Revolution and Modernity in Maale: Ethiopia, 1974 to 1987

Abstract

For a long time now, people have pondered the ambiguity, at least in English, of ‘history’: the records men make, the records men write. In modern Chinese history, these are beginning to correspond. Revolutionary spirits like the famous writer Lu Hsün (1881–1936) felt that the old high culture was dead, and they resented being instructed, as it seemed, to rest quietly, uttering platitudes in silk-fan attitudes. They wanted to create (and destroy): to make-their own history, not to be politically stricken by forces from abroad, or culturally sterile at home, their past frozen solid in the present. The revolution they helped to foster in a cosmopolitan spirit—against the world to join the world, against their past to keep it theirs, but past—may be interpreted, in cultural terms, as a long striving to make their museums themselves.