I found this whole discussion fascinating. Particularly, as someone who studies how White people who work in solidarity with BIPOC folk in the US grapple with our identities and heritages, I found the discussion of Medieval racial formation revealing. I've been taught to see the modern construct of race as forming during the time that European powers consolidated into nation states with proto-capitalist economies and began occupying and colonizing lands outside Europe. Racial ideologies formed around the project of uprooting indigenous populations from their lands and importing indentured and enslaved persons to exploit their labor. It is interesting to hear about medieval and particularly Nordic ideas of race, blackness, and the what was it the noble pagan? The idea of the "noble savage" has been very prominent in writing our colonial history in the US. It associates indigeneity with a sort of tragic fading out of a pristine primordial way of life. It first of all ignores the fact that indigenous people are still with us and fighting today. Secondly it's part of writing a history that ignores the vast genocidal projects that white settlers and the colonial state, with European politico-economic backing, undertook to separate the people from lands that they very much already populated and cultivated. Projects such as many multiple wars, treaty violation, the reservation system, reprogramming in indigenous schools, deployment as domestic labor, etc. It seems relevant for us to understand just how deeply these proto-racial notions are embedded in the White settler psyche.
I found this whole discussion fascinating. Particularly, as someone who studies how White people who work in solidarity with BIPOC folk in the US grapple with our identities and heritages, I found the discussion of Medieval racial formation revealing.
I've been taught to see the modern construct of race as forming during the time that European powers consolidated into nation states with proto-capitalist economies and began occupying and colonizing lands outside Europe. Racial ideologies formed around the project of uprooting indigenous populations from their lands and importing indentured and enslaved persons to exploit their labor.
It is interesting to hear about medieval and particularly Nordic ideas of race, blackness, and the what was it the noble pagan?
The idea of the "noble savage" has been very prominent in writing our colonial history in the US. It associates indigeneity with a sort of tragic fading out of a pristine primordial way of life.
It first of all ignores the fact that indigenous people are still with us and fighting today.
Secondly it's part of writing a history that ignores the vast genocidal projects that white settlers and the colonial state, with European politico-economic backing, undertook to separate the people from lands that they very much already populated and cultivated. Projects such as many multiple wars, treaty violation, the reservation system, reprogramming in indigenous schools, deployment as domestic labor, etc.
It seems relevant for us to understand just how deeply these proto-racial notions are embedded in the White settler psyche.
I would say the biggest reason I'm not really interested in those sagas is that I find prechristian Scandinavia and Europe far more interesting.
really?