nevernotbroken

asha-greyjoy:

archaeology:

The Fire at the L’Institut d’Egypte a “great loss”

On Sunday the Institute D’Egypte caught fire and burned. The Institute was established in 1798 by the French, and held an estimated 200,000 volumes, including rare accounts of Egypt in the 18th Century. I must confess I had no knowledge of the Institute before yesterday, but because I, like many privileged folks in the developed world, have access to Wikipedia, I know it is an important building, and an important repository of information. Yet most Egyptians don’t have that luxury. As Larry Rothfield points out, neither the protesters, nor the military seemed to know this was an important building containing books and manuscripts.

i’m sick of bullshit, patronizing, western-penned articles that characterize egyptians as being ~ignorant of our own heritage and in need of western scholars to fucking hold our hands and tell us the significance of historical items and buildings because us sad, stupid brown people don’t know the fucking difference and GOLLY GEE WE’LL JUST BURN EVERYTHING WE DIDN’T KNOW THERE WAS BOOKS IN THERE, MISTER WHITE MAN

fuck you, larry rothfield, whoever you are. fuck you for whitesplaining, and fuck you for insinuating that you know more about my fucking country than i and my fellow egyptians do. the protesters knew the significance, the soldiers knew the significance, and saying we just “didn’t know better” absolves whoever did this (probably the military) of responsibility for destroying their own cultural property.

egypt had a culture and a history millennia before white people found it and appropriated it and fetishized it, and sycophantic pearlclutching white journalists would fucking do well to remember it.

THIS.

Wikipedia exists in Egypt. Poor people can use wikipedia, brown people can use wikipedia, people in the ~developing world!~ can use wikipedia. Your privilege is showing, but it’s not because you have Wikipedia; it’s because you’re not in the middle of an insurrection with an army throwing bricks at you.

The article you linked quotes one person. I’ve been in pretty heavy situations too, and I sure as fuck didn’t know the historical significance of every single building I was ever in front of. That doesn’t mean that nobody knew. I really don’t like the blanket statement that “the protesters didn’t know”. That’s not how a protest works.

If you want to talk about the destruction of historical artifacts, talk about the history that has been destroyed by colonization by the west, the Mubarak regime which was supported by the US, and the ruling military junta which is also supported by the US. Talk about your own manipulation of the narratives of people who are making Egyptian history right now and whose hands that’s playing into.

This is colonialism we are talking about. You can shove your books.