Blog Post #7

Margery Sly’s “Venus in Two Acts” details the story of a brutal death of a slave girl while shedding light on the shortcomings of the archives. Sly notes how the archives strip away the heavy emotional baggage and humanity the girl’s story holds. The girl is diminished to nothing more than a faceless tragic tale. Her suffering and entire life is summed up in a few remorseless lines. She becomes a fictional being in her own story and nothing more is known of her beyond her traumatic death. The archives are supposed to be a factual, impartial database, which to its own merit often work in the favor of its audience who are able to learn without the clouding of emotion. However, in turn, the people and stories themselves become nothing more than a tale and some characters, thus sucking the humanity out of history. People’s emotions and thoughts are lost to the nonpartisan nature of history. Furthermore, though history strives to be non-partial, the writer of history is always the victor. In the story of Venus, the one who recounts her life are those who led to her demise whether directly or indirectly. Her abuser and men who benefited from the slave trade detailed her life within a few sentences. The horrors and emotional depth of her death are purposefully left out of history, causing Sly to imagine the rest. This article opened my eyes to the holes within my own research. Being that Native Americans are an underrepresented and repressed group today in history, I’ve found that most primary resources I found are from missionaries or English settlers rather than the Lenape themselves. Being that these sources do not come from the Natives themselves, it’s only natural that emotional depth and a profound understanding of their culture and traditions are lost in the archives. Emotional weight from firsthand accounts are not unnecessary or frivolous, but rather essential in understanding the perspective of your topic/person of study. By listening to the emotional ties a subject has to their story, more can be understood about Native perspectives and the true gravity of colonization.