The next article in the June 2012 Harry Potter and Philosophy collection is “House-Elves, Hogwarts, and Friendship: Casting Away the Institutions which Made Voldemort’s Rise Possible,” written by Susan Peppers-Bates and Joshua Rust (both philosophy professors at Stetson University, FL).
This essay begins the collection’s journey toward an exploration of some of the darker themes present in the Harry Potter series (though with the ray of hope that is friendship!). For an abstract of their article, please read below the jump. As always, questions and comments on the full article and its topic are welcome in the comments box below.
In “House-Elves, Hogwarts, and Friendship: Casting Away the Institutions which Made Voldemort’s Rise Possible,” Peppers-Bates and Rust develop the theme of “elf justice,” which is Hermione’s special crusade. They argue that the Harry Potter series demonstrates how the power of identity politics and friendship across difference can replace the false universalism of hierarchical societies that privileges one group by rendering others deviant and invisible. After contrasting Voldemort’s “pure blood” racial politics with the seemingly progressive house model of Hogwarts, they reject the house model and separation from the Muggle World that characterize the novels before and after Harry’s triumph over Voldemort. True friendship that sees difference as a cause for celebration, as opposed to domination, would reject the old model for a more truly egalitarian vision—where muggles and magic-folk of all sorts mingle, and house-elf slavery has been abolished.
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Cbiondi, I’ve only had time to skim this article, which looks excellent. I can’t help but think of the connections with themes in The Casual Vacancy. Just today I watched the interview with Jo Rowling on Australian television which korg20000bc posted under “HogPro discussion on The Casual Vacancy.” She made comments about government and prejudice, and I was really touched by how important these issues are to her.
Glad you like what you’ve read so far, phoenixsong58!
For some reason, I wasn’t able to view that interview–dog-gone it….
TCV is now on my bookshelf and I can hardly wait until I get a chance to read it later this semester and join these great conversations you all are having about it. That’s great that Rowling has resumed and pursued further the theme of how various institutions can continue to support prejudice despite some people’s fight against prejudice. The tentacles of bigotry can be difficult to extract. Her time spent working with Amnesty International must have been so frustrating in many ways. Seeing and hearing such horror up close and trying to motivate people to help do something about it…. Sounds like TCV is sort of an extension of that work, but now with a much larger audience and perhaps even greater positive impact (one can hope).