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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3658 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The main theme is about how slavery obliterates everything it comes into contact with, and specifically, the identity of the enslaved.

C. V. Gheorghiu's The 25th Hour, a whirlwind tour of European labor camps and concentration camps during World War II, also does a lot with this theme. It's fairly didactic though. His other book La Seconde Chance is a work of genius, and much better written; unfortunately it has not been translated to English.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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