I do believe there is a real difference between history and the past. History is an official version in which people’s names are written. The past on the other hand is a place of whispers and gestures and names that are often not recognized, and identities that will not be remembered, and lives that are hidden. I think many women in different societies think of themselves as living in the past rather than in history.
I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history.
Memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition. Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in name [..] History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is perpetually an actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present, history is a representation of the past.
The past is living rather than dead; the past lives in the very wounds that remain open in the present.
Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion
As such, memoirs, oral testimonies and autobiographies are dismissed as falling under the auspices of Memory, assumed to be closer to fiction than History. Within this paradigm, “History” (with a capital “H”), which takes the archive as its basis, is assumed to be disinterested, verifiable and truthful. On the other hand, “Memory” is characterized by “lapses of forgetting, silences and exclusions.” It is cast as fickle and therefore un-authoritative and unreliable. Thus, where oral histories, letters, autobiographies, and testimonies (those forms of evidence characterized as Memory) throw doubt on dominant narratives, they are dismissed as unreliable. Given what we know about History’s (and therefore the Archive’s) role in legitimating male, elite and nationalist dominance, it is no surprise that sources produced by women, workers and …[the subaltern voice] are dismissed as unreliable and therefore as falling within the realm of Memory.
Hussein Omar, Speak, Memory: On Archives and Other Strategies of (Re)activation of Cultural Memory
what is it about capybaras that attracts groups of small animals to them?
Its not just mammals either its like birds and turtles and frogs too
look at this shit
They radiate peace
capybaras are friend shaped
I love this post
This is actually a cool thing I know about!
In the wild capybaras live in large groups so naturally a female capybara will take care of not only her own offspring, but all of the other offspring in the group. So capybaras are super great mothers who will adopt pretty much anything and take care of it.
Lots of places that rescue different animals will give a group of baby animals to a capybara to raise if they have one.
Like puppies
Ducks
Deer
Emus
They are just super calm animals so they’re naturally great at mothering or just existing in a group!
