I wanna talk a bit more about the way history is taught and how this in turn affects our thinking on historical objects, and how we relate to our history [thread] https://twitter.com/violentkeysmash/status/1298409273869950982

for most of us, history is taught in a fragmented way that ignores most events and doesn't place the past in relation to the present or future. events we *do* get to learn about are isolated, inaccurate narratives that prop up the ideology of whichever empire set the curriculum.

think about the way slavery is (or rather isn't) taught about in schools. the curriculum narrative says slavery only happened in a distant past, and that it was completely abolished by the Very Great British Empire (the same empire that began the transatlantic slave trade).

when unconnected to material conditions in the present and more recent past, or to the evolution of the British Empire into the UK nation-state, we invent the term "modern slavery" to distinguish slavery happening now. because in the imagination, slavery is consigned to the past.

[there's debates on different types and mechanisms of enslavement and what they should properly be named, which aren't relevant here, and which I'm not qualified to comment on, so I won't.]

the point is that the historical narrative places the phenomenon of slavery exclusively in the past, so we invent a new term to describe it in the present, when it never actually went away. this is a small illustration of the larger problem of disjointed, disconnected history.

as this thread discusses, the twin legacies of slavery and the British Empire are what built the UK, but you wouldn't know it from the way we're taught. because the framing puts these legacies in the past, with no connection to the present. https://twitter.com/Sisyphusa/status/1270627480689356800?s=19