Astral Codex Ten

The Castrato

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The Castrato

Article

The Castrato is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between May 23, 2022 and September 02, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “The full list of Book Review Contest finalists is: … The Castrato”; “her 2015 book titled simply The Castrato”; “Commenters on the review of The Castrato mentioned Radu Marian”. It most often appears alongside Consciousness and the Brain, Making Nature, The Anti-Politics Machine.

Metadata

  • Category: Books
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: May 23, 2022
  • Last seen: September 02, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Open Thread 225
May 23, 2022 · Original source
1: The full list of Book Review Contest finalists is: Consciousness And The Brain, Making Nature, The Anti-Politics Machine, The Castrato, The Dawn Of Everything (EH’s review), The Future Of Fusion, The Illusion Of Grand Strategy, The Internationalists, The Outlier, The Righteous Mind (BW’s review), The Society Of The Spectacle, and Viral.
Your Book Review: The Castrato
June 03, 2022 · Original source
In the Weird Studies podcast episode which serves as the namesake of this review, University of Indiana Musicologist Phil Ford traces the origin of the modern day mutant archetype back to the castrati, those eunuch singers produced in Italy from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s. In support of his analysis, Ford cites the numerous similarities between the castrati and what is perhaps the most well-known fictional example of the mutant archetype: the X-men. While X-men are born as mutants, a number of X-men-adjacent superheros are so-called “mutates”, individuals who received their powers through some externally-mediated transformation (e.g. Juggernaut, Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, Deadpool); similarly, the castrati were not born as mutants but became “mutates” by undergoing castration before puberty. Like the X-men, the castrati spent their childhood sequestered in special academies where they honed their superhuman (singing) powers with rigorous training. The mutant status of both groups made them objects of both fascination and scorn, awe and fear. In a plot twist reminiscent of X-men lore, some castrati managed to rise above their outcast status and obtain great influence as diplomats or more clandestine political operatives (i.e. spies). The X-men comparison (whatever its validity) speaks to the stranger-than-fiction quality of the castrati’s story, a story told by University of Chicago musicologist Martha Feldman in her 2015 book titled simply The Castrato. Feldman jumps around between the different aspects of the history (the biology, the music, the fame, the fortune, etc.) and I will do the same here, but we will begin, as tales of mutants and “mutates” often do, with an origin story.
Inline links: Weird Studies podcast episode, Phil Ford, Martha Feldman, https://www.amazon.com/Castrato-Reflections-Natures-Ernest-Lectures/dp/0520292448
That Catholic doctrine also happened to forbid bodily mutilation was only a minor inconvenience; there was, fortunately, a loophole—it was allowed in cases of medical necessity. This led to all kinds of fabricated stories in which an accident damaged the genitalia and castration was deemed necessary in order to save the boy’s life. The stories usually centered around animals—falls from horses, attacks by wild boar, or, hilariously, bites on the junk by wild swans (“Swans, we should remember, where renowned in mythic and lyric traditions for singing while dying”)—and also frequently involved perilous male activities such as horseback riding or hunting in order to allow the castrato to save face and maintain something of a masculine reputation.
— Casanova, writing of the castrato Salimbeni
Links For June
July 01, 2022 · Original source
12: Commenters on the review of The Castrato mentioned Radu Marian, a singer with an intersex condition who probably sounds the way historical castrati did. Here’s a sample:
Inline links: The Castrato
Open Thread 239
August 28, 2022 · Original source
The Castrato
Inline links: The Castrato
Book Review Contest 2022 Winners
September 02, 2022 · Original source
=3rd: The Castrato, reviewed by Roger’s Bacon. RB is a teacher based in NYC. He writes at Secretorum and serves as head editor at Seeds of Science (ACX grant winner), a journal publishing speculative and non-traditional scientific articles.
Inline links: The Castrato, Secretorum, Seeds of Science