Anne of Oxford Street

Such reads an engraved inscription in “The Perpetuity Wing,” a museum of the history of Lumen, the omnipotent corporate power that rules over the fictional world of Severance . It’s a truism that winners write the history books; not only winners of wars fought on battlefields with formal rules, but – what’s easier to forget – winners of colder wars. After all, in this world and in the parallel reality of Severance , popular American history is told from the point of view of major corporations. Some of the numerous ways this happens will be covered in future posts, but in this three-part series, I focus on the popular history of work and Lumen’s industrial aristocrats, the Eagan family. (Image from Metawitches ) Lumen’s founder, Kier Eagan, a gilded age captain of industry, depicted as a self-made man, with an image somewhat like Andrew Carnegie, fits the Horatio Alger model of virtue made rich. The imagery of the period, including didactic history painting favoured to depict nation b...