Moments of Permanence - Derailment Redux: Lois McMaster Bujold Hypocrisy Special Edition

From: (Anonymous) Date: May 11th, 2009 03:42 am (UTC) (Link)

Apologies, I don't have a Dreamwidth account so I'm posting this anon.

I disagree with your assessment of this situation. You're criticizing the writer because her premises are faulty in constructing an alternate history. Everything you've said beyond that appears to be ad hominem attacks that put a ton of words into people's mouths. Here's an example:

"the only mark the native population has left on America is place names"

I'm not seeing that supported by any of your evidence. Are you certain that's the limit of the alterations the author has made? Have you read the book to be certain of this? The rest of your comments seem to be directed in the same direction, especially when you discuss tone. Tone is such an incredibly difficult thing to understand via text, how do you know you're getting what Bujold is giving?

I can totally understand you rejecting the author's premises. Premises give us consistency, and consistency gives us suspension of disbelief. If you can't accept the premises, you won't be able to get into the book, and that's frequently the writer's fault. But that doesn't say to me that the book is wrong.

There are books I'd consider wrong. I'd still wouldn't censor them, but I would consider them wrong. And I'd attach a heavy dose of skeptical thinking and actual facts to go with them, so that people weren't emotionally moved to believe factually incorrect things. You're right in that fiction has power, and I think it's important to help people understand how media can influence them, because sometimes that power is used for wrong.

But here, I don't see it. I haven't read the book, I don't know how bad it gets. Have you? It sounds like normal alt history material to me, and thus far, no one's talked about how it advocates racism or hatred or genocide or anything of the like. Like most fiction of its kind, it's asking a really simple question. It might have premises you don't like, but why shouldn't they be able to ask that question? What makes it dangerous, in a world of books like The Bell Curve and people like David Duke?

Is it asking you to believe that Native Americans have done nothing noteworthy, that they are less for being who they are?

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From: (Anonymous) Date: May 11th, 2009 03:42 am (UTC) (Link)

Same guy, here's my sign:

Kurosau

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From: sami Date: May 11th, 2009 04:46 am (UTC) (Link)

I'm not seeing that supported by any of your evidence. Are you certain that's the limit of the alterations the author has made?

Okay, so you see how the bit about names was point 3 in my short summary of overlooked implications of a native-free America?

See points 1 and 2. And, you know, the whole rest of the post. And this post.

no one's talked about how it advocates racism or hatred or genocide or anything of the like

That's because... it doesn't? And no-one's trying to claim it is, so they're not bringing it up? The problem here is subtle, implicit racism - the ramifications of excluding the very existence of a people, one the author's own people have actively tried to wipe off the face of the planet, and assuming that that doesn't make a huge difference - that America will be just the same without the natives or the slaves, and that therefore, the natives and slaves don't matter.

I would seriously recommend you read naraht's links - read, don't comment - because your questions have been covered in depth, and the only way you can still be asking is if you're not listening.

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From: (Anonymous) Date: May 11th, 2009 03:00 pm (UTC) (Link)

See, that's the sort of dismissive tone I was hearing in your first bit, about how if I'm asking a question I must not be listening to someone. Forbid I could still be asking because I don't find those answers to be satisfactory. Although in all fairness, I didn't see the bits about whether or not you or naraht had read the book, so that bit could be me overlooking something.

Mainly, I want you to keep making your criticism. I disagree, but I'm still interested in hearing it. I am saying what I'm saying because I'm not sure the book deserves to be...words fail me at this point, but bashed maybe? The sort of attributes you're giving it may greatly influence whether or not people will even consider reading it, and I think that's the bit I don't like.

But more than that, I think that your statement about subtle, implicit racism is an important one. Although poorly worded, I was indeed trying to get to the point that no one is comparing the book to something like...a book that promotes overt racism, because we know those books are racist and usually attack them as such.

That means the situation gets all that much harder when the question is one of subtlety. Is a work racist or just myopic? I think the reason I disagree is based on two basic ideas.

First, however you want to paint it, writing an alternate view of history is not in and of itself racist. Such stories will always exclude some parties, and in that essence if I want to write a story about an un-peopled Europe being settled by Egyptians, then X is Y in both books and I'm creating something that's racist. And I don't buy that. We're discussing racism at the very razor's edge of the definition, and while the discussion is important, I don't think anyone can clearly state which way the argument should fall. There is a point where you're going to call something racist, and I'm going to say something else isn't racist, and we're both going to be wrong by virtue of that subtlety.

Second, your tone makes it sound like you're interpreting the book, comments about it, and responses to those comments, through a filter that makes them all come out racist. Like, if the author is white, and white people tried to commit genocide on Native American peoples, then any exploration that said white author did of a world without Native Americans must be rooted in racism. It might reinforce the 'empty plains' myth, but the cornerstone of your arguments seem to be intent, without which the subtlety of this racism doesn't seem at all clear. I can see where you're getting your interpretations, I just don't see that they're necessarily correct.

In short, fantasy doesn't need to model reality, and I don't think the situation is anywhere near as clear as you're making it out to be.

- Kurosau

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From: (Anonymous) Date: May 11th, 2009 03:02 pm (UTC) (Link)

Oh, and one more thing.

I freely admit that two of the reasons I'm saying this to you are:

a) you've collected your thoughts in one place and stated them clearly, and
b) the comments to your post are almost completely postive

- Kurosau

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From: sami Date: May 12th, 2009 12:17 am (UTC) (Link)

Is it asking you to believe that Native Americans have done nothing noteworthy, that they are less for being who they are?

Essentially? Yes. Because - and this is explicit in statements Wrede herself made - she removed the "Indians" from the equation because it was the easiest way to avoid writing them as stereotypes (writing them as real people apparently didn't occur to her) and she specifically said she didn't want her history to be wildly divergent. Accordingly? Removing the Native Americans doesn't really make a difference.

What she said:

The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel.

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From: (Anonymous) Date: May 12th, 2009 04:13 am (UTC) (Link)

Riiight. Because the fact that she didn't feel like she couldn't write them well without writing them as a stereotype means that she just shouldn't ever write it at all because because.

That's what I meant by how tricky a thing this subtle brand of racism you're referring to is. Because that thing you just said? That's a whole lot of you in there, less her. I mean, you say in one breath that she's saying removing the Native Americans won't make a difference, and then in the next you're quoting her as saying that she's doing a familiar setting with one thing subtracted. That just makes her setting internally inconsistent, not racist.

- Kurosau

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From: sami Date: May 12th, 2009 04:25 am (UTC) (Link)

Good grief.

I mean, you say in one breath that she's saying removing the Native Americans won't make a difference, and then in the next you're quoting her as saying that she's doing a familiar setting with one thing subtracted.

How the hell are you parsing those as unrelated statements? She's saying that she's doing a familiar setting with one thing subtracted. That one thing is the Native Americans. Subtracting the Native Americans and having her American history be approximately the same IS saying removing the Native Americans won't make a difference.

Either you're being deliberately obtuse because you think somehow this will let you win the argument, or you're actually not that good at coherent thought. Either way? I'm done. I have better things to do with my time than talk to you - there's some grass growing outside my house I could be watching, for example.

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