I just think this is really important and I want people to see it. When people say feudalism to talk about the modern economy they are identifying a way in which 21st-century capitalism binds us to various corporations in various different kinds of ways. This is not medieval. https://twitter.com/sonja_drimmer/status/1260648781457977344

I have proposed a concept over the years I call “chronological alterity.” When people see something in the modern moment that they don’t like so they categorize it as pre-modern: usually medieval. They do it to distance them now and themselves from the thing they don’t like.

There are many reasons that this is a problem. First, it’s usually not accurate. But second and more critical, it prevents us from envisioning the steps we might take to address the contemporary problem or understanding the ways that modern systems created them.

A few years ago my favorite examples were articles characterizing the Ferguson Missouri Police Department as medieval, the Russian drivers license bureau as medieval. And of course ISIS.

There is a history to the police department that rides through 19th century slavery, reconstruction, the backlash, and the move to sundown laws in the greater Midwest. I am not a historian of modern policing, I have read a lot of them. They will tell you this history.

To call the system of plunder of the black residence of Ferguson River is to hide the ways in which it is so bound up in modernity. The same could be said for Isis, whose brutal methods broadcast on YouTube are quintessentially modern.

Then use of feudalism as an adjective to describe problems in the modern economy is very common lately, and I think it obscures the way in which this has emerged by undermining regulatory capitalism.

This thread on chronological alterity has been brought to you by waiting for my flank steak to finish grilling. 117 degrees now. Almost ready.