Jul 15, 2017 03:50 PM
The western housewives who sought freedom in Soviet Russia
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-american-house...iet-russia
EXCERPT: In the summer of 1922, Ruth Epperson Kennell, a children’s librarian, left New York City for the far reaches of Siberia. She travelled with her husband Frank and 132 other ‘pioneers’. [...] Haywood and hundreds of other foreigners were eagerly establishing industrial and agricultural communes to aid the ‘new Russia’. [...] Why has fascination with revolutionary Russia, particularly among women, been forgotten? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the ‘Soviet dream’ became a nightmare for many, including the unlucky Americans who tried to live out their lives there, optimistically (and sometimes accidentally) giving up their US citizenship and then finding themselves trapped: some wound up in the gulag or died, and nearly all who stayed lost the idealism that initially drew them there. For the many who stayed for several years or months – that is, long enough to feel like they were more than just tourists, but short enough to feel like their own fate was not tied up with the Soviet Union’s – it was in many cases possible, at least for a time, to rationalise violence, repression and paranoia as temporary and necessary steps on the road to building true socialism....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-american-house...iet-russia
Ancient ruins keep being ‘discovered’: were they ever lost?
https://aeon.co/ideas/ancient-ruins-keep...-ever-lost
EXCERPT: [...] Nothing in their description is accurate. The cities aren’t lost; the people living in these areas know all about them. And the original legends do not even reference cities; rather, they refer to locations that, for whatever reason, represent a golden age for indigenous communities. Even the landscape is not particularly dangerous; children grow up there, after all. Archaeologists often say: ‘It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.’ We are not in pursuit of objects but rather an understanding of the past. My work has never been about finding sites. It’s about finding out how leaders gained and maintained power, how these ancient societies interacted with other groups, and how such societies situated themselves across the landscape.
[...] The American feminist and legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon [...] challenged scholars to ask themselves how they know things [...] By claiming a non-situated position, as if it were possible to operate free of perspective and bias, archaeologists inherently support and reinforce the status quo; this way of asserting power too often goes unnoticed.
Out of this type of questioning, some archaeologists have come up with an alternative mode of investigation known as ‘sensory archaeology’. Sensory archaeologies challenge the power-dominated fantasy of exploration [...] helping to expose [...] a problematic relationship between the investigator and the subject of the investigation. Though my research is not explicitly sensory archaeology, my attempts to immerse myself in a place and within local communities, and to contextualise discoveries, follow similar guiding principles....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/ancient-ruins-keep...-ever-lost
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-american-house...iet-russia
EXCERPT: In the summer of 1922, Ruth Epperson Kennell, a children’s librarian, left New York City for the far reaches of Siberia. She travelled with her husband Frank and 132 other ‘pioneers’. [...] Haywood and hundreds of other foreigners were eagerly establishing industrial and agricultural communes to aid the ‘new Russia’. [...] Why has fascination with revolutionary Russia, particularly among women, been forgotten? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the ‘Soviet dream’ became a nightmare for many, including the unlucky Americans who tried to live out their lives there, optimistically (and sometimes accidentally) giving up their US citizenship and then finding themselves trapped: some wound up in the gulag or died, and nearly all who stayed lost the idealism that initially drew them there. For the many who stayed for several years or months – that is, long enough to feel like they were more than just tourists, but short enough to feel like their own fate was not tied up with the Soviet Union’s – it was in many cases possible, at least for a time, to rationalise violence, repression and paranoia as temporary and necessary steps on the road to building true socialism....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-american-house...iet-russia
Ancient ruins keep being ‘discovered’: were they ever lost?
https://aeon.co/ideas/ancient-ruins-keep...-ever-lost
EXCERPT: [...] Nothing in their description is accurate. The cities aren’t lost; the people living in these areas know all about them. And the original legends do not even reference cities; rather, they refer to locations that, for whatever reason, represent a golden age for indigenous communities. Even the landscape is not particularly dangerous; children grow up there, after all. Archaeologists often say: ‘It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.’ We are not in pursuit of objects but rather an understanding of the past. My work has never been about finding sites. It’s about finding out how leaders gained and maintained power, how these ancient societies interacted with other groups, and how such societies situated themselves across the landscape.
[...] The American feminist and legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon [...] challenged scholars to ask themselves how they know things [...] By claiming a non-situated position, as if it were possible to operate free of perspective and bias, archaeologists inherently support and reinforce the status quo; this way of asserting power too often goes unnoticed.
Out of this type of questioning, some archaeologists have come up with an alternative mode of investigation known as ‘sensory archaeology’. Sensory archaeologies challenge the power-dominated fantasy of exploration [...] helping to expose [...] a problematic relationship between the investigator and the subject of the investigation. Though my research is not explicitly sensory archaeology, my attempts to immerse myself in a place and within local communities, and to contextualise discoveries, follow similar guiding principles....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/ancient-ruins-keep...-ever-lost
