presented. Power and Authority are not constants and should not be confused as such. The constant is Power and Authority must exist.
Work Cited
Dumezil, Georges. 1948. Mitra-Varuna. Translated 1988 by Derek Coltman. New York: Zone Books.
Guenon, Rene. 1929. Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power. Translated 2001 by Henry D. Fohr. New York: Sophia Perennis.
Needham, Rodney. 1980. “Dual Sovereignty” in Reconnaissances. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Williamson, Margaret Holmes. 2003. Powhatan Lords of Life and Death: Command and Consent in Seventeenth-Century Virginia. University of Nebraska Press.
Hey, did you hear the one about that wizard kid…?
Greetings!
This is the very first post on the Harry Potter Project blog! It’s all shiny and new and STOKED for some brain-scrubbin’, nail-bitin’, gut-bustin’ good times.
“Now what’s this all about?” you might be wondering–some kid in this weird culture class was talking about some kids’ book getting the social rubdown and my interest was piqued. WELL, the short answer as to the origins of this dear project is a certain professor of Anthropology said it couldn’t be done and the three of us decided to take a big bite and see if we could. For a more detailed description of the torrid tale, visit our ABOUT page off to the side there.
So, as we’re making our way through the books and various bodies of literature, we thought we’d get all public because a) some of you were interested in its progress and b) we want to make sure we’re not going off the intellectual deep end. We need you active academe (or certainly watchdog) types to keep an eye on us as we run around in the real world trying to keep our skills sharp on this project.
We can’t promise the whole wizarding world in a teacup, but we can assure you that the following will most likely show up for discussion and/or your amusement: potter-related memes, dual sovereignty, sci-fi references, tape recordings of group discussions, house-elf rights vs. our hatred of Dobby, social dissections of characters, places, positions, and possibly plants, critical literary reviews, structuralism, noted social and cultural thinkers such as, but not limited to Leach, Evans-Pritchard, Lévi-Strauss, (Marx if we’re feeling peaky), and Dumézil, colorful metaphors, and possibly colorful language.
To join the fray on anything we post in the future (or now, I suppose, depending if you’re here at the same time we are), simply go to the comments section of any post and comment/respond. Please do put a name on your comment so we know who you are and think of you kindly.
You have been forewarned! This is a seriously silly and substantial study that we are excited to share and brain-pick with you! Today!
Cheers!
the harry potter project 