Current events Archives - Page 5 of 12 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Dark Academia, the “Western Canon,” and the Decline of the Humanities

In around mid-July, I found out that there is apparently a huge internet “aesthetic” movement called “dark academia” that centers around a highly romanticized impression of what humanities scholars and students—especially those in the fields of classics, English, history, and philosophy—dressed and lived like in the twentieth century. Aspects of the aesthetic include wearing old-fashioned, dark-colored, stereotypically “academic” clothing and appreciating “classic” literature, art, and music.

For those who aren’t already aware, I am currently about to enter my senior year at Indiana University Bloomington double-majoring in history and classical studies (i.e., Ancient Greek and Latin), with honors in history. My current plan is to apply to graduate programs in ancient history later this year. Even though I don’t deliberately dress in a dark academia style and I don’t identify with the aesthetic in any particular way, being a humanities student does make me feel like I have a connection to it.

I was so struck by my surprise discovery of dark academia’s apparent popularity that I’ve spent a good part of the past two weeks researching it and its history. Naturally, I have a lot of thoughts, especially about how the current popularity of the aesthetic seems to be at least in part a reaction to the slow ongoing decline of the academic humanities.

Alluring Anecdotes about the Olympic Games

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo are now officially underway, having been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have absolutely no interest in sports and, in all likelihood, I will not watch any part of the ongoing Olympics. Nonetheless, I do know a little bit about Olympic history, due to my intense study of ancient Greece and Rome and, on account of the occasion, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite anecdotes about Olympic history.

The first is a legend about why ancient Olympic athletes were required to compete naked, the second is about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to attend the Olympic Games, the third is about how women were sometimes able to compete in the ancient Olympic Games due to a loophole, and the fourth is about how the modern Olympic Games at one point included competitions for literature and the arts.

Yes, Loki Is Genderfluid in Norse Mythology!

On 9 June 2021, the streaming service Disney+ released the first episode of the series Loki, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The series stars the English actor Tom Hiddleston as the Marvel character Loki, who is very loosely based on the Norse god Loki. In the show, there is a shot of an official document which clearly lists Loki’s gender as “fluid.” This means that the Marvel character Loki is now officially genderfluid in the MCU. Some people are upset about this revelation, claiming that it is a shoddy attempt to shoehorn unneeded gender diversity into the MCU.

What these people don’t seem to realize is that Loki has always been what a modern person would describe as genderfluid—even in the original Norse myths. In Norse mythology, Loki can shapeshift and, although they are most commonly male, they sometimes adopt female forms. For instance, in one Old Norse poem, Loki is said to have lived on earth as a woman for eight years, during which time she milked a cow (which the Norse saw as a feminine chore), had sex with a man, and gave birth to children. The Prose Edda tells another story that Loki once turned into a mare, had sex with a stallion, and gave birth to a foal. Additionally, the Marvel character Loki has also been explicitly genderfluid in the comics for nearly a decade now, so Loki’s genderfluidity isn’t even a new thing for Marvel.

Peter Singer’s Extraordinarily Bad Take on Apuleius

On 30 May 2021, the online open classics journal Antigone published a piece written by the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer about the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass, which was originally written in Latin in the late second century CE by the North African writer Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 CE). Antigone promoted the article on their Twitter account. Their announcement begins with the words: “Today we are delighted to share an article by Peter Singer, renowned philosopher and animal rights advocate…”

Antigone’s publication and promotion of Singer’s article immediately sparked backlash over the fact that Singer has spent the past three and a half decades publicly advocating that infants who have observable physical disabilities at birth should be killed. He even co-authored and published an entire book in 1985 titled Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of Handicapped Infants, in which he advocated this.

Many classicists, myself included, feel that Antigone should not have published Singer’s article about Apuleius because, even though the article itself did not discuss infanticide, he is not the sort of person that they should be platforming. Even beyond this, though, Singer’s take on The Golden Ass is so extraordinarily bad that, even if he didn’t have a long history of advocating infanticide, no classics journal should have published it.

Tucker Carlson Is Using Controversy about Literature Classes to Promote Fascism

There is something of a culture war going on right now over which books students should be assigned to read in literature classes. I’ve been meaning to write an article on this subject for over six months now, but, until now, I haven’t had time. Sadly, I’ve been so insanely busy with the many other things going on in my life that I haven’t had much time for researching and writing articles lately. Now, however, recent events have compelled me to write an article about a different aspect of the controversy than I originally planned.

Many of my readers are probably already aware of Tucker Carlson. He is a far-right political commentator who has a long and well-documented history of promoting white supremacist, fascist, misogynist, and xenophobic ideas. He has his own show on Fox News called Tucker Carlson Tonight and, on 14 May 2021, he did an entire segment about the literature class controversy titled “Classic literature out. Sexual propaganda in.”

In this segment, Carlson first protests the removal of works that he considers “classic literature” from English syllabi and then pretends to be absolutely scandalized by the reading of explicit passages in young adult novels that have been approved for students to read in one public school in Loudoun County, Virginia. Carlson frames the controversy using a standard fascist narrative that misrepresents the issues and ignores many demonstrable facts, including the fact that many works of so-called “classic literature,” including many works that are often read in schools, are just as sexually explicit as the works he protests against—or, in some cases, even more explicit.

“Rewriting History” Is Not Inherently a Bad Thing

There seems to be something of a trend going on right now in politics where people have developed a habit of accusing their opponents of wanting to “rewrite history.” I’ve mostly seen conservatives accusing progressives of this, but I’ve also seen a few cases of progressives accusing conservatives of it without further clarification. In all cases, people who accuse other people of wanting to “rewrite history” portray this as something unambiguously bad.

The problem is that “rewriting history” is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, “rewriting history” is literally a historian’s job description. It is inevitable that each generation will rewrite history and there is really nothing anyone can do to stop it. It is, however, extremely important that the people who rewrite history do so honestly, using correct evidence and correct methods of interpretation. When we talk about “rewriting history,” what matters is not whether people are doing it, but how they are doing it.

Why We Should Avoid Using the Name ‘Anglo-Saxon’

As many of my readers are probably already aware, on 16 April 2021, Punchbowl News released documents, which revealed that Trump allies in the Republican Party, led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, had founded what they were calling the “American First Caucus,” which was supposed to be dedicated to promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that “befits the progeny of European architecture.”

The caucus was immediately denounced as white supremacist. According to this article from The Washington Post, Greene is now trying to distance herself from the proposed American First Caucus, insisting that the documents Punchbowl News released were “a staff level draft proposal from an outside group.”

This relates to a controversy that has been boiling in the field of medieval studies for years now over the use of the name Anglo-Saxon. The term has been widely used for over two centuries to refer to the English-speaking inhabitants of Britain after the Germanic invasions of the fifth century CE until the Norman conquest in 1066. Now, though, many scholars, especially young scholars and scholars of color, argue that people should avoid applying the name in this way, because it is largely anachronistic, it inherently implies racial whiteness, and it alienates people of color. Below is a discussion of the issue, along with a few of my thoughts on the matter.

What It Means If Biden Recognizes the Armenian Genocide

On 21 April 2021, The New York Times published an article reporting that President Joe Biden plans to declare that the mass murder of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918 was an act of genocide. The declaration is planned to take place on 24 April, which the Republic of Armenia has designated Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

This declaration will mark the fulfillment of a campaign promise that Barack Obama made in 2008 but never fulfilled and a campaign promise that Biden himself made last year. The declaration is controversial, however, because it may further harm the United States’ already-frayed relationship with the Republic of Turkey, whose government officially maintains that the genocide never happened. As a student of history, I thought I would give some background on the Armenian Genocide and what Biden’s declaration might mean.

How Vaccines Were Really Invented

I am greatly pleased to say that I am finally in the process of being vaccinated for COVID-19, since Indiana University (the university I am currently attending) has a huge stockpile of vaccines reserved for students. I received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on 8 April 2021 and I am scheduled to receive my second dose on 29 April. Since lots of people like me are now receiving the vaccine for COVID-19, I decided that now would be a good time to write an article about the history of vaccines.

The story that most people have been told is that Edward Jenner, a white English man, single-handedly invented the very first vaccine—a vaccine for smallpox—in 1796. The reality, though, is much more complicated. Notably, many people are not aware of the fact that Jenner’s vaccine was an improvement on the much older procedure of inoculation, which originally independently developed in at least three different parts of the world (in China, West Africa, and the Ottoman Empire) and only later spread to Europe and the Americas through a process of cultural diffusion.

Elon Musk Declares Himself “Imperator”?

On 12 April 2021, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who currently has a net worth of approximately $175 billion, changed his Twitter bio to say “Technoking of Tesla, Imperator of Mars.” This change immediately sparked headlines in Newsweek, NDTV, and dozens of other news outlets. Ordinarily, one person—even an ultra-wealthy CEO—changing their Twitter bio probably wouldn’t make the news. Elon Musk, however, has a massive cult following of adoring fans who, for the most part, wholeheartedly believe that he is a brilliant, forward-thinking, polymathic genius who is single-handedly ushering in a new era of technology and freedom. Thus, everything he does automatically attracts attention.

I’m sure that some of Musk’s fans are reading this. I hope they will forgive me for the fact that I am not one of them. Indeed, I think that Musk has risen to where he is to a large extent through exploitation, that he isn’t nearly as personally brilliant as most of his fans think he is, that he has an obnoxious personal ego the size of the planet Jupiter, and that he is generally a rather odious person. I do, however, want to talk about Musk’s updated Twitter bio because I think it reveals a lot of startling things about how Musk thinks of himself and his position in the world.