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condwiramurs.livejournal.comI started replying to a comment posted to "I Would Sell Out the Nation," but it developed into a rather long post thinking my way through some things. And talking more about Snape, of course. I’m just thinking out loud here though.
In particular, thinking through how a number of canonical incidents and patterns might have looked from the inside, once we make the realization that – since valuing ‘purity’ of wizarding ancestry is a concept that really only makes sense as arising from and existing within a formally Secret and so strictly isolated wizarding world – when the issue of blood status is on the table, it’s virtually always at one level a coded way of talking about the ever-present but culturally traumatically-frightening threat of historical violent muggle-on-wizard persecution. And is not necessarily the only form of such coded talk. It has developed, over three centuries, a life of its own and has picked up and integrated itself with a lot of other cultural and psychological stuff, like any bigotry, but the root of it and the most unnameable but central aspect of it is the specter of the reverse of wizarding supremacy: muggle domination or eliminationist violence.
A threat that the ongoing, legally-required and violently-maintained muggle ignorance of magic both looks back to historically, and implicitly promises to allow – indeed to spark – again if it is ever discovered.
Not that most adult witches and wizards even want to THINK about that, thank you very much. Secrecy is the most unquestioned need and principle, and its collary – wizarding ignorance of the muggle world – practically a point of pride; but beyond the political and social acceptability and indeed near-indispensibility of expressing at least minimally-coded anti-muggle sentiment, wizards just don’t want to think about it. Keep muggles in their place by whatever means necessary, and then leave it and them alone. Don’t remind anyone of the muggles. Think about wizarding things. Proper things. Safe things.
Show proper wizarding pride.
( Read more... )
In particular, thinking through how a number of canonical incidents and patterns might have looked from the inside, once we make the realization that – since valuing ‘purity’ of wizarding ancestry is a concept that really only makes sense as arising from and existing within a formally Secret and so strictly isolated wizarding world – when the issue of blood status is on the table, it’s virtually always at one level a coded way of talking about the ever-present but culturally traumatically-frightening threat of historical violent muggle-on-wizard persecution. And is not necessarily the only form of such coded talk. It has developed, over three centuries, a life of its own and has picked up and integrated itself with a lot of other cultural and psychological stuff, like any bigotry, but the root of it and the most unnameable but central aspect of it is the specter of the reverse of wizarding supremacy: muggle domination or eliminationist violence.
A threat that the ongoing, legally-required and violently-maintained muggle ignorance of magic both looks back to historically, and implicitly promises to allow – indeed to spark – again if it is ever discovered.
Not that most adult witches and wizards even want to THINK about that, thank you very much. Secrecy is the most unquestioned need and principle, and its collary – wizarding ignorance of the muggle world – practically a point of pride; but beyond the political and social acceptability and indeed near-indispensibility of expressing at least minimally-coded anti-muggle sentiment, wizards just don’t want to think about it. Keep muggles in their place by whatever means necessary, and then leave it and them alone. Don’t remind anyone of the muggles. Think about wizarding things. Proper things. Safe things.
Show proper wizarding pride.
( Read more... )
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