Yeah that’s a fucked up thing to say, but it’s supposed to be. It’s been quite a while since I read Unsong, but in the context of a work that’s packed to the gills with allusions to biblical stories and the various interpretations of those stories, “Northeast Africa” has a much more specific implication than if it had referred to any other part of the continent.
I think that’s a reference to a bizarre argument in Christian apologetics that claims God’s slaughter of the firstborn in Exodus was not actually an evil act because he had presciently created them all without souls in the first place. Which is pretty fucked up.
Yeah that’s a fucked up thing to say, but it’s supposed to be. It’s been quite a while since I read Unsong, but in the context of a work that’s packed to the gills with allusions to biblical stories and the various interpretations of those stories, “Northeast Africa” has a much more specific implication than if it had referred to any other part of the continent.
I think that’s a reference to a bizarre argument in Christian apologetics that claims God’s slaughter of the firstborn in Exodus was not actually an evil act because he had presciently created them all without souls in the first place. Which is pretty fucked up.