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berniesrevolution · 5 years

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JACOBIN MAGAZINE

American culture is saturated with the idea that public housing is inevitably and uniformly grim — not so much a place to live as a place to lay your head while you plot your escape, or to simply resign yourself to paralyzing poverty and social invisibility forever.

The impression of public housing as dull, dilapidated, and dangerous has always worked in favor of those who would rather there be no public housing at all. Private real-estate developers, landlords, banks, and assorted wealthy people who don’t like paying taxes benefit enormously from our pessimism and lack of imagination. It galls and frightens them that we might someday start to view public housing not as emergency aid for the most destitute, but as an ambitious long-term solution and preferable alternative to the atomization, insecurity, and relentless exploitation of the private housing market — that is, that we might build public housing so attractive that people wouldn’t want to take out mortgages or pay market-rate rent anymore.

So they would rather we didn’t find out about Red Vienna, or Le Lorrain in Brussels, or Sa Pobla in Mallorca, or even the heyday of British council housing. These projects past and present demonstrate that social housing can be vibrant, safe and beautiful, all while being affordable and reliable for ordinary working people.

1. Red Vienna

To capitalists whose profits depend on extracting as much value from land and shelter as possible, raised expectations for what public housing can accomplish are an existential threat. And nothing raises those expectations quicker and higher than familiarity with Red Vienna, the paragon of social housing in modern history.

Unsurprisingly, the massive undertaking to build decommodified housing for the city’s residents was spearheaded by socialists. A robust labor movement with socialist leadership had established itself in Austria during industrialization in the late ninteenth century, but socialism really came into its own after the First World War, when the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy created new political openings. In Vienna, the Social Democratic Workers Party came to power in 1919 and immediately set about implementing an ambitious reform program.

The socialist city government imposed heavy taxes on the wealthy and, starting in 1923, used new revenue to replace its overcrowded and drab working-class slums with modern public housing. Because these were built by socialists with a vision for decommodifying shelter entirely and with a political allegiance to the city’s working class, they weren’t begrudging bare-bones offerings. Far from it, they were high-concept, masterfully-built edifices, many of which have stood the test of time. Their construction doubled as a good unionized public jobs program, helping the economy recover after the war.

Red Vienna’s social housing was designed not just as a place for workers to recharge between shifts — what Barbara Ehrenreich has aptly called “canned labor” — but as a place to live. The majestic apartment buildings featured leafy courtyards, copious open space, and plenty of natural light. They had well-equipped shared laundries and communal state-of-the-art kitchen facilities. They were connected to, and sometimes contained within them, public schools and cooperative stores. Many even had bathhouses and swimming pools, healthcare and childcare centers, pharmacies, post offices, and libraries on the premises.

The largest apartment block in Red Vienna, Karl Marx-Hof, was used as a fortress against militant fascists in the lead-up to the Second World War. The socialists put up a valiant resistance, but in time Red Vienna fell to the fascists. Even so, the city retained the memory of beautiful social housing: for residents of Vienna, the illusion that shelter had to be either private or subpar had been forever shattered. Vienna continued to build desirable social housing after the war, and today 62 percent of the city’s residents live in social housing, compared to 5 percent in New York City.

“We have an old idea here that not only rich people should live in good conditions,” says one 52-year-old social housing resident in Vienna. “It’s an important idea and we should hold onto it.”

2. British Council Housing

In 1979, 42 percent of Brits lived in public housing. The big and bold postwar British public housing system wasn’t a telltale sign or symptom of widespread immiseration. Instead it was the fruit of a century of reformers’ visions and working-class struggles. Some council estates were modest, while others — like the charming, eccentric turn-of-the-century Boundary Street Estate, or the striking modernist buildings designed by communist architect Berthold Lubetkin — were carefully planned for maximum livability and architectural allure.

British social housing was funded through progressive taxation, an arrangement that social democrats justified by pointing out that public housing tenants performed the labor that made large personal fortunes possible. Naturally, this never sat well with the domestic ruling class. So when a global recession in 1973 caused a crack in the foundation of the economic system, capitalists and their political allies leapt at the opportunity. Deliberate underfunding of the housing projects — rationalized as a consequence of unavoidable recession-era belt-tightening — began in the 1970s, followed by a full-on privatization scheme in the 1980s.

When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she swiftly passed legislation allowing tenants to buy and eventually sell their council flats — a clever way of absorbing the publicly-furnished housing stock into the private sector and reestablishing the supremacy of capitalist markets. Low-income tenants have been subjected to steadily disappearing protections and increasing rents ever since.

As shelter costs creep up on earnings across the UK, many who grew up in public council housing are nostalgic for a time when working-class tenants were protected from the vagaries of the private rental market. They remember their council-house upbringings fondly. “You practically knew every kid that was here, and you always had someone to play with,” recalls one woman who grew up in the Quaker Court Estate in London. “The parents got on brilliantly as well. If one of you was having a party, the whole lot of you would go.”

“We had an idyllic childhood,” says another, who grew up in the Boundary Street Estate in London — the city’s oldest social housing project, born on the heels of the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885. “We really did. I mean, it seems strange to say that now.”

A man who grew up in the Heygate Estate in London recalls that he “loved it here… I remember being dazzled by the whiteness of the fitted kitchens, and the stairwells seemed to head to heaven, and away from the slate-grey streets below. This was the modern world, and it was ours for the taking.”

Austerity drove many estates into disrepair in the late twentieth century, and Thatcher’s ongoing right-to-buy scheme continues to privatize what remains.

Only 8 percent of Brits live in public housing today, but they still have a stronger intuition about social housing than Americans do. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has recently proposed an ambitious new social housing initiative, and it’s been received with an enthusiasm that’s difficult — though not impossible — to imagine in the United States.

3. Spain’s Architecturally Adventurous Housing Projects

Though privatization and austerity are on the march everywhere, the social-democratic legacy of high-quality public housing hasn’t entirely evaporated. Particularly in Europe, there are a handful of recent developments that draw inspiration from the projects of the past — particularly their architectural legacy.

Spain has recently taken up the mantle, and has turned its public housing program into an opportunity for architectural experimentation. In Madrid, the Mirador housing project features a large open space in the middle of the vertical building that doubles as a communal plaza, while the Carabanchel Social Housing project is heavy on bamboo and the 120 Parla project has a retro-futuristic appearance. In Barcelona, the Torre Plaça Europa looks identical to a pricey condo building in London or New York City — same with the Parc Central Social Housing Building in Valencia. The Sa Pobla project in Mallorca looks like something a movie star would rent out for an Instagrammable vacation, and social housing for mineworkers in Asturias is a geometric novelty, inspired in color and shape by the coal that the miners extract.

But Spain is not run by socialists, and while the architecture of these new social housing projects upends the idea that poor people should live in ugly and boring buildings, the projects leave some things to be desired. These buildings are often located on the peripheries of cities, where land is cheaper — for a reason, since these areas are underdeveloped and remote. Building social housing on the outskirts tends to segregate working-class tenants and burden them with costly and time-consuming travel, a mistake also made by the otherwise relatively successful Swedish miljonprogrammet, or Million Program. Fashionable buildings are an improvement, but ultimately unsatisfactory if there aren’t shops or schools nearby.

Imagine these buildings in vibrant city centers and you’ll have an idea of what social housing can actually achieve. Better yet, imagine them in bustling neighborhoods and equipped with their own publicly-run pharmacies and daycares. Now you see why Red Vienna remains the social housing gold standard, in terms of real value to working-class tenants.

4. Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain, Brussels

Brussels has given Spain a run for its money in recent years. Two developments in particular — Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain — are shining examples of social housing architecture.

Savonnerie Heymans, named after the soap factory that used to occupy the site, is less than half a mile from Brussels’ central square. It comprises dozens of units of varying types — studios, lofts, duplexes and apartments ranging from one to six bedrooms. The architecture is as varied as the units themselves: there are boxlike structures made from glass and slatted wood that have a modern Finnish-sauna feel, and white pitched-roof dwellings that resemble modern interpretations of Belgian cottages. In the middle is the old chimney from the soap factory, the kind of homage to industrial history that’s usually cloying in bourgeois settings, less so in a social housing project.

The smaller Le Lorrain is designed by the same architects and is also a renovated industrial complex, this one an old iron dealer. The new estate is spotless and stylish, like something out of Kinfolk or Dwell. But what’s remarkable about Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain isn’t just their pleasing architecture; it’s that, unlike the Spanish projects, they’re located on high-value lots in lively neighborhoods, avoiding the problem of working-class siloing. Their designs also encourage communal life to a greater extent: plenty of shared outdoor space, pavilions and gardens and “mini-forests,” and Savonnerie Heymans even has a game library for kids.

The major downside to social housing in Belgium is that it’s a complicated public-private affair, with a labyrinthine nexus of developers, providers, payers and categories of tenant. The system is decentralized, and while Brussels doesn’t allow tenants to buy (or eventually sell) public housing as Britain does, other Belgian regions do — and there’s a danger that Brussels could fall prey to this policy, as austerity and neoliberalism break the social-democratic commitments of municipal governments across Europe.

This is another area in which Red Vienna shines by contrast. The planning, construction, finance and maintenance of its social housing were highly centralized. The buildings were completely planned and administered by a democratically-elected body, and they were never intended to be privatized. They were provided by workers, for workers, ideally forever.

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#politics #the left #jacobin magazine #social housing #Housing market #affordable housing #democratic socialism #jacobin

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untilourapathy · 6 years

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Navigating a white space as a PoC

This comes after a 7 hour conversation with the lovely Anna @pukingpastilles. Bear in mind that this is drawn from our specific experiences and may not be universal. We hope it resonates with some of you.

Scrolling past this is an act of white privilege.

A lot of people either see race as irrelevant or that we talk about it too much in our ‘post-racial’ age. However, for us, it is our daily reality. We cannot choose to switch off our race, and thus cannot remove the burdens that accompany it. We do not have the ‘luxury’ of ignoring race. Until then, we’re going to keep talking about it. You may want to ‘skip the drama’ but it is a privilege for you to be able to scroll past this. It is our very lives that you are scrolling past. We are attempting to argue for our right to exist in this space. The topic of race is extremely underdiscussed in fandom discourse. Some people either see race as not relevant to fandom or something that they think they’ve sussed because they’re ‘open’, ‘liberal’ or have a PoC friend or something. That’s very different from actively educating yourself on issues that affect us beyond what you see in the news or from history. That’s good, but there’s more. Just because you’re socially liberal does not excuse you from perpetuating the cycle of racism. We have to fight to validly exist, and that is exhausting. Existing is exhausting.

Being a PoC in a predominantly white space is an act of protest as our very existence is politicised.

It can never be just a story of two people, not when we are so burdened. You are never just yourself, race comes first, and you are never not conscious of this. A PoC would be constantly hyperaware of their race because it informs how society treats them in every way. You are always self-conscious about things like not associating with too many people of your own race in case it comes off as threatening or exclusive or discriminatory. You subconsciously make adjustments to blend into the space as much as possible in fear of offending somebody, such as changing your accent or clothes. You feel a constant sense of double alienation. You occupy a liminal space. You are the hyphen in the Asian-American. We are marginalised, Othered. We are never granted full rights to exist independently of a Eurocentric standard.

Frank, outright racism does occur. And it sticks with you.

Whether or not you are easily hurt, it does stay with you subconsciously, and just reinforces this concept of your being lesser. It’s even worse when the target is someone you care about. You never forgot those moments. Moreover, microaggressions, ignorant comments, stereotyping and subtle prejudice can be just as bad. You have to work twice as hard to get recognised, and one thing do wrong completely discounts everything you’ve done. We are gaslighted, invalidated, discriminated against because of our genes…

You are seen as a representative of your entire race.

There have been incidents where I see a fellow person of my race on public transport, or in that room, and silently hope that they don’t do anything ‘embarrassing’ or ‘out of the ordinary’ because it would reflect badly on me. Watching the news, every time I see someone of my race do something awful, my heart drops not only due to what they did, because no matter what, their race is highlighted and I feel like this reflects on me. The onus is always on you, to conform, to fit in, to be as least foreign and Other as possible. However, your behaviour will never eradicate the fact that you will be judged. Or, you will be judged as ‘good for a ---‘. We must make a good impression to offset the automatic prejudice before they have met us.

Internalised racism has led us to believe we deserve our treatment.

Family can sometimes be the worst perpetuators of the cycle, as in their bid to give us a better life, they seek for us to fit in to a certain standard (especially with colourism). The effects of colonialism etc have shaped the way people view the white hegemony, and subconsciously we believe that we are lesser, less beautiful, less valid, less human. Furthermore, we’re grateful whenever an ally joins our cause, because we have got used to seeing our treatment as what we have to settle for. Even as adults, Anna and I still feel uncomfortable with our features because they do not fit the European standard of beauty, despite rationally knowing that it is just a subjective, culturally imposed standard. For example, we are keen to wear glasses because we feel so negatively about our eyes due to that ingrained internalised racism. By sole dint of having European features, the irrational part of me with that engrained white supremacy with never think of myself as pretty enough in comparison to white girls. You feel off-brand, broken and like something is wrong with you, even as a very small child. My friends still have to call me out for hating on my features too much. It makes for a very difficult relationship with your family, your sense of identity, home and how you see others of your own race. The onus is on us to accommodate white fragility.

That’s why representation is incredibly important.

Every time I read a fic with representation, no matter how small or how large the issues are explored, the twelve year old me within me tears up a little because for a little girl growing up assuming every character was white until disproven, I remember hunting library shelves for books with any PoC that weren’t stereotyped, reading those few books over and over again just so I could relate to somebody in the media I consumed. For all the little children, and for the children inside us all, please make an effort to reflect the way society is today. Your work makes a huge difference to us, our self-esteem, how we see ourselves. Every instance of representation is something that sticks with us forever. You will have made such a difference in people’s lives. If you’ve made a difference in mine, you must’ve for somebody else. Please. If your art or fic has helped someone deal with the implications of being PoC in a world of white hegemony, I personally think it’s worth the hate that you’ll inevitably get. Every fic or art that involves a PoC has been automatically politically charged, and there is a meaning and purpose behind it.

Often it’s said that a character is not PoC in canon, and thus shouldn’t be in fic.

Well, lots of the things that people do in fic isn’t canon. White fragility is real; a fic that removes every aspect of the character’s personality, or behaviour, or introduces A/B/O or sex pollen or talking hats or removing magic in the HP universe, for example, is seen as more acceptable than making a character PoC. Saying that a character can be turned into a wall or a pancake but not a PoC is to invalidate our experience as less than valid.

How should I write PoC in fic if I am not a PoC?

Perhaps see this comment I made on @gracerene09‘s post here. I am all here for the normalisation of PoC in fic. It doesn’t have to be tackled in depth in every fic. But due to the dearth of authentic representation in fandom, I think it has to be explored. However, please be diligent about how you explore racial issues if you do choose to. Race cannot just be switched out, you must deal with the implications – your heritage, culture, background, experience of the world all shifts. To lend authenticity to the experience you are trying to convey, please research eg please don’t fall into the trap of white saviourism, etc. Also, please don’t use epithets unless is it absolutely integral to the story. If we know the character’s name, there is no need to write: ‘‘Yes, please’, said the Indian man.’ If you are nervous about representing a PoC character without that experience, ask a few friends or try engage in discourse. It is better than remaining in ‘respectful’ silence, because then you are complicit in the greater systemic problem. To pretend race doesn’t matter is to say that we are all treated equally. The experience of being PoC is being hyperaware of your race constantly and that feeding into everything you do, regardless of how mundane, so there is no conceivable way that a PoC's character's every move in a world with white hegemony would not have been influenced by society's perception of their race. To pretend racism doesn’t exist is to dismiss societal racism and our everyday experiences. To be honest, racial issues are an inalienable part of the PoC experience, and thus I think they should be explored.

HARRY POTTER SPECIFIC DISCOURSE

How would the race be treated in the wizarding world?

There is no canon on this, so this is all my personal conjecture. However, I believe that Petunia’s treatment of Harry could easily be understood as racist as well as prejudiced based on his magic, should you choose to see Harry as a PoC. Harry can be an anglicised name (from Hari, which means Lion in Sanskrit), or Harry could’ve just been named Harry. It’s totally possible for someone to be named Harry and be PoC. Blood purity was intended as an analogy of racism to begin with, and the stigma of being mixed race and that balance between two worlds is not incompatible with canon. Say Harry is desi – the Potters could have gained their wealth from the days of colonised South-East Asia. Also, to say that it is unrealistic for there to be PoC in the Wizarding World is a bit rich, considering as the Wizarding World defies gravity etc. Plus, looking at the census, the nineties had about an 8% ethnic minority population. I think the percentage of PoC characters in HP is less than 1%, although do tell me if I’ve done my maths wrong.

Blaise Zabini: Class, status and race in the upper echelons of the Wizarding World

Blaise Zabini is at a very interesting intersection between various social constructs. He’s chummy with the upper class and the Sacred 28, and grew up in the Wizarding world. He is wealthy, thanks to his mother, and is very posh. However, as a black man, in my eyes he is almost certainly Othered. This is just my personal interpretation, but I think Blaise would have to emphasise his poshness to validate his place in the Pureblood bubble, and yet he would always be subconsciously othered, one’s Otherness can never be erased by looks, class, status, wealth or intelligence. Although race would not be the primary optic that people are discriminated against, I think that it still would be one of those open secrets that blood purity could sometimes be conflated with. I think that is why being both elite and PoC is such an interesting intersection to occupy. In a manner of speaking, I see Blaise to be akin to Othello – accepted because he has his merits but his entire character and experience is so heavily tinged by being black in a white space. This would be especially if the Pureblood set is meant to parallel aristocracy. I doubt the Draco, for example, would say anything intentionally racist to Blaise, but he seems to more the exception to the rule. This social mobility may be because he is a ‘foreigner’ from Italy, and thus his race is ‘excused’ because I very much doubt a PoC family could rise to such extreme heights in medieval England like the Malfoys. Say racism didn’t exist, in an extremely hypothetical scenario, being the minority would still affect you in power dynamics.

Hermione Granger as a Muggleborn PoC

Should you see Hermione as a PoC, she would then be doubly discriminated against. I would believe it to be inconceivable for there to be two parallel societies, of which there is interaction and immigration, existing in the same space where race would not matter in one where it would in the other. Blood purity does not matter in the Muggle World because they do not know of magic. This is not the case with race. Especially given Britain’s empire, it would take lots of worldbuilding for one to believe that the Muggle community at one point owned 25% of the globe but the Wizarding World was a happy little content republic. The twin lenses of blood purity and race is something that cannot be ignored, and that intersection has deep impacts upon a character’s identity. Hermione would be forced to go above and beyond to justify her existence (hence her fear of being expelled) and then would be called out for not fitting in by trying too hard. Being dismissed for the smallest of things is very real because as a PoC, everything is your fault. As a PoC, this behaviour would be normalised for her because she, even at 11, would be so used to accommodating to fit Eurocentric notions.

Cho Chang

This lazy orientalisation naming is another example of JKR being a white feminist. No PoC couple in the 80s would have wanted to draw further attention to their child’s race. To better integrate to make their life easier for their child, they would have not chosen Cho as an extra obstacle for her, I don’t think.

Colourblind casting

Adding onto above, I don’t think we can give JKR credit for being a progressive, intersectional feminist in the books if she retroactively showed love for black Hermione. I love that she did that and could be one now, but a lot of HP does not show due diligence in portraying characters of colour. The thing about a white character being casted as another race is that usually, that is fine because their race is incidental, and was not a defining aspect of their character or experience because white people in white spaces do not face the same institutionalised discrimination. When a PoC character is played by a white person, it complicates matters as their experience as a PoC in a white space is integral to their experience of the world.

by @untilourapathy

#racism #race #poc #representation #diversity #harry potter #hp #fandom #fic #mine

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thehalalgirlofficial · 6 years

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The Golden Age of Spain Al-Andalus

From 711-1492 AD, the majority of modern day Spain and Portugal was under Muslim rule. The arabic name given to this region was al-Andalus. Today, the southern part of Spain, where Muslim control lasted the longest, still bears the name Andalusia. The Muslims entered this region through Tariq Bin Ziayd, who easily took over the country due to its weakness after a recent civil war. Muslims entered Spain not as tyrants or oppressors, rather as liberators. This is because in their society, many Jews and Christians held government positions. In fact the Golden Age of Jewish history is known as the period of Muslim rule in Spain. Islam allowed the Jews to flourish, with the example of the renowned philosopher Maimonides, Musa ibn Maymun. Spain was home to by far the largest and most brilliant Jewish community in Europe; elsewhere, they were hounded and persecuted. Although non-Muslims paid more in taxes than the Muslims, it was by far less than any previous government had imposed upon them. In addition, it obviously wasn't much of a burden, however, since non-Muslims freely opted and longed to live under Muslim rule.

No where else has there been so long and so close of a relationship between the 3 Great faiths. All Jews and Christians were allowed to maintain their beliefs and live their lives as they desired as long as they respected their Muslim rulers. The tolerance that was displayed towards the Jews and Christians enabled them all to live together in relative peace and harmony, an indication of the Greatness of Islam. As a result of the compassion Islam displayed towards the non-Muslims inhabitants, many of them embraced it as their religion.

Allah says Himself, "Say to the disbelievers I do not worship that which you worship. Nor do you worship that which I worship. And Nor will I worship that which you have worshiped. Neither will you worship that which I worship. To you belongs your religion, and to me mine."

As a result of the tolerance displayed by Islam, the incredibly rich language of the Muslims became the official language of literature and scholarship in Spain for all. Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike devoted their time in studying Arabic. Christians essentially spoke Arabic, which was often considered better than their Latin. They absorbed the Arabic culture so much so that they began to be called, "mozarabs" a corruption of "must'arib" meaning the "Arabized ones." Furthermore, the Christian Priest Alvaro complained in the 9th century that Christians preferred to read Arabic writings and studied Muslim theologians and philosophers rather than their own. He exclaimed, "Oh, the pain and the sorrow! The Christians have even forgotten their own language, and in every thousand you will not find one who can write a letter in respectable Latin to a friend, while as soon as they have to write Arabic, there is no difficulty in finding a whole multitude who can express themselves with the greatest elegance in this language..."

Under their rule, Muslims made Spain a center for learning and knowledge. The Muslims were taught reading, writing, math, Arabic, Qur'an, and Hadith, and became leaders in math, science, medicine, astronomy, navigation, etc. Al-Andalus became renowned for its prosperity as people who quested for knowledge journeyed from afar to learn in its universities under the feet of the Muslims. As a result, Andalus gave rise to a great many scholars. Muslim Spain produced philosophers, physicians, scientists, judges, artists, and the like. Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, Ibn Zuhr, and Al-Razi,to name a few, were all Muslims educated in Andalus. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, was also educated in Andalusia. Great renowned Christian men like St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante borrowed their philosophies from the Andalusian philosophers. Ironically, Thomas Aquinas described Arabs as "brutal men dwelling in the desert."

The Islamic civilization had reached its peak in the 10th century, and by 1100, the number of Muslims rose to 5.6 million. There existed in Cordoba alone, 200,000 houses, 600 mosques, 900 public baths, 10,000 lamps, 50 hospitals, and lighted and paved streets. Libraries and research institutions grew rapidly in Muslim Spain, while the rest of Europe remained illiterate. Muslim Spain had truly become an area unique to the entire world.

The Muslim artisans applied their skills in architecture in to making masajid and palaces. The Alhambra Palace, and The Great Mosque of Cordoba, are two of the famous magnificent masterpieces of the Muslims which can still be seen today. Of the Alhambra, one Muslim poet wrote:

"A sun dwells in this place and even its shadow is blessed.

In this palace a multitude of pleasures capture the eye and suspend the intellect.

Here a crystal world teaches marvels.

Everywhere Beauty is carved, opulence is manifest."

On the greatness of the Mosque of Cordoba, one poet praises it by saying, “'The gold shines in your domes like the lightning which flashes among the clouds.”

Muslim Cordoba was described as the "jewel of the tenth century," often compared with Constantinople and Baghdad.

But like all great empires, Muslim Spain had eventually fallen.

Abu Bakr (RA) said, “...Where are the great kings who built cities and castles and fortified them with towering walls? What happened to the lionhearted valorous ones who made their enemy suffer humiliation in the battlefields? Time waned under their feet and they ended inside dark graves. Think of it and take heed.”

Islam had remained strong in Spain for eight centuries. However, as the military power in the Christian North began to strengthen, Al-Andalus gradually began to shrink. The last Amir, Abu Abdullah, more often known as Boabdil, surrendered Granada in 1492. He was called by his people as, "Al-Ghalib,” The Conqueror. Yet, when recognizing his imminent defeat, he exclaimed otherwise proclaiming that none other than Allah was the Greatest. “Wa La Ghalib illa Allah” "There is no Conqueror except Allah," became the motto of his descendents.

Queen Isabella of Aragon, in her quest to eradicate Islam from Spain, issued forth decrees of mass conversions in her 'Holy War' against the Muslims. Muslim prayers were forbidden and masaajid in their original splendor were destroyed and converted into churches. Muslims were converted to Christianity, but were usually insincere Christians fearing for their lives, and remained Muslim by heart. They too, called "Moriscos" were soon to be expelled, because they weren't accepted as real Christians. Eventually, the Muslims and Islam disappeared from Spain entirely.

As one historian says, "The Arabs suddenly appeared in Spain like a star which crosses through the air with its light, spreads its flames on the Horizon and then vanishes rapidly into naught."

By analyzing the tragedy of Islam in Andalus, we find that the Muslims of Spain disregarded the fact that Allah indeed blessed them with Islam, and therefore went astray. They were so successful that as a result, Muslims believed that they treasured the wealth they accumulated so much so that they became arrogant and deviated from the practice of Islam; disregarding the commandments of Allah, and the Sunnah. They failed to remember their prosperity and wealth came from Allah and Him alone. Therefore, Allah took away the abundance of wealth, power, supremacy, and favors that He bestowed upon them so that they would remember. Allah says in the Qur'an.

"Remember Me, and I will remember you. Give thanks to Me and never deny Me"

When the Muslims in Spain neglected Allah, He therefore neglected them. Allah asks mankind repeatedly in Surah Rahman, “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?"

The legacy of al-Andalus serves as a lesson for Muslims. The persecution of Muslims in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries was a great trial of their faith, as is the entire life of a Muslim; this was a great challenge from Allah. In the end, many died fighting for Islam.

Spain and the West will forever stand in the debt of the Muslims of Al Andalus. Their contribution to knowledge eventually lead to the European Renaissance. The 1.2 billion plus Muslims of the world today have the same potential as of the Muslims of the past. By its outstanding example, Muslim Spain proves to the world that as a melting pot of religious faiths and races, we can, in reality, live and prosper with one another.

credits: @certifiedmail

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bookclub4m · 3 years

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Episode 134 - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

This episode we’re discussing Piranesi by Susanna Clarke! Major spoiler warning for this episode as we talk about a lot of various plot points! (Though we don’t reveal everything.) There’s an extra spoiler siren immediately before we start diving into the plot in depth.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

Check out the transcript of this episode!

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Media We Mentioned

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (buy it from our store)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV series) (Wikipedia)

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

SCP-3008 (Ikea)

SCP-087 (stairs that go down forever)

SCP Foundation (Wikipedia)

BLAME! Vol. 1 by Tsutomu Nihei

Resilience Is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie Lalonde by Julie S. Lalonde

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Links, Articles, and Things

Book Talk Live with McArthur Public Library (featuring Matthew!)

It’s not up on podcast places yet, but we’ll let you know!

Episode 130 - Battle of the Books 2021

Episode 107 - Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Episode 083 - The Fifth Season

Episode 058 - The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Italian Emergency Alert System (YouTube)

Censor Beep

Cornice (Wikipedia)

Walking simulators (Wikipedia)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Wikipedia)

Imaginary Prisons (Wikipedia)

15 Self Help books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors to help our listeners diversify their readers’ advisory. All of the lists can be found here.

Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual by Luvvie Ajayi Jones

Walking In Your Power: Lessons from the Grandmothers by Barbara Derrick

Get Over 'I Got It': How to Stop Playing Superwoman, Get Support, and Remember That Having It All Doesn’t Mean Doing It All Alone by Elayne Fluker

Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language by Roxane Gay

It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage by Arlan Hamilton

Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness by Vex King

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty

How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life by Lilly Singh

Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley

The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations by Richard Wagamese

Navigate Your Stars by Jesmyn Ward

Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul by Najwa Zebian

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Join us again on Tuesday, October 5th we’ll be discussing the genre of Erotica!

Then on Tuesday, October 19th we’ll be playing a spooky role-playing game!

#episodes #books

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nietterugnaarnormaal · 3 years

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If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution - rhythms of Resistance is een actiegroep die diverse acties van muzikale ondersteuning voorziet. Niets leuker dan een demonstratie doen, al dansend op het ritme van de drumbands. En gelukkig zijn stoplichten groot, dus is daar ook ruimte voor gay liberation. Stonewall was a riot.” In the 51 years since the uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York City catapulted the movement for LGBTQ+ liberation into public consciousness, this phrase has become a cliché. Yes, it was a riot—but what kind of riot was it? On the anniversary of the iconic queer rebellion, many of us are reflecting on how today’s struggles against police and white supremacy connect to past uprisings. Let’s look at the resonances between Stonewall and the Justice for George Floyd rebellions and what these show us about how to catalyze resistance to oppression. So what kind of riot was Stonewall? Stonewall was a violent anti-police riot. It was a leaderless, multiracial riot. Stonewall was a youth riot. Stonewall was fun. This time, let’s choose the right side. From Stonewall to the Minneapolis Third Precinct: fuck the police forever. Lees meerover stonewall en LGBTQI strijd: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/some-queer-anarchists-stonewall-means-riot-right-now #gayliberation #queerpride #revolution #stonewall #resistance #rhythmsofresistance #queeringanarchism #nietterugnaarnormaal #covid_19 #coronacrisis #blacklivesmatter #blm✊🏾 https://www.instagram.com/p/CHqoUs7lNMr/?igshid=qbdobizlaqza

#gayliberation #queerpride #revolution #stonewall #resistance #rhythmsofresistance #queeringanarchism #nietterugnaarnormaal #covid_19 #coronacrisis #blacklivesmatter #blm✊🏾

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revoltedstates · 7 years

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“A Great White Monument Towering to the Sky:” Confederate Monuments in the Words of the Men who Placed them There. The Confederate monument issue has been weighing on me, not just as a Civil War nerd, but as an American and a human being. I’ll admit, while I’ve long been obsessed with this chapter of our history, I’ve spent very little time studying the way it was remembered and evoked into the early twentieth century. While I understand the importance of honoring American veterans, the stamp of the Jim Crow South seems indelibly imprinted upon so many of these monuments. But are we simply tainted by our “modern” moral high ground and demonizing what were actually innocent attempts by Southerners to remember their fallen? Or are many of these monuments indeed beacons of the cause of white supremacy as so many folks today are claiming? Seeking to find evidence on the true motivations of some of the leaders involved in erecting and dedicating these monuments, I decided to flip through the Library of Congress's newspaper archive to read their original words. Much of what I found is downright revolting. But don’t take my word for it, read for yourselves... ...shall [Ulysses S. Grant's] monument arise quicker than our monument, the monument of us, the homogenous, us, the best expression of the all-subduing, the Anglo-Saxon race; us, the most capable, because the most inspired; us, the most obligated, because the most blessed; us, who love our public men, because we make them and they are a part of us; us, who are inspired by their examples, because, like the south wind upon a bank of violets, which steals and gives their odor, we teach them what to inspire.

WHAT SHALL IT BE CALLED

What, then, is our monument, and by the name of what one of us shall it be called, although it be the monument of every one of us? It shall be a monument to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America...

-Gen. Peyton Wise, speaking on behalf of the Jefferson Davis Monument Association (of Richmond, VA) in 1895. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038614/1896-06-30/ed-1/seq-11/

My fellow countrymen, our people had been tried as by fire. You, Confederate Veterans found our State governed by the malice of the North, by fraud, duress. The Constitution was amended to make the blacks equal with the whites. In those days the Confederate Veteran was a 'Pillar of Fire by Night,' to the women and children of the South. The carpet-bagger came, extravagance crime stalked abroad. The women and children felt danger and by magic an 'invisible empire sprung up—the Ku Klux. Yes, in those times the women of the South leaned on the Confederate Veteran and found their trust well placed. When I look at the Confederacy I am glad the leaders in War became the leaders in peace....

I want to see a great white monument towering to the sky erected in [the Southern woman's] honor. And on it, I care not what else is written but this, 'The dark days of reconstruction never found a scalawag among the women.'

I congratulate you, that you who saw the day when the North attempted to perpetuate a party to make the races equal, have lived to see it nullified. When this white race has climbed to the mountain peak and looks down upon the races below, historians will wonder how the South stood it so many years. It is the inevitable triumph of right, the survival of the fittest. You have seen the white man knock at the door of the yellow man in the East, and have seen it open; you have seen him come in contact with the black man, and beheld the black man kneel and make obeisance to him; you have seen the red man, too, give place.

It is not in the power of all Constitutions ever drawn, or dreamed of, to make the races equal. It is a consolation to you, I know, that your sons are here to stay, and control forever and forever.

-William Walton Kitchin, Governor of North Carolina, speaking at the dedication of the Confederate Monument in Henderson, NC, November 10, 1910. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91068402/1910-11-24/ed-1/seq-3/

On the smoldering ruins of a hallowed past the Southern man, upheld by the love of a Southern woman, began to build anew. Together they wrought out the grandest chapter in American history. Though they had been overpowered, they refused to be degraded, Though cast down they refused to be destroyed. They swore they would not touch the pitch, and that pitch should not touch them. They defied the bayonets and laughed at statutes. Immutable as the rocks and glorious as the stars they stood for a white civilization and a white race, and today North Carolina holds in trust for the safety of the nation the purest Anglo-Saxon blood to be found on the American shores. And the nation is beginning to realize how well you served it when, in the hour of utter desolation you refused to be defiled....

The New York Sun, a paper of strong Northern prejudices, but edited with matchless scholarship, has declared that the Fifteenth Amendment was the most colossal blunder and crime in the history of the civilized world.

Everywhere the people are beginning to recognize that the South, and only the South, is competent to deal with the race question, and the doctrine of 'Let the South alone' is in the saddle in the very heart of the North.

-Thomas Walter Bickett, Attorney General of North Carolina (and later its Governor), speaking at the dedication of the Confederate Soldiers' Monument in Monroe, NC, July 4, 1910. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91068476/1910-07-19/ed-1/seq-7/

#american civil war #civil war #monuments #confederate monuments #confederacy #jim crow #segregation #white supremacy

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amoqa · 4 years

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Day With(out) Art, the program

Amoqa is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the thirtieth annual Day With(out) Art by presenting STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.

Shanti Avirgan, Beat Goes On

Beat Goes On is an impressionistic portrait of the activist Keith Cylar (1958–2004), co-founder of Housing Works and a central figure in the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) NY. Cylar spoke clearly, frequently and with moral force about the struggles of people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City, many of whom were impoverished and struggling with multiple social and medical problems. His openness about his own drug use and the centrality of the fight against the criminalization of drugs for AIDS activism make Cylar's legacy especially resonant and relevant at this time. A fellow harm reduction activist recalls how "Keith moved from mixing with the government, to threatening the government, to beating the government—all in the space of five minutes." By resurfacing and weaving together archival media of Cylar's own words and actions, this video will endeavor to convey—in the space of about five minutes—some of the personal charisma, political savvy and fearlessness that characterized Cylar's advocacy.

Bio: Shanti Avirgan is a documentary producer and archival researcher. Her work related to the AIDS crisis includes the feature documentaries Pills Profits Protest (2004); Sex in an Epidemic (2009); Larry Kramer in Love & Anger (2015); 5B (2019) and a forthcoming film about the photographer Peter Hujar. She has worked with a number of organizations in Brazil and the US to create, archive and curate video about ongoing HIV/AIDS activism. Shanti has also worked as a producer for National Geographic's climate change TV series Years of Living Dangerously, and the feature documentaries The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014), Life, Animated (2016) and Agility (2020), about the anthropologist Esther Newton. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Anthropology from UT Austin, was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil at the Federal University of Bahia, and has an MPhil in Anthropology from NYU, where she studied medical anthropology and documentary filmmaking.

Shanti Avirgan, Beat Goes On, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Carl George, The Lie

The Lie is the latest in an ongoing series of short films drawing on found footage and materials from the artist’s archive. Offering “ruminations on ruined nations,” the film aims to expose the links between war, AIDS, capitalism, and the persistent mythologies that bind them all.

Bio: Carl George is an artist and activist working in experimental film, painting and collage. His short experimental films have shown in festivals internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Guggenheim Museum and the New York Public Library. His 1989 film DHPG Mon Amour, documenting the radical advances made by people with AIDS in developing their own health care, is a classic of AIDS activist filmmaking and was incorporated into the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague (2012). His visual art can be seen on the Visual AIDS Artist Registry.

Carl George, The Lie, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Nguyen Tan Hoang, I Remember Dancing

I Remember Dancing brings together an intergenerational cast of trans and queer gaysians ruminating on the past and future of AIDS, activism, gay culture, love, and (un)safe sex. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s I Remember poems, these confessions illuminate perspectives of queer Asian communities often absent from whitewashed narratives of HIV and AIDS. Grief, regret, longing, risk, and pleasure surface as their memories and fantasies blur into one another.

Bio: Nguyen Tan Hoang is a videomaker and film and media scholar. His short experimental videos include K.I.P, Forever Bottom!, PIRATED! and look_im_azn. He is the author of A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Duke UP, 2014) and articles on porn pedagogy and Southeast Asian queer cinema. He teaches literature, film, and cultural studies at UC San Diego.

Nguyen Tan Hoang, I Remember Dancing, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Viva Ruiz, Chloe Dzubilo: There is a Transolution

Viva Ruiz invites transgender AIDS activist, artist, and beloved friend Chloe Dzubilo (1960–2011) to speak via never before seen Hi-8 footage filmed by Chloe's then-partner Kelly McGowan. The process triangulates mother (Chloe), lover (Kelly), and child (Viva) in a deliberate ritual to uplift the spirit and legacy of an ancestral teacher. Through artifacts from the moment when video first became accessible and before mobile phone cameras became ubiquitous, we witness Chloe declare herself and her sisters as leaders in art, advocacy and culture for evermore.

Bio: Viva Ruiz is the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants and a community and nightlife-educated advocate and artist born and based in New York City. The throughline of her work across mediums is a passion to dismantle white supremacy and exorcise the colonial/colonized mindset. In 2017, she programmed sex education and practical spirituality workshops as an invited curator for the New Museum’s "Scamming the Patriarchy" youth summit. Her 2019 solo exhibition “ProAbortion Shakira: A Thank God For Abortion Introspective” at PARTICIPANT, INC included work related to the multimedia abortion de-stigmatization experiment THANK GOD FOR ABORTION.

Viva Ruiz, Chloe Dzubilo: There is a Transolution, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Iman Shervington, I’m Still Me

I'm Still Me explores how digital platforms have created community and connections for Sian, a Black woman living with HIV and navigating the stigma and misinformation that is prevalent in the American South. Through her blog, social media accounts and online video platforms, Sian connects with (predominately) heterosexual Black women that send her messages, ask questions, and share their experiences with stigma and fear, all the while creating community that may have previously only existed in the shadows.

Bio: Iman Shervington is the Director of Media & Communications at the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies (IWES), a public health non-profit. Through IWES, Iman has utilized her script development, cinematography, directing, producing, and editing skills to create over 50 short films and PSAs, a web-series, a feature-length documentary, two feature-length narrative films and an award-winning podcast. In 2016, Iman was chosen as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader to promote a culture of health in New Orleans and she received the award as a "Changemaker" in the New Orleans-based Millennial Awards. Outside of film, Iman specializes in social marketing, social media management, graphic design, photography, positive youth development, participatory action research, and media literacy.

Iman Shervington, I'm Still Me, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artist

Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, (eye, virus)

Through an experimental collage of video and pictographs, (eye, virus) explores how conversations around disclosure, stigma, and harm reduction shift across generations and from public to private realms. Combining street interviews with footage from a punk show and a mobile testing site, the video centers pleasure and community as it expands the conversation around HIV to include hepatitis C and the opioid epidemic. (eye, virus) extends from documentation of a 2017 public program titled AIDS OS Y Version 10.11.6, and is collaboratively produced with Nikki Sweet.

Bio: Jack Waters is a visual artist, film maker, writer, media artist, choreographer and performer. Jack’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, the New York and London Film Makers Cooperatives, Center for Contemporary Culture Barcelona, and Anthology Film Archives. With his partner Peter Cramer, Jack co-directed ABC No Rio from 1983–1991 and founded the non-profit arts umbrella Allied Productions, Inc., as well as the community art garden Le Petit Versailles. The first part of Jack’s musical opus Pestilence will premiere at LaMaMa Experimental Theater Club in Spring 2020. His visual art can be seen on the Visual AIDS Artist Registry.

Victor F. M. Torres is an intermedia artist born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Torres holds an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Arts and a BA in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, both from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is an Adjunct Faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. Torres has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Stevenson University, George Mason University, and UMBC. He is the author of Language Writes Myth Writes Reality: Or How Does the Acculturated Body Take the Role of Culture Maker?. Torres’ sculptural work snapshots the relationship between information retention, capacitive touch, and bronze age aesthetics, thinning the threshold between primitivism and futurism. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Monmouth Museum, MIX NYC, Maryland Art Place, and Grace Exhibition Space, among others.

Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, (eye, virus), 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Still courtesy of the artists

Derrick Woods-Morrow, Much handled things are always soft (8:36)

Much handled things are always soft unearths the unwritten and undocumented histories of public sex culture in the south-side of Chicago. Through conversation with longterm survivor Patric McCoy, the film traces the height of activity in the 1970s, the downfall of cruising culture in the 1980s, and the prevailing summer heat, which continues to linger. Together, McCoy and Woods-Morrow reflect on their relationship to cruising, to photography, and to each other; attempting to bridge the gap between what was, and what still remains to be explored.

Bio: Derrick Woods-Morrow’s work is a meditation on deviation and disruption. Currently based in Chicago, his artistic practice deploys a wide variety of media, including photographic transfers, digital video collage, ceramics, and narrative performance. Exploring modes of representation, he salvages, displaces, and removes raw material from sites of historical significance and trauma, reimagines their future purpose and denies their perceived function, while actively interrogating the correlation between labor and play. A recipient of the 2018 Artadia Award, Derrick received his MFA in Photography from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2016, and was most recently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Photography and Teaching Artist at the University of Illinois Chicago. His work appeared in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, in collaboration with Paul Mpagi Sepuya and his recent works were shown at YNCI V: Detroit Art Week Expo, in a solo exhibition curated by Darryl Terrell.

Derrick Woods-Morrow, Much handled things are always soft, 2019. Commissioned for Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art 2019. Production still by Patric McCoy

#visualAids #queer archive #STILL BEGINNING

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: A Critical Understanding of Edward Curtis’s Photos of Native American Culture

Plate from The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis at the Muskegon Museum of Art (all images by the author for Hyperallergic)

MUSKEGON, Mich. — Can one come to a revelation through a visit to an art museum, or is it something that can only be arrived at through a more intensive personal journey? This is the question that emerged for me as I visited the Muskegon Museum of Art for Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, a massive installation of the 30-year-plus ethnographic survey of surviving Native American culture by turn-of-the-20th-century, Seattle-based photographer Edward S. Curtis.

Edward Curtis, self-portrait

The North American Indian is a seminal and controversial blend of documentary and staged photography — one which contributes to much of the foundational imagery and, often-stereotypical, understanding possessed by white America about some 82-plus native tribes that the United States eradicated over a century of colonization. Much has been made about the complexities, contradictions, and conflicts of interest in Curtis’s masterwork, by Native and non-Native scholars. Some argue that in staging photographs and, at times, adding props or accessories, Curtis took liberties with the concept of ethnography, both imposing and reinforcing white notions of Native American appearances and culture. Others argue that without Curtis, there would be hardly any extant imagery of the cultural heritage of the tribes he worked with.

The Curtis exhibition at the Muskegon Museum of Art raised, for me, compelling questions around our individual and institutional tendencies to justify the art that we find interesting. It is undeniable that the 723 portfolio images lining the walls of the Musekegon’s galleries — as well as a 20-volume edition gathering 1,500 additional photos and ethnographic research carried out by Curtis in cooperation with tribes west of the Missouri River — represent a remarkable accomplishment. They are fascinating photos, and managed to chronicle what Curtis called, “the lifeways and morays of all the tribes who were still relatively intact from the colonialism and the invasion of Anglo culture.” Beyond ethnography, many of them are also formally beautiful works of art.

Plate from Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian

The Muskegon Museum has personal reason to take pride in this exhibition — the museum is in possession of the collection because of Lulu Miller, the first female director of the adjacent Hackley Library and second director of the Muskegon Art Museum (appointed in 1916, being the second woman in the US to run an art museum). In 1908, as her first acquisition for the library, Miller sourced $3,000 to purchase a subscription to Curtis’s series, which was issued in 20 volumes and would ultimately take 30 years to complete — an incredible gamble when you consider that sum is equivalent to $80,000 today, and certainly a tidy sum for a regional library. The Muskegon Museum of Art owns one of the estimated 225 sets of The North American Indian (many of which are likely incomplete), and this exhibition is one of very few that has put the collection on display in its entirety. The final volume arrived in late 1930, bracketing Miller’s career with the library and museum, and in the 1970s was transferred from the library to the purview of the art museum for conservation efforts.

Hackley Public Library in Muskegon, Michigan

“We think she was pretty gutsy,” said Muskegon Museum of Art’s executive director Judith Haynor, in reference to Miller. “We have a variety of letters from Curtis to Lulu, and from his staff — they had a lively correspondence. There have been 200 or more exhibitions of selections of Curtis’s work, but from what we can ascertain, never before has the entire body of work been put out on display.”

However, the hometown pride in the visionary Lulu Miller — not to mention the more generalized sense of wonder at the beauty and exoticism of Curtis’s imagery — has perhaps skewed the museum’s framing of the appropriateness and relevance of Curtis’s work. The prevailing view here is that the photographs’ issues are a product of their time, and that they are nonetheless of educational value, particularly in our current climate.

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, installation view at the Muskegon Museum of Art

“I think that these images clearly show someone who began to understand more deeply the importance and uniqueness of the American Indian cultures,” said guest curator Ben Mitchell, who worked on the exhibition for some two years. “You can find this in his writing, that he came to understand that white America had something really poignant and important to learn from Native American culture, especially the depth of the spirituality. And I think about the times that we live in right now, in a time of name-calling, when our major political leadership is scapegoating people who are not white. Deportation is up 38% in just the last four months. The point is, I think, that Curtis, through The North American Indian, realized that white America had something to learn.”

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, installation view, including a display featuring a camera of the type Curtis hauled, along with boxes of glass negatives

The museum has gone to great lengths to ensure deft handling of the subject matter, including engagement with the local Little River Band of Ottowa Indians, located in Manistee, Michigan (too far east to have been included in Curtis’s work). Tribal Chief Larry Romanelli served as an advisor to the exhibition, and appeared with other Native American participants in panel discussions and programming that accompanied the exhibition. His view of the exhibition is positive, and echoes a sentiment presented in some of the voluminous wall texts accompanying the imagery: that Curtis captured humanity and heritage that is significant to the descendants of Native American tribes, which would likely have otherwise been lost forever.

“Edward Curtis’s work is not embraced by 100% of people, or all Indian tribes, as well. And they wanted to know if I thought it would be a good idea or not,” said Romanelli in an interview with Hyperallergic. “I’ve been interested in his work for years, and I believe the good absolutely outweighs the negative part. I don’t believe that he ever did anything to intentionally hurt Native Americans. I think he was trying to help Native Americans, and that makes a big difference to me.”

Plate from Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian (detail view)

Romanelli also highlighted a strong sense of connection to the subjects of Curtis’s photographs. “The world would not have known those people [without Curtis’s work], and I believe, in one sense, I can see the souls of my ancestors. I would not have known what they looked like, who they were. So I cherish those photos, from my perspective.”

Perhaps it is powerful enough, all on its own, to enter a conventional museum space and find it entirely dedicated to images of people of color. Western art institutions continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by Eurocentric imagery and artists, and perhaps, by putting these photos on display, they help contribute to a collective understanding of racial injustice.

Plate from Edward Curtis’s The North American Indian

“The time we live in today, where we have the rise of white supremacy, compared with just one year ago — I think pushing forward a takeaway that the majority, dominant, white male culture in America still has a lot to learn from cultures that are not themselves is entirely appropriate,” said Mitchell, in an interview with Hyperallergic. “Some of us may feel that we have already had that takeaway, because of our background and our experience — but remember that in almost any community, the art museum, the anthropology museum will receive far more visitors with very little background in art and anthropology. Our job is to teach.”

Perhaps this is so, and all my personal frustration at the retrograde mentalities that make such remedial learning a necessity does not, at the end of the day, mean they do not exist or need to be addressed. But I have to wonder, if we are dealing with a population whose baseline takeaway from The North American Indian is that “Indians are people, too,” is putting 723 images on display enough to truly move the needle? After all, the United States is still breaking treaties. One cannot doubt Mitchell’s sincere engagement with Curtis’s work, nor the museum’s good faith efforts to present it in an inclusive way — nor even, in following Curtis’s 30-year journey of engagement with tribespeople, can one doubt that the experience profoundly affected his understanding of Native American cultures and humanity. But if presenting such imagery were enough to trigger revelation, could we not put 723 images of Syrian refugees on display somewhere, and watch the understanding come rolling in?

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, installation view at the Muskegon Museum of Art

A more effective contemporary reading of Curtis’s work happens in what I consider to be the very best part of the exhibition: the room juxtaposing Curtis’s images with the work of contemporary Native American artists who’ve reflected upon his impact on their cultural identity. Some, like two paintings by Ojibwe painter Jim Denomie, characterize Curtis as a kind of voyeur or paparazzi figure. Others directly reference his photography in their personal, interpretive works. Inarguably, Curtis’s long relationship with the tribespeople of North America had a significant impact on their communities.

Some of the contemporary works, hung adjacent to Edward Curtis’s photographs which served as source material

According to the narrative presented by the museum, by the end of The North American Indian, Curtis was basically penniless and died in obscurity, as popular interest in his project waned while his own obsession mounted. In his later years, as he became more aware of the struggles of the people he was photographing, his work might be seen as an early attempt at activist or social practice art, before there was any notion of such a thing. These works, also on display, showcase Native Americans living in a more Anglicized context, wearing Depression-era clothing rather than traditional garb, and reflect the ways in which there was, by then, little remaining of the “lifeways and morays” that Curtis found so initially fascinating. The fact that he continued to pursue Native Americans as subjects outside of the exoticized trappings of their traditional culture demonstrates a real transition in Curtis’s work.

Painting by Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie characterizes Edward Curtis as a paparazzi figure

Today, the preponderance of technology has made it possible for people to self-document, and there is less a need to rely on an external, paternalistic, or authoritative record. In this, at least, Curtis’s access to photography tools and training can justifiably be recognized as a product of his time. The question is, then, how can we take this work and do it better in our time — for example, centralizing the creative output and self-representation of Native American peoples, or at least giving it equal ground in the museum setting (rather than only putting it on display in museums dedicated to anthropology or Native American art).

“I’ve come away from this two years of work realizing that history is a very powerful force, because history, when you’re immersed in it, isn’t just looking at the past,” said Mitchell. “History constantly informs the present you’re living in — or it better, if we’re paying attention. But even more than that — and this touches upon why this exhibition is so poignantly timely for the time we live in — history also points us to our future that we’re going to share. We learn from the history how to live in our present, and how to plan to live in our future.”

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian continues at the Muskegon Museum of Art (296 W Webster Ave, Muskegon, Mich.) through September 10.

The post A Critical Understanding of Edward Curtis’s Photos of Native American Culture appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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plusorminuscongress · 6 years

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New Online: Theodore Roosevelt Papers

New Online: Theodore Roosevelt Papers By Wendi Maloney Published October 17, 2018 at 03:59PM

Theodore Roosevelt, 1884.

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

On Feb. 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt marked an X in his pocket diary, followed by the words, “The light has gone out of my life.” That morning his mother, Martha Roosevelt, died of typhoid fever. That same afternoon, in the same house, his wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, died of kidney disease, just two days after giving birth to their daughter. On another page, Roosevelt recalled his relationship with Alice, concluding, “For joy or for sorrow my life has now been lived out.” He was 25 years old.

Roosevelt’s life had really only begun, however, and his papers at the Library of Congress record his extraordinary public career through voluminous correspondence sent and received, speeches and executive orders, press releases and public statements, diaries and scrapbooks. The Theodore Roosevelt Papers, now available online, document the multifaceted and remarkable life led by America’s 26th president.

Roosevelt’s diary entry for Feb. 14, 1884.

T.R. entrusted his infant daughter to his sister Anna, and set off for the Dakota Territory. “Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough,” Roosevelt later wrote. He exercised his grief by leading the strenuous life of a cattle rancher, and learned the politically useful skill of working toward a common goal with people from different backgrounds. “I got along excellently with everyone,” he wrote his son Ted in 1908. “I worked hard with them on the roundup.” Roosevelt’s western period also gave him a cowboy image, which political cartoonists used in years to come.

Roosevelt found happiness with his second wife, Edith, his children and public service. He served on the United States Civil Service Commission (1889–95), and then applied his abundant energy to the New York City Board of Police Commissioners (1895–97). There he honed skills that he employed for the rest of his career. He sought reform in the operation of the police force and went on “midnight rambles” to determine how many beat cops slept at their posts or engaged in corrupt activities. He cultivated the press to publicize his actions and learned from reporters like Jacob Riis about problems in the community. As the scrapbooks in the Roosevelt papers attest, T.R. made news as a police commissioner, and his prominent teeth and eyeglasses became symbols that forever more identified Roosevelt cartoons.

An 1895 cartoon depicts Roosevelt solely by way of his pince-nez glasses and his prominent teeth.

A 1900 cartoon also portrays Roosevelt by his glasses and his nose.

Roosevelt followed his police work by serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, where he advocated Alfred T. Mahan’s principles of naval supremacy. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Roosevelt refused to miss his “crowded hour” of glory and organized the First Regiment, U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the “Rough Riders.” He parlayed his fame as the hero of San Juan Hill into election as governor of New York, telling his friend Cecil Spring Rice in November 1898, “I have played it in bull luck this summer. First, to get into the war; then to get out of it; then to get elected.”

Roosevelt flees the vice presidency in the cartoon “The Office Seeks the Man,” published in 1900.

Roosevelt, a Republican, continued his reformist and independent ways as governor, to the chagrin of his party’s establishment in New York. Political bosses hoped electing him vice president in 1900 would shelve him in a powerless position. Although he did not want the job, T.R. campaigned hard for President McKinley and reconciled himself to the end of his political ascent. In September 1901, however, an assassin’s bullet ended McKinley’s life, making Roosevelt president of the United States.

Roosevelt’s presidency is the best-known period of his political life, and it is documented extensively in his papers. Incoming correspondence captures the issues brought to Roosevelt’s attention, while letterpress copybooks record his voluminous output on subjects from coal strikes to conservation, from statues to socialism. Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings on various aspects of the Roosevelt administration, and desk diaries reveal who met with the president on a daily basis.

An April 11, 1908, letter from Roosevelt to his son Archie in which Roosevelt describes punishing Archie’s brother Quentin for putting spitballs on portraits at the White House.

Throughout his political career, Roosevelt enjoyed another life as an author. He published historical works; wrote about his experiences as a rancher, hunter and explorer; and regularly contributed articles to periodicals such as “The Outlook.” T.R. even briefly tried to change the English language itself by promoting economical spelling, such as substituting “thoroly” for “thoroughly.” The experiment failed, but Roosevelt accepted good-natured ribbing from associates and continued using alternative spelling in his personal correspondence.

After leaving the presidency, T.R. went on safari in Africa, sending specimens to the Smithsonian Institution. He then toured Europe in 1910. After breaking with the Republican Party in 1912, he formed the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party and ran unsuccessfully for president. He went to South America in 1913 on an expedition to explore an Amazon River tributary later named in his honor.

The outbreak of World War I brought Roosevelt back into the public arena as an ardent voice for American war preparedness. T.R. even offered to raise troops, but the Wilson administration rebuffed his offer. “I am a man of action,” Roosevelt wrote in June 1917, “and the President has refused to let me take part in this great contest as a man of action.”

Theodore Roosevelt, the man of war who also received a Nobel Peace Prize, died in his sleep on January 6, 1919.