~*♥ open containers ♥*~

Ivan Van Sertimam, Associate Professor, Rutgers University Author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Early America (via chainlynx)

I totally get this quote and it’s implied critique of Eurocentrism, especially in the context of the book title (which I have not read, but I want to now). I also feel a need to add that actually by far the most voluminous and continuous body of written history and literature in the world is that of Chinese civilization, not that of any short-lived European language or empire (500 years is the blink of an eye in Chinese terms, we go by millennia).

You know, I’ve probably seen hundreds of reading lists out of North America and Europe — in indie bookstores, in academia, online — aimed at interrogating and/or upending the “Western canon”, yet I have not seen even one which included the Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature. I’d put good money on betting that most “educated” folks in the US can’t even name them. That’s just four novels. Lotsa folks think everybody must read Shakespeare and Hemingway (and yeah I did the whole Western canon thing, I studied English-language literature in school until I went to China and switched my focus to Chinese literature when I was 19), but the vast majority of non-Asians are apparently unwilling to invest any effort into trying to approach and understand an ancient culture shared by one-fifth of humanity.

(via zuky)

word. this reminds me of a critique that david graeber (anarchist anthropologist) makes of the “guns, germs and steel” type argument/explanation of western dominance/colonialism (that europe became powerful enough to colonize the world because the geography/climate of the region allowed food surplus to develop faster) - where he interrogates the assumption that people should necessarily even WANT to take over the world, and points out that at points in history, china could have done the same thing, but just chose not to.