Babel

by R.F. Kuang

professors like to pretend that the tower is a refuge for pure knowledge, that it sits above the mundane concerns of business and commerce, but it does not. It’s intricately tied to the business of colonialism. It is the business of colonialism.

Hmmmm its giving colonial library

He was a child starved of affection, which he now had in abundance – and was it so wrong for him to cling to what he had? He was not ready to commit fully to Hermes. But by God, he would have killed for any of his cohort.

History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.’

In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.

An unfortunate reality

Free trade, open borders, equal access to the same knowledge – it all sounded so fine in theory. But if the playing field really was so even, why had all the profits accumulated in Britain? Were the British really so much more clever and industrious?

This part

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

HMMMMMMMMMMMM

I hate knowing that my very presence at Oxford is a betrayal of my race and religion, because I’m becoming just that class of person Macaulay hoped to create.

It took him a moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.

Hmmmmmmmm teaaaaaaa

‘But that’s the great contradiction of colonialism.’ Cathy uttered this like a simple matter of fact. ‘It’s built to destroy that which it prizes most.’

‘But if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable?

The problem is that we’re always living like we’ve lost. We’re all living like you. We see their guns, their silver-work, and their ships, and we think it’s already over for us. We don’t stop to consider how even the playing field actually might be. And we never consider what things would look like if we took the gun.’ Once again, Griffin offered the gun to Robin. ‘Careful, it’s front-heavy.’

‘Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock.

Because their own interest is the only logic they’ll listen to. Not justice, not human dignity, not the liberal freedoms they so profess to value. Profit.’

That was no favour, Sterling. It was cruelty. Don’t ask me to love my master.’

for if she could not save her friends, she had at least to save herself.

….

I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end.

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’

But who, in living history, ever understands their part in the tapestry?