Siona O'Connell
→Worlding person entity: E21 Person
Class E21 Person is used here to
model people. The scope note for this class uses the term ‘historical figures’ which may be considered as problematic
especially when references are made to established conventional historical textbooks. Marking a person as a
‘historical figure’ implies an assessment of their importance in history and as such it provides little room to
accommodate those who are not written in the historical text books, who are invisible or hidden. Clarification is
needed on the use of the term in the scope note to include any person who has existed regardless of their contextual
history. The examples included in the scope note are Western focused and the scope note should be revised to make
visible historical actors, by referring to the histories of resistance of people of color. The class E21 Person and
its superclass E39 Actor imply that after one’s death there is no capacity for agency. The necessity of being alive
excludes experiences of dead people being present in rituals from various religions. Class E39 Actor does not include
non-human actors. While examples are rare and almost always correspond to documenting species as opposed to individual
organisms (for example the performance piece
FreePort), this class is
not suitable to describe the agency of animals. Additionally, from other perspectives and ontologies an object has as
much agency as a person, for example the Benin bronzes being considered as living ancestors and the agency of the
sacred altars of K’iche’ Maya.