This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
Hello everyone, not had much time to be on here this week. Hope everyone is keeping well.
In the news its good to see protests mounting in China against Zero Covid, with people now openly calling for Xi to go.
Unfortunately I doubt that Xi can or will be ousted but hopefully we are now reaching a point where Covid restrictions are increasingly unthinkable even in authoritarian dictatorships.
Indeed. It is most heartening. Given how keen some posters on here were to lock people in their homes, or quarantine hotels etc etc for MUCH longer than was necessary, I hope it may have provoked some introspection...
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
I have a bad cold and had a weird fever dream featuring Leon last night. First he was berating me on Bloomberg, lots of random capitalisation. Then we met in person. I don't remember exactly what occurred but I think it featured a lot of drinking and shouting on his part. Very strange.
You getting a crush on him
Yes it is rather disturbing isn't it. It wasn't *that* kind of dream though.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
I'm not sure this painting healed anyone. It's just propaganda.
Sweeping judgments on the basis of minimal evidence are obviously the order of the day - on both sides.
Belgium were really poor today gor the quality of their players. I think Martinez has been carried by how good they have been individually previously and now they're a bit older his lack of managing ability is showing.
Same as Southgate. Mediocre manager blessed with incredible players.
And Eddie Jones
England rugby were truly dire yesterday. One of their worst ever performances. And they have such talent, in theory
They look so utterly lost. No idea what to do, or who is in control. It’s going to be a tough six nations.
Eddie Jones needs to go, and they need to move on from Owen Farrell
Start from the ground up and rebuild with youth. Do what France did a few years back. Try and poach Sean Edwards. Yes it will be a crap 6 Nations and a crap World Cup but at least we will be on the road. And as you say we going to get duffed in the 6N and WC anyway
It is an interesting and underrated discussion the national humiliation of public figures. It's easy to disregard the sensibilities of Truss by dismissing her as an ambitious politician who knew what she was getting herself into or believing someone with so much front must be pretty insensitive anyway.
There are two instances I remember where a humiliation greater than anything I could imagine happened to someone and it was described.
The first was Muhammed Ali in his book 'The Greatest'. The best sports autobiography by a competitive athlete that I've read. In it he describes the feeling of being beaten and humiliated infront of the world. It's an extraordinary insight and after reading it no one would take Truss's humiliation lightly. Particularly as arrogance in both cases played such a large part.
The second happened to a sportsman I had been comissioned to photograph. By chance he had been 'exposed' for a sexual misdemeanour in the News of the World a few days before we were due to shoot. A hugely likable man who had almost overnight become a quivering wreck. To my knwledge he never fully recovered. He certainly never achieved the same heights he had before.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
I've changed my mind now. It's such a crap painting, no museum visitors ever deserve to have to it inflicted on them.
It tells us something about a Victorian medical missionary psyche, but that's all. And how much that needs saying is another matter. After all, any museum (like statues in a town) boils down to having too much stuff for the available space.
Even so, 8.30 tomorrow. No biscuits for you curators. I'm going to eat biscuits, because I'm having to be dragged in for an early meeting. I'm damn well not doing that without biscuits.
I'll be pleasantly surprised if this is reversed. There might be some emollient language, but they won't back down on the essential decision, nor its rationale. This is what they believe, and boy, do they believe it
From online research, it looks like the Wellcome Collection has been entirely captured by Wokerati. They are all in this. There is not one sane voice
And this is what Wokeness does, as well, of course. You impose the regime, and then weed out anyone who has the slightest doubt. You are then left with loyal a cadre. The similarities to other extreme political movements are uncanny
The fact that this has wound you up so much almost justifies it imo.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people are trying to work out how they can afford their heating this winter.
Those who accept the absurdities of wokery because it rubs those they disagree with up the wrong way would do well to remember that the counter revolution is generally fiercer than the revolution itself.
Liberalism, the centre, needs to hold against this rubbish. Or we'll all be worse off.
I noted the other night on the "issues of concern to voters" thread that no issue of Woke or gender politics, nor indeed much of anything to do with "culture war" featured in voters concerns.
Yes and Covid restrictions were actively popular and demanded until they weren't. Now even authoritarian dictators are struggling to remove people's liberties in the name of Covid anymore.
I think the wokehunters on here are generally wrong but simply saying something is popular today doesn't make it right. Simply saying something isn't unpopular today doesn't make it wrong.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
About 110 000 African porters died in the little known East African campaign, which was fought across Tanganyika with spillover into adjacent colonies. A further 350 000 died in war related famines.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
I've changed my mind now. It's such a crap painting, no museum visitors ever deserve to have to it inflicted on them.
It’s crap. A piece of propaganda unto itself.
But wouldn’t it be interesting to know just how many missionaries were active in Africa? What they thought they were achieving? The quality (or otherwise) of the medical treatment they provided? Also, the concomitant rush for exotic plants and the extent to which it furthered medical knowledge?
One would think you’d be able to get a basic understanding of that at the Wellcome.
It was quite common at the time to think that Europeans were on a Christian civilising mission to Africa, and that this was a good thing.
If museums aren't there to help us understand the past, and what people thought and why, then there is little point in them.
Still quite a common belief in Africa. Most Africans are far more religious than Europeans and greatly appreciate the benefits of Christian or Islamic missionaries, in both spiritual terms and also in practical things like education and missionary schools.
Sure, there is still a whiff of colonialism about, but the difference between a missionary and an aid worker is not very marked, apart from missionaries being there for the long term, and generally much more modest stipends.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
In both cases, creativity is in short supply and if Plan A isn't working, any attempt to shift seems to make things worse.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
But they ain't doing none of that. They aren't putting it in a Wokey context and they've given up attaching feeble Woke poems next to problematic items.
Instead, over a single weekend, they've decided that the entire collection is too problematic to even exhibit, as it was gathered by one rich patriarchal racist blah blah (while offering zero evidence for this), so the entire core of the Wellcome Collection has been shut. For good, Without debate. In a weekend. Announced on Friday closed on Sunday. And without any clear plan of what comes next, if indeed they are thinking of doing anything next. Given what they believe it seems difficult for them to show any of this stuff ever again
It is book burning, Knowledge that must be burned
They’ll have to show them. They’re not going to get any new artefacts, are they? They’ll just modernise, refresh - wokify, if you prefer, how they’re presented.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
I've changed my mind now. It's such a crap painting, no museum visitors ever deserve to have to it inflicted on them.
It tells us something about a Victorian medical missionary psyche, but that's all. And how much that needs saying is another matter. After all, any museum (like statues in a town) boils down to having too much stuff for the available space.
Even so, 8.30 tomorrow. No biscuits for you curators. I'm going to eat biscuits, because I'm having to be dragged in for an early meeting. I'm damn well not doing that without biscuits.
I'll be pleasantly surprised if this is reversed. There might be some emollient language, but they won't back down on the essential decision, nor its rationale. This is what they believe, and boy, do they believe it
From online research, it looks like the Wellcome Collection has been entirely captured by Wokerati. They are all in this. There is not one sane voice
And this is what Wokeness does, as well, of course. You impose the regime, and then weed out anyone who has the slightest doubt. You are then left with loyal a cadre. The similarities to other extreme political movements are uncanny
The fact that this has wound you up so much almost justifies it imo.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people are trying to work out how they can afford their heating this winter.
Those who accept the absurdities of wokery because it rubs those they disagree with up the wrong way would do well to remember that the counter revolution is generally fiercer than the revolution itself.
Liberalism, the centre, needs to hold against this rubbish. Or we'll all be worse off.
I noted the other night on the "issues of concern to voters" thread that no issue of Woke or gender politics, nor indeed much of anything to do with "culture war" featured in voters concerns.
Yes and Covid restrictions were actively popular and demanded until they weren't. Now even authoritarian dictators are struggling to remove people's liberties in the name of Covid anymore.
I think the wokehunters on here are generally wrong but simply saying something is popular today doesn't make it right. Simply saying something isn't unpopular today doesn't make it wrong.
That was another point on that thread, that issues on voters minds are often proxies for related ones. EU and immigration for example.
It is hard to see any culture war or covid proxies in that list though.
Any chance Truss might get invited back into the Shadow Cabinet by LOTO Badenoch (or whoever else would succeed Sunak if the Tories lose the next GE)? Hague, IDS, and Ed Miliband all managed to eventually get back onto the frontbench after 'failed' tenures as leaders of their respective parties. Though I suppose the magnitude of Truss' failure was greater than theirs's.
The magnitude of Truss's failure is certainly not larger than theirs, she never lead the party to an electoral defeat.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome.
The interesting thing about medical history is how useless counter productive and plain wrong everything thing is, from hippocrates up to Florey (not Fleming) discovering penicillin. Gotta hope the child has malaria and that is quinine in the glass.
It is an interesting and underrated discussion the national humiliation of public figures. It's easy to disregard the sensibilities of Truss by dismissing her as an ambitious politician who knew what she was getting herself into or believing someone with so much front must be pretty insensitive anyway.
There are two instances I remember where a humiliation greater than anything I could imagine happened to someone and it was described.
The first was Muhammed Ali in his book 'The Greatest'. The best sports autobiography by a competitive athlete that I've read. In it he describes the feeling of being beaten and humiliated infront of the world. It's an extraordinary insight and after reading it no one would take Truss's humiliation lightly. Particularly as arrogance in both cases played such a large part.
The second happened to a sportsman I had been comissioned to photograph. By chance he had been 'exposed' for a sexual misdemeanour in the News of the World a few days before we were due to shoot. A hugely likable man who had almost overnight become a quivering wreck. To my knwledge he never fully recovered. He certainly never achieved the same heights he had before.
Of course, the sort of submissives that wear day collars in public might not mind a bit of the old humiliation.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
About 110 000 African porters died in the little known East African campaign, which was fought across Tanganyika with spillover into adjacent colonies. A further 350 000 died in war related famines.
Tending a sick African is not irrelevant to WW1.
You think that diverting expenditure from humanitarian to military efforts saves more lives in the long run?
I suppose it's a point of view, but it's not one I agree with.
I have a bad cold and had a weird fever dream featuring Leon last night. First he was berating me on Bloomberg, lots of random capitalisation. Then we met in person. I don't remember exactly what occurred but I think it featured a lot of drinking and shouting on his part. Very strange.
You getting a crush on him
Yes it is rather disturbing isn't it. It wasn't *that* kind of dream though.
Any chance Truss might get invited back into the Shadow Cabinet by LOTO Badenoch (or whoever else would succeed Sunak if the Tories lose the next GE)? Hague, IDS, and Ed Miliband all managed to eventually get back onto the frontbench after 'failed' tenures as leaders of their respective parties. Though I suppose the magnitude of Truss' failure was greater than theirs's.
The magnitude of Truss's failure is certainly not larger than theirs, she never lead the party to an electoral defeat.
Neither did Iain Duncan-Smith for whom Liz Truss is the closest analogy except he was never Prime Minister or ever likely to be Prime Minister.
Truss got the top job thanks to the Conservative Party membership. @HYUFD has opined the Truss/Kwarteng economic policy might be the one the Conservatives adopt in Opposition to a Starmer-led Labour Government.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
But he won't pick the likes of Malins, Radwan, Arundell, Raffi Quirke, Hasell Collins, Ollie Lawrence, Anthony Watson....and insists on square pegs into round holes to get Marcus Smith and Farrell into the same team.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
But they ain't doing none of that. They aren't putting it in a Wokey context and they've given up attaching feeble Woke poems next to problematic items.
Instead, over a single weekend, they've decided that the entire collection is too problematic to even exhibit, as it was gathered by one rich patriarchal racist blah blah (while offering zero evidence for this), so the entire core of the Wellcome Collection has been shut. For good, Without debate. In a weekend. Announced on Friday closed on Sunday. And without any clear plan of what comes next, if indeed they are thinking of doing anything next. Given what they believe it seems difficult for them to show any of this stuff ever again
It is book burning, Knowledge that must be burned
They’ll have to show them. They’re not going to get any new artefacts, are they? They’ll just modernise, refresh - wokify, if you prefer, how they’re presented.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
You haven't even read what they have said. The whole collection is too "problematic" to be shown
Here, I will kindly help you out:
"We tried to do this [ie put it all in context, as you want and expect] with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions.
But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."
That's it. The whole thing is binned, The Collection, simply by being the collection of a rich old Victorian guy, is too offensive to show. There is no elaboration from them of what comes next, if anything, just a bit of waffle about conversations. It looks like everything is gone for good
If they find it all so hateful, the best thing they could do is give the Collection to someone who IS willing to show it.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
But he won't pick the likes of Malins, Radwan, Arundell, Raffi Quirke, Hasell Collins....and insists on square pegs into round holes to get Marcus Smith and Farrell into the same team.
Arundell and Malians have had chances, not sure of the others. Is Smith the finished article yet? Not convinced, but maybe giving him game time is part of the plan. But ultimately the pack is no longer good enough. You must achieve parity up front as a minimum.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
This thread header feels a little bit like whistling in the dark given the shit situation and the destructive economic 'strategy' we're seeing from the current Government. The idiots who made Sunak happen, nudging their mate and saying 'Yeh, but, Truss, right? Right?'. Well, instead of trying to wring whatever remaining giggles you can get out of Truss, why not face up to your own part in replacing her with a weak, vacillating, elitist whose biggest political allies are Grant Shapps and Gavin Williamson and whose pet project for the remainder of the Tory reign is a prolonged recession.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
But he won't pick the likes of Malins, Radwan, Arundell, Raffi Quirke, Hasell Collins....and insists on square pegs into round holes to get Marcus Smith and Farrell into the same team.
Arundell and Malians have had chances, not sure of the others. Is Smith the finished article yet? Not convinced, but maybe giving him game time is part of the plan. But ultimately the pack is no longer good enough. You must achieve parity up front as a minimum.
Arundell has had 3 caps and is 20 years old.
Jones has a bit of a history with picking somebody, they play a few games, then never to be seen again regardless of form for their club e.g. Ludlam seem to do pretty well for England as a finisher, never gets picked now. Matlins has been ripping it up for his club.
In the pack, England definitely missing the likes of Laws, Underhill. I think they need to move on from the old tactic of Big Billy is the main threat battering ram, as after all his injuries he doesn't have that anymore.
The really big thing with England forwards is the number of stupid penalties they give away, yet the same people keep doing it and get picked. Modern rugby you are going to get killed if you keep giving the opposition the option of 50-60 yard kick to touch into your half or 3 points from anywhere over the half way line.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
But they ain't doing none of that. They aren't putting it in a Wokey context and they've given up attaching feeble Woke poems next to problematic items.
Instead, over a single weekend, they've decided that the entire collection is too problematic to even exhibit, as it was gathered by one rich patriarchal racist blah blah (while offering zero evidence for this), so the entire core of the Wellcome Collection has been shut. For good, Without debate. In a weekend. Announced on Friday closed on Sunday. And without any clear plan of what comes next, if indeed they are thinking of doing anything next. Given what they believe it seems difficult for them to show any of this stuff ever again
It is book burning, Knowledge that must be burned
They’ll have to show them. They’re not going to get any new artefacts, are they? They’ll just modernise, refresh - wokify, if you prefer, how they’re presented.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
You haven't even read what they have said. The whole collection is too "problematic" to be shown
Here, I will kindly help you out:
"We tried to do this [ie put it all in context, as you want and expect] with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions.
But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."
That's it. The whole thing is binned, The Collection, simply by being the collection of a rich old Victorian guy, is too offensive to show. There is no elaboration from them of what comes next, if anything, just a bit of waffle about conversations. It looks like everything is gone for good
If they find it all so hateful, the best thing they could do is give the Collection to someone who IS willing to show it.
Your last sentence misses the point, namely that nobody should be able to see it, in their opinion.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
About 110 000 African porters died in the little known East African campaign, which was fought across Tanganyika with spillover into adjacent colonies. A further 350 000 died in war related famines.
Tending a sick African is not irrelevant to WW1.
I love "porters," as if Africans get to carry the tents and picnic supplies, whereas discharging the magic fire sticks is white man's business. Actually you can get around lots of East Africa in wheeled vehicles, and most or all of the actual troops deployed by the UK were African or Indian.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
But they ain't doing none of that. They aren't putting it in a Wokey context and they've given up attaching feeble Woke poems next to problematic items.
Instead, over a single weekend, they've decided that the entire collection is too problematic to even exhibit, as it was gathered by one rich patriarchal racist blah blah (while offering zero evidence for this), so the entire core of the Wellcome Collection has been shut. For good, Without debate. In a weekend. Announced on Friday closed on Sunday. And without any clear plan of what comes next, if indeed they are thinking of doing anything next. Given what they believe it seems difficult for them to show any of this stuff ever again
It is book burning, Knowledge that must be burned
They’ll have to show them. They’re not going to get any new artefacts, are they? They’ll just modernise, refresh - wokify, if you prefer, how they’re presented.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
You haven't even read what they have said. The whole collection is too "problematic" to be shown
Here, I will kindly help you out:
"We tried to do this [ie put it all in context, as you want and expect] with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions.
But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."
That's it. The whole thing is binned, The Collection, simply by being the collection of a rich old Victorian guy, is too offensive to show. There is no elaboration from them of what comes next, if anything, just a bit of waffle about conversations. It looks like everything is gone for good
If they find it all so hateful, the best thing they could do is give the Collection to someone who IS willing to show it.
Your last sentence misses the point, namely that nobody should be able to see it, in their opinion.
Indeed. I was about to add that. The probability is they wouldn't even sell it on, as it is evil in itself. What are they gonna do then? Destroy it? Give it back to... who?
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
About 110 000 African porters died in the little known East African campaign, which was fought across Tanganyika with spillover into adjacent colonies. A further 350 000 died in war related famines.
Tending a sick African is not irrelevant to WW1.
You think that diverting expenditure from humanitarian to military efforts saves more lives in the long run?
I suppose it's a point of view, but it's not one I agree with.
That wasn't my point.
My point was that parts of Africa suffered greatly during the collision of European empires in WW1. We tend to neglect the campaigns other than the Western front, and even there only concentrate on the third of the front held by the BEF.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Shuttering a remarkable collection of medical history, and never allowing anyone to see it is quite definitely "erasing history"
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
But he won't pick the likes of Malins, Radwan, Arundell, Raffi Quirke, Hasell Collins....and insists on square pegs into round holes to get Marcus Smith and Farrell into the same team.
Arundell and Malians have had chances, not sure of the others. Is Smith the finished article yet? Not convinced, but maybe giving him game time is part of the plan. But ultimately the pack is no longer good enough. You must achieve parity up front as a minimum.
Arundell has had 3 caps and is 20 years old.
Jones has a bit of a history with picking somebody, they play a few games, then never to be seen again regardless of form for their club e.g. Ludlam seem to do pretty well for England as a finisher, never gets picked now. Matlins has been ripping it up for his club.
In the pack, England definitely missing the likes of Laws, Underhill. I think they need to move on from the old tactic of Big Billy is the main threat battering ram, as after all his injuries he doesn't have that anymore.
The really big thing with England forwards is the number of stupid penalties they give away, yet the same people keep doing it and get picked.
On penalties I agree, although that is often a symptom of being under the cosh, or trying to get on top of things. And yes, reliance on Billy is getting us nowhere. Sadly England have also become a kicking team, like Bath, who I’ve watched on a couple of occasions this year. The crowd at Bath groan at every box kick this year.
One of the many depressing things about the Wellcome Brouhaha is all the tweets supporting the decision
There aren't thousands but there are dozens, amongst the large tide of disapproval
And the "well done" tweets all come from historians, or, even more, people in the museum biz, fellow curators, etc
Which tells us that all of Britain's museums have been captured by this putrid ideology so it is only going to get worse. We can expect a lot more rows such as this. The Wokeness is far from Peaking
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
One of the many depressing things about the Wellcome Brouhaha is all the tweets supporting the decision
There aren't thousands but there are dozens, amongst the large tide of disapproval
And the "well done" tweets all come from historians, or, even more, people in the museum biz, fellow curators, etc
Which tells us that all of Britain's museums have been captured by this putrid ideology so it is only going to get worse. We can expect a lot more rows such as this. The Wokeness is far from Peaking
Replace them with migrants. It's what they would want.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Some sort of award for point-missing must be on the cards here.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
I’m just an amateur, but to me, the thing to do is to display, say the painting, with the context - colonialism, 1916, East Africa campaign, missionaries trying to do good according to their lights etc. Probably have a bunch of QR codes leading to online resources with more detail, as well.
Declaring the whole lot to evil to look at is one step from book burning.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Shuttering a remarkable collection of medical history, and never allowing anyone to see it is quite definitely "erasing history"
You and your little pals never said a word about how remarkable it was until today.
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
But he won't pick the likes of Malins, Radwan, Arundell, Raffi Quirke, Hasell Collins....and insists on square pegs into round holes to get Marcus Smith and Farrell into the same team.
Arundell and Malians have had chances, not sure of the others. Is Smith the finished article yet? Not convinced, but maybe giving him game time is part of the plan. But ultimately the pack is no longer good enough. You must achieve parity up front as a minimum.
Arundell has had 3 caps and is 20 years old.
Jones has a bit of a history with picking somebody, they play a few games, then never to be seen again regardless of form for their club e.g. Ludlam seem to do pretty well for England as a finisher, never gets picked now. Matlins has been ripping it up for his club.
In the pack, England definitely missing the likes of Laws, Underhill. I think they need to move on from the old tactic of Big Billy is the main threat battering ram, as after all his injuries he doesn't have that anymore.
The really big thing with England forwards is the number of stupid penalties they give away, yet the same people keep doing it and get picked.
On penalties I agree, although that is often a symptom of being under the cosh, or trying to get on top of things. And yes, reliance on Billy is getting us nowhere. Sadly England have also become a kicking team, like Bath, who I’ve watched on a couple of occasions this year. The crowd at Bath groan at every box kick this year.
The over-reliance and predictability of England box kick / kick for position based approach is particularly depressing. The number of times you see England fake that and go with the run can be counted on one hand.
Belgium were really poor today gor the quality of their players. I think Martinez has been carried by how good they have been individually previously and now they're a bit older his lack of managing ability is showing.
Same as Southgate. Mediocre manager blessed with incredible players.
And Eddie Jones
England rugby were truly dire yesterday. One of their worst ever performances. And they have such talent, in theory
They look so utterly lost. No idea what to do, or who is in control. It’s going to be a tough six nations.
Eddie Jones needs to go, and they need to move on from Owen Farrell
Start from the ground up and rebuild with youth. Do what France did a few years back. Try and poach Sean Edwards. Yes it will be a crap 6 Nations and a crap World Cup but at least we will be on the road. And as you say we going to get duffed in the 6N and WC anyway
That Boks game SHOULD be pivotal
Shaun Edwards hates the RFU. The feeling is mutual. He was disgracefully treated as a working class, common accented, League playing captain of England Schools aged 16. They didn't like a Wiganer from a Comprehensive being head and shoulders better than the right sort. Despite never having played the game except for one season aged 11. Nor that he made no secret that he'd be turning "officially" pro. Despite the offer of money to stay "officially" amateur. He won't coach England.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Then say so. Educate people on both what we know and what we don't know. Rumsfeldian known unknowns can be taught.
No need to delete exhibits and shutter history though, is there? We lack a lot of knowledge about the people who created the pyramids and other historical artifacts. The actual people, not the leaders. But ultimately you wouldn't remove those exhibitions I assume?
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
The liberal critique of it is easy: that opposing ideas should be engaged with and not cancelled. That ideas should be judged on their merit and not the person who spoke them.
I also agree that the Tory critique is often misplaced and based on them not liking an opposing view. For example, I'd argue choosing to remove a statue of a slave owner from a public place is a reasonable, non-woke position to take. Such artifacts are divisive, so depending on the wider achievements of said person, may be better suited to a museum.
But where things should definitely not be cancelled is in a museum. That is a place where people go by choice and the curation can explain where pieces are controversial.
Well, the Wellcome morons are getting tremendous pushback on Twitter and near universal condemnation, so maybe, in this rare instance, the Wokeness will be defeated
But I'm not betting on it
Well the BBC are unconcerned....
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled "A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African" which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
What is interesting here is that this is now totally verboten. Are we to say that never happened? Of course you could easily put context of we need to be careful here about the motivates of such a painting etc etc etc.
NO IT DOESN'T.
Shouting at them, not you. They lie about it, everybody is too squeamish to reproduce it, and away we go.
Bloody hilarious, but it's the white man who is kneeling in front of someone; the black woman is supporting the sick child.
Here it is. It’s quite crap art, and surely inessential, but it’s not what it’s been represented as by Wellcome (and parroted by the BBC).
Looks like the missionary chap is taking the knee. My favourite take on missionaries in Africa is this one: when they came, we had the land and they had God. Then suddenly they had the land and we had God. I think that more or less summarises their role. This painting should take pride of place in a museum of hilarious Victorian kitsch. If such a thing doesn't exist perhaps Leon could start one.
1916.
The sentiment is Victorian anyway. I'm surprised anyone could be bothered to churn out this kind of garbage during ww1.
You think we should have been concentrating on the miiltary effort rather than thinking about tending to sick Africans? That doesn't seem quite right.
About 110 000 African porters died in the little known East African campaign, which was fought across Tanganyika with spillover into adjacent colonies. A further 350 000 died in war related famines.
Tending a sick African is not irrelevant to WW1.
I love "porters," as if Africans get to carry the tents and picnic supplies, whereas discharging the magic fire sticks is white man's business. Actually you can get around lots of East Africa in wheeled vehicles, and most or all of the actual troops deployed by the UK were African or Indian.
Manual porterage, often compulsory service, was a mainstay of logistics in that campaign. Kenya contributed 10,500 soldiers but 200 000 non combatant porters.
Yes, a lot of Imperial troops were used in the campaign, as commanders felt they were more suited to the conditions.
Generally the non European troops were buried in unmarked graves, the Commonwealth War graves website discusses this here:
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
But they ain't doing none of that. They aren't putting it in a Wokey context and they've given up attaching feeble Woke poems next to problematic items.
Instead, over a single weekend, they've decided that the entire collection is too problematic to even exhibit, as it was gathered by one rich patriarchal racist blah blah (while offering zero evidence for this), so the entire core of the Wellcome Collection has been shut. For good, Without debate. In a weekend. Announced on Friday closed on Sunday. And without any clear plan of what comes next, if indeed they are thinking of doing anything next. Given what they believe it seems difficult for them to show any of this stuff ever again
It is book burning, Knowledge that must be burned
They’ll have to show them. They’re not going to get any new artefacts, are they? They’ll just modernise, refresh - wokify, if you prefer, how they’re presented.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
You haven't even read what they have said. The whole collection is too "problematic" to be shown
Here, I will kindly help you out:
"We tried to do this [ie put it all in context, as you want and expect] with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions.
But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."
That's it. The whole thing is binned, The Collection, simply by being the collection of a rich old Victorian guy, is too offensive to show. There is no elaboration from them of what comes next, if anything, just a bit of waffle about conversations. It looks like everything is gone for good
If they find it all so hateful, the best thing they could do is give the Collection to someone who IS willing to show it.
The display is binned, the 15 year old Medicine Man display. The artefacts will be back.
One of the many depressing things about the Wellcome Brouhaha is all the tweets supporting the decision
There aren't thousands but there are dozens, amongst the large tide of disapproval
And the "well done" tweets all come from historians, or, even more, people in the museum biz, fellow curators, etc
Which tells us that all of Britain's museums have been captured by this putrid ideology so it is only going to get worse. We can expect a lot more rows such as this. The Wokeness is far from Peaking
They are the enlightened ones who will decide what the hoi poloi are allowed to see. Indeed, woke and enlightened are synonyms. Ironically it was the church missionaries who saw their calling as bringing enlightenment to darkest Africa. - - Full circle.
Morroco fans in Brussels after their win against Belgium…
Some of the many young Morocco’ fans in Brussels are getting out of hand with “celebrations” getting out of control. car and a scooter amongst the first victims… quartier midi Bruxelles.
Interesting definition of the celebration by BBC journo there.
Police used tear gas and water cannons against crowds in central Brussels on Sunday as violence broke out in the aftermath of Belgium’s 2-0 defeat to Morocco in the FIFA World Cup.
Riot police were deployed to a Christmas market in the downtown area of the Belgian capital, and police ordered the shutdown of some public transport lines. Fires were set and rocks were thrown at vehicles. A group of young Morocco fans smashed up a car and rental scooters, according to footage from a BBC journalist on the scene.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Shuttering a remarkable collection of medical history, and never allowing anyone to see it is quite definitely "erasing history"
You and your little pals never said a word about how remarkable it was until today.
Re: The Wellcome. I have the dubious distinction of a Masters Degree in the History of Medicine, and I still have my Library Card for the Wellcome. It's been undergoing a number of changes in recent years. It used to fund postgraduate work in numerous Universities, but that's been scaled back - the stated intention was that it was now easier for it to fulfil its mission (i.e. the education of people about the history of medicine) by expanding their own educational work - in particular, the collections in Euston Road and by doing more on line and in schools.
In academia, the conspiracy theory was that the history of medicine had changed so much over the years that the Wellcome had taken umbrage. Whereas the discipline used to be about Great Men in White Coats having priority disputes over various discoveries, the universities had wandered off into history from below, gender studies, (anti-)psychiatry, public health and societal matters such as poverty and class in medicine, rather than Eminent Doctors.
The theory, therefore, was that the Wellcome was cutting back on tertiary education because the academies were too unsympathetic to medicine, and were too Woke for the Wellcome. One does wonder, though, what the point of the Wellcome Institute is nowadays, if it's closing its major exhibition as well as cutting back on postgraduate funding.
There are two things to note about the Euston Road site: 1) It provides free wifi, a decent coffee shop and comfortable seating for all comers - so now that the British Library has clamped down on students cluttering up their facilities, the Wellcome has become a massive pick-up joint for UCL students and the like. One of the consequences of the over-expansion of universities such as UCL is that there simply isn't enough space for everyone, hence the overflow. 2) The Wellcome Library has the most bizarre cataloguing system in the world. Totally incomprehensible, but the librarians are very helpful.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
Quite. Not just a critique though - a coherent and inclusive alternative philosophy.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Yes, quite. So if there is one, and only one, thing which we incontrovertibly know about them - which is that they carved, owned, sold or had stolen from them precisely there artifacts, does it give them more of a voice if we study display and seek to know as much as possible about the artifacts, or if we hide them away and decide we have "no right to" tell their stories?
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
One of the many depressing things about the Wellcome Brouhaha is all the tweets supporting the decision
There aren't thousands but there are dozens, amongst the large tide of disapproval
And the "well done" tweets all come from historians, or, even more, people in the museum biz, fellow curators, etc
Which tells us that all of Britain's museums have been captured by this putrid ideology so it is only going to get worse. We can expect a lot more rows such as this. The Wokeness is far from Peaking
This has to be fake news.
How can there be lots of well done Tweets when Twitter is dead and everyone educated has left it to go to Mastodon?
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Shuttering a remarkable collection of medical history, and never allowing anyone to see it is quite definitely "erasing history"
You and your little pals never said a word about how remarkable it was until today.
Jesus. Are you about six years old?
Perhaps I missed your big PB post about going up to London and being impressed by the Wellcome Collection. But I'm certain that nobody in my entire life has said that to me, after all, it's not exactly the British Museum is it.
Re: The Wellcome. I have the dubious distinction of a Masters Degree in the History of Medicine, and I still have my Library Card for the Wellcome. It's been undergoing a number of changes in recent years. It used to fund postgraduate work in numerous Universities, but that's been scaled back - the stated intention was that it was now easier for it to fulfil its mission (i.e. the education of people about the history of medicine) by expanding their own educational work - in particular, the collections in Euston Road and by doing more on line and in schools.
In academia, the conspiracy theory was that the history of medicine had changed so much over the years that the Wellcome had taken umbrage. Whereas the discipline used to be about Great Men in White Coats having priority disputes over various discoveries, the universities had wandered off into history from below, gender studies, (anti-)psychiatry, public health and societal matters such as poverty and class in medicine, rather than Eminent Doctors.
The theory, therefore, was that the Wellcome was cutting back on tertiary education because the academies were too unsympathetic to medicine, and were too Woke for the Wellcome. One does wonder, though, what the point of the Wellcome Institute is nowadays, if it's closing its major exhibition as well as cutting back on postgraduate funding.
There are two things to note about the Euston Road site: 1) It provides free wifi, a decent coffee shop and comfortable seating for all comers - so now that the British Library has clamped down on students cluttering up their facilities, the Wellcome has become a massive pick-up joint for UCL students and the like. One of the consequences of the over-expansion of universities such as UCL is that there simply isn't enough space for everyone, hence the overflow. 2) The Wellcome Library has the most bizarre cataloguing system in the world. Totally incomprehensible, but the librarians are very helpful.
Perhaps number 1 is a reason - they're trying to impress the infestation of spotty herberts.
Re: The Wellcome. I have the dubious distinction of a Masters Degree in the History of Medicine, and I still have my Library Card for the Wellcome. It's been undergoing a number of changes in recent years. It used to fund postgraduate work in numerous Universities, but that's been scaled back - the stated intention was that it was now easier for it to fulfil its mission (i.e. the education of people about the history of medicine) by expanding their own educational work - in particular, the collections in Euston Road and by doing more on line and in schools.
In academia, the conspiracy theory was that the history of medicine had changed so much over the years that the Wellcome had taken umbrage. Whereas the discipline used to be about Great Men in White Coats having priority disputes over various discoveries, the universities had wandered off into history from below, gender studies, (anti-)psychiatry, public health and societal matters such as poverty and class in medicine, rather than Eminent Doctors.
The theory, therefore, was that the Wellcome was cutting back on tertiary education because the academies were too unsympathetic to medicine, and were too Woke for the Wellcome. One does wonder, though, what the point of the Wellcome Institute is nowadays, if it's closing its major exhibition as well as cutting back on postgraduate funding.
There are two things to note about the Euston Road site: 1) It provides free wifi, a decent coffee shop and comfortable seating for all comers - so now that the British Library has clamped down on students cluttering up their facilities, the Wellcome has become a massive pick-up joint for UCL students and the like. One of the consequences of the over-expansion of universities such as UCL is that there simply isn't enough space for everyone, hence the overflow. 2) The Wellcome Library has the most bizarre cataloguing system in the world. Totally incomprehensible, but the librarians are very helpful.
It subbed me for three years of a history of medicine PhD, God bless it, and at the scientist rate which is or was half as much again as humanities. Never had a problem with the catalogue, and the library itself just oozes money in a way most university book stacks cannot compete with.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Some sort of award for point-missing must be on the cards here.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Then say so. Educate people on both what we know and what we don't know. Rumsfeldian known unknowns can be taught.
No need to delete exhibits and shutter history though, is there? We lack a lot of knowledge about the people who created the pyramids and other historical artifacts. The actual people, not the leaders. But ultimately you wouldn't remove those exhibitions I assume?
History isn’t fixed. It isn’t set. Historians don’t sit down and sign off an a subject. ‘Right lads, that’s the Napoleonic Wars settled, what’s next?’
Artefacts are artefacts. They’re just objects. The interpretation of those objects, their context, is always changing.
The Wellcome Collection are closing an exhibit, Medicine Man, that’s been there for 15 years. They will no doubt come up with a new exhibit. It might have the same artefacts, some might be put on storage, there be artefacts in the new exhibit that the public haven’t seen displayed for decades, if ever. That’s what museums, curators, have always done. Museums evolve. Displays, exhibitions, artefacts displayed, come and go.
Re: The Wellcome. I have the dubious distinction of a Masters Degree in the History of Medicine, and I still have my Library Card for the Wellcome. It's been undergoing a number of changes in recent years. It used to fund postgraduate work in numerous Universities, but that's been scaled back - the stated intention was that it was now easier for it to fulfil its mission (i.e. the education of people about the history of medicine) by expanding their own educational work - in particular, the collections in Euston Road and by doing more on line and in schools.
In academia, the conspiracy theory was that the history of medicine had changed so much over the years that the Wellcome had taken umbrage. Whereas the discipline used to be about Great Men in White Coats having priority disputes over various discoveries, the universities had wandered off into history from below, gender studies, (anti-)psychiatry, public health and societal matters such as poverty and class in medicine, rather than Eminent Doctors.
The theory, therefore, was that the Wellcome was cutting back on tertiary education because the academies were too unsympathetic to medicine, and were too Woke for the Wellcome. One does wonder, though, what the point of the Wellcome Institute is nowadays, if it's closing its major exhibition as well as cutting back on postgraduate funding.
There are two things to note about the Euston Road site: 1) It provides free wifi, a decent coffee shop and comfortable seating for all comers - so now that the British Library has clamped down on students cluttering up their facilities, the Wellcome has become a massive pick-up joint for UCL students and the like. One of the consequences of the over-expansion of universities such as UCL is that there simply isn't enough space for everyone, hence the overflow. 2) The Wellcome Library has the most bizarre cataloguing system in the world. Totally incomprehensible, but the librarians are very helpful.
It subbed me for three years of a history of medicine PhD, God bless it, and at the scientist rate which is or was half as much again as humanities. Never had a problem with the catalogue, and the library itself just oozes money in a way most university book stacks cannot compete with.
I think the cataloguing system is one used by medics, but not by historians! (It's got a special name, but I can't remember what it is.)
Southgate and Eddie Jones management share a lot of a parallels...
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
I’m not convinced of the talent available to Jones. They were smashed upfront yesterday, and have been before. England have a lot of very fit, identikit rugby players. I don’t see huge talent among them. Notably it is Nowell and Youngs who have come on and looked good.
It’s what happens when fitness is prioritised over skill. It goes back to at least Graham Gooch, and almost certainly earlier.
By the way, if anyone wants to get annoyed (or even informed!) about the problems of museum curation, have a look at the controversy in 1989 at the Royal Ontario Museum.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
Although I am largely on the opposite side of this debate to you, I think you've nailed down the part of your argument I can agree to.
I think it is right that this collection is questioned, and probably replaced. But the role of the Wellcome Trust is to try to answer these questions, not (just) to pose them.
To me this is a problem of carrying out this exercise on Twitter. A much better example in the same vein was the exhibition put on around the Colston statue in the M Shed in Bristol. Lots of history, lots of arguments on both sides, I learnt more about Colston and the statue (and therefore more about history) from that than the statue being torn down or the media furore around it.
The answer e.g. to the first question might be, 'we don't know, and that is a problem because there is evidence that they may have been stolen not traded', but at least make an effort to create history, rather than remove it.
The Wellcome will redeem themselves somewhat in my eyes if they put selected works back into a future 'exhibition about the exhibition' telling a longer story about why they made the decision they made, and putting it in a historical context. Until they do that, I feel uncomfortable with these questions, particularly the last one (to be clear, it's not that I think they have a 'right' to tell the objects' stories, just that they have the obligation to do so, given that the objects are in their possession as @pillsbury says).
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Yes, quite. So if there is one, and only one, thing which we incontrovertibly know about them - which is that they carved, owned, sold or had stolen from them precisely there artifacts, does it give them more of a voice if we study display and seek to know as much as possible about the artifacts, or if we hide them away and decide we have "no right to" tell their stories?
But we might know more. Through archaeology, for instance, or more recent scholarship, whatever. The curators obviously feel that the Medicine Man exhibit is dated and that the artefacts can be presented better. You might not agree. If I saw it I might think it’s shit. Not really my area of interest anyway. But the curators are just doing their job.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Also, I do not see this as an attack on British history. Britishness has fuck all to do with it
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
But they’re not erasing anything. They’re just reinterpreting it. That’s what academic historians do. That’s why history is never settled, never set. Our view of what hall and why is always changing. You don’t have to agree with the prevailing current orthodoxy- obviously you don’t - but it’s where we are with history as a discipline.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Shuttering a remarkable collection of medical history, and never allowing anyone to see it is quite definitely "erasing history"
You and your little pals never said a word about how remarkable it was until today.
Jesus. Are you about six years old?
Perhaps I missed your big PB post about going up to London and being impressed by the Wellcome Collection. But I'm certain that nobody in my entire life has said that to me, after all, it's not exactly the British Museum is it.
I live about 10 minutes from the Wellcome. Years ago I lived 2 minutes from it
I know it well. What they’ve permanently closed and deemed unacceptable is the core of the Founder’s personal collection. Which is replete with remarkable objects
It is - was - a quirky, historical gem. One of those things that makes - made - the city great. Worse than the curatorial crime is the attitude behind it. Applied everywhere it will butcher our museums
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Yes, quite. So if there is one, and only one, thing which we incontrovertibly know about them - which is that they carved, owned, sold or had stolen from them precisely there artifacts, does it give them more of a voice if we study display and seek to know as much as possible about the artifacts, or if we hide them away and decide we have "no right to" tell their stories?
But we might know more. Through archaeology, for instance, or more recent scholarship, whatever. The curators obviously feel that the Medicine Man exhibit is dated and that the artefacts can be presented better. You might not agree. If I saw it I might think it’s shit. Not really my area of interest anyway. But the curators are just doing their job.
Certainly a 15 year old exhibit is ripe for revamping (what is the point of being a curator if you are not gonna curate?) and this painting never deserved wall space to start with. But the basis on which it has been done thinks it's being very clever about pwning the right, but actually denies history and scholarship, and deprives the voiceless of what very little voice they have.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Yes, quite. So if there is one, and only one, thing which we incontrovertibly know about them - which is that they carved, owned, sold or had stolen from them precisely there artifacts, does it give them more of a voice if we study display and seek to know as much as possible about the artifacts, or if we hide them away and decide we have "no right to" tell their stories?
But we might know more. Through archaeology, for instance, or more recent scholarship, whatever. The curators obviously feel that the Medicine Man exhibit is dated and that the artefacts can be presented better. You might not agree. If I saw it I might think it’s shit. Not really my area of interest anyway. But the curators are just doing their job.
Certainly a 15 year old exhibit is ripe for revamping (what is the point of being a curator if you are not gonna curate?) and this painting never deserved wall space to start with. But the basis on which it has been done thinks it's being very clever about pwning the right, but actually denies history and scholarship, and deprives the voiceless of what very little voice they have.
Artistically it’s a shit painting. As a historical artefact it is fascinating. You could write an essay on it if you were so inclined.
I doubt they’ve meant to pwn the right. It’s just blown up massively, thanks to ever vigilant wokehunters. They’ll be shitting themselves now.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
I've been trying my best, on and off. Not that I use the term "woke" finding it largely meaningless. A liberal critique would be rooted in the need to treat individuals fairly, in an understanding of why people and organisations behave unfairly, and in the need to have clear definitions and a proper understanding of when and why discrimination is unfair and wrong and when it is isn't but necessary precisely to be fair. Finally, it would be alert to the vital importance of not replacing an old religion by a new one and adopting all the bad habits of religions.
(I will add "Doing this properly" to my ever-increasing To Do List". Today I plotted and also cleaned out under the sink. And the plotting and writing have to take priority.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
May I ask when you did your degree?
Matriculated 05, graduated 08.
Same as me! I had you pictured in my head as some crusty old guy in his 70s. Dunno why. Soz.
Belgium were really poor today gor the quality of their players. I think Martinez has been carried by how good they have been individually previously and now they're a bit older his lack of managing ability is showing.
Same as Southgate. Mediocre manager blessed with incredible players.
And Eddie Jones
England rugby were truly dire yesterday. One of their worst ever performances. And they have such talent, in theory
They look so utterly lost. No idea what to do, or who is in control. It’s going to be a tough six nations.
Eddie Jones needs to go, and they need to move on from Owen Farrell
Start from the ground up and rebuild with youth. Do what France did a few years back. Try and poach Sean Edwards. Yes it will be a crap 6 Nations and a crap World Cup but at least we will be on the road. And as you say we going to get duffed in the 6N and WC anyway
That Boks game SHOULD be
pivotal
The ludicrous, odious, one dimensional, “brutality” obsessed Eddie Jones should have been dismissed months ago. We are awful to watch. Kickers and lumpers in a game that has changed.
By the way, we have a talented squad and it’s by no means guaranteed that we’d have a bad World Cup if we changed coach at short notice.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
All of which can be achieved without the vain introspection that post-modernist theory makes out to be academic and intellectual.
How?
Employing smarter curators might be a start?
Smarter in what way?
Well, for a start, knowing the answer to some of the questions posed in that twitter thread is literally the job of the curator. It really isn't hard.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
May I ask when you did your degree?
Matriculated 05, graduated 08.
Same as me! I had you pictured in my head as some crusty old guy in his 70s. Dunno why. Soz.
Morroco fans in Brussels after their win against Belgium…
Some of the many young Morocco’ fans in Brussels are getting out of hand with “celebrations” getting out of control. car and a scooter amongst the first victims… quartier midi Bruxelles.
Interesting definition of the celebration by BBC journo there.
Police used tear gas and water cannons against crowds in central Brussels on Sunday as violence broke out in the aftermath of Belgium’s 2-0 defeat to Morocco in the FIFA World Cup.
Riot police were deployed to a Christmas market in the downtown area of the Belgian capital, and police ordered the shutdown of some public transport lines. Fires were set and rocks were thrown at vehicles. A group of young Morocco fans smashed up a car and rental scooters, according to footage from a BBC journalist on the scene.
We have quite a big Italian population in Woking. In 1994 they were tearing up and down Goldsworth Road beeping their horns when they made the final, but I don’t remember their reaction to losing it.
Interestingly, there’s a big Brazil flag hanging on a house on Goldsworth Road this year.
Just caught up with today’s news. I can only conclude the Wellcome Collection is populated by moles operating for the Tory Party. It seems just a bit too obviously bonkers. Even my very-woke wife thinks it’s a bit silly.
Or are they moles for the neoliberal globalist Blairite consensus? Because everything happening in the world at the moment: Russia-Ukraine, China’s zero-Covid madness, Iran, the mid-terms, the final utter sidelining of the Corbynistas, the Brexit regret polling, Macron’s new love-in with Britain…it all points towards a new golden age of global liberal hegemony. The amber diamond and the light blue globe.
The thing I find offensive here is that the activity and language of the Wellcome Museum is the precise opposite of the empancipatory, liberal values of the Enlightenment.
Instead of engaging, it seeks to exclude. Instead of accessibility, it’s literally closing. Instead of education, the idea is to shame.
My issue with the general “Tory” campaign against woke is that it doesn’t position itself in liberal values either. It’s just knockabout stuff to eke out coverage in the Mail.
We need a proper liberal critique of “woke”.
I've been trying my best, on and off. Not that I use the term "woke" finding it largely meaningless. A liberal critique would be rooted in the need to treat individuals fairly, in an understanding of why people and organisations behave unfairly, and in the need to have clear definitions and a proper understanding of when and why discrimination is unfair and wrong and when it is isn't but necessary precisely to be fair. Finally, it would be alert to the vital importance of not replacing an old religion by a new one and adopting all the bad habits of religions.
(I will add "Doing this properly" to my ever-increasing To Do List". Today I plotted and also cleaned out under the sink. And the plotting and writing have to take priority.
Yes.
I am also too busy, getting ready for an apartment move, and listening to “His Band and the Street Choir”. It’s a grey, wet afternoon in Manhattan.
This Wellcome Collection thing is interesting. I can understand why it’s got the wokehunters riled.
I’m a bit of a history nerd. I read history for my undergraduate degree. For me, what the Wellcome Trust are doing isn’t controversial. They’re just reflecting the evolution of the study of history as a discipline. It’s history from below, giving a voice to those who have been, in traditional historiography, voiceless.
The right see it as an attack on our history. I think it makes our, British, history richer. I don’t think these historians want to erase our history, to make us feel guilty about a past we had no control over. Like Germans born after the war who have no blame for Nazism or the Holocaust, we should feel no personal guilt for Empire.
But perhaps we would be healthier as a country if we had a better understanding, more of a reckoning with our history, than we generally do.
What the Wellcome Collection are doing, for me, is trying to recognise and contextualise, understand and explain, the creation of the Collection as an artefact in its own right. To explain that its creation, an extremely enlightened act by an enlightened man in the mores of the day, can now be seen, from a modern perspective, to be excluding the voices and experiences of many of the people whose artefacts Wellcome was so enlightened in recognising and curating. His work should be celebrated, recognised and respected, but also contextualised from a modern perspective.
Absolutely baffling claim. You are allowed to say you are an historian if you are, without infantilising it as "a bit of a history nerd." And the Wellcome are doing precisely and exactly the opposite of what you claim: they are withdrawing and suppressing evidence, and not replacing it with anything else.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
I definitely self-identify as a history nerd. Nothing so grand as an actual historian.
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Yes, quite. So if there is one, and only one, thing which we incontrovertibly know about them - which is that they carved, owned, sold or had stolen from them precisely there artifacts, does it give them more of a voice if we study display and seek to know as much as possible about the artifacts, or if we hide them away and decide we have "no right to" tell their stories?
But we might know more. Through archaeology, for instance, or more recent scholarship, whatever. The curators obviously feel that the Medicine Man exhibit is dated and that the artefacts can be presented better. You might not agree. If I saw it I might think it’s shit. Not really my area of interest anyway. But the curators are just doing their job.
Certainly a 15 year old exhibit is ripe for revamping (what is the point of being a curator if you are not gonna curate?) and this painting never deserved wall space to start with. But the basis on which it has been done thinks it's being very clever about pwning the right, but actually denies history and scholarship, and deprives the voiceless of what very little voice they have.
Nearly everyone associated with any archeological or ethnographic artefacts is an unknown voice. Think of all the dead soldiers in the pictures of various wars, for a start. You nearly never have names to any of them.
Very occasionally we can make guesses of names. But we will never know who this was -
should we put it in the basement?
Incidentally, the Elgin Marbles were made using money stolen by an aggressive Empire from its subjects, to glorify its supreme leader (Pericles) and his wars. A good deal of the work on the Parthenon would have been done by slaves. The island communities the money was stolen from were slave based societies as well. Both were proud of the their fairly racist disdain for outsiders (barbarians). Both were very, very misogynistic as well as being racist. And we have no idea who the models for the figures were.
Perhaps we should grind the Elgin Marbles up and use them as an ingredient for cement?
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
Majority white, and almost entirely white within living memory
You’d have no trouble with me calling Nigeria a black country, even tho lots of white people live there. So it’s the usual toxic double standards from you, and the usual racist Woke BOLLOCKS. Only whites can be racist and bad?
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
I make no comment on the statement itself.
As a factual matter the figures from the Office of National Statistics are as follows:-
Ethnic Group Population Percentage White 55,010,359 87.1% Asian or Asian British 4,373,339 6.9% Black or Black British 1,904,684 3.0% Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups 1,250,229 2.0% Other ethnic group 580,374 0.9% Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller 63,193 0.1%
I did civil engineering as an undergraduate but I must say I'm sorely tempted by what @Sean_F is doing and love the idea of studying military history by myself too. Possibly via the University of Buckingham programme. I've got no doubt it's hard work, and a lot of grind, but if you have the passion - rewarding.
Unfortunately, I have two young kids and a mortgage and nursery/school fees to pay. So this is a project for my 60s.
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
As I pointed out earlier, the differences between missionaries and aid workers is fairly marginal, though the latter often have a secular rather than religious agenda. Both have long histories of positive works as well as a string of scandals. People will abuse power, particularly against the voiceless.
Here is where "Woke" enters the conversation, by being aware of the structural bias to one story over other marginalised stories. It is that awareness of the potential abuse of power that needs to be raised.
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
Two very senior people I know in the infrastructure sector (who shall remain nameless) are both bullies - and petty ones at that - but are both huge grandstanders on the great works they've done for "diversity".
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
I make no comment on the statement itself.
As a factual matter the figures from the Office of National Statistics are as follows:-
Ethnic Group Population Percentage White 55,010,359 87.1% Asian or Asian British 4,373,339 6.9% Black or Black British 1,904,684 3.0% Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups 1,250,229 2.0% Other ethnic group 580,374 0.9% Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller 63,193 0.1%
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
Yes, it's almost as if the past is a set of lessons we could learn from or something.
Does anyone else wonder about the anger of some of the Reformers in the Reformation and draw a line with the scandals of the Catholic Church today?
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
Yes, it's almost as if the past is a set of lessons we could learn from or something.
Does anyone else wonder about the anger of some of the Reformers in the Reformation and draw a line with the scandals of the Catholic Church today?
People virtually never learn lessons.
They just want to be seen seriously interested in learning lessons.
"It's very difficult to play against top class players when they pass and move the ball at speed." Thanks Alan Shearer. If the BBC wants to save money, I will provide such insights for a tenth of the price.
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
I make no comment on the statement itself.
As a factual matter the figures from the Office of National Statistics are as follows:-
Ethnic Group Population Percentage White 55,010,359 87.1% Asian or Asian British 4,373,339 6.9% Black or Black British 1,904,684 3.0% Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups 1,250,229 2.0% Other ethnic group 580,374 0.9% Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller 63,193 0.1%
Would not think that looking at TV adverts…
I wonder if that's because there's such a split between the demographics in metropolitan and non-metropolitan Britain?
I know the Houses of Parliament received a report from a consultancy that argued that its staff (both Commons and Lords) should be representative of the demographics in London in the aftermath of George Floyd.
Maybe MSM broadcasting studios take a similar approach?
I am - provocatively - going to bring today's two threads together.
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
Yes, it's almost as if the past is a set of lessons we could learn from or something.
Does anyone else wonder about the anger of some of the Reformers in the Reformation and draw a line with the scandals of the Catholic Church today?
Well I could be even more provocative and draw a line between the payment of cash for indulgences to the medieval pre-Reformation church and the payment of cash by various public and private organisations to - and doing what they are told by - today's secular priesthoods (aka charities) in return for getting brownie points and put higher up the Diversity rankings issued by said charities. Which the organizations then boast about.
And both the medieval Church and today's organizations were / are seemingly incapable of realising the grotesque conflict of interest they were / are thereby creating, which was detrimental to the Church then and good governance today.
It’s quite open now. They want to tear down our culture and history. They admit it
I have to admit that made me laugh.
It's funny that for all the hostility to privileged cis white men throughout history they seem to make an exception for Karl Marx. Or just Marx if you prefer.
Naturally the man who wants to dismantle white infrastructure is a fellow of an Oxford college, and white:
I quite like the irony of an archaeologist saying "time's up"
Yep, "time's up, who needs all this old shit?"
That placard reads like a parody, like something from Private Eye.
Every sentence is a keeper.
If Wellcome think that the very idea of museums is exploitatively “re-centering the white cis-male body” they shouldn’t stop at one collection but simply close the doors full stop.
Imagine being working class - both repulsed and intrigued by Bentham’s skin, naturally - and hoping to learn more about Bentham and how his skin got there.
You’d come way shrugging, wondering why you wasted your bus fare.
Yes, it is an agenda to close every single museum (and university, and art gallery, etc). Or turn them into conversation spaces for Black poets to express their angst
We are a white country, with a white history, and the white elite hates us for that
It is genuinely quite bleak and depressing. And STILL there will be PB-ers claiming Woke is a bogeyman invented by the Right
Kinda wondering what site I bother coming to where contemptible racist statements such as "We are a white country" stay up.
I make no comment on the statement itself.
As a factual matter the figures from the Office of National Statistics are as follows:-
Ethnic Group Population Percentage White 55,010,359 87.1% Asian or Asian British 4,373,339 6.9% Black or Black British 1,904,684 3.0% Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups 1,250,229 2.0% Other ethnic group 580,374 0.9% Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller 63,193 0.1%
Would not think that looking at TV adverts…
I wonder if that's because there's such a split between the demographics in metropolitan and non-metropolitan Britain?
I know the Houses of Parliament received a report from a consultancy that argued that its staff (both Commons and Lords) should be representative of the demographics in London in the aftermath of George Floyd.
Maybe MSM broadcasting studios take a similar approach?
Maybe, but I think it’s more that they are trying to advertise to all in the nation (rightly - maximise your market), and have hit on the wheeze that every family shall be mixed race. Perhaps it’s more noticeable to me in leafy Wiltshire than metroplolitan Britain? *
*I don’t really care about this, it’s just an observation.
Comments
This is an attack on history itself, and it is quite explicit. They do want to erase history. Luckily they write all this down so we can see them for what they are
And they apparently want to erase western museums as we know them, hence the talk of dismantling the Wellcome, and "dismantling white infrastructure"
It wasn't *that* kind of dream though.
Start from the ground up and rebuild with youth. Do what France did a few years back. Try and poach Sean Edwards. Yes it will be a crap 6 Nations and a crap World Cup but at least we will be on the road. And as you say we going to get duffed in the 6N and WC anyway
That Boks game SHOULD be pivotal
There are two instances I remember where a humiliation greater than anything I could imagine happened to someone and it was described.
The first was Muhammed Ali in his book 'The Greatest'. The best sports autobiography by a competitive athlete that I've read. In it he describes the feeling of being beaten and humiliated infront of the world. It's an extraordinary insight and after reading it no one would take Truss's humiliation lightly. Particularly as arrogance in both cases played such a large part.
The second happened to a sportsman I had been comissioned to photograph. By chance he had been 'exposed' for a sexual misdemeanour in the News of the World a few days before we were due to shoot. A hugely likable man who had almost overnight become a quivering wreck. To my knwledge he never fully recovered. He certainly never achieved the same heights he had before.
I think the wokehunters on here are generally wrong but simply saying something is popular today doesn't make it right. Simply saying something isn't unpopular today doesn't make it wrong.
Tending a sick African is not irrelevant to WW1.
From their twitter feed: pic of some W African-looking figurines, with text
Who did these objects belong to?
How were they acquired?
What gave us the right to tell their stories?
To which the answers are, to the first two: you should fucking know, because you work for the organisation that acquired them; and that you have not just the right but actually the *obligation* to tell their stories, because you have in your possession literally all the evidence that exists about them.
Built out of necessity they developed an effective albeit quite negative and one dimensional approach. That brought them success at major tournament.
However, now much more talent has become available, both have struggled to progress the system in order to able to incorporate and maximum the availability of world class talent, and both have a tendency to favouritism of certain players regardless of fitness or form e.g. Farrell playing with an injured ankle yesterday, Kane will be flogged to death regardless of his ankle.
In both cases, creativity is in short supply and if Plan A isn't working, any attempt to shift seems to make things worse.
The collection isn’t being destroyed.
It’s political, isn’t it? A new front in the culture war everyone can get enraged about.
Maybe this Medicine Man exhibition - I think I read it’s been there 15 years - was just a bit tired and needed a bit of rejigging and, being nice middle-class academics, they have jazzed that up with a load of worthy verbiage. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I just don’t think there’s anything sinister here. I know you won’t agree. I just can’t get particularly worked up about it. I can see why they’re doing what they’re doing. Bet they never thought it’d cause all this shit like.
It is hard to see any culture war or covid proxies in that list though.
England's Dan Bradbury secures fairytale victory at Joburg Open
The 23-year-old from Wakefield was playing thanks to a sponsor invitation in only his third professional start.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/63773737
I suppose it's a point of view, but it's not one I agree with.
Truss got the top job thanks to the Conservative Party membership. @HYUFD has opined the Truss/Kwarteng economic policy might be the one the Conservatives adopt in Opposition to a Starmer-led Labour Government.
Here, I will kindly help you out:
"We tried to do this [ie put it all in context, as you want and expect] with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions.
But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."
https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091247445561344?s=20&t=FHLltN4pg7AYF_ZdDX_9xA
"This is why this Sunday on 27 November, we will be closing Medicine Man for good."
https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091252612923393?s=20&t=FHLltN4pg7AYF_ZdDX_9xA
That's it. The whole thing is binned, The Collection, simply by being the collection of a rich old Victorian guy, is too offensive to show. There is no elaboration from them of what comes next, if anything, just a bit of waffle about conversations. It looks like everything is gone for good
If they find it all so hateful, the best thing they could do is give the Collection to someone who IS willing to show it.
The Great Man view will come back one day, I’m sure, be patient.
Jones has a bit of a history with picking somebody, they play a few games, then never to be seen again regardless of form for their club e.g. Ludlam seem to do pretty well for England as a finisher, never gets picked now. Matlins has been ripping it up for his club.
In the pack, England definitely missing the likes of Laws, Underhill. I think they need to move on from the old tactic of Big Billy is the main threat battering ram, as after all his injuries he doesn't have that anymore.
The really big thing with England forwards is the number of stupid penalties they give away, yet the same people keep doing it and get picked. Modern rugby you are going to get killed if you keep giving the opposition the option of 50-60 yard kick to touch into your half or 3 points from anywhere over the half way line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-prepare-deport-10-500-132508804.html
One of the least discussed but most horrific stories from the war.
Anyone spouting that sort of rubbish in my Modern History undergrad degree tutes would have been laughed out of the room.
My point was that parts of Africa suffered greatly during the collision of European empires in WW1. We tend to neglect the campaigns other than the Western front, and even there only concentrate on the third of the front held by the BEF.
There aren't thousands but there are dozens, amongst the large tide of disapproval
And the "well done" tweets all come from historians, or, even more, people in the museum biz, fellow curators, etc
Which tells us that all of Britain's museums have been captured by this putrid ideology so it is only going to get worse. We can expect a lot more rows such as this. The Wokeness is far from Peaking
The thing is, the Collection probably knows very little, if anything, of the people the artefacts came from. It just wasn’t done. No names, no life stories, very little knowledge of the people and communities who created them, I would expect. That’s why such people, subject to the common practices of the time, are generally considered to be voiceless.
Declaring the whole lot to evil to look at is one step from book burning.
He was disgracefully treated as a working class, common accented, League playing captain of England Schools aged 16.
They didn't like a Wiganer from a Comprehensive being head and shoulders better than the right sort. Despite never having played the game except for one season aged 11.
Nor that he made no secret that he'd be turning "officially" pro. Despite the offer of money to stay "officially" amateur.
He won't coach England.
No need to delete exhibits and shutter history though, is there? We lack a lot of knowledge about the people who created the pyramids and other historical artifacts. The actual people, not the leaders. But ultimately you wouldn't remove those exhibitions I assume?
Yes, a lot of Imperial troops were used in the campaign, as commanders felt they were more suited to the conditions.
Generally the non European troops were buried in unmarked graves, the Commonwealth War graves website discusses this here:
https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/discover-commonwealth-war-graves-in-kenya/
Some of the many young Morocco’ fans in Brussels are getting out of hand with “celebrations” getting out of control. car and a scooter amongst the first victims… quartier midi Bruxelles.
https://twitter.com/BrunoBoelpaep/status/1596884319259471872
Interesting definition of the celebration by BBC journo there.
Police used tear gas and water cannons against crowds in central Brussels on Sunday as violence broke out in the aftermath of Belgium’s 2-0 defeat to Morocco in the FIFA World Cup.
Riot police were deployed to a Christmas market in the downtown area of the Belgian capital, and police ordered the shutdown of some public transport lines. Fires were set and rocks were thrown at vehicles. A group of young Morocco fans smashed up a car and rental scooters, according to footage from a BBC journalist on the scene.
https://www.politico.eu/article/rioting-in-brussels-after-belgium-loses-world-cup-football-match-to-morocco/
Twitter littered with clips.
https://twitter.com/theawayfans/status/1596887884702679041
https://twitter.com/Gilless_92/status/1596912133056647168
In academia, the conspiracy theory was that the history of medicine had changed so much over the years that the Wellcome had taken umbrage. Whereas the discipline used to be about Great Men in White Coats having priority disputes over various discoveries, the universities had wandered off into history from below, gender studies, (anti-)psychiatry, public health and societal matters such as poverty and class in medicine, rather than Eminent Doctors.
The theory, therefore, was that the Wellcome was cutting back on tertiary education because the academies were too unsympathetic to medicine, and were too Woke for the Wellcome. One does wonder, though, what the point of the Wellcome Institute is nowadays, if it's closing its major exhibition as well as cutting back on postgraduate funding.
There are two things to note about the Euston Road site:
1) It provides free wifi, a decent coffee shop and comfortable seating for all comers - so now that the British Library has clamped down on students cluttering up their facilities, the Wellcome has become a massive pick-up joint for UCL students and the like. One of the consequences of the over-expansion of universities such as UCL is that there simply isn't enough space for everyone, hence the overflow.
2) The Wellcome Library has the most bizarre cataloguing system in the world. Totally incomprehensible, but the librarians are very helpful.
How can there be lots of well done Tweets when Twitter is dead and everyone educated has left it to go to Mastodon?
Artefacts are artefacts. They’re just objects. The interpretation of those objects, their context, is always changing.
The Wellcome Collection are closing an exhibit, Medicine Man, that’s been there for 15 years. They will no doubt come up with a new exhibit. It might have the same artefacts, some might be put on storage, there be artefacts in the new exhibit that the public haven’t seen displayed for decades, if ever. That’s what museums, curators, have always done. Museums evolve. Displays, exhibitions, artefacts displayed, come and go.
I think it is right that this collection is questioned, and probably replaced. But the role of the Wellcome Trust is to try to answer these questions, not (just) to pose them.
To me this is a problem of carrying out this exercise on Twitter. A much better example in the same vein was the exhibition put on around the Colston statue in the M Shed in Bristol. Lots of history, lots of arguments on both sides, I learnt more about Colston and the statue (and therefore more about history) from that than the statue being torn down or the media furore around it.
The answer e.g. to the first question might be, 'we don't know, and that is a problem because there is evidence that they may have been stolen not traded', but at least make an effort to create history, rather than remove it.
The Wellcome will redeem themselves somewhat in my eyes if they put selected works back into a future 'exhibition about the exhibition' telling a longer story about why they made the decision they made, and putting it in a historical context. Until they do that, I feel uncomfortable with these questions, particularly the last one (to be clear, it's not that I think they have a 'right' to tell the objects' stories, just that they have the obligation to do so, given that the objects are in their possession as @pillsbury says).
I know it well. What they’ve permanently closed and deemed unacceptable is the core of the Founder’s personal collection. Which is replete with remarkable objects
It is - was - a quirky, historical gem. One of those things that makes - made - the city great. Worse than the curatorial crime is the attitude behind it. Applied everywhere it will butcher our museums
I doubt they’ve meant to pwn the right. It’s just blown up massively, thanks to ever vigilant wokehunters. They’ll be shitting themselves now.
(I will add "Doing this properly" to my ever-increasing To Do List". Today I plotted and also cleaned out under the sink. And the plotting and writing have to take priority.
By the way, we have a talented squad and it’s by no means guaranteed that we’d have a bad World Cup if we changed coach at short notice.
Do it.
Interestingly, there’s a big Brazil flag hanging on a house on Goldsworth Road this year.
Or are they moles for the neoliberal globalist Blairite consensus? Because everything happening in the world at the moment: Russia-Ukraine, China’s zero-Covid madness, Iran, the mid-terms, the final utter sidelining of the Corbynistas, the Brexit regret polling, Macron’s new love-in with Britain…it all points towards a new golden age of global liberal hegemony. The amber diamond and the light blue globe.
I am also too busy, getting ready for an apartment move, and listening to “His Band and the Street Choir”. It’s a grey, wet afternoon in Manhattan.
Very occasionally we can make guesses of names. But we will never know who this was -
should we put it in the basement?
Incidentally, the Elgin Marbles were made using money stolen by an aggressive Empire from its subjects, to glorify its supreme leader (Pericles) and his wars. A good deal of the work on the Parthenon would have been done by slaves. The island communities the money was stolen from were slave based societies as well. Both were proud of the their fairly racist disdain for outsiders (barbarians). Both were very, very misogynistic as well as being racist. And we have no idea who the models for the figures were.
Perhaps we should grind the Elgin Marbles up and use them as an ingredient for cement?
Missionaries going to Africa to bring Christianity and medicine - as in that dreadful painting - is now seen as bad and of its time and not on now. Instead we have the likes of Oxfam who bring help to the poorest and those affected by natural disasters and.... er...... sexually exploit poor women.
As here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162 - some 3 years after the previous scandal. We have had similar stories about UN relief agencies and other NGOs - for instance, refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation, reportedly by employees of national and international NGOs, UNHCR and other UN bodies. Even Save The Children was subject to sexual abuse allegations against its employees.
It's almost as if people with power will abuse it, sexual predators will abuse every opportunity they can find and doing good works does not stop people behaving like total arseholes - whether in the 19th century or now.
"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons."
You’d have no trouble with me calling Nigeria a black country, even tho lots of white people live there. So it’s the usual toxic double standards from you, and the usual racist Woke BOLLOCKS. Only whites can be racist and bad?
Pah
As a factual matter the figures from the Office of National Statistics are as follows:-
Ethnic Group Population Percentage
White 55,010,359 87.1%
Asian or Asian British 4,373,339 6.9%
Black or Black British 1,904,684 3.0%
Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups 1,250,229 2.0%
Other ethnic group 580,374 0.9%
Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller 63,193 0.1%
Unfortunately, I have two young kids and a mortgage and nursery/school fees to pay. So this is a project for my 60s.
Here is where "Woke" enters the conversation, by being aware of the structural bias to one story over other marginalised stories. It is that awareness of the potential abuse of power that needs to be raised.
It's all hokum and about their brand.
Does anyone else wonder about the anger of some of the Reformers in the Reformation and draw a line with the scandals of the Catholic Church today?
They just want to be seen seriously interested in learning lessons.
Spain much less impressive in their 2nd game - like England
Thanks Alan Shearer.
If the BBC wants to save money, I will provide such insights for a tenth of the price.
I know the Houses of Parliament received a report from a consultancy that argued that its staff (both Commons and Lords) should be representative of the demographics in London in the aftermath of George Floyd.
Maybe MSM broadcasting studios take a similar approach?
And both the medieval Church and today's organizations were / are seemingly incapable of realising the grotesque conflict of interest they were / are thereby creating, which was detrimental to the Church then and good governance today.
Is that what you were referring to? 🤔
*I don’t really care about this, it’s just an observation.