Like, who gets to decide what events are over and done with and which are still happening? As a Jew, I often notice how some people relate to the Nazi Shoah as distant past, others seem to feel that it’s a recent occurrence and still others understand it as a current reality. I’m not making a value judgment here about which is the correct lense. In fact, I think each has its usefulness, depending on the agenda at hand. But it does matter and these are very different assumptions with which to begin. Especially when you fold in issues about reparations and accountability.
My friend told me that the public elementary school her daughter attends makes a point of including in the curriculum the histories of indigenous people who lived in the geographic area. And while that’s right and good at face value, there are some problematic implications. Because the kids learn about Native American Indians as these fascinating People of the Past and not as folks whose traditions are alive and well. History has to be taught as connected to the people who are still living them, who are still causing them to evolve and deepen and branch out. And this isn’t just a problem with how our children are educated!
An anthropology professor I had in college taught me the term and concept ‘contemporary ancestor.’ She became an anthropologist in part because, as an indigenous person, she was tired of being studied and never being invited to be the expert on who she and her people were and are. She critiqued the white Western worldview by telling us that white culture fixates on indigenous histories as a way of communicating that indigenous people, customs and agendas are long conquered things of the past. This makes people from dominant locations see and experience and relate to indigenous people (and their movements and struggles) as if they are contemporary ancestors, alive but still in the past.
2 comments:
the other thing that I've been thinking about from my postcolonial class in regards to time, is how establishing "beginnings" cuts off a huge chunk of the past. In stating "The such and such began in such a such time," keeps us from looking further to what lead to the point at which a beginning is established. In our conversations today about Judaism and Christianity in relation to the Hebrew Bible and the Christian new testament, there was a time when Christians chose to make their starting point at Genesis, and not simply at Matthew. It still leaves out a lot of the complexities we are learning about in OT in regards to the origins of Judaism, but yeah. I thought that was interesting. -ktm
Yeah, right on. Thanks for helping me think about the power and privilege of declaring when time begins.
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