[HN Gopher] The Bronte archive needs to be secured for public us...
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The Bronte archive needs to be secured for public use and made
accessible
Author : benbreen
Score : 25 points
Date : 2021-07-18 22:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hyperallergic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hyperallergic.com)
| MikeUt wrote:
| > If my students benefit from public largesse and access, it's
| because they challenge public institutions, asking why they are
| not free (like CUNY once was), demanding access to them, and
| questioning the way they work.
|
| I'm not sure how to interpret this passage. Is she saying public
| libraries are only accessible thanks to her students "challenges"
| and demands?
| [deleted]
| swashboon wrote:
| Yea, in general, representative republic policy is often form
| by those who complain the most/loudest.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> If my students benefit from public largesse and access,
| it's because they challenge public institutions, asking why
| they are not free (like CUNY once was), demanding access to
| them, and questioning the way they work.
|
| >> I'm not sure how to interpret this passage. That public
| libraries are only accessible thanks to her students
| "challenges" and demands?
|
| > Yea, in general, representative republic policy is often
| form by those who complain the most/loudest.
|
| That's true, but I don't think it salvages that passage. The
| loud complaints that got these students access may well have
| actually come from (likely dead) white do-gooders on a
| civilizing mission than from the students themselves.
| Jiro wrote:
| I don't believe in decolonizing archives.
|
| (It's amazing that the article says this with complete
| seriousness.)
| thebooktocome wrote:
| It's not clear to me if you object to the choice of word or the
| action that the author intends for it to mean.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| What does it mean? I agree that this information should be open
| and available to all, but I find this language confusing.
| SiVal wrote:
| Yes, it's confusing, and a dictionary won't help, because
| it's religious jargon. Religious jargon, whether from a
| theistic or, currently, a non-theistic religion, is used to
| turn comments about nearly anything into declarations of
| faith.
|
| When a single religion dominates academia, as has often been
| the case through the centuries, they can comment on anything,
| but it will always be expressed in the form of an argument
| for their institution's religious doctrines. Professors at
| Cambridge in the early 17th century were almost all puritans,
| so they could talk about chemistry experiments, but it would
| have to be presented as yet more proof of the glory of God
| and include some jab at popery.
|
| In the religion of today's academies, they can choose to talk
| about Bronte family artifacts as being emblems of "white
| supremacy" that should be hidden or destroyed or public goods
| that need to be "decolonized" (opened and freely given to
| all), but either way, the jargon combines the opinion with
| the jab at "popery" required by their co-religionists.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What does it mean? I agree that this information should be
| open and available to all, but I find this language
| confusing.
|
| Honestly, it seems like a faddish buzzword, incorrectly used.
|
| IIRC "decolonizing" sometimes means returning cultural
| artifacts acquired during colonial times to the
| regions/cultures where they originated. However, it doesn't
| make any sense to do that to cultural artifacts created by
| citizens a colonial power in their own originating culture.
| Honestly, that sounds like another kind of colonization.
|
| This article seems like a mess trying to force a combination
| of trendy ideology with personal experience that don't really
| fit. For instance:
|
| > For her, the archive became a place of postcolonial
| recovery and remembering.
|
| What's that in reference too? A student seeing a card catalog
| that's still in use, and being reminded of personally using
| them in the past. It's weirdly trying to particularize the
| universal. I'm about the farthest from a "colonized" person
| there is, but I could have had _the exact same reaction to
| the exact same situation_ as that student. The only
| difference is that I have the wrong background, so no one 's
| going to try to gratuitously describe my reaction as
| something "postcolonial."
| swashboon wrote:
| It's certainly a provocative use of the language. I believe
| they are making the case that fetishistic hoarding of
| historical documents is both, only available to those with a
| means of wealth created through probably exploitation, and in
| an of itself an aspect of western/euro-centric ideology and
| its propagation through colonization. I tend to think the
| hoarding mentality is more base then that (I've watched
| squirrels before) but I think the argument that hoarding
| _knowledge_ specifically is certainly a more amorphous
| problem.
|
| Yes, they are just making the claim that the information
| should be available. They are putting it into their own
| contextualized argument framework.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I believe they are making the case that fetishistic
| hoarding of historical documents is...in an of itself an
| aspect of western/euro-centric ideology and its propagation
| through colonization.
|
| I'm pretty sure a historian with the right background could
| easily find examples of that in, for instance, China before
| it had any significant contact with the West. Trying to
| particularize it seems incorrect.
|
| > I believe they are making the case that fetishistic
| hoarding of historical documents is both, only available to
| those with a means of wealth created through probably
| exploitation...
|
| That's probably true but well understood. Caring about
| historical documents, let alone hoarding them, is quite a
| luxury activity available only to those with wealth, and
| wealth (now, and especially in the past) usually comes from
| some kind of exportation of others.
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(page generated 2021-07-19 23:01 UTC)