7.1 Reflection

I picked the topic of physiognomy and its beginnings in antiquity, particularly its popularity in ancient Greece, as the concept greatly interests me. Having little to no connection to any country or cultural identity, the concept of these ideas interests me because I cannot completely understand them personally, yet I’m privileged to have no need for cultural identity and have no negative connotations around my ‘race’ as a result of what I look like.

I chose to create a blog post as I felt I could best do justice to a medium with text, where I could have interactions with people while sharing information about history. I also wanted to be clear in my writing, as the topic of racism and how physiognomy plays into this is highly contested. I felt the facts could be received more objectively using text than in person. I learnt through the process of creating this digital object that scientific racism and modern racism have heavy ties and a basis in historical texts as old as Hippocrates. During the last 500 years, white European men didn’t even start their brand of scientific racism on new ‘facts’ or ‘science’, they just took ancient texts at their word, even though thousands of years had passed. They ignored any objectivity in writings like those of Hippocrates and refused to acknowledge that they knowingly twisted texts to suit their purposes.