DiscoverThe John Batchelor Show30: 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument
30: 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument

30: 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument

Update: 2025-10-27
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 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier



This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument war" near Logan's Elm in Ohio. The Cresap Society funded a monument to clear their family name, leading locals to erect counter-monuments with the lament's text and a statue of Logan. Parkinson utilizes Joseph Conrad's metaphor of "the flicker" (human systems like patriotism, colonialism, and republics) attempting to illuminate the terrifying, bewildering "darkness" of the world. He notes that the aggressive colonial expansion seemed inevitable, but the specific outcomes were shaped by contingency and the biographies of individuals like Logan and Michael Cresap, whose actions were enabled and celebrated by the new American Republic.

1958
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30: 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument

30: 8. Monuments, Darkness, and Contingency Professor Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier This section highlights the enduring conflict, which extended into the early 20th century through a "monument

John Batchelor