Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id654156577
It is not just that history is written by the victors. It’s written by those who are prosperous, those who are well, those who have free time and a good library. Even the last of those things can be hard to obtain. I have said before that the truth is paywalled but the lies are free. If you want to do serious research as an independent scholar, it can cost a lot of money.
id654156638
In my life, I’ve met a lot of the types of people Gould was referring to. Brilliant, insightful, thoughtful people. Many of them are stuck working shitty jobs. I’ve known people who could have been great writers, but spend their time working to earn money to care for sick family members. I always wonder what they might have written.
id654156727
There’s a type of snooty “cultured” reactionary who looks back on the history of literature, sees how few women produced “classics” before the 20th century, and concludes that men were simply better writers. Any halfway intelligent person can see the obvious fact that before the 20th century, women were treated as property and of course they weren’t able to flourish as writers. In fact, when I look back at the times that reactionaries see as a golden age of culture (the 18th and 19th centuries), what I see is a hideous tragedy, because I think of all the unwritten books, unpainted paintings, and uncomposed music that could have been produced by women and Black people if they hadn’t been kept in subjugation.
✏️ The past is a lie.. or basically a half-truth. Yes, in the past men came up with all the best stuff, and hey, there weren’t as many gay people around, especially not in culture/literature/etc., and of course there weren’t black or people of color. Guess what? It’s not because they didn’t exist.. they were there, but they weren’t allowed to contribute; they weren’t able to do more than survive (if that). And the rare few that somehow not only survived, but thrived, against all odds? Their achievements won’t be recognized because history is not written by them. The past has all things, but all too often we look at it through a lens that’s forced upon us. #followup #addto/questions 🔗 View Highlight
id654160492
knowledge of the world is biased by the fact that producing and spreading information is a luxury only a few can engage in. The genocide of Native Americans was very effective at keeping their stories from being told. Some of our only firsthand accounts of what life for the enslaved in America was like come because the Works Progress Administration funded the production of a slave narrative collection that recorded oral histories. If there hadn’t been a social democratic administration, the testimonies wouldn’t have been collected, and the voices would have been lost, along with the understanding of the world that comes from reading them.
id654161029
All kinds of factors determine what knowledge gets produced. What kind of research is being funded? Who is funding it? Who has the time to study and learn? What are they taught? What information do they have access to? Whose voices will they hear? Will their own voices be heard? What do they have to do in order to make a living?