mary beard

@wmarybeard I know 'damnatio memoriae' is a scholarly concoction but one based on real attempts at erasure. It's a human instinct sometimes

@RozKaveney "it's not the job of the present to tick the past off, but to get off its backside and do better" is what I want to say!

@wmarybeard Sometimes acknowledging the past is part of that though. Contemporaries thought Rhodes a criminal.

@RozKaveney david mitchell in obs spot on: if you’ve made Hitler hon PhD in peace studies, record shd stand as rebuke to hon degree policy.

@wmarybeard It's true that it is only one aspect of the problem but that would only be an issue were it a token rather than part of process.

@RozKaveney re-appropriation a better way than destruction. I remember tariq ali saying sensible things on statues of Q Victoria in Pakistan

@wmarybeard It's always a judgement call - but statues of Victoria are not statues of, say, O'Dwyer.

@wmarybeard I don't understand the argument made today that Rhodes is "not racist but imperialist". How was British imperialism not racist?

@wmarybeard (not your argument, and too complicated perhaps for 140 characters, but it baffled me)

@Susanna_Forrest certainly wasnt my argument & baffles me too (papers just lifted words selectively from my blog, by the way - no interview)

@wmarybeard sorry- putting that into 140 chars mangled it to gibberish. I mean I find the campaign interesting even if i don't agree totally

@hesychast there are important issues here -- clouded by the statue issue