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by swashboon 1798 days ago
It's certainly a provocative use of the language. I believe they are making the case that fetishistic hoarding of historical documents is both, only available to those with a means of wealth created through probably exploitation, and in an of itself an aspect of western/euro-centric ideology and its propagation through colonization. I tend to think the hoarding mentality is more base then that (I've watched squirrels before) but I think the argument that hoarding knowledge specifically is certainly a more amorphous problem.

Yes, they are just making the claim that the information should be available. They are putting it into their own contextualized argument framework.

1 comments

> I believe they are making the case that fetishistic hoarding of historical documents is...in an of itself an aspect of western/euro-centric ideology and its propagation through colonization.

I'm pretty sure a historian with the right background could easily find examples of that in, for instance, China before it had any significant contact with the West. Trying to particularize it seems incorrect.

> I believe they are making the case that fetishistic hoarding of historical documents is both, only available to those with a means of wealth created through probably exploitation...

That's probably true but well understood. Caring about historical documents, let alone hoarding them, is quite a luxury activity available only to those with wealth, and wealth (now, and especially in the past) usually comes from some kind of exportation of others.