dance of the korybante

Owning Guilt

I was watching this documentary about the life of Oscar Wilde, and there was an interview with a descendant of Lord Alfred Douglas, a.k.a. “Bosie”, who was Wilde’s friend and lover. Bosie’s dad brought charges against Wilde which ultimately resulted in his conviction and sentence of two and half years hard labor for “gross indecency” - his sexual activity with “rent boys” or young male prostitutes. This descendant of Douglas was expressing remorse that her family, her forbears had been responsible for these actions.

I had just watched a film and read a history about the Irish war for independence from Britain and the civil war that ensued in the 1920’s. It made me ashamed to be of English extraction. Then I watched a movie about Romans at war with Anglo-Saxons in ancient Brittania, and I despised the Romans and rooted for the Anglos.

I started thinking about inherited guilt - the guilt we feel for actions taken by our forbears and not ourselves. Why do we feel guilt for things we didn’t do? As a southerner, I have had to examine the tendency to own guilt for slavery, when my ancestors as far as I know weren’t planters and were probably too poor to own slaves anyway. Still, the imbalance of race and class privilege has informed and continues to inform the shape of my life and experiences. As a person of British descent, I feel shame at my Norman surname. O’ cursed 1066. When I read or consume media that addresses the history of the Norman conquest of England, I side with the English - whose culture was predominately Anglo-Saxon, yet in the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the Isles, my sympathies are with the Celts.

In fact, as far as the ancient world and Roman domination of Europe is concerned, I can’t read the history objectively. I identify with the Celts, hate the Romans, and scoff at the  Germanic “barbarians”. I don’t know why. Is it because the Celts were ultimately the underdogs in these conflicts? What about the fact that the Celts invaded Europe from further east and displaced the people who preceded them? They were by no means native to Gaul and Britannia. But little is known of those earlier peoples. In the old histories of the British Isles there is evidence that the isles were populated by a neolithic culture before the first wave of Celts, and it was these earlier people that built Stonehenge and similar megalithic monuments. There is even speculation that Neanderthal people lived there, and we certainly know they were in Western Europe. Am I to own guilt for the obliteration of the Neanderthal species by my sapiens sapiens forbears? Do I not sympathize with these underdogs who disappeared from the Earth? Actually, I kind of do. But that’s crazy!