(under construction)

emai. she/her. sideblog. i focus on anticolonialism & asian history!

[ajewen]

hi everyone ! this is a history sideblog made by yours truly (@jedaos) because some of my dear mutuals expressed interest in it <3 i'm currently posting excerpts of what i've been reading but please lmk what you'd like this blog to be!

i'll also be sharing my republican china reading list when i'm done compiling it — which is hopefully soon!

[gothhabiba]

“Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the aid of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude.”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (via precarious-life)

[tajrishgp]

Edina Bećirević, Genocide on the Drina River.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea

The US carpet-bombed vast civilian areas, killing thousands of people. It was almost certainly a war crime.

And there is another misconception, one that Americans might not want to hear but that is important for understanding the hermit kingdom: Yes, much of its anti-Americanism is cynically manufactured as a propaganda tool, and yes, it is often based on lies. But no, it is not all lies. The US did in fact do something terrible, even evil to North Korea, and while that act does not explain, much less forgive, North Korea’s many abuses since, it is not totally irrelevant either.

That act was this: In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry.

For Americans, the journalist Blaine Harden has written, this bombing was “perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war,” even though it was almost certainly “a major war crime.” Yet it shows that North Korea’s hatred of America “is not all manufactured,” he wrote. “It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”

[rui-cifer]

To begin, America forced a government with Rhee Syngman in charge to rule even though there was a People’s Republic of Korea that was willing to work with North as a unified effort to govern Korea together, despite Soviet-American division. Soviet Union supported the people’s committee that would be the Northern representative of People’s Republic of Korea, but America flatly rejected this and violently repressed the People’s Republic. America manufactured the Korean War and then bombed Koreans for fighting a war that another country manufactured on their soil.

[fluoresensitives]

I'll post it in a bit but I read a good Medium article about Black music and Black eroticism, and how our raunchier songs are a way to reclaim our sexuality from slavery + fetishization from white folk. Also about how super sexual songs from Black artists tend to center women's pleasure, consistently speaking about making the woman orgasm, and it's literally so true... From the oldest blues song to the newest vibey R&B, we will be singing about sucking that pussy ameen.

[fluoresensitives]

“Let Me Bang Your Box: The Erotic Life of the Blues by Mark Anthony Neal

It was perhaps fitting that the opening scene of 12 Years a Slave — a film that in its most effective moments captured the everydayness of…

"This was the music of a generation of Black folk — two generations removed from slavery and still suffering Jim Crow — for which the sensual and erotic use of their bodies were acts of survival, sustenance, pleasure and even resistance." - MARK ANTHONY NEALE

[iphigeniacomplex]

it’s not my business what people joke about in private but if you are going to joke about lobotomy i think you owe yourself the 22 minutes it takes to listen to howard dully’s 2005 npr report on the transorbital lobotomy he was subjected to at the age of twelve. it’s a hard listen, but it’s a hard subject. like i said, it’s not my business, but it’s always good to know what exactly you’re joking about.

[khutsydoh-deactivated20260810]

Differentiated from the universal or high modernism of the interwar and postwar period, which settled into a comfortable relationship with the dominant power structures of capitalism, heroic modernism was at the core of North Korea’s social and cultural revolution by which peasants, workers, and women took center stage as revolutionary heroes sketching out a new path in Korean history. As David Harvey and Raymond Williams point out, modernist impulses in the twentieth century were varied to the point of being contradictory. The Enlightenment project of controlling and rationalizing the world in the name of science and progress was not only deeply flawed in theory but extremely destructive in practice, particularly visible in the two world wars. Multiple modernisms responded in various ways. Reactionary modernists, or “modernists against modernity,” as Williams describes them, attempted to redeploy the use of science and rational order for expedient goals in the pursuit of state power, turning back the clock for a mythical sense of coherence as the ticket to greater stability. In East Asia, this trend was best exemplified by Japanese discourses and policies in the 1930s and 1940s that wanted to “overcome modernity” through a singular emphasis on the deification of the Japanese emperor and subsequent policies of “imperialization” of colonized subjects in the construction of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Others sought to build what Harvey terms heroic modernism in the form of politically committed movements such as surrealism, constructivism, and socialist realism that dared to critique the present and the past while offering alternatives for an altogether different future grounded in a belief in historical progress. The collective embodied in these movements was defined by concrete material interests brought together for social ends as opposed to ambiguous collectives relying on a fabled past for militarist expansion. Modernity did not only produce isolated individuals in crowds of strangers but made possible “new kinds of human solidarity” based on the “liberating diversity and mobility of the city.” The socialist project grabbed hold of this possibility presented by modernity, critiquing the effects of capitalist modernity by putting society above the logic of capital.

The superficial similarities in form between the different strains of modernism that stress efficiency and rationality should not be mistaken for substantive differences in content. Movements such as constructivism sought to create a life of social meaning toward a better future as opposed to the pursuit of profit in the here and now or the glory of a transcendental past. It is within this history of modernity that we must situate North Korean history—as a critique of capitalist colonial modernity rather than a failed modernist project from the vantage point of postmodernity.

- from Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 by Suzy Kim

[romanistan]

The Day of Romani Resistance in Europe reveals a hidden history of a stereotyped people.

On the evening of May 16, 1944, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, SS guards armed with machine guns surrounded the area of the camp designated for Roma and Sinti prisoners. Their intent was to round up the nearly 6,000 prisoners there and send them to the gas chambers. But when the guards approached the area, they were met with armed resistance from the inmates. The prisoners had learned of the planned “liquidation” and fashioned weapons from sheet metal, wood, pipes, rocks, and any other scraps of material they could get their hands on. According to the memories of survivors and witnesses to the incident, the inmates forced the guards into retreat, and though some prisoners were shot that night, the act of resistance allowed the Roma and Sinti prisoners to put off execution for several more months.

[jacobwren]

“Contrary to common-sense understanding, the transformations of self-identity are not just a personal matter. Historical shifts out there provide the social conditions of existence of personal and psychic change in here. What mattered was how I positioned myself on the other side - or positioned myself to catch the other side: how I was, involuntarily, hailed by and interpellated into a broader social discourse. Only by discovering this did I begin to understand that what black identity involved was a social, political, historical and symbolic event, not just a personal, and certainly not simply a genetic, one. From this I came to understand that identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being.”

— Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger

[creatingblackcharacters]

"When you can't keep women out anymore, and you can't force them all to become secretaries or teachers because modern social politics demand that you at least pretend to support gender equality in the workplace, what can you do to keep women out of powerful positions in business? You can set them up to fail- or, to be more accurate, you set them up to fall.

It's called the glass cliff, and it's a phrase that was first coined in 2005 by University of Exeter researchers Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam. The research was inspired by an article in the Times (of London, not New York) that suggested women leaders have a negative impact on stock performance. Perhaps Ryan and Haslam smelled the whiff of bullshit coming from the page. They wondered if it was actually true that women brought doom and gloom to the businesses they led, or if there was some other reason why women were more likely to be found in leadership positions at troubled businesses.

They found that women were indeed more likely than men to be in leadership positions at distressed companies, but they also found that the problems were not the women's fault... These firms had shown months of decline and seemed at risk of failure prior to adding women to their boards.

When Allison Cook and Christy Glass at Utah State University followed up on this research by looking at US companies, they also discovered disturbing patterns impacting women and people of color in business: women and people of color were most likely to be placed at the head of a company when it was already at risk of failure; white men were less likely to accept leadership positions when companies were at risk of failure; and when women or people of color fail to quickly turn around the struggling company, they were most likely replaced with white men.

Women and people of color are often only given the opportunity to steer ships that white men have already rammed into icebergs. Then, when the ship sinks, the media reports that women make bad captains."

Chapter 5- Mediocre, Ijeoma Oluo

[processedlives]

“I will have an undergraduate class, let’s say a young white male student, politically-correct, who will say: “I am only a bourgeois white male, I can’t speak.” … I say to them: “Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has written such an abject script for you that you are silenced?” Then you begin to investigate what it is that silences you, rather than take this very determinist position-since my skin colour is this, since my sex is this, I cannot speak… From this position, then, I say you will of course not speak in the same way about the Third World material, but if you make it your task not only to learn what is going on there through language, through specific programmes of study, but also at the same time through a historical critique of your position as the investigating person, then you will have earned the right to criticize, you be heard. When you take the position of not doing your homework- “I will not criticize because of my accident of birth, the historical accident” - that is the much more pernicious position.”

— Gayatri Spivak (via fearandwar)

[curtwilde]

“but i think this perspective also ignores the fact that hinduism in its most ancient and pagan forms was shaped by dalit and adivasi communities and later appropriated by savarnas with rules and rituals (caste) created to their advantage”

I would be very interested in reading more about this topic, do you have any recommendations for where to start? thank you in advance

I do!

A Panoramic View of Tribal-Hindu Cultural Interface by Sandhya Jain.

The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger.

These are the most comprehensive books on the subject. However for a deeper understanding I think the best approach is to read the history of ancient India from a neutral perspective, read between the lines to understand the consequent processes of Aryanisation, Sanskritisation and Bramhinisation, and draw your own conclusions from that.

A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century by Upinder Singh - the most detailed and the best.

India's Ancient Past by R.S. Sharma for a compact overview you don't have the time and patience for Upinder Singh.

Early indians: From Origins to AD 1300 by Romila Thapar - great for socioeconomic analysis of ancient India.

Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From by Tony Joseph.

I also recommend reading up on the history of Tantra which is heavily influenced by adivasi practices, kept alive and still largely practiced among oppressed castes: History of the Tantric religion by N.N. Bannerjee.

These should be enough to give you a general idea about how the Aryans appropriated and eventually subsumed older religions and traditions under the broader umbrella of the vedic religion.

For more localised narratives -

The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa by Anncharlott Eschmann, Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathi. The writers use the example of the Jagannath cult to deliberate on the transition from tribal culture to Brahmanisation of the deities and focus on some Hindu temples which have been constructed at places where tribal deities were being worshipped since time immemorial. They also discuss deities like Charchika, Bhattarika, Pathalika, Badamba, Maninageswari and Tarini, which were originally tribal deities of Orissa that were gradually incorporated into vedic gods and goddesses.

The appropriation of Murugan into Karthik has been much better documented.

The Rise of Mahasena: The Transformation of Skanda-Karttikeya in North India from the Kusana to Gupta Empires by Richard D. Mann.

The Many Faces of Murukan: The History and Meaning of a South Indian God by Fred Clothey.

The Cult of Skanda-Kartikeya in Ancient India by A.K. Chatterjee.

For Kali:

The Book of Kali by Seema Mohanty.

Revisiting Kali: An Amalgam of Aboriginal Deities and a Symbol of Rebellion by Sumanta Bannerjee.

Banglar Daakat Kali: Myth o Itihash by Pinaki Biswas (this is in Bengali, I couldn't find a translation unfortunately but on the off chance that you can read Bengali I highly recommend this)

In Bengal, Kali is considered a saviour and protector of the downtrodden, and a manifestation of rage and resistance symbolised in blood. The more violent forms of Kali are the ones more similar to the tribal deities she was appropriated from are still primarily worshipped by Dalits.

Shoshan Kali (Shoshan literally translated to burning place) is a form of Kali that is primarily worshipped by the people of the Dom caste - undertakers responsible for disposing of the dead. Shoshan Kali is considered a patron of the space between the living and the dead, which is also why Bhoot Chaturdarshi, another folk festival honoring spirits and ghosts (Bengal's Halloween if you will) is celebrated the day before Kali Puja. It is also worth noting that animal sacrifice, red meat, blood and alcohol is mandatory in the worship of Shoshan Kali; which goes against vedic savarna sensibilities - which is probably why upper castes had always kept their distance from Kali until very recently in the last century.

Kosai Kali is a patron saint of the butcher castes - the Khatiks and Budhiks (who are now classified under SC). In 17th-18th century Bengal, hindus could not eat meat unless they had been offered to a god first and thus purified - which meant that meat was only consumed as prasad after pujas. The butchers initially opened to cater to muslims who could eat meat all year round but they wanted to expand their business, so they came up with a workaround. They installed an icon of Kali in the shop and performed a puja every day before opening shop thus purifying the meat they were about to sell - which meant that hindus could now consume meat all year round, thus forever changing eating habits of Bengal. Even today, butchers in North Kolkata perform a daily puja for Kosai Kali before opening shop.

For Shiva:

The Sacred Bond: Lord Shiva and Aadivasi Folklore in Indian Mythology by Sheetal Kakar

How Tribal India Has Held Onto Shiva by Nabarun Barooah.

Something I have observed is that the further away from the vedas the practices get, the more it seems to belong to Dalit hindus. Most of the non-vedic deities from Bengal are not worshipped by Brahmins. Manasa (bengali folk goddess associated with snakes), Sitala (folk goddess believed to cure smallpox and other diseases), Oladevi (goddess of cholera), and Shashthi (folk goddess of fertility and protecter of children) and mostly worshipped by the women of the household. The mantras are all in Bengali, not Sanskrit, and the rituals can be performed by anyone, it does not require brahmins to complete the absolutions. This can partly be explained by the fact that village economy is dictated by caste and the poorer lower caste people living in mud households are way more likely to be bitten by snakes, or have their children die of smallpox or cholera; compared to upper castes who lived in better protected houses and could afford better healthcare. But also, they are most likely derived from earlier fertility and/or protective goddess from a more pagan past, which has (mostly) escaped Sanskritisation.

Dharmathakur or Dharmaraj is a folk deity from Bengal worshipped mainly by Dalits, especially the Bauris, Bagdis, Dom and Chandala castes. Dharmaraj is considered to be formless, and represented with a sacred stone daubed with sindoor. There have been attempts to link Dharmaraj with various Vedic gods like Shiva, Surya, Yama etc. and bring him under the vedic umbrella but somehow, perhaps because his worship has always remained exclusive to Dalits, he has always resisted appropriation. Over time, Dharmaraj also came to be closely associated with Sufi traditions in Bengal - as most likely Dalit hindus converted to Islam but did not entirely let go of older rituals and worship but rather fused them with each other. Which is why many of Dharmaraj's representative stones double as Pir sthans (which is Bengal's version of Dargahs). Dharmaraj's vahan (carrier) is a horse, which is why you will find clay horses daubed in sindoor in almost all Pir sthans in Bengal - even those that do not have Dharmaraj's stone. Also fun fact, Dharmatala, the central area of Kolkata is named after him.

Charak Puja or Gajan is a folk festival from rural Bengal intended to honor Dharmathakur in some places, Shiva in others. It is mostly considered a festival of lower castes as the rituals are deemed too difficult and undignified for upper castes to perform. They involve rolling in the dirt, self-flagellation and swallowing fire in a display of frenzied devotion. (Off topic trivia but it has been said that Charak Puja's rituals may have been influenced by Muharram processions. Though I personally doubt it considering Shia muslims in Bengal were always a small community who mostly lived in cities and Charak Puja is a rural festival, but it is possible).

Rankini is another non-vedic deity worshipped by many of the adivasi tribes in Jharkhand and Bengal. Her shrines are usually found deep in the forests and like Dharmaraj, she is considered formless and depicted as a stone. There have been attempts to incorporate her as a form of Durga and Kali but, perhaps because the aadivasi tribes in the east have themselves largely succeeded in resisting appropriation and assimilation by the Aryans, Rankini too has escaped Sanskritisation altogether.

Bonbibi, believed to be the guardian spirit of the Sunderbans, is worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims alike in the (dalit) fishing communities of the Sunderbans.

Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal by June McDaniel.

Historical Studies in the Cult of the Goddess Manasa (A Socio-Cultural Study) by Pradyot Kumar Maity

Cult of Goddess Sitala in Bengal: An enquiry into folk culture by Subrata Kumar Mukhopadhyay

The Cult of Bonbibi: A Folk Paradigm in Deltaic Sundarbans by Kakali Chakravarty

Rankini: Devi, Myth, Manabi by Kaushik Dutta. (this is in Bengali)

Rarher Sanskriti O Dharmaraj by Amalendu Mitra (also in Bengali)

If you can read Bengali please do read Banglar Loukik Debota by Gopalkrishna Basu. I can't recommend this book enough because of all the books listed this one goes into the deepest dive into how most of the Vedic gods were most likely appropriated from earlier deities that existed in the land; However, most of Bengal's folk dieties resisted appropriation and were only be included in the vedic milleu either as lesser gods like Manasa, or appropriated as the occasional form of a Vedic god, as happened with Shashthi, Sitala, Dharmaraj and Jagannath. Some, like Rankini, or the Santhal's Bonga pantheon, resisted Sanskritisation altogether.

Again, as I mentioned earlier the best approach to this is to read neutral accounts of history, read between the lines and draw your own interpretations, which is what I did. If you are specifically interested in Bengal then read Banglar Itihas: Adiparba by Niharranjan Dey first. Here is a translation by John W. Wood.

Apologies for a large part of this being specific to Bengal and for the many untranslated books. I do feel that the Dravidians have been a lot more successful in preserving their pre-vedic past, but my knowledge of it is mostly surface level so I'm not going into it.

Tagging @murukanism here in case you want to add anything or have anything to recommend, since I know this to be a topic that interests you too. :)

[khutsydoh-deactivated20260810]

The division of society into castes facilitated the inclusion of new cultures and groups of people who could eventually be filed away in the open shelving of the caste system, “slotted into the caste hierarchy, their position being dependent on their occupation and social origins, and on the reason for the induction.” This was an effective way to harness the energies and loyalties of skilled indigenous people who were conquered, subordinated, or encroached upon by a society that already observed class distinctions. For while the system of classes (varnas) was already a theoretical mechanism for assimilation, the system of castes (jatis) now offered the practical reality of a form of integration, from outside the system to inside it. Caste thus paved the way for other conversions, such as that of Hindus to Buddhism or Jainism or to the new non-Vedic forms of Hinduism—renunciant or sectarian.

Many of the assimilated castes were Shudras, who were excluded from participating in the Vedic rituals but often had their own rituals and worshiped their own gods. Below the Shudras were the so-called polluted castes; beside, rather than below them, were the tribals and unassimilated aliens (mlecchas). The logic of class placed some tribal groups in a castelike category, albeit one standing outside the caste hierarchy; tribals are relegated not to a distinct level within a vertical structure, but rather to a horizontal annex that could not be integrated into any cubbyhole in the system. But some tribals are peculiarly intimate outsiders, recognized as neighbors whom the system can ultimately assimilate within the system more easily than alien invaders like Turks or Europeans. The system of castes was rationalized through an ideology of purity and pollution that was applied to the subgroups, both ethnic and professional, within the four classes. As some professions were defined as purer than others, the hierarchy took over.

Like the Buddhists and Jainas, many of the new sects disavowed caste or at least questioned its assumptions.At the same time, there was an increasing tendency, which Ashoka did much to popularize, to define a dharma that could be all things to all men, a dharma/dhamma so general (sadharana, “held in common”), so perpetual (sanatana) that it applied to all right-thinking people always, transcending the differences between various sects. And though the Brahmins quickly manipulated the system to keep individuals from moving up in the hierarchy of castes, vertical mobility was possible for the caste as a whole, if the entire group changed its work and, sometimes, its location. In this way, a particular caste might begin as a Shudra caste and eventually become a Brahmin caste. Some of the assimilated castes did become Brahmins, Kshatriyas, or Vaishyas and thus had access to the rites of the twice born. So many kings were of Shudra or Brahmin origin rather than Kshatriyas that by the time the Muslim rulers reached India they found it difficult to make a correct identification of either a class or a caste among their opposite numbers.

- from the hindus: an alternative history by wendy doniger

[occidentalist]

Yeah man, it’s totally Russia that is trying to destroy the culture of Donbass and not Ukraine, who are currently floating the idea of renaming the region after Donald fucking trump like a colonial namesake instead of the name it has had since the 19th century, on top of all the nazi monuments they’re putting all over the place and the cultural suppression laws they’re explicitly doing. Sure. Yeah

[occidentalist]

Relevant commentary by @ineed2forgetsotakeme2floridaaa:

The name Donbass comes from the Donets coal basin. The coal industry is at the heart of the history of Donbass and the Donbass people; it is the center of our identity, our culture, our cuisine, our traditions. From birth, you understand that as a resident of Donbass, whether you work in a mine or not, you are a Donbass miner who never sees the Ukrainian sky. Everything Ukraine does, from the bombing of mines, which they neglected for two decades, while people were are inside, to the renaming of our region, is aimed at stripping us of our identity, as it is perceived as contradictory and dangerous to a pan-Ukrainian identity. Donchane understand that we built Donbass with our own labor, and that anyone who builds Donbasss with their own labor becomes someone who is of Donbass. If you want to create an ethnically pure society, this doctrine of identity will become an obstacle.

One of the most famous poems about Donbass, which was widely used on posters and brochures during the Russian Spring, describes this:

“As long as a miner's heart beats in his chest,

And the blood of its sons runs warm,

I want our song to befriend the coal-cutter,

To forge the steel and lead deep into the mine shaft,

To rivet the mine cages, and raise up buildings,

And upon the scaffolding of great creation,

To stand as an example of the highest valor.

Donbass shall live! One siren sends to another

The steel chimes of a miner's brotherhood:

No one has brought Donbass to its knees,

And no one ever shall!

There is no land more beautiful, more inspired,

Where everything is built by the creator-people.

No one has brought Donbass to its knees,

And no one ever shall!

And there is no Fatherland purer or more sacred,

Where all hearts merge into one...

And this heart is illuminated by Lenin

The great guiding beacon of our native Party!”

It's clear that Donbass will one day cease to mine coal, but our history and identity will remain. This is an attempt to hit both.

[ajewen]

judgement at tokyo by gary j bass

[ajewen]

picked these up from my (secondhand) bookstore !

[beguines]

These days, sentimental dads get a lot of cultural cachet. New fathers, misty-eyed, proclaim their feminism when they first hold their newborn baby daughter. Overnight, they are transformed into heroic defenders of women's rights—though it's a defence that blurs into a defence of their daughters' purity; it relies, in other words, on an identification with a predatory masculinity that a father knows but now disavows; he sees into the dark soul of masculinity, now that he loves a creature he realises is vulnerable to its violence. And the adulation a father receives when he does the mundane, relentless work of parenting—when he 'helps' with the children, or 'babysits' them—reveals how ordinary acts of parental work and care add a glow of sanctity to a father, while passing unnoticed, because expected, in a mother. A 'hands-on' mother is a mother—the statement is a tautology—while a 'hands-on' father is a saint. We love a good Daddy.

Katherine Angel, Daddy Issues