STAY OUT ALL NIGHT!

So I'm up all night (on a Saturday, holy moly) writing a paper for my Transnational Feminist Theory class, and it occured to me that many of the most important ideas that leak into public consciousness have no author at all. We're reading one essay, "Le bebe en brousse" by Nancy Rose Hunt, that details European women’s early twentieth century colonial mission in the Belgian Congo. In response to a perceived need for increased black labor in the colony, the European missionaries set out to undermine the native women’s tradition of birth spacing. The colonists were successful, resulting in cheap black labor for the Europeans and the current overpopulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Clearly the racism, Eurocentricity and general ignorance that leads to the idea "Hey, let's manufacture babies to work for us in our colonies" do not originate with one person, or a group of people in one time period. These hegemonic prejudices taint entire societies' creations, as much an author as any individual.