Hermione Laake's Blog: Thoughts, page 9
June 14, 2020
June 12, 2020
June 10, 2020
Racism, Sexism, and Binaries. A personal History.
I’ve always found the term ‘black’ to signify difference problematic. Maybe, because I was a student of art, to me black is a very specific colour when compared to other colours, and yet, of course it isn’t really a single colour at all. The term ‘black’ refers to many people of many different colours; therefore it seems to be a term to signify difference.As a child, my first experience of myself as ‘Other’ (a term coined by E. Said in the comparatively recent work in the history of Imperialism, ‘Orientalism’ to illustrate the Oriental and Occidental dichotomy), was when someone at my junior school pointed out that my skin was “olive”. I was shocked by this reference, and realized that this child at my school saw me as different and did this by reference to the colour of my skin.[image error]As I got older, my skin became whiter. I stayed out of the sun to avoid skin cancer, as there was a big campaign against skin cancer in the 1980s (which raised my awareness of skin cancer), when sunbed use was prevalent here in the UK and I was a teenager, although I’ve never been on a sunbed; yet I had thick, black curly hair and people often asked me whether I was Spanish. (I am told that my great grandmother might have been Spanish, but I have never had a DNA test, so I really do not know.) Anyway there are rumours, aren’t there, that we all hail from Africa originally, and we are all related.So what is all the fuss about? Well, the treatment of people that we deem different from ourselves, and the abuse of those people.Perhaps, more because of other people’s reactions to me, and less anything to do with my own examination of my feelings about my identity, I’ve never felt ‘white’. I’ve always felt ‘Other’ and I’ve always felt angry at history, which was partly why I wrote a literary sequel to Jane Eyre which attempted to look at the psyche of Bertha, the Creole woman locked away in Thornfield Hall; the secret wife of Rochester.I have been vocal about my anger at the self-congratulatory attitude of the country I have grown up in; for example, questioning visitors to a Raj exhibition at the V&A in 2010, about their feelings about what I called the ‘rape’ of India, to this exhibition which glorified the British Empire and exhibited a Rolls Royce as if that were something to aspire to, when there were rooms of beautiful and delicate Indian artifacts leading towards this final display of opulence, which were lost to history. The resulting feeling of the experience of this exhibition was that I felt sickened by the inference, which was that we were civilised and had civilised a people. Fellow citizens seemed oblivious to the obvious ignorance of displaying opulence and wealth gained through the subjugation and slavery of others. They told me “we (meaning the British, so that includes you, if you are British), had given them our language.”I am aware that there were many people, in all cultures affected by colonialism, who benefited from working with their oppressors at the time, and you can go to your history books if you are interested in reading about this. But, regardless of this, it is still wrong to continue to revel in something which was long ago (over 200 years ago in 1807 in Great Britain; I will upload further research on this at a later date as notes since this was not a uniform abolition, worldwide), abolished. For this reason, I was heartened and moved to tears this morning when I heard that monuments celebrating prominent slave trade beneficiaries were being torn down and revised. It is confusing for our children that we revere people who have traded in lives of other people. There can be no other way to describe it.As a descendant of an Irish grandmother who was born in Wexford in the 1900s, I grew up in 1960s and 70s Britain being acutely aware that the British projected the Irish as stupid, and cracked jokes about them. I always thought this was interesting, since I knew I was not stupid. (I missed a first at university because I was a single mum with a sick 9 year old at home and handed in two essays late, which reduced my mark by a couple of points to just below the mark for a first; I did fight this, but concessions were not allowed retrospectively, you had to know you were going to get sick.) Still, although I was bemused by the treatment of the Irish (the knowledge that Ulster was once a colony not being lost on me), I was slightly angry too, which made me pick up another book alongside the standard reading of our Postcolonial Studies module as an undergraduate. That book was ‘Inventing Ireland’, by the Irish writer Declan Kiberd. That book taught me about what it is like to be in captivity and how playing dumb pleases those people who are in charge of you. It’s a device that the Irish used to confound the British.Other research has taught me that there were similarities between the abuses that were meted out to countries and regions that were colonised. Their customs and dress was the subject of ridicule. (Customs and dress tend to be categorised using the term ethnicity.)There are cross overs between abuses of any colonised people and the subjugation of women. It seems to me that women who behave differently from men, dress differently and sometimes have different or even, as we are learning, the same needs as men, are often derided for this by men. Instead those men should celebrate the difference the opposite sex brings to their business, or table, and see this difference as an asset.Any form of slavery is wrong. The slavery of women in this country is wrong. Paying women lower salaries than men and not taking account of their responsibilities to their children or accommodating these is wrong. This is a form of subjugation and slavery, and along with all slavery it should be eradicated.Personally, I did not find binaries helpful, the binaries of ‘black’ and ‘white’, and ‘male’ and ‘female’ seem to me to be tools of segregation.[image error]Recently, as a means of educating myself about the literature that my forefathers grew up with, I’ve been reading a work by Robert Browning called The Ring and The Book. This work highlights the attitudes to women who were born out of wedlock in history. Women were thought of as Bastards and of lower worth.Even as recently as the 1970s, I recall a child telling me (when I was still a child), that she was a “bastard” because she was born out of wedlock. The language of The Ring and the Book is truly shocking. Both the woman who adopts a child, and passes her off as her own, and the child of the story are at fault for being involved in such a scheme, although there are several viewpoints. (The story is retold from several different standpoints.)Nowadays, adoption would be seen as a kind and caring act of charity.Any demeaning of another human being as of lower worth than oneself is barbaric.Perhaps we should erect statues to show gratitude to the people in our communities who volunteer or who dedicate themselves to family life, and who do not profit from their work, except perhaps through personal growth which enables them to further enrich the lives of others.Research:The following researched writing discusses different experiences of abolition:The abolition of slavery in the French Antilles on 27 April 1848 led to a modification of the legal and judicial systems: the changing legal status of former slaves gave them new opportunities to move around the colonies, at least on paper. In theory, after 1848, everyone should have had freedom of social and spatial mobility and access to the urban centres and their institutions; what happened in practice, however, still needs to be researched.(“Freedom of Movement, Access to the Urban Centres, and Abolition of Slavery in the French Caribbean, “Fatah-Black, Karwan, and Marion Pluskota).https://ku-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/45nsh0/TN_cambridgeS0020859020000103accessed 11-06-2020The following researched writing discusses different experiences of abolition:in reaction to slave-trade abolition-Great Britain’s 1807 legislation and the United States’ ban in 1808-cultural producers began bifurcating constitutional from personal freedom in their iterations of Columbia. Anti-slavery advocates still used Columbia as an iconic syncretism of political and personal liberty to critique slavery. Others, however, threatened by the possibility of black freedom associated with slave-trade abolition, staged Columbia to represent political but not personal liberty.(“Columbia the Goddess of Liberty and Slave-Trade Abolition (1807–1820s)”, Jenna M. Gibbs; see bibliography for full references)https://ku-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/45nsh0/TN_doaj_soai_doaj_org_article_fd994b9dd7804c878ce802a2bd786c21Accessed 11-06-2020Bibliography:Fatah-Black, Karwan, and Marion Pluskota. “Freedom of Movement, Access to the Urban Centres, and Abolition of Slavery in the French Caribbean.” 65.S28 (2020): 93-115. Web.Jenna M. Gibbs. “Columbia the Goddess of Liberty and Slave-Trade Abolition (1807–1820s).” Sjuttonhundratal 8 (2011): Sjuttonhundratal, 01 October 2011, Vol.8. Web.
Racism, Sexism, and Binaries.
I’ve always found the term ‘black’ to signify difference problematic. Maybe, because I was a student of art, to me black is a very specific colour. And yet the term ‘black’ refers to many people of many different colours; therefore it seems to be a term to signify difference.
As a child, my first experience of myself as ‘Other’ (a term coined by E. Said in the comparatively recent work in the history of Imperialism, ‘Orientalism’ to illustrate the Oriental and Occidental dichotomy), was when someone at my junior school pointed out that my skin was “olive”. I was shocked by this reference, and realized that this child at my school saw me as different and did this by reference to the colour of my skin.
[image error]
As I got older, my skin became whiter. I stayed out of the sun to avoid skin cancer as there was a big campaign against skin cancer in the 1980s when sunbed use was prevalent here in the UK and I was a teenager which raised my awareness of skin damage, although I’ve never been on a sunbed; yet I had thick, black curly hair and people often asked me whether I was Spanish. I am told that my grandmother might have been Spanish, but I have never had a DNA test, so I really do not know. Anyway there are rumours, aren’t there, that we all hail from Africa originally, and we are all related, so what is all the fuss about? Well, the treatment of of people that we deem different from ourselves, and the abuse of those people.
Perhaps more because of other people’s reactions to me, and less anything to do with my own examination of my feelings about my identity, I’ve never felt ‘white’. I’ve always felt ‘Other’ and I’ve always felt angry at history, which was partly why I wrote a literary sequel to Jane Eyre which attempted to look at the psyche of Bertha, the Creole woman locked away in Thornfield Hall; the secret wife of Rochester.
I have been vocal about my anger at the self-congratulatory attitude of the country I have grown up in, for example, questioning visitors to a Raj exhibition about there feelings about what I called the ‘rape’ of India, to this exhibition which glorified the British Empire and exhibited a Rolls Royce as if that were something to aspire to, when there were rooms of beautiful and delicate Indian artifacts leading towards this final display of opulence, which were lost to history. The resulting feeling of the experience of this exhibition was that I felt sickened by the inference which was that we were civilised and had civilised a people. Fellow citizens seemed oblivious to the obvious ignorance of displaying opulence and wealth gained through the subjugation and slavery of others. They told me “we (meaning the British, so that includes you, if you are British), had given them our language.”
I am aware that there were many people, in all cultures affected by colonialism, who benefited from working with their oppressors at the time, and you can go to your history books if you are interested in reading about this. But, regardless of this, it is still wrong to continue to revel in something which was long ago (over 200 years ago in 1807), abolished.
For this reason, I was heartened and moved to tears this morning when I heard that monuments celebrating prominent slave trade beneficiaries were being torn down and revised. It is confusing for our children that we revere people who have traded in lives of other people. There can be no other way to describe it.
As a descendant of an Irish grandmother who was born in Wexford in the 1900s, I grew up in 1960s and 70s Britain being acutely aware that the British projected the Irish as stupid and cracked jokes about them. I always thought this was interesting, since I knew I was not stupid. (I missed a first at university because I was a single mum with a sick 9 year old at home and handed in two essays late, which reduced my mark by a couple of points to just below the mark for a first; I did fight this, but concessions were not allowed retrospectively, you had to know you were going not get sick.) Still, although I was bemused I was slightly angry too, which made me pick up another book alongside the standard reading if postcolonial studies as an undergraduate. That book was ‘Inventing Ireland’, by the Irish writer Declan Kiberd. That book taught me about what it is like to be in captivity and how playing dumb pleases those people who are in charge of you. It’s a device that the Irish used to confound the British.
Other research has taught me that there were similarities between the abuses that were meted out to countries and regions that were colonised. Their customs and dress was the subject of ridicule. This is termed as ethnicity. It seems to me that women who behave differently from men, are often derided for this by men. Instead men should celebrate the difference the opposite sex brings to their business, and see it as an asset.
Any form of slavery is wrong. The slavery of women in this country is wrong. Paying women lower salaries than men and not taking account of their responsibilities to their children or accommodating these is wrong. This is a form of subjugation and slavery, and along with all slavery it should be eradicated.
Personally, I did not find binaries helpful, the binaries of ‘black’ and ‘white’, and ‘male’ and ‘female’ seem to me to be tools of segregation.
[image error]
Recently, as a means of educating myself about the literature that my forefathers grew up with, I’ve been reading a work by Robert Browning called The Ring and The Book. This work highlights the attitudes to women who were born out of wedlock in history. Women were thought of as Bastards and of lower worth. Even as recently as the 1970s, I recall a child telling me (when I was still a child), that she was a “bastard” because she was born out of wedlock. The language of The Ring and the Book is truly shocking. Both the woman who adopts a child, and passes her off as her own, and the child of the story are at fault for being involved in such a scheme, although there are several viewpoints. (The story is retold from several different standpoints.)
Nowadays, adoption would be seen as a kind and caring act of charity.
Any demeaning of another human being as of lower worth than oneself is barbaric.
Perhaps we should erect statues to show gratitude to the people in our communities who volunteer or who dedicate themselves to family life, and who do not profit from their work, except perhaps through personal growth which enables them to further enrich the lives of others.
June 9, 2020
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, The Film based on the book; released in 2020.
As a child, I loved David Copperfield. I had forgotten what a good story it was, until January of 2020 when I went to the cinema and watched the film. The film is based on the story and is very contemporary, with regard to the problems with finding decent rented accommodation, particularly in Britain.
Dickens was an autobiographical writer, and this work appears to be drawn from the idea of Dickens as a young writer and eccentric child. He did work in a factory and his father was sent to a debtor’s prison, so it is likely that much of his work was based on his experiences while growing up.
This was one of those rare occasions when the film was a good as the book. Although I must go back and re-read David Copperfield, since I must own up to have forgotten it entirely.
The story is a rags to riches and rags to riches again theme, and follows the child Copperfield, who works in a factory, but is a gifted writer, through to adulthood where his fortunes change and he is in the position to help the man who was once benevolent to him.
I won’t give anything away.
The acting is believable and the events are sometimes not unlike the predicament that many people find themselves in nowadays in this world of unreliable rented accommodation (not surprisingly Dickens has been called a social critic), but you come away feeling hopeful that there is some justice in the world and that good things do happen.
A richly colourful film, with likeable characters.
Notes:
The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019), is a comedy-drama film written and directed by Armando Iannucci and is based on the 1850 Victorian-era novel David Copperfield.
A good review on the film:
June 8, 2020
When birds lie down
I come to you today, feeling empty. There are no more excuses. Today I witnessed a blackbird lying down in the grass like a cat. I had seen the pigeons do this a month ago, but I thought little of it. Perhaps they had become domesticated, since they had fallen out of their nest and into an uncovered chimney at our house and we rescued them when they were fledglings. They seemed to have decided to camp out in the garden since they have grown. They were a little fat. Perhaps they were being lazy. Or perhaps not. I did speak to my daughter about the pigeons, since their reliance on the garden seems rather comical. She told me she had noticed blackbirds behaving in the same way; this in another county, several miles away. “What?” I replied. “Blackbirds? Are you sure they were blackbirds?” Well, I was wrong to doubt this. Today, I myself observed the same thing. I should know that my daughter is more knowledgeable than I am on many animals and that her almost two decades of observing animals will have stood her in good stead to comment. I didn’t believe her because it seemed too incredible; blackbirds lying down in the grass.
Thing must change. We all need to change our focus to work with nature and not against it.
French lessons
When I was an A level student of French, I remember that we were supposed to write about recycling for our A level paper. But I thought that there were other things we should be talking about. I was serious about having conversations in other languages because I felt that the British were arrogant expecting everyone to converse in English. This approach seemed to me to be one that left the British in an ignorant and uninformed position, and it was dangerous, since when you are only informed in one language you miss nuances and delicate turns of phrase, idiosyncratic sayings and customs which are borne out of experience, and you miss opportunities to learn; everything is seen and translated from your own perspective, which can make you oblivious to the needs and suffering of others. This, of course filters down to our relationship with nature. I decided to rebel and wrote my paper on the demise of the blue butterfly for the exam. That was over twenty years ago in the late 90s, and I didn’t get a great mark, probably because everybody else was writing about recycling (for me that was old news, since I had been recycling since the 1980s, and grew up with a grandmother that used to collect silver milk bottle tops for the blind and fold her Christmas paper and carrier bags up to re-use them). I am happy to say that for the past two years, I have noticed a few tiny blue butterflies flying around here in south Gloucestershire so something good must have happened to increase their numbers.
Now, having spent much of my childhood outdoors (I used to go gardening with my father who was a landscape gardener and I had a plot of earth in my back garden which I tended, as well as a gardening business of my own which I set up at the age of 11), I am used to the ways of the plants and the wild life that frequent the garden. I was so used to the outdoors that I used to be able to tell the time simply by the position of the sun in the sky to the minute. I was lucky enough to be able to choose to give up my 6-year career in retail management in 1990 to look after a young family, and this meant that I could once again spend time outdoors and in nature. And I did this, planting trees and nurturing my children and the gardens. Because of this, I am experienced enough to share with you that we have gone far enough and we have to stop now because our behaviour is not harmonious.
Forget Covid-19
“Forget Covid-19” may seem like a provocative statement since many people are still at risk. And yet, if we do not change radically, then we will not be living on this planet for much longer and diseases will be irrelevant. When the birds, that never change, begin to change then you need to start worrying. You need to listen and you need to pay attention.
I was idly looking at The Times this morning, having worked on a journal that I do some part-time work for, and having just finished re-reading Dances with Wolves, and having updated two of my blogs, when an article in the Times caught my eye; three women were dressed in face masks to match their outfits. This struck me as odd because still after all that we have learned from Greta Thunberg and the scientists who support her, we are still worrying about our looks even when we have the need to cover most of our faces. In fact, it strikes me as a form of madness. This obsession with the self. This obsession with being seen. And yet, perhaps it is not so mad after all, because perhaps the obsession with being seen is the last death throes of a dying planet. Yet what will we leave behind as our legacy for any future planet but hundreds of photographs of ourselves smiling into cameras? As if we were saying it is ok, I am here. I am happy after all. Don’t worry. The protagonist of the book I was reading, John Dunbar, or Dances with Wolves (his Comanche name), was also someone who liked to be seen, and yet he learnt through a journey of spending time with Comanches and his own people what being seen really means, it wasn’t his clothes or looks that made him what he was, it was his kindness to animals. Read it if you have time. It is about living in harmony with nature and respecting nature.
I may be someone who did not reach my full potential while at school because I was always dreaming, with my head in a book or my eyes staring out of a window, but I know that this was valuable time that I spent (later on, after writing several works of fiction, I went to university and caught up), you see I noticed things. It seems to me that other people do not notice the subtle changes in nature. Perhaps this is because they do not spend time out doors in nature. And we cannot blame them for that. But if you sit in front of your computers all day then you will not notice the strange behaviour of birds and you will not notice changes in behaviour either.
Gardens, like children, need nurture
Gardens are like children they need attention, care and nurture. Without it they wither and die. Sometimes a plant is down to one solitary leaf, and then by moving it you can restore it and it can thrive and grow to eight foot. But you need to know how to do this. How will you learn if you spend all of your days staring at a computer screen and worrying about money–GDP this and KPI that? While you are sitting down you are not exercising your body. Therefore, your body is not thriving and it will find it more difficult to battle with diseases. Surely anyone can see that a few hours in front of a computer is enough for any human being every day. Surely humans are supposed to spend time walking and exercising, taking fresh air and interacting with other humans and nature, face-to-face. When we do not interact face-to-face, we lose the ability to sense cues in body language and in facial expressions. Why are we doing this to ourselves? What is this race that we are in?
We need to stop and ask ourselves whether it will be worth it when we have stored up all the money that we can gather together and we have nothing superficial or meaningless to spend it on. What then? Will there be any ancient trees left to sustain the atmosphere? Will there be any vegetation to sustain the animals that are part of a delicate eco-system? Will there be any animals? When the oceans are full of our cups and plastic what fish will be left to sustain us? Perhaps we can go back to catching and eating birds. But will there be any birds left?
June 7, 2020
June 6, 2020
June 5, 2020
NYTimes: Watch Full Video: Cuomo Holds Daily News Conference
Watch Full Video: Cuomo Holds Daily News Conference https://nyti.ms/3eYc5Rj
This gives me hope. A stunning 14 minutes of sensible talk on how societal change can happen overnight.
Bibliography:
Courtesy of Reuters, New York Times, June 5th 2020
Accessed 5-6-2020
Image by Gill Adams, 1992-1996
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