#wtrk liveblog

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

It's like. Ok. Listen. I absolutely don't care if characters in historical novels have progressive views and politics. Many people did! That's why we're more progressive than we used to be thank goodness! However I need to know WHY. If a young woman has been raised in a position of complete privilege in a society and is clearly comfortable and happy in it why is she railing against it? Why does she see the flaws in it for other people? How did she learn to see those??? You can't just give your good guys modern views and your bad guys historical ones you have to EXPLAIN.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

See idk man but the thing about anthropology was that it was originally conceived way back as a way to study non-western cultures and as an outcome of that, explain why western cultures were inherently better, it existed in large part to defend imperialism. And obviously that changed and it changed because a lot of anthropologists said this is wrong, but that was the discipline! The discipline WAS imperialist to its core. You didn't say there were the real anthropologists who didn't do that and the fake ones who did, the fake ones were real anthropologists too because the very fabric of the academic field existed for this purpose. Right? And if you called yourself an anthropologist but you disagreed with this idea you still had to understand you were in a field with its very core rooted in this idea and that idea will affect your behaviour in subtle ways you might hardly recognise (it still does today! Anthropologists of colour tend to be the ones assumed to study their "own people" while white anthropologists are sent off to study "the other" just to name one example)

So part of my struggle with wtrk is that archaeology, not exactly the same but like, the grave-robbing aspect wasn't something separate from the western concept of archaeology, it was rooted in it, it was woven into it. So the idea that Inez's parents were like no we're the real archaeologists and they're the evil fake ones, that's not how it could have worked! And Inez and her family do not seem to be addressing that in participating in this field without publically taking a stand against this approach (rather just hiding their finds) they are passively condoning it AND acting in a way shaped by it (they think they have a right to control what is done with and who sees the artefacts) without acknowledging their complicity. They can't claim that they're archaeologists and the British archaeolgists are "nothing more than grave-robbers" because they have to understand that the very discipline of archaeology comes with that unethical behaviour alongside and within it during the time period.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Look if the family in what the river knows were Egyptian it would be fine, but I'm told this immensely rich non-Egyptian couple spend half the year in Cairo, they supervise digs and discoveries (I am NOT told their methods it is vague), they're upset by the exploitation of resources privately but don't appear to leverage their own (very significant) wealth and resources to do anything about it within the discipline of archaeology or from without it, and I'm left asking how they're actually better than the foreign "grave-robbers" that the other archaeologists we meet are rightfully branded.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

maybe I don't want a fun historical fantasy novel maybe I want an archaeological ethics thesis who can say.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

and obviously I'm not saying you can't acknowledge the harm of imperalism while at the same time being born into a position where you benefit from it but you do have to on some level acknowledge that benefit!!! you can't just be like hmm this is evil behaviour. couldn't be me.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

I haven't analyzed a novel this in depth in YEARS but I really really need you all to understand exactly why I'm angry.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Ok last thing but not to ever ever idolize academia but to just TURN UP in Cairo every year and dig stuff up with NO supervision from ANY body of ANY kind government or academic???? Bitch tf you are the PROBLEM you are PART OF THE PROBLEM

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

I guess it just gets my goat because like. you can't be part of a discipline that is inherently flawed and claim you have no part in said flawed behaviour, that it doesn't shape your very world-view on some level. All education from whatever source you recieve in the discipline, if that flaw is inherent, will come with the flaw. You can recognize the flaw and attempt to change for sure, but you don't get to sit there and say that actually you're the special ones untouched by it. And claiming that somehow your good version is the real version of the discipline and the flawed version is a fake version actually just sweeps the issues under the rug, meaning the discipline as a whole never need reflect upon itself, and you as a member also never need consider your own behaviour.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

What Isabel Ibañez did NOT count on is an arch and anth student who's easily pissed off by narrative double standards.