Moments of Permanence - Because I need to think about things that are differently stressful, sometimes...

From: smillaraaq.livejournal.com Date: May 13th, 2009 06:20 pm (UTC) (Link)

I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background. If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it for reasons that are entirely offensive.

Yes, yes, THIS. And I would add further to your equally spot-on note about untoward glibness in wiping out the icky dark bits of history, that if one is going to try to pursue a premise that imaginatively eliminates a people who have historically been subjected to genocide, particularly genocide within living memory, then it really would behoove such a writer not to discuss their projects in terms reminiscent of the historical horrors. Say, in your hypothetical case of an AU where Europe (or the whole world) contains no Jews, an author with an ounce of sense or sensitivity would at the bare minimum hopefully not make blithe remarks in the vein of "Well, I didn't want to have to deal with the ugly old stereotypes of the tight-fisted moneylender or the newer stock figures like the neurotic intellectual mama's boy and the materialistic spoiled princess, so the final solution that I settled upon was just removing Jews from the worldbuilding entirely." (And if such a statement sounds utterly horrifying even in the hypothetical -- that's pretty much the level of nausea-and-rage-inducing gutpunch Wrede's glib comment about "eliminating the problem" of trying to write non-stereotyped Indians was to me.)

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From: sami Date: May 14th, 2009 12:26 am (UTC) (Link)

I can understand that. That phrasing horrified me fairly profoundly, and I'm not even American, let alone one included in her mass deletion. My attachment to American history is distant at best.

You're right - the word choices really matter quite a lot, in this context.

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