Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I expect a new sign in the British Library:
“This is the original copy of the “The Canterbury Tales” written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. Written in Middle English more than 500 years ago, the book is known primarily for having once been owned by a family with connections to the slave trade. Further information about slavery is available in the Humanities Wing, the Social Sciences Wing and most of the Rare Books and Music Wing.”
Joe Doakes
Today’s parody and satire is tomorrow’s reality.
As part of the “generational shift” envisaged by the British Library all items found to have been associated with the slave trade should be gathered together and publicly burned – there is no other acceptable resolution. Further, those authors works should be banned from republication or performance world wide and their works stripped from the syllabus of every Western Literature course at all reputable universities.
T shirt idea: We are all slave owners now.
If we follow this wormhole to its conclusion, doc’s suggestion resides there.
Not only everyone, but everything on the planet is irrevocably tied to slavery…African slavery specifically. Books, pens, paper, desks, chairs, spoons, forks, people, dogs, rose bushes and even dirt….it’s all part and parcel of the same corrupt system.
If we all accept that as fact, what will aggrieved parties revolve around next?
So, we come through a weekend of flaming comments, in the rudest terms ever, and not one moderation.
Start the week fresh, with a thoughtful, uncontroversial observation, using only the most courtly of terms, aaaaaand, moderation.
This is how we know the mod bot was programmed by a leftist.
I’m hoping for new signs at Auschwitz: “Many Jews died here. Jews are primarily known for having been slaves liberated by Moses, a precursor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. More information on slavery is available at Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau.”
Message from Orwell; “Da**it, my book was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual!”
Label on copy for first printing of “1984”; “this book is best known for it’s author being the descendant of slave owners.”
I guess I don’t object completely to the notion that history is messy, and that it can be interesting to know how a text came to us, but generally the object itself ought to take center stage, not its guilty associations.