prologger

Salutations to all who know me or do not. For a supposed fan of history, information and the archives, I don’t keep a very coherent record of myself and my interests. No matter, for I shall now arrange these disparate facts into a body of knowledge and disseminate them - as befits a woman of my personality and profession!

purpose :

This is primarily a historyblr/studyblr/writeblr account. I like to make reading lists for my favourite research topics! Follow if you think I or anything I say is interesting, I enjoy discussion and am very friendly.

history / academic-ish interests :

- Favourite themes in History: gender, religion and Empire. I like learning about the Islamicate (Abbasids and Ottomans mainly) the Soviet project, and the various German polities.

- Honing in on the Interwar period right now!

- I like to look at interesting black women figures in a transnational (across the nations), transtemporal (across the ages) way. Hagar, Barakah bint Tha'laba, Octavia Butler and Diane Abbott occupy and rule over the same realm of my mind. It’s also why I call myself a drudge and biomass in a loving and reclaiming way.

fandom-y interests:

- I like anime and manga. Favourites include: Black Lagoon, Otoyomegatari, Asobi Asobase, Maria Holic, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I want to get into Golden Kamuy soon.

- I also like Western animation. Favourites include: Moral Orel, Gravity Falls, Infinity Train and Inside Job.

writing / writeblr stuff:

- Most of what I read and write can be slotted into the speculative / sci fi / historical genres. Character driven books about crazy, minoritised people capture my imagination! Favourites include: Earthlings, Woman at Point Zero, Native Son, From A Crooked Rib and The Street. I want to read Heart of Darkness soon. I have pretty comprehensive reading lists for all of these genres under the tag ‘reading list’.

- The writing I do on archives is mostly an exploration and exercise of ideas. It will likely be useful in future if I conduct research and practice in the field but as of yet, it is recreational, not vocational. It’s also good to figure out niches now, and what type or period of records I’d like to focus on.

politics / philosophy :

REVIEW OF OUTRAGEOUS:

This period drama provides a nice piece of British interwar history (mainly 1930s) through the eyes of the Mitford sisters, young women of the aristocracy. The narrator, pained and prudent eldest Nancy, takes us head on into the life of a New Woman through the turbulent decade.

Upsides: The gender and international politics are discussed with a lot of detail. Sexuality was also an interesting one. It could have been explained more and taken as less of a given that Nancy was as progressive in these aspects as she was, because that interested me, but her personal life and politics were very well woven into her character. The sisterhood aspect was also good. If you like coquettey things or Hitler if she was a teenage girl (Unity), you will enjoy.

Some downsides: the show was tame in how it approached how prolific fascism was in the family and wider British aristocracy at the time. The appeal was shown but they portray the adoption of the politics as bizarre with no reactionary basis. Unity and Diana Mitford / Mosley are made out to be corrupted bad apples when in reality, their parents were already virulent anti semites.

Women are often accused of not being abstract thinkers and needing to find anecdote and reference to justify things, thinking too relationally. I am not a believer of this at all and reject most strains of philosophy as being irrelevant and inapplicable to my historically and socially constructed form. In a way, this somewhat proves my ability to think abstractly, as I am looking beyond the obvious. The Obvious and the Natural in human civilisations is the Patriarchal.