The narrative is made by erasure and exclusion. Erasure

[suegeo]

Last edited Fri Jul 26, 2024, 07:18 PM - Edit history (2)

Men Explain Things to Me
By Rebecca Solnit

I am re-reading this excellent book.

The author writes

I think a lot about …obliteration. …
I have a friend whose family tree has been traced back a thousand years, but no women existed on it.
She just discovered that she herself did not exist, but her brothers did. Her mother did not exist, and nor did her father’s mother. …There were no grandmothers.
…missing sisters, aunts mothers, grand mothers, great-great grand mothers, a vast population made to disappear on paper and in history.
Thus coherence—of patriarchy, or ancestry, of narrative—is made by erasure and exclusion.

The narrative is made by erasure and exclusion.

What an excellent book, for this and other reasons.