National founding narratives depend on ellipses that occlude conquest and predator origins.
Evidence
English history textbooks offer the diverting spectacle of a great Founding Father whom every schoolchild is taught to call William the Conqueror. The same child is not informed that William spoke no English, indeed could not have done so, since the English language did not exist in his epoch; nor is he or she told ‘Conqueror of what?’. For the only intelligible modern answer would have to be ‘Conqueror of the English,’ which would turn the old Norman predator into a more successful precursor of Napoléon and Hitler. Hence ‘the Conqueror’ operates as the same kind of ellipsis as ‘la Saint-Barthélemy,’ to remind one of something which it is immediately obligatory to forget. Norman William and Saxon Harold thus meet on the battlefield of Hastings, if not as dancing partners, at least as brothers. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 738
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘ellipsis’ device echoes Orientalist structures where the Other’s agency and violence is edited out of the national self-narrative. — connects to: Founding myths substitute fabricated narrative for genuine history to serve ruling classes; Nation-state formation generates founding myths that legitimate ruling-class orders; Colonial histories are internal to the identity of the colonizer nation (+1 more)
- CANDY: The image of William the Conqueror meeting Harold ‘at least as brothers’ after being a predator is a fun, shareable observation about history textbook logic.
Related
Broader Connections
- Founding myths substitute fabricated narrative for genuine history to serve ruling classes
#expands(0.85) - Nation-state formation generates founding myths that legitimate ruling-class orders
#expands(0.80) - Origin myths function as political arguments about power, not historical records
#corroborates(0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 132 - Colonial histories are internal to the identity of the colonizer nation
#corroborates(0.75)