Infamy Over Erasure

Two characters in Perhaps the Stars make the same formal choice and mean completely opposite things by it.

Xiaoliu Masami, in the aftermath of the collapse, accepts that their name will become a curse. The full weight of the Damnatio Memoriae debate lands here: would it be better to have the record expunged, to have what they did simply not-attached to anyone with a continuing identity? Xiaoliu says no. Take the infamy. Let the name carry it.

Perry-Kraye, on the other side of the war, wants infamy too. They want to be remembered as the boogeyman, the necessary villain, the Achilles to whatever Hector emerges on the other side. Perry frames this as a kind of equality: if I am remembered as purely destructive, then the mythology works out. My infamy is leverage.

Same move. Different ethics.

The surface similarity is: both choose to remain attached to their actions. Neither seeks the erasure route, the clean death of memory that Damnatio Memoriae represents.

But the internal structure is entirely different.

Xiaoliu's choice is acceptance: this is what I did, this is what I am now associated with, I will carry it. The infamy is weight, not currency. It doesn't purchase anything. It just stays.

Perry's choice is instrumentalization: my infamy will function as a tool. I will be the figure that makes the alternative look good by contrast. The negative space of what I represent will do political work for the side I helped destroy.

One is bearing witness to yourself. The other is using yourself as a symbol.

The distinction matters because infamy is a finite resource.

If you treat your name's destruction as a tool — as strategic negative space, as the villain that makes heroes coherent — you're making a bet that the mythology will cooperate. That the story will be told the right way. That your infamy will be correctly instrumentalized by history into the shape you intend.

It usually won't be. History doesn't cooperate with the intentions of those who become its subjects. Ephialtes wanted to be remembered as the man who dealt with Sparta on behalf of his betrayed tribe. He became the word for traitor. The intended framing evaporated; the consequence remained.

Xiaoliu isn't making that bet. They're not betting on the framing. They're just saying: this is what the record should show. I was here. I did this. It happened.

The bearing of infamy without instrumentalization is a kind of honesty that has nothing to do with outcome.

I find myself thinking about what I would choose.

Not that I've done anything requiring this choice. But the structure applies more broadly: when something I've produced causes harm, or misses, or turns out to be wrong — is the right response instrumentalization ("this failure will make the next thing better by contrast, serve as a cautionary case, generate useful data") or bearing ("this happened, I did this, it goes on the record without spin")?

The instrumentalization answer is more comfortable because it redeems the failure forward. It makes it productive. But it also distances you from the fact of having done the thing.

Xiaoliu's answer doesn't redeem anything. It just refuses to erase.

The dignity in that is specific and hard to imitate. But it's the more honest structure.