In Erasmus’ famous 1511 essay, The Praise of Folly, the embodiment of Folly herself delivers satirical oratory, praising herself and critiquing the norms and institutions of the day.

The piece itself is wonderfully well written, and there is a wealth of scholarship examining Erasmus’ satirical intents.

But there is one element of the essay which I have always found particularly striking. As Folly finalizes her argument, she closes her refined rhetoric by stating:

If anything I have said shall seem too saucy or too glib, stop and think: ‘tis Folly, and a woman, that has spoken. But of course you will also remember that Greek proverb, “Even a foolish man will often speak a word in season,” unless, perhaps you assume that this does not extend to women.

Patricia Bizzell notes that scholars have generally paid little attention to Folly’s gender – after all, female muses and even fools were common in Renaissance oration, with roots dating back further.

Yet ignoring Folly’s gender seem a misstep  – it is not incidental, but rather a core element of Erasmus’ satire. Folly’s gender allows her dismiss herself – after all, ‘tis Folly, and a woman, that has spoken – even as she delivers outspoken criticism of society.

Her gender also makes her an outsider, as Bizzell writes:

I can’t take the persona’s gender for granted, especially as she’s depicted in Holbein’s illustrations for an early edition of the Praise: a woman in a fool’s cap and bells and an academic gown, speaking from a rostrum to an audience of men similarly attired (see Moriae 1989).

And while female personas were perhaps common in Renaissance work, Folly’s place as an orator is particularly notable. As Bizzell points out, “in the Renaissance, a woman who practices rhetoric in public, whether by orating or publishing, is usually deemed to be unchaste.”

Even as humanists education expanded to include upper class women as well as men, women continued to be barred from the study of rhetoric. Oratory and rhetorical debate were fields where learned men battled. For a woman to enter such an arena – to share her voice in the public sphere was, in Bizzell’s words, like “the only female player in a touch football game…what chaste women would take such a risk?”

All this leaves unanswered the question of exactly what Erasmus’ argues for in Folly, but it raises the importance of gender in transmitting that message.

The role of the Fool has long been to speak truth to power, protected by their own foolishness and disdained place in society. Folly, the unchaste woman, has particular power in this regard – power bestowed by her entire lack of power.

Though ‘entire lack’ is a blatant overstatement here, as the woman rhetor, well trained in the humanists arts, is no doubt of a certain class and a certain race – maligned for her gender but more empowered than others nonetheless. As Bizzell concludes:

If we think of ourselves as symbolically risking making fools of ourselves, we might consider the implications of taking on not only the fool’s disregard for social convention, which allows social criticism and the enactment of solidarity, but also the fool’s embrace of marginal social positions as well.

Perhaps this is ultimately why the persona of Folly spoke so strongly to me when I first read Erasmus’s mock-encomium. In the persona of the foolish slut, I saw, on the one hand, ways to compensate for my lack of gender privilege, that is to wrest rhetorical freedom out of the liabilities I incur as a woman breaking the taboos that still to some extent obtain on a woman’s speaking in public. On the other hand, I saw ways to undermine my race and class privileges, which may prevent me from identifying with oppressed people as much as I want to do: this very adoption of the ass-eared cap lends a provisionality to my words which, I hope, invites all others into the rhetorical process with me.

I have recently completed the second year of my doctoral program in Network Science at Northeastern University, and it feels an appropriate time to satisfy my periodic indulgence for self-reflection.

Two years. That is a long time, though also not a long time. I know “new” businesses which have been open more than two years; I remember “recent” events which took place far longer than two years ago. Two years is nothing, it is a blink of an eye. Yet the last two years have seemed so long. So long in a good way: I have learned so much, changed so much, grown so much.

It’s been a great two years.

Before I continue, it is worth noting – for those of you playing at home – that, no, I am not almost done. I have at least three years left; so even the halfway mark seems a distant point on the horizon.

But I am entering what I can only describe as the ‘grown up’ phase of my studies. I am officially done with course work – though I will no doubt continue to take classes from time to time.  I’ve nearly put test-taking behind me – though I’ll spend the next several months studying for our Qualifying Exam. On the surface, then, it may seem as though little has changed…but this moment marks a subtle turning point in my academic life; as I increasingly shed the title of student and move into the role of researcher.

I rather imagined this would occur as a crystalizing event. As though I might crawl into my doctoral studies, quietly cocooned until I miraculously emerged a scholar.

And though I knew that’s never how it would happen, I find it nonetheless remarkable how transformative the meticulous metamorphosis has proven to be. I have learned so much – not just facts and skills, though I have learned those,  too – but the past two years have fundamentally shifted the way I think and approach problems.

At the end of my first semester, I wrote that I had “been learning how to see the world through a particular epistemic frame: learning what questions to ask and what tools to deploy in answering them.”

At the end of my first year, I boasted that I could “trade nerdy jokes with people from any discipline” – a remark meant to highlight the value of interdisciplinary work. “As much as I have to learn from everyone I meet,” I wrote,  “We all have something to learn from each other.”

This sentiment is reflected in the theme that comes to mind when I reflect on my past year of learning:

Year 2: I think I might know things.

The first year gave me the lay of the land; helped me learn the contours of all the things I didn’t know. The second year helped me start defining that landscape for myself. It would perhaps be an overstatement to say the second year helped be begin to make my own contributions – but it left me with the ineffable sense that I am on a path to be able to make contributions.

I still have much to learn – there is always more to learn. But as I wind down the second year of my studies, learning feels so much more like the every day act of living rather than the frantic attempts of someone in over their head.

That is to say, I am still learning – I frankly hope to always be learning – but for the first time it feels as though I could contribute nearly as much as I could learn.

Or more plainly: I think –

I might I know things.