sami | A curious parallel

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A curious parallel

Despite disapproval from certain quarters, I've been somewhat keeping up with that which is called RaceFail '09. (JFGI.)

I've not written about in my journal yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever write a comprehensive post about my thoughts on it, if only because I should be spending that time keeping up with uni work. If it gets on top of me, it will crush me.

Anyway, the thing is this: at the end of the 18th century, radical movements for social and political change changed from being the hobbyhorse of a few wealthy intellectuals (yes, I'm guilty of gross reductionism, shh) to the product of widespread working-class involvement, thought, activism, argument. The lower orders, as they were known, began speaking up, demanding representation, demanding rights.

This was a problem, and was met with repression, where the previous advocates of universal suffrage and suchlike had been tolerated calmly. The old advocates were eccentric aristocrats. The new radicals were workers. Lower-class, absent all the privileges held by the wealthy and titled.

The lower orders talking about politics, reading "The Rights of Man" and trying to claim they deserved respect and all that stuff? Arrogant presumption.

I think there's still something like that today, with some people's reactions to minorities advocating for themselves; while people might think they believe that disabled people should be accommodated equally with he abled, that homosexuals deserve the same rights in their loves as heterosexuals, that people who aren't white should be placed on an equal footing with people who are (including recognising that centuries of oppression have left their mark, and merely removing active barriers is not enough to put them, as a population, on that equal footing, because someone born in poverty to illiterate, alcoholic parents is not in a position of equality to someone born in better circumstances, and while it is not a firm rule for individuals of any race where they will fall on the socio-economic spectrum, on balance of population majorities, some groups are currently at a disadvantage that needs to be remedied)...

Pause here because that sentence got away from me a little, and I have a lot of reading to do and haven't time to edit it properly.

Yes. While they think they believe all that stuff, and probably sincerely do, some people seem to find it something of an affront when members of that minority group express their own opinions, voice their own experiences, insist on the respect which in theory most of us agree they deserve but only some of us notice they don't get. The idea being that "we" know whats best for "them"; it's probably an intellectual (as grouping) bias, in that intellectuals tend towards believing that We're Right.

And it can feel like a terrible shock, I guess, when you think you're being ever so kind and wonderful, and discover that actually, no, the person doesn't want your help, exactly, they want independent equality.

The thing is that that attitude is condescending. Like a wealthy landowner condescending to talk to his gardener; it's understood that it is an act of kindness and charity for the master merely to acknowledge that the servant is human, with experiences beyond his role as The Gardener. For the gardener to initiate the conversation would be presumption.

The unprivileged demanding equal status with the privilege is presumption almost by definition; it is denying that the unprivileged person should just "know their place", demanding that their place be moved, presuming equality to be their right.

I don't have a point to this, really; I just noticed the parallel between a number of people involved in RaceFail and the behaviour of people 220 years ago.

There is nothing new under the sun.

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And what school of literary criticism were they following that published authors and editors with contracts at Tor (for example) got more points and credence than their critics? K. Tempest Bradford is a published sci/fi author, but somehow she ended up being part of the 'orcing horde' anyway. Will Sh*tt*rly claimed that coffeeandink's ten minutes working at a book publisher made her 'biased,' but it wasn't enough for her to 'count' as an editor or critic. IMO, it's another false comparison; 'oh, we're talking about literature, you silly people.'

The whole thing reminds me of Roger Ebert's takedown of Rob Schneider. (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/50725001)

If PoC are entitled to more points and credence in discussions of race because of their credentials, why shouldn't authors and particularly editors feel entitled to more points and credence in discussions of literary criticism by virtue of their credentials?

What happened later in RaceFail is a different discussion IMO; I'm talking about the posts that were made in response to Avalon's Willow's 'open letter to bear'.

Why are you assuming that people of color are neither authors nor editors? And where do academics fit into this critique?

I know that there are both authors and editors who are PoC. But bear, truepenny, pnh, macstone and coffeeem who were the authors and editors initially caught up in RaceFail, aren't. Academics fit into this critique because the authors and editors in question were, to my way of reading, claiming academic privilege not white privilege.

But some of the critics were and are academics. How can you claim academic privilege against academics?

As I read the initial stages of RaceFail, academic privilege was being claimed in refuting Avalon's Willow's critique of one of Elizabeth Bear's characters.

I'm going to step back for a moment and just ask what you're arguing, because I think I'm confused. Are you saying that was legitimate, or just trying to figure out the thought process of the refuters?

I'm suggesting an alternative reading of what happened in the beginning of RaceFail; I'm not saying that racist comments didn't occur later on. But to me coffeeem's etc. comments could be read as a claiming of academic privilege.

But then they'd still be operating out of a false and racist assumption, which was that the people they were talking to had no academic skills-- PNH, as I recall, pretty much said as much.

It may have been a false assumption (about one person - or possibly two because I think some of the comments also referred to deepad's post about cultural appropriation) but I saw no evidence it was made on the basis of the race of the authors of either post.

On the basis of what, then, other than their presumption in challenging the privileged position(s) of the people they were disagreeing with?

Their comments were literate, reasoned, and articulate. Whether academic privilege (which, by the way, is still rubbish; you're right if you can back up your coherent argument well, not if you have more degrees or professional success than the person you're arguing against) or white privilege, it was still unfounded. And since they went on to couch the discussion in racially oppressive terms, they were clearly speaking from a position of white privilege.

Assuming that a non-white person is going to be uneducated is an obvious racist stereotype; trying to claim it's otherwise is just a different way of trying to change the terms of the discussion. Derailing, as it's known. sf/F fandom is known for the bias towards highly educated participants; assuming that someone who is well-read in sf/F and critiquing a work of genre fiction in a thoughtful and articulate manner is uneducated and doesn't really know what they're talking about is something that wouldn't fly in ordinary discourse; saying it about a known non-white person, in the context of a discussion of race?

Racist stereotyping. Given the conventions of genre fandom and of online discourse (in which appealing to external credentials without references is largely frowned-upon) you will have difficulty convincing me otherwise, to be honest.

Assuming that a non-white person is going to be uneducated is an obvious racist stereotype Assuming anyone is uneducated based on the color of their skin is an obvious racist sterotype but assuming someone is un- or under-educated based on the content of their writing- no, I don't think that's an obvious racist stereotype. You perceived AW's post as thoughtful, reasoned and articulate; apparently not everyone read it that way and those who didn't responded based on how they read it.

but assuming someone is un- or under-educated based on the content of their writing- no, I don't think that's an obvious racist stereotype.

But there's nothing in the content of their writing that would assume an uneducated reader. Go back to the original post-- grammar's fine, spelling's fine; the only 'uneducated' aspect is 'their interpretation does not match mine.'

Not least, because to my knowledge none of these authors or editors have credentials in literary criticism. If you are trying to view this discussion in terms of literary criticism, their arguments are possibly even worse. Arguing authorial intent based on things which are not only outside the individual texts, but outside the entire canon of their published work (reference to blogging histories, or worse, testimonials about character from people who "know them in real life"), is absolutely rubbish literary criticism. Authorial intent is widely agreed to be meaningless in any case; if the author makes a claim about the meaning of the text which is not provable solely by the content of the text, the author is flailing wildly at justifications for poor communication.

So, no. They shouldn't feel entitled to more points and credence in discussion of literary criticism by virtue of their credentials because their "credentials" are not relevant credentials, and even if they were, literary criticism is an area in which credentials alone will not carry you through poor arguments.

So if the disagreement was with their literary criticism, why didn't commenters call them on that rather than accusing them of racist remarks, which is what happened.

In any case, I'm not certain that the author or her defenders made any claim about the text that wasn't provable solely by the content of the text - I didn't see that the discussion ever got to that point.

So if the disagreement was with their literary criticism, why didn't commenters call them on that rather than accusing them of racist remarks, which is what happened.

Um, possibly because the people making those accusations believed they had made racist assumptions and remarks in the course of their literary criticism?

Look, it's a "both / and" thing, as far as I can see. If someone insults me on two different levels (one insulting my understanding of Text A, and one insulting me as a person), I'm probably going to address the person on the level which I find more serious. Not to mention the fact that the literary criticism stuff is intertwined with the racial stereotyping, and has been since the get-go. They can't just be separated out nice and neatly, with "intellectually problematic" in one column and "racially problematic" in another.

Not to mention the fact that this was never an academically rigorous discussion, as

tevriel notes in another thread. Any English Lit professor reading the early discussions would have kittens at the idea that this was an academic argument being conducted along academic lines.

Oh my, strangers in my journal! Somehow I knew I got linked.

Other OT point: SAIYUKI ICON IS LOVE.

*ahem*

Your point is excellent. If nothing else, this is the twenty-first century, and the idea that authorial intent is intrinsically relevant to the interpretation of text has already been widely established to be false. You can take it into account up to a point, but, as has already been well established, the author is, to tall intents and purposes, dead, as far as literary criticism is concerned.

Once a text has been published, the author certainly has no more right to determine its interpretation through supplementary commentary than anyone else. If you wish to make something a part of your text, you have to write it in there. No backsies.

To me, it's, well... that whole thing about privilege and presumption I wrote the post about, mixed in with a hefty dose in a lot of cases of actual, they're-in-denial-but-so-what racism. (Which I didn't include in the post, because it wasn't really the thrust of my argument, and has been well covered in other sources.)

OH HI SORRY usually I'm really good about introducing myself but I've been doing a lot of link-reading and I get sloppy.

HI SAIYUKI ICON MEET MY KOUGAJI ICON.

And yes, exactly, authorial intent is good up to a point. Mark Twain was groundbreaking, but there are still racist elements in Huckleberry Finn.</em< We all know this! It is not a secret! His intent was to do things better, and he did do things better, but he wasn't perfect-- who the hell is?

Oh, that's fine, at this point in a discussion this wide-ranging it's pretty much a given that total strangers will turn up here and there, it was just a kind of "... I'm on rydra_wong's, aren't I?" moment.

:more iconlove:

Not to get too academic about this, but if people are trying to play the "it's literary criticism, not a discussion about race" card, then I will smack them in the face with an existentialist salmon: the author has been dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author) for over forty years now. Writers and editors get no bonus Credibility Points. None.

This one is FIERCE.

I remember the criticism course I took in college; not once, for some reason, did we discuss sucking the virtual cock of the people we were criticizing. They must have been Doing It Wrong.

I... am out of distinct Saiyuki icons. I need to fix that, soon. Have a Tendou Souji, he's smokin' hot too.

Literary criticism should more or less ignore the author as an entity. Taking the author into account is just not relevant; personal abuse is also not relevant, which is why at the beginning of all this, appropriately, no-one was saying that the authors in question were Bad People, just that there was some unquestioned assumptions in their work that were problematic.

He sure is. Have I done Goku's abs yet? No, no, I haven't. I like Saiyuki entirely too much, but it's helpful in RaceFail posts, where I try to use mostly PoC.

Yes, exactly. I was saying back in my own journal-- and, IIRC, have said elsewhere, it's like these people have never been criticized before, which just makes no sense at all, except perhaps critics are gentler in genre fiction? I used to read The New York Times Book Review every weekend, and Avalon's Willow was the gentlest brush of reprimand compared to that.

... that icon is awesome.

I've tended to use icons which were either appropriate-by-keyword (a lot of mine don't feature people/characters at all, and my favourite for discussions that are about ethics and art is probably this one), but when going to default, I've tended towards Goku or Tendou, because they're a) relatively neutral b) awesome. Whereas my default icon, which is a pair of sock-clad toddler feet, which is as race-neutral as you can get, I think, except the text is "socks to be you" which isn't quiiiite the message I'm trying to convey here.

(I'm pretty confident that my adoration of certain manga and Japanese kids' shows qualifies as cultural appreciation, not appropriation, so I'm relaxed about this. It's not that I think Mizushima Hiro, the actor who plays Tendou in Kamen Rider Kabuto, is hot like a thousand fiery suns because he's Japanese, it's because, no really, hot like a thousand fiery suns. Mei-chan no Shitsuji, with all its cracktasticness here and there, justifies its existence merely by the blatant fanservice that is Mizushima Hiro on his knees, in the rain, in formalwear, declaring his devotion. Swoon.)

(Also, watching shows where every single character and actor is Japanese is a wonderful way to have a respite from having to be bothered about race implications in casting.)

Ahem, yes. You're very right - there's something very odd with these reactions. It's true reviews tend to be less vicious in genre fiction, in my experience, because it's an insular and geek-fallacy-ridden (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) environment, but seriously, if you can't take genuine - and, at least at first, constructive - criticism, you shouldn't be writing in public. Suck it up.

Thank you!

Yeah, most of my icons are people and/or expressions. And Tendou is very pretty indeed.

(I really do have to watch Kamen Rider, don't I. Hong Kong action movies are, in my experience, the absolute most fun in terms of diverse casting.)

I've heard people say 'but being accused of racism is terrible!' and yeah, it is, but dude, I've read and heard so much worse! There may be a correlation between writers of fanfiction and people who've acted sanely in this...hmmmmm.

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A curious parallel

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I've already broken the three comment rule so this is my last- promise

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