Do you know who Kona @konathekelpie is? What about Sammo Hog @sammohog? These two Instagram personalities are animals. They are animals who have been imbued with a type of agency and existence in the world beyond their affiliation with their owners.
Stopping to think about the ramifications of that is powerful. That means, in time, as a society, we may have archival documents about the lives and predilections of pets.
The medium and ability by which we record the present may have changed from tablets to papyrus, paper to electronic from single hierarchy to poly, but what remains the same is our need to record today to remember what we need. What remains the same is our memory of today is transmitted to the future where we are remembered by our descendants. Kona is a dog who likes belly rubs, and Sammo is a power pig. In the future we may remember them by the records they left about themselves.
In South Africa there’s a debate making national headlines. The combatants have concerned themselves with the legitimacy of South African heritage. Challenges are volleyed to and fro about who may claim legitimate voice. The debate is not limited to South Africa, a cursory scan of reporting from Canada gives the reader a glimpse into Toronto’s busy business and financial district and the search for justice. These headlines seemingly pale in comparison to debates of the same nature in the United States. There, focus on the election of Donald Trump and the outbreak of issues ostensibly centred around the status of monuments to the Civil War have turned a flamboyant nation into a powder keg.
These present debates are brought to us by narratives inherited by us from the past. Black South Africans, Canadians, and Americans struggle to be seen as on par as their White counterparts; Indigenous Canadians seek the same redress for crimes committed against their communities as non-Indigenous communities. Historians and Sociologists might attribute these struggles for recognition, these struggles to attain equal and representational voice, as an on-going legacy of symbolic annihilation whereby non-dominant voices are excised and de-legitimized in the historical record.
Why would entire segments of a country’s population not find representation in the historical record? If, for example Kona and Sammo have a voice where are these other voices? Perhaps it is the means by which our history is written. Perhaps if Black communities had Instagram we would hear their voices.
Yet there is a wicked, wicked trap we are in danger of falling. Looking at the systems which are used to inform the historical record, we notice that the medium has changed, the ability has changed, but the systems we use are still very much the same. At the root of these systems is an actor, doing things. Formally we may call this agency and function. Despite the naming convention, the implications of our systems, from Western antiquity to the present, is to privilege the classification, acquisition, retention, and description of our memory from the perspective of doers of things and not the myriad things being acted upon.
Understanding our systems in this way shows us how symbolic annihilation is not the only way to silence voices. Understanding systems in this way shows us how difficult it is to find Black and Indigenous voices. Understanding systems in this way shows us how Kona and Sammo may stand the test of time. Our systems have been, and still are, used to determine who we were, and in what circumstances those with agency were worth writing about.
It is not that Black and Indigenous people were not recorded. It is how these groups were recorded. It is not that Kona and Sammo are recorded now. It is how they are recorded. Black people were often recorded as slaves, as property. Indigenous people were recorded as uncivilized, as heathens, godless, needing paternalistic care to raise them to the level of personhood. And our systems of record reflect the primacy of some over that of others to this day. Kona and Sammo are not pets only to be mentioned when their owner sees fit. Kona and Sammo manifest their own destiny.
In this way we see that the omission of some groups in the historic record was an extension of record systems. While the question of malice could be leveled at those designing the systems we must remember, fundamentally that difficulty or ease by which one is seen and seen by others is a legacy we continue to shape. Requirements of keeping history call upon us to ensure recall of the past for today and tomorrow, thus requiring what we do today to not stray too far from where we came. And it takes time for custodians of a system to recognize that the many subjects of actions may also be important.
Systems of the past are not so different from systems of today. After seeing where we have been, there is a responsibility to design our systems to allow people to have legitimate-voice, to show others that Blacks, Indigenous, and all have agency.
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