Lanterna Rally

Author: Kristoffer Ehrnstrom

Publisher: Kristoffer Ehrnström

Published: 2023-05-22

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13:

Does ”black” as a social signifier, pregnant with history, really mean what it is thought to mean? Does white, as the symmetrical object of black, really refer to its current form? Or do these apperceptive objects, these epithets, draw energy from somewhere else, a past veiled by current discourse? When we reveal historical figures, in what is supposed to be an idiosyncratic context (in Europe for example), and refer to them simply as ”black” due to their hue, are we really putting words in their mouths, colonizing the past anachronistically, implanting memories? Did the whiteness and blackness of the past really transcend physical appearance? How did the original white and black actually look? Is the current culture of equity, for example actors portraying historical figures based on the premise that their physical appearance wasn’t present, really a revisionist act through replacement by representation - the replacement of the one representing themselves, by themselves, unknowingly? Is history simply being replaced by a new social interpretation, looking as it were? Lastly, is the emergence of afrocentric interpretation nothing more than the completion of a revisionist ritual, erasing changed white culture, inherently brown skinned to begin with? These are some of the questions this essay tries to answer, hermeneutically touching down in everything from metaphysics to sociology to religion; all the way from ancient Egypt (Kemet), to Israel, to medieval Europe and contemporary discourse.