what i'm reading (not) wednesday 27/02/2025

[lirazel]

What I finished:

+ On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky. Read for my anarchist book club, lol. This was actually my first time reading Chomsky? Which is wild, but my whole life he was presented to me as some kind of kook--as a public intellectual, anyway, I don't think most people in my life knew he was a linguist so they didn't care what he said about that.

Shockingly (lol), I do not find him a kook when it comes to politics, I find him imminently reasonable.

But anyway, as with most collections, this was hit-or-miss. There's nothing that's bad, it's just some of it was certainly more interesting or relevant to me. It also would have benefited from being arranged differently and certainly from having some DATES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE ESSAYS. Why do editors never include the dates when the pieces were written?

The bits I liked best were the pieces of interviews where he talks about his political background, the way he views anarchism, etc. These were mostly from the first part, which was excerpts from Understanding Power, which I now want to read. There was also another little interview second-to-last, and since that one talked about his life and how it affected his politics it REALLY should have been the first essay.

There was an extended essay that was a critical reading of another writer's history of the Spanish Civil War, which was well done, but didn't mean as much to me as it should have because I am not terribly educated on the Spanish Civil War (though I definitely want to read more about the anarchist communities that flourished for a short while). The final essay was a speech he gave on a topic assigned to him--language and freedom. This was a fairly dense text full of references to Rousseau and Humboldt and the Enlightenment in general that was mostly interesting to me because it combined Chomskys two big Things, linguistics and politics. I wish he'd grappled with it more straightforwardly, but I caught some interesting glimpses.

I don't think this particular collection is the best introduction to Chomsky's thoughts on anarchism--I want to seek out something better--but I am glad I read it.

+ Terre Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land by Sven Lindqvist.

This was paired in ebook form with the first Lindqvist book I read; together, the volume was called The Dead Do Not Die. They went extremely well together, though I counted them as the two separate books they were written as.

This one was about colonialism in Australia and the destruction of Indigenous life and culture. As with Exterminate All the Brutes, it's also part travelogue, though it works better here because the places he's describing are the places where the history he talks about took place.

I of course knew that the settlers treated the native peoples terribly, but I didn't know details, really, other than having a vague idea of the indoctrination schools that some children were taken to. It's horrifically fascinating to me, the way that colonialism takes education, a space that is meant to enlighten and expand our worlds, and turn it into incredibly brutal spaces of obliteration and torture. There's a dissertation to be written--actually, I'm sure it's already written, I'd just need to find it it--tying together the experiences of Native kids in boarding schools in the US and Canada with Indigenous kids in these schools in Australia and Romani kids in Central/Eastern Europe. And probably in other places too that I don't know about.

Lindqvist's argument is straightforward: the "settling" of Australia was horrifically brutal, many Australians don't want to face this, but this history is all around in the land that was stolen, the land that was everything to the Indigenous way of life. The story is mostly told through white eyes, a series of historical figures who encountered the native people of the Australian continent and the widely varying ways in which they reacted. There are people here who were straight-up evil in their actions, people who had good motivations but bad results, and people who managed to do some good. The glimpses of Indigenous culture we get are very intriguing and make me (yet again) want to read more about them.

Taken together, the two volumes are an incredibly powerful indictment of white settler colonialism and imperialism; Lindqvist just wants people to face the fact that Western wealth and power is built upon unspeakable brutality committed against millions of people in the global south. I think he does this well. He's not doing any original research per se (at least as far as I can tell), but he's pulling together a wide variety of sources and putting them together in an effective and provocative (complimentary) way.

What I'm reading now:

Bury Me Standing: The [Romani] and Their Journey. Speaking of the Romani, I had been meaning to read this one for a long time and I've finally gotten around to it. I have mixed feelings about and I'm sure I'll have things to say when I finish. For now, I'll just say that it's uncomfortable to me that they still haven't updated the language used at least in the subtitle.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I was introduced to Chomskey's Manufacturing Consent pretty young (9 or 10?), and it's shaped my life more than anything else, I think. Though I don't know how well it holds up. I read a more recent book for school, and didn't find it as coherent or well written.

Just reading The Knowing by Tanya Talaga, which sounds like Terre Nullus but Canadian (and by an Indigenous author). Very bleak.

[lirazel]

That's definitely one I want to read! I'm impressed you were reading it at such a young age!

Very bleak indeed.

[greenwoodside]

Re: the word in the subtitle.

The last time I tried to look into this (a few years ago), it sounded as if it was still current and being used self-descriptively by Romani and Travellers – at least in the UK. e.g. this website.

But as someone with no connection to any of the peoples concerned, I'm first to admit I've no idea what I'm talking about.

[lirazel]

I have always been told not to use, but I also don't actually know anyone who's Romani, so I could be mistaken!

[greenwoodside]

I had also been advised that it was in the same category as racial slurs. Probably it is, but with some contextual variation.

Dolorosa's advice below is what I will try to follow – since I'm not Roma or Traveller, best to avoid.

Aaaanyway, I impolitely failed to thank you for sharing the reviews. The Lindqvist book sounds important and I should read it. Just a few days ago, I was reading about the completion of the Colonial Frontier Massacres digital map project.

If the UK education system accounted for all I know of history, I would never have had an inkling such events took place.

[lirazel]

Yeah, since there are other words available, it seems best just to not use it, but also I know that a lot of people aren't aware that it can be a slur so I don't necessarily judge people who use it. In the US, at least, there is almost no common awareness of Roma people as people who are real and exist today.

Not impolite! I'm glad you found the reviews useful!

If the UK education system accounted for all I know of history, I would never have had an inkling such events took place.

Yeah. I definitely found when I was living in the UK that people were not great at talking about colonialism/imperialism.

[dolorosa_12]

It's definitely used self-descriptively in the UK, and for this reason it gets used in official government documentation (for example the census and things like that).

Since my understanding is that it is very much not used self-descriptively elsewhere, apart from possibly as a reclaimed slur, I don't use it, since a) I'm not Roma, and b) in international spaces, the UK context and usage is not necessarily known.

[greenwoodside]

Thanks! Good guidance.

[lirazel]

Yeah, that lines up with what I've heard in the past.

[genarti]

Yes, that's what I've heard, as well. As I understand it it's rather like "Indian" for Native Americans -- some people do use it as a self-descriptor and some of them get (understandably) very annoyed about being language policed about terms for the community they belong to; nonetheless, many other people within the relevant communities do not use it, prefer that no one else do either, and in the case of the g-word it's widely considered a bad slur. So it's a "don't use unless you're talking to someone who uses it for themself" kind of thing, to my understanding. As I am not Rromani etc, I therefore don't use it either, but I don't know what the politics behind this book's subtitle are. (I've read it, but years ago.)

[lirazel]

Yes, this framing makes sense to me! I tend to say Native American even though I know Native people who say Indian. But they can do that! I'd rather default to caution than hurt someone.

[pauraque]

It drives me crazy when editors make you go looking for the dates of things. When I read a piece of writing that's the first thing I want to know! It matters!!

[lirazel]

THANK YOU. This makes me feel validated. Honestly it was particularly egregious with this one because some of them were written in the 70s and others in the 2000s. That is waaaaay too wide a range not to make the dates very, very clear. I should not have to be looking at the copyright page for that info.

[dolorosa_12]

That Lindqvist book sounds very good, and he's definitely the right person to have written it. He's absolutely right that non-Indigenous Australians are completely in denial about the horrors of the 'settlement' of the continent; in my experience people tend to react extremely defensively ('but it's nowhere near as bad here as in the United States' is a common refrain, to which my response is that surely we shouldn't be content with supposedly walking over such a low bar). One of my sisters was involved in the recent 'Yes' campaign for an Indignous Voice to Parliament, which lost comprehensively at a referendum two years ago, and she said it was an absolute uphill battle to contend with this defensiveness: people were simply unprepared to hear them (and what Indigenous people were asking for was so small).

[lirazel]

'but it's nowhere near as bad here as in the United States' is a common refrain

I'm not even sure that's true? If it is true, it seems to me that it's more a matter of scale than difference in kind--there were more people living in the US pre-contact, and a ton more people immigrated there. The descriptions in this book, anyway, make me think it was in fact way more like what happened in North America than different.

I'm so sorry to hear that about the campaign. What a shame.

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, I should have given the typical refrain in full: 'it all happened so long ago* so I don't understand why they're still so upset about it, my ancestors were convicts so they suffered just as much and didn't choose to come here, and [current racism and police violence faced by Indigenous people in Australia] is nowhere near as bad here as it is in the United States.' Translation: 'Thinking about this makes me feel bad, so I don't want to think about it.'

*The idea of this happening 'so long ago' is obviously wilful ignorance, since obviously the experiences of the Stolen Generations are still in living memory.

[lirazel]

Yeah, that's the exact same refrain we get here (minus the convicts bit). So long ago, even though school desegregation happened in my parents' lifetime and my dad remembers violence at his school when integration finally reached them. So long ago, even though Emmett Till could still be alive today if he weren't murdered.

I wonder if I'm missing some kind of collective feeling that most people have, because I am unbothered by the idea that my ancestors did terrible things. I mean, I'm bothered that anyone did terrible things! But I don't feel the fact that my ancestors did them reflects on me in any way. And admitting that I have benefited from systemic oppression towards others in the past doesn't emotionally take a toll on me?

Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I think there are two things that make people defensive and they're often but not always concurrent.

1. The knowledge that the family/community/nation you identify with has done bad things.
2. The knowledge that you have benefited from those bad things, even if you didn't ask for that benefit.

Some people can do the first one but not make it to the second one. The first one I don't get at all, but the second seems to me to be a direct result of people being so deeply invested in the idea of meritocracy and the world being just and while I don't feel that way, I can understand why it would be deeply threatening if you've built your whole worldview on that.

But I have to wonder why I find it easy to say, "My mom's dad only got out of poverty because of the G.I. Bill that let them go to college and my dad's dad only got out of poverty because after he got back from Korea he was able to get a great union job and work for one company for his entire career, and that has direct material effects on me today that someone my age whose grandparents also served don't have because their grandparents were Black/Indigenous/whatever and so didn't get those benefits." Maybe childhood experiences that made me deeply sensitive to unfairness mean that I could never develop that just world fallacy? It doesn't feel like a conscious decision that I've made.

(Sorry for the ruminating. It's just something I think about a lot. Why it's easy for me to admit these truths when it's so hard for others to do so.)

[dolorosa_12]

Ruminate away!

Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I think there are two things that make people defensive and they're often but not always concurrent.

1. The knowledge that the family/community/nation you identify with has done bad things.
2. The knowledge that you have benefited from those bad things, even if you didn't ask for that benefit.

One of my friends is an academic historian, but she has also written a literary fiction memoir that is in part a mediation on being a historian, the work of academic history, and the popular understanding of what 'history' is and what its purpose is. (She's also someone who has always done a lot of public outreach in the course of her job, and has had an interesting life and is very happy speaking to anyone about anything.) One of the really fantastic passages in the book is where she meditates on the contrast between academic history, and the popular misconception that learning and studying history is supposed to make you feel proud of your country and community.

I think all that ties in with the defensiveness we're discussing, and that specific block in admitting that one's country has done bad things, and that you, personally, have benefitted materially and socially from those bad things.

[lirazel]

Oh that looks very interesting! I'm not usually one for memoir, but it might be something I should read.

the popular misconception that learning and studying history is supposed to make you feel proud of your country and community.

Yeah, that's often the subtext, but sometimes it's explicit. The "1776 Project" that was the right-wing reaction to the 1619 Project explicitly says that that's history's purpose. Grosssssssss.