"The article will show that the translation, as well as Belcher’s subsequent publications around Woletta Petros, constitute colonial scholarship, where a foreigner who cannot understand the language is elevated to the status of expert at the expense of the local people" 1/https://twitter.com/DerilloEyob/status/1302513616525176832 …
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Also, as a queer woman, reading about what seems to be a deliberate twisting of the original text into a translation to impart sexuality onto a nun is highly distressing. There are certainly many texts that demonstrate the sexuality of individuals have been ignored by translators
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But to impose this on a text where you have no real knowledge of the language at all, as a white woman writing about an Ethiopian nun, is distressing. The lens here is as
@YirgaGelaw says, a sexualisation of Black women that is informed by racist and colonialist ideas.Show this thread -
"To further apply this to the local experts and scholars, erasing their knowledge with the label of “homophobic”, relies heavily on the racist assumption that black people are barbaric and ignorant enough not to accept the truth about their own history." p. 195.
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I do not know if Belcher is a queer woman, but I will say that it is not uncommon for white queer people to make heavily racist comments towards Black people stating that they are inherently homophobic or transphobic. There was a lot of it in America after Prop 8 in Cali.
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A screenshot of an excellent paragraph here. The white woman gaze on Black women is insidious, harmful, and destructive.pic.twitter.com/iXEh1gXd2Y
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Thank you
@YirgaGelaw for this incredibly detailed and insightful review.Show this thread
End of conversation
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