Chilling. In a meditation on the Civil War style, Desisgn*Sponge suggests buying a padlock and keys. (Click to see original mood board on D*S)
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
–Abraham Lincoln
The “Living In: The Civil War” antebellum aesthetic meditation at Design*Sponge is a breathtaking exercise in privileged consumerist reductivism that is easily summed up in writer Amy Merrick‘s own words:
“I am fully aware of the absurdity of making a round up of products inspired by the most bloody, tragic and heartbreaking event ever to happen on American soil.”
Absurdity noted, products with a vaguely antique and militaristic flair are rounded up for your purchasing pleasure anyway because the writer has long been fascinated by the US Civil War and the prospect of “march[ing] to your death to protect your way of life or crusad[ing] for the rights of others.”
Mood board via Design*Sponge. Ken Burns' "Civil War" imagined as chic consumerist pastiche.
I’ll leave to others a close reading of the text and say that while it is riddled with errors, assumptions and what are probably unwitting misstatements (such as the implication that fighting for “your way of life” which would include institutionalized human bondage, breeding, rape, torture murder is somehow the moral equivalent of crusading “for the rights of others”), the larger issues is the misguided assumption that it is permissible to fetishize and commercially promote antebellum culture so long as you do so from the ‘morally superior’ Union perspective and that it is appropriate to imagine the Civil War as a conflict in which slavery is an abstraction and black people are absent or invisible.
Let me disprove the former by rendering visible the latter. In the 7 images which accompany the article, none depict visibly black Americans. This war might have as well have been fought in Scandinavia, if the visual ‘inspiration’ were any indication. Much like Lincoln’s view of Negritude, black people are really besides the point.
How do you feel about channeling that set of padlock and keys when confronted with this?:
via Spartacus Education. Thomas Johnson, born a slave in 1835, with slave whip and chains.
Did the thought that Civil War was largely about the locking away of human beings simply not occur? Perhaps that’s because the subjectivity of African Americans was completely disregarded.
Let’s look for more Civil War inspiration…Do you think your sartorial pleasure is an answer to scars such as those?
via Spartacus Educational. A Whipped Slave, circa 1860.
What we need to do is conjure up an authentic antebellum moodboard:
via Thank God I'm Natural.
via Superstock. Slave handbill.
via Wikipedia. Dred Scott, returned to slavery by order of the US Supreme Court.
via NIU. Advertisement of the Sale of Slaves.
via Ole Miss. Five generations of an enslaved family.
This is a rather more grim tableau than that of a few steely eyed white men gripping their guns featured on D*S and to not include them, to not account for them in the moral weight of this fantasy, is to wield privilege in the most insidious way. Despite protests to the contrary, it is exactly the same position occupied by those who long for a world of Gone With The Wind and Lady Antebellum.
To Amy and Grace Bonney who defended her at length: If you truly wish to live in a time when when wealthy white men pitted their poorer brethren one against another to fight over the spoils of the blood-soaked cotton fields that powered the nation’s economy, nationalistic banners and the chattelized bodies of black men, black women and black children in a land that they wrenched from the hands of its indigenous people, I can only pray that further reflection and education change your mind. As the descendant of slave, I know too well that my place in an antebellum fantasy would have almost inevitably been at the end of the lash but I am resolutely not “in total awe” at the Union’s belated, self-interested war to save itself. This was no “crusade” as it was put, no holy war; it was just a war that happened to (blessedly) benefit enslaved people. I feel ill and chilled to my core when I think of the cruelty, astounding greed (like the $212 million net worth of slaveholding President Thomas Jefferson) and elaborate racial slanders that led America to enshrine slaveholding exploitation in the Constitution, even as it sought to break free of Britain for the ‘tyranny’ of ‘taxation without representation.’ To celebrate the Union uncritically and without looking at the role of African Americans is to take part in a dangerous conquerors’ revisionism that assigns all guilt to the vanquished South without interrogating the collusion of the North. The entire country was founded upon stolen and coerced labor (not to mention stolen land); What beauty is there in channeling the vibe of the amoral Union and reducing a struggle about owning human beings to an occasion to celebrate owning objects, especially those with implications as nasty as a lock and key? I feel certain that you didn’t think of that ’round up’ item as a slaveholding lock and key but that is perhaps the point–you seemed not to think of blacks or oppression at all. 160 years beyond Lincoln and the Eurocentric intellectual and political class still imagines the Civil War as having nothing to do with the black experience.
There is a moral obligation to cast aside the perverse ‘romanticism’ of the Civil War and the chattel slaveholding American era and use, instead, the words that it deserves, the language familiar to descriptions of Dachau or the Rape of Nanjing or the Great War in Congo: horrific, inhuman, disgusting, cruel, torturous, murderous, exploitative rather than the politesse usually used, in deference to the Confederacy enthusiasts like ‘antiquated’, ‘outdated’, ‘complex’. It matters not if you like to imagine yourself as the dashing sweetheart of some Union Army gallant or as Scarlett herself; if you find beauty in human exploitation and the chaos and heartbreak of war, you are on the wrong side of human history.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for this. I had great difficulty articulating to myself what was so sickening to me about this piece and I think you’ve nailed it.
Very glad to have found your blog.
unfortunately, it seems as though grace sees nothing wrong with this and will continue to defend the civil war post and dodge a response to her views on the whole situation (race vacuum). she also saw nothing wrong with offending individuals on her post about the “craft mafia” knitta please. honestly, i am through with her. and thank you for your comments and persistence. many were offended, so at least we are not alone. this post that you have written is indeed what many feel, which you have so perfectly articulated. thank you
thank you, thank you, thank you.
you have written very articulately about a post which left me uncomfortable and without words. i appreciate so much that there are folks in the internet design/craft world that are willing to step up and address these important issues. thanks again!
Damn. Deep. Thanks. Reposting, okay?
Reblog away, and thanks.
I also saw the original post and was taken aback by the fetishistic of a violent horrific part of American history. Thanks for writing this.
please submit this to Racialicious as a guest post
http://www.racialicious.com/
LaDonna,
Thanks for the idea. I see that the post has been submitted for their ‘Links’. I haven’t submitted it as a guest post because I’m just not up to it right now (see my comment downstream, if you’re curious). Hopefully, Racialicious will see fit to pick it up. I appreciate the encouragement.
Alexis, there are days that one has the energy to head on tackle the liberal version of racism(yesterday, over at DS, was one of those days for me), and days when one does not. Today, for me, is one of those days when my energy for this issue is tapped out. And because of that, it makes me extra grateful that there are allies such as yourself, Julia and, thankfully, many others~ so we can take turns at the very front line.
I have already told you this, but thank you, thank you, thank you.. for not only being so thoughtful in your thinking process(should be implied, right? The Palins of the world, remind us that it is not), but in putting yourself out there to share these critical thoughts.
I will write more, over at DS, once I finish digesting the myriad of things that have gone down since my last post(including Amy’s response, and Grace’s lack there of).
Hi Anna,
Indeed there are days when I have no energy to take up questions of race, class, gender and justice and I think people of conscience are indebted to one another for our day-to-day activism and resistance of oppression because the making of a better world happens one affirmative act at a time.
To me, though, there comes a point in a dialogue where I have to accept that the other person is too invested in their perspective to change and that they profoundly don’t agree. And that’s a large reason why I created this blog; as a platform for a more considered approach to design, consumption, material culture, and living rather than leaving me screaming hoarsely in someone else’s commentfield.
I’m not going to post again at D*S because I think it would be an exercise in futility and I would rather add content to sites like Make It in discussing this than to give page views to an editorial perspective that I really don’t appreciate. You might find that a much less frustrating approach, too.
Oh, yes. I completely agree. Last night’s post were the last of my contributions to the convo on the actual DS blog. (I actually was not going to respond at all, as I found Amy’s personalized response to me, and request that I help guide her, in her moment of heartsickness- to be so stereotypical of the vampirical nature of the offender to the offended.)
I am totally conscious that Grace does not deserve an ounce more of my energy, and that I want my energy to pour into vessels that are creative, as opposed to one’s that are stagnant.
The one blessing of DS’s heinous post, was that it opened me up to allies in the design/craft community, that I did not know that I had. So I am gratefull for that.
Hi Alexis,
I have participated to a small degree in the discussion thread on Design Sponge, and I wanted to post this question on your blog to ask for your thoughts as well in case you weren’t following the DS thread anymore. I am so glad to have discovered your page through your link by the way!
I definitely agree with your critique on the post in its context of being an “aesthetic meditation” as you described it. Here’s what I posted at the end of my comment on the other page:
Framing and context issues not withstanding, I believe that, broadly, Amy was searching for a way to find design inspiration in an historical account she found moving. The question I would like to pose is: how can an accurate, forthright, and respectful consideration of a history, including its horrible and even shameful aspects, inform design? In my view, historical objects can be an important influence on home design to the extent that design is an extension of the self. After all, our history is who we are. Can design move beyond a consideration of what is “beautiful” in a purely feel-good sense to incorporate aspects of painful historical experiences? What would this design look like? It is appropriate for designers to consider this in their work? Or is the purpose of design to focus only on the positive, cooperative experiences that (if we’re lucky), help us overcome trauma?
I’m not suggesting that we should surround ourselves with our traumas – that would be horrible for our collective psychology! I’m wondering if a complete and responsible consideration of history can/should influence design and if so, in what ways?
If you are interested, I would love to hear your thoughts! If not, or if too burnt out on the topic, no worries.
Looking forward to future visits on One Grand Home,
Minna
Minna,
I love your question. There is no one answer but I can share at least some of what I think would be helpful.
First, I agree that “broadly, Amy was searching for a way to find design inspiration in an historical account she found moving.” And for the benefit of everyone; she’s expressed that she was ambivalent about the post she wrote and is rather emotional about its reception.
That said, here are some ideas I have about “how can an accurate, forthright, and respectful consideration of a history, including its horrible and even shameful aspects, inform design?” rather than being reductivist, fetishistic and insensitive:
Understand the history. And learn some more. And then design.
History is academic, not intuitive and I think that attempting to treat a historical event like a flower-themed design is a real disservice. It involves an intellectual attention that goes beyond watching just one documentary or reading a single book. If you can’t dedicate yourself to understanding the topic, leave it be.
Consider the historical distance and impact of the event or period you are incorporating in the design and design accordingly.
Major historical events generally involve a great degree of tragedy. Boldface human history is more a record of tragedy and conquest than collaboration and justice. That said, there is a point at which there is enough historical remove that the material culture of the time can be treated rather lightly. I think the style of Revolutionary America, Czarist Russia or Marie Antoinette’s France or Edo Japan are good examples because although there was clearly a great degree of violence, death, and subjugation and American, Russian, French and Japanese societies are indeed are indelibly marked by those times, there is not a major, ongoing, festering, society-riving degree of conflict or discrimination that hearkens directly back to that time. Some counter examples are the US Civil War and the antebellum South, the European Holocaust, the Second Palestinian Intifada, and WWII era Japan. In the case of each, though they are rich with material culture, they are not distant tragedies; they are recent traumas in which people are still very much emotionally invested and in some case bear physical or psychological scars. That doesn’t mean you can’t treat them at all in design but it does mean that you should treat them especially reverently, deeply intellectually and with an accounting for the perspective of suffering and injustice, which brings me to the next point.
Consider, include and account for the perspectives of minorities, victims, and the disadvantaged.
This is not tokenism. You can certainly design around the American Revolution without a nod to, say, Crispus Attucks but if you are exploring the US Civil Rights Movement and only portray white allies, if you are exploring Nazism and do not account for the Jewish perspective, if you are examining Japanese Imperialist WWII and you are just “so feeling, like, Sun Flags, are so ‘it’ now” but don’t account for Japanese war crimes you are warping and denying history. It’s dangerous revisionism.
So much more to say but I’ll leave it here for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
About an hour and a half ago, Grace published one of two back to back posts that I sent her this evening. Post A- which was a reply to Amy, she published. Post B- which was me directly asking her to please state her position as Founder/Editor-in-Chief of DS, re: the issues around DS and race, that have been raised- she has not.
She has not deleted it, but has kept it on “hold”, though they were sent in at the same time. Maybe she wants to wait til she has a prepared answer, before she publishes the questions? I don’t know. So there is a record of it- here is the content of that 2nd post:
Grace Bonney~
As the Creator and Editor-in-Chief of Design Sponge, what is your response to the questions raised about a lack of race consciousness -mostly expressed as an absence of it, absence of sensitivity around it, and lack of humility or respect,in ignoring it- on your blog?
In the case of this current post, we are discussing..
The post on your Knitta, Please coverage:
http://www.designspongeonline.com/2006/09/knitta.html
And the comments section on an even earlier post on “pretty and good”:
http://www.designspongeonline.com/2005/09/pretty-and-good.html
Is it a personal policy as the Owner/Editor-in-Chief of this blog to not respond to direct, carefully considered, and worded questions?
Thank you, in advance, for breaking your silence on this very important issue, and entering into a sincere dialogue on the matter.
Anna
Everyone,
I just want to thank you for taking the time to comment. I probably won’t be as active or nuanced in this thread as I would like; I’ve been ill for a week now and it’s really taking its toll. Additionally, I’ve been trying to work on new hosting, site design and a relaunch for the blog and I was really hoping this would be a quiet week in which to do it. No such luck of course. Thanks for all your thoughts and your passion and please don’t take offense if I don’t respond to your particular comment, especially if I can’t do so in an immediate way. Also, if you are writing about this elsewhere, please link away and feel free to reblog this post.
Thanks again and I value you all.
Alexis
Alexis, one of the reasons why I’ve been reading your blog is because you engage in issues of domestic aesthetics and the larger underpinnings of material culture in a way that almost no designed-centered blogs ever do. When I saw the Civil War post on D*S, I skimmed it just long enough to roll my eyes, and then forgot about it until I read your critique here. I’m glad I went back and read everything on D*S. Wow. Thank you for, once again, engaging in issues frequently left unaddressed.
I’m not sure what to say that has not already been addressed, but I keep coming back to the Harlem toile by Sheila Bridges as one example of a decor item that does attempt in engage in social issues while upholding an historical aesthetic standard in its subversive mimicry. I first saw it in an exhibit, as a “decor as commentary” installation. I thought it was brilliant. Now, it’s become a series of products, and I wonder if people would, or should, live with them. Is the purchasing ability another layer of commentary, or does it neutralize the impact the toile originally had? I don’t know.
Thanks so much, Maya (Visualingual), as always.
I think the Harlem Toile by Sheila Bridges deserves its own post, maybe its own blog because I am sooo ambivalent about it and on some level it frankly confuses me. I know I couldn’t live with it but it’s fascinating. Personally, I appreciate it much more in a studio setting than for commercial consumption but there are a lot of feelings that I need to unpack about that work.
Your authentic antebellum moodboard is not to be forgotten.
p.s. Hope you feel better soon.
Thank you and thank you, Bromeliad. I have two photographs of enslaved African Americans in my home. I look at them every day and the emotions I feel are in the marrow of everything I am and all that I aspire to be.
Hey Alexis,
Since it feels futile to even comment over there anymore, I came here to thank you for your latest reponse at d*s. It’s true–it’s not a vacuum, but an unacknowledged default setting. And I’m glad you spoke directly to the Knitta stuff.
I hope you’re feeling better.
Ditto, to what Julia just said. As well, as to you taking the time, to pull back, and frame the original post, in the context of the National climate right now, for people of ethnic origins, that are not european. And in addition to all you outlined, how the omissions in the original post, tie in so neatly(sadly) with the ethnic studies ban, as well, in Arizona.
I found your excellent post by googling a term I had never seen before this morning — “Lady Antebellum”. Huh? Are were really that far down the rabbit hole? I had to find some reference points for this name, so I added the search term “revisionism”. Happily I found your post.
But I can’t forbear to say that, notwithstanding the Lincoln quote putting the Union above all causes, his personal convictions are clearly visible under the pallium of his official duties. The whole of his Cooper Union speech is devoted to limiting (I have to think, a pragmatic deal with possibility) the expansion of slavery, itself a very bold and difficult cause at the time, but one which probably won him his fatal assignment.
His second inaugural includes these words:
“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ ”
This was a man who knew right from wrong.
The Union was a commercial interest, as was the South, and Tammany Hall soon became the railroad barons and the Robber Barons, and those were Democrats. After the backroom sellout of the election of Hayes over Tilden, the new Republican Party ended its brief shining moment of moral superiority, and became the new incarnation of Tammany Hall. The Gilded Age, leading to Rockefeller, Morgan, DuPont, Fortune magazine’s support for Mussolini and the attempted coup by all the above against FDR were to follow in quick succession.
Yes, the North was corrupt too, but all of the Abolitionists were northerners, primarily New Englanders. I’m proud to be a resident of Maine, home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and near neighbor of stalwarts such as Boston lawyer Wendell Phillips, as well as New York evangelist and friend of Fredk. Douglas, Charles G. Finney.
The Ohio river was the water to walk on — not the Sewanee, because of conscience in the northern states.
Today, the Democrats are a shoddy bunch in many ways, but what good there is to be found in Congress is among them, with the possible exception of Ron Paul. The other Republicans are unwilling to forego politics for the good of any just cause. Mainers Snowe and Collins allow us a few crumbs of comfort, but very few.
I just found your web site and am so glad I did.
I want to note two books that might be of interest to you and your readers — The first is “Slavery in the Connecticut Valley” by Robert Romer, who disabuses (us) Northerners of the idea that slavery basically only existed in the South. He takes us through all of the houses on Historic Deerfield’s main street in 1754 and details the lives of the African and African-American slaves in each home. He has carefully and compassionately researched everything possible about each of the people held as slaves by other human beings. He records runaway slave notices and slave auctions from Boston newspapers. Visiting Historic Deerfield with Romer’s book and map in hand gives a much different perspective from the official interpretation.
The other book is called “The Lost German Slave Girl” by John Bailey (an Australian). It’s a true tale of a trial that concerned a woman in New Orleans who was thought to be either an olive-skinned German who was illegally put into slavery or a “quadronne” (1/4 black, 3/4 white) woman who was another person’s property. Her freedom and personhood (as well as that of her children) rested upon which of these two descriptions a court (a white man or a group of white men) decided was correct. I just finished reading this one, and it’s really fresh in my mind. It raises so many issues of identity based on factors of skin tone, hair quality, facial features, speech, accent, dress, posture — it was really thought-provoking.
Erica,
I’m so glad you decided to comment.
Thanks very much for the reading recommendations. I think that more information is definitely the antidote to the romanticization of the Civil War era and, therefore, slavery.
You should be able to take inspiration from anywhere.
Period.
Art is more important than hurt feelings.
When will you people (PC people) understand that?
I’m sure it’s easy to say “art is more important than hurt feelings” when you’ve never suffered.
“art is more important than hurt feelings”
wow, just wow! one of the most ignorant comments i’ve come across in quiet a while. so, sad.
very well said schmitt, i couldn’t have put it any better.
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it. keep up the good work calling ppl out.
Sorrow is the only word that comes to my mind. You are very courageous. I salute you.
{ 1 trackback }