From Racism and Science Fiction, by Samuel R. Delany, in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora:
Racism for me has always appeared to be first and foremost a system, largely supported by material and economic conditions at work in a field of social traditions. Thus, though racism is always made manifest through individuals' decisions, actions, words, and feeings, when we have the luxury of looking at it with the longer view (and we don't, always), usually I don't see much point in blaming people personally, black or white, for their feelings or even for their specific actions -- as long as they remain this side of the criminal. These are not what stabilize the system. These are not what promote and reproduce the system. These are not the points where the most lasting changes can be introduced to alter the system.
References to "the system" obviously harken to Morpheus'/Laurence Fishburne's description of The Matrix, if you're in an SF frame of mind. Which you needn't necessarily be, despite the title of the essay and the volume in which it was (re)printed.
Said volume includes not only this and other essays, but also short stories and novel excerpts by Mr. (Prof.?) Delany, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Walter Mosley, Tananarive Due and, as the back cover copy says, "many more," including archvillain Amiri Baraka.
Somewhat ironically, given the focus of the book, the essay goes on to say,
I don't think you can have racism as a positive sytem until you have that socioeconomic support suggested by that (rather arbitrary [placement of walls]) twenty percent/eighty percent proportion. But what racism as a system does is isolate and segregate the people of one race, or group, or ethnos from another. As a system it can be fueled by chance as much as by hostility or by the best of intentions. ("I thought they would be more comfortable together, I thought they would want to be with each other. . .") And certainly one of its strongest manifestations is as a socio-visual system in which people become used to always seeing blacks with other blacks and so -- because people are used to it -- being uncomfortable whenever they see blacks mixed in, at whatever proportion, with whites.[. . .] As such, [the system] is fueled as much by chance as by hostile intentions and equally by the best intentions as well. It is whatever systematically acclimates people, of all colors, to become comfortable with the isolation and segregation of the races, on a visual, social, or economic level -- which in turn supports and is supported socioeconomic discrimination. Because it is a system, however, I believe personal guilt will never repace a bit of well founded systems analysis.
Oliver mentioned the lack of diversity apparent in photos from a recent get-together of bloggers on the East Coast, where he and Tony (apparently) integrated the place, and Hanne touched on the sort'a-segregation (and general lack) of erotica by people of color in a piece in the recent issue of Bitch (he wrote from notoriously faulty memory rather than hunting down a copy to check, or just writing Hanne to confirm, because that would make sense. . .).
Applying "a bit of well founded systems analysis" to either of those situations -- or tying the two of them together, given the frequent appearances of sexualized text/imagery on Oliver's and Tony's blogs -- might produce some interesting results.
Remind me to try that after a bit more coffee.
And Hanne might'a said smut, not erotica. . . can we not have the erotica/pornography terminological debate here? Thanks.
Instead, um, I know I was going to work a reference to R. Gay into this, but have forgotten precisely how. Any suggestions, so it doesn't look like I'm just pushing Heather's sites for no reason whatsoever?
Slowly but surely, I'm feeling myself being drawn back into the "fun" race discussions...which sucks because, really, I just want to talk about sex.
Now I see that I can do both.
Ummm, yay?
I'm thinking yay.
F'r instance, there was some concern about putting "interracial" in the alt text for some of the photos Heather and I did. Mostly because, well, most of the search results for such things are icky. In a consistent sort of way, too.
And I see Oliver got some grief about the images he posts, something I'd been anticipating (especially since there was a burst of traffic from Tacitus while I was out of town, and them kids ain't none too bright), but which hasn't materialized.
S'funny, I could have sworn I had a point when I started this reply.
Right, off to brew another pot. . .
I vividly remember having to come up with a photograph of Chip Delaney in high school when my English teacher refused to believe that the guy who wrote Dhalgren wasn't white. I was so furious about that.
And yes, R. Gay rocks. She also is published widely in joints that aren't even Heather's (or mine, though her work has appeared in all the anthologies I've edited). You could link out to one of the recent "Best Lesbian Erotica" editions, if you wanted to...
Everyone seems to be pushing a skin fetish these days - it's not even 'race' per se anymore...it seems more like an edgy, borne-from-porn sensibility that has more to do with cartoonish, sex characters (who are not that sophisticated), than actual people..e.g. "blonde twink", "gansta mandingo", "supple oriental wife/slave".
Good luck to trying to 'think' it out.. I find it really depressing.
I don't read Oliver on a consistent basis but from time to time have enjoyed things he's written. I just wish he'd post pictures of his dog instead of being such a fucking sterotype of a straight Man (note the capital M). I like naked women as much as the next person (trust me I do) but I really wish he'd say what he has to say without the semi-porn pictures. I know where to go when I want erotic photography (ahem) and if I'm going to see photos of O Dub's site I wish they were of his dog.
Yes I know my long comment really has nothing to do with the ongoing conversation but whatever. I'm high on cold medicine.
I'm with Michelle on the semi-naked picture thing. I like semi-naked people too, but his choices leave something to be desired. I understand where Oliver's coming from: he wants to be a human brand, and he's going gangbusters towards that goal. More power to him, even if it makes his blog cheesy.
Not totally unrelated aside: ISTR there's a (single, one) book of black erotica in the QPB erotica section. Haven't looked at out though.
My most recent encounter with academic racism and SF/fantasy has been the accusation that Tolkien's trilogy is rooted in racism. The guy was writing an English mythology; it's no surprise that he wasn't writing multicultural fantasy, or representing cultures that weren't historically (medievally or further back) English. You can say that the absence is racist, but making the orcs (in the novels) out to be black is pushing it.
I'm not saying anything about the films, mind you. I think the films rely less on the racial stereotypes of 1930s and 1940s film than, say, some of the Star Wars movies do, or the Indiana Jones movies. I've watched period cartoons, films, and serials from the 30s and 40s, and the stereotypes often leave me with my mouth hanging open. Modern stereotyping that relies on similar images is so much more subtle by comparison, which is not to say really subtle.
Which is a long way of saying, it'd be hard for Tolkien to not be a racist, but saying his books are rooted in it (particularly in immigration problems of the 1950s, which is the end of the period when he was working on his myth cycle) is excessive.
$DEITY, logorrhea. I'll shut up now.
Okay, so Tolkien wasn't playing games (knowingly) with established racial stereotypes.
He was still playing in a racist, essentialist universe.
If you're an orc, you're ugly, foul, crude, devolved, hairy, nasty smelly, and either stupid or filled with a low cunning.
If you're an elf, you're tall, willowy, beautiful, ancient, distant, distractable, and vaguely morally questionable, since most of you is off away over the west anyway, and you can't much be bothered. (Isn't it sad?)
If you're a Southron, you're swarthy and duped by the Dark Lord.
If you're a hobbit, you're jolly. Also, hungry.
--It doesn't matter if you can't map it one for one onto 1940s stereotypes of Nordically Aryan warriors and swarthy Mediterranean types and stolid English countryfolk. Within the context of the universe, who you are and who you can be is very much tied up with your race, in a physical, deterministic way. (Race is most assuredly NOT a social construct in Middle Earth.)
The same holds true for Star Trek, by the way. Klingons are violent and honor-bound. Vulcans are cold, emotionless, and logical. Romulans are whatever the fuck our current cold-war geopolitical opponents are perceived as. A terribly narrow range for the spear carriers of each race; a narrow set of patterns each easily flagged, readily identifiable type can fall into. Who you are is determined by what race you are. (Humans, of course, being gung-ho and industrious and somewhat adaptable and generally of good will.) --For all that Trek broke some hefty barriers down and did some respectable good, it still falls into the same old traps when it comes to dealing with the Other.
Which is one of the reasons I think why Whedon dumped aliens out of Firefly (beyond the I-don't-wanna-deal-with-latex factor). Aliens in science fiction are always a way you deal with the Other, and in a physical and even visceral way; in cinematic and televisual SF, given tight budgets and until recently a lack of magical computer effects, aliens end up being read as race--since they're just humans who look different. (Skin color. Bumps on the forehead. That sort of thing.) --Since Firefly's conceit was post-Civil War edges and dregs of Reconstruction Wild West, Whedon defused a number of possible stickinesses by dumping aliens--and would maybe have had some room to say some snarky things about how race has played out metaphorically in other SF and fantasy texts. (Yes. I'm giving him a heaping helping of benefit of the doubt, given Mutant Enemy's track record of hiring actors that aren't young, white, and cute as a couple of rather similar buttons. Call me a cock-eyed optimist and leave it at that; the show's dead now, so we'll never know.)
But! You were looking for a way to work R. Gay into the post: maybe the way in which one's race or sex sets up patterns of expectation with regards to the genre(s) and medium(s) one works in? Black SF and horror writers (or cartoonists) are still considered oddities by some, after all--why aren't they writing, you know, black fiction? Instead of that ephemeral, unimportant pop-culture stuff? But the combination erotica and women has come to be expected, for a variety of reasons--yes, there are men making their mark (for one thing, gay male erotica--but that always ends up getting ghettoized and overlooked when discussing, you know, erotica in general, for some reason) (for another thing, M. Christian), but if you rattle off the names of leading lights in sex writing and erotica, it's going to be predominately women.
Or maybe it's just me. I am weird, or so I'm told.
re: Tolkein
One of the larger academic history listservs [which I don't subscribe to, thanks] recently ran a thread suggesting that T was antisemitic. I was gleefully shown a prof's firm and negative reply. In it, he quotes largely from T's letter to his publisher in response to a German publisher's letter expressing interest in translating and publishing his fiction. The German letter asks, in addition, if Tolkein is [pardon my memory & my German] "arisch." To which Tolkein replied in the snarkiest & most donnish manner possible that he supposed that meant "aryan," and while he could prove that his grandfather had immigrated from Germany, and spoke German rather than another indoeuropean language [T was a linguist], he certainly couldn't vouch for his geneology over the thousands of years of linguistic history.
There was more, of course, but the [rather long, I now realize] story does demonstrate contemporary interest in -and debate about- racializing T [and by extension, his characters], and suggests that T was -at least to a degree- sensitive about the ways his works might be read in this "racist, essentialist universe."
That's a fascinating story, Neogrammarian. I hadn't heard it before, and I'm glad I have.
Accepting k's comments for the sake of argument (they don't take into account some of the issues Tolkien was apparently grappling with in his myth cycle at the end of his life), the question becomes, then, if you want to write about nonhumans (elves, Vulcans, whatever), how you can write that without going to essentialism and, by extension, racism. Or, rephrasing: what's the difference between writing to archetypes and writing essentialist/racist stories?
Tying this question back into erotica, again: one of the most annoying Star Trek images for me is the green Orion slave girl, complete with Otherness and limited range per k. The five-paragraph essay question then becomes: what's so sexy about the Other? (Note that this question hardly comes up in Tolkien, save by way of elf-human interaction, or maybe Gimli's courtly love for Galadriel.)
Oooh. Sexy ?s, Ginger. Thanks- can I think about them tonight & turn my [less than 5 parag, I promise] essay in tomorrow?
Neogrammarian, my pleasure. Just glad someone thinks they're worthwhile.
I'm thinking about them and some other related things that have been running through my head in an effort to get a blog entry or two out of them myself. I'm looking forward to reading your ideas.
Hmm. That's interesting. Given that my main RPG right now is a Trek game, and my main (Terran) PC is involved with a Bajoran, I've actually been thinking about that in a Trek context. While I agree that k's statement is true in some cases, a strong case can also be said that this is not so much a strictly racial statement as it is a culturally-bound statement. I know this is how it's been playing out on Anomaly, at the very least, as culture clashes are frequent and strong (one of them was a large contributing factor to a confrontation that got a Security officer landed in the brig just last night).
Then again, we're not Trek canon. Then again... as I'm watching DS9 (for the first time, I've never really watched Trek before, so this series is my first real exposure), I'm seeing the culture issue as the central fixture, as opposed to race in "physical, deterministic" sense. Otherwise we wouldn't have Major Kira struggling with the idea of the return of the D'jarra system, as she's from the artist's caste and has no artistic talent, but is a good officer. It would simply be, without any struggle at all.
(We interrupt this message for an important announcement from the Emergency Birthday System)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY!
XOXO,
me
Ooooooh.
Biiiiiiirthday?
Happy birthday, Evil Twin.
Yes: reading Tolkien merely as a racist (or racialist?) tract IS missing rather a lot of the point. I just get kinda annoyed when people insist that because you can't read orcs directly as [insert ethnicity of choice currently considered to be "mud people"], it's therefore foolish to look for any racial underpinnings to the books.
Which isn't what Ginger was doing, granted. I just have a twitchy knee.
(The lovely story about the letter he sent is based on a draft of the letter he sent; the actual letter he sent ended up being lost. Casualty of war and all. Which changes neither the story nor the intent behind it one whit; I'm just proving geek cred of some sort or another.)
And yes, Spider: what Trek is dealing with IS culture, but it's culture filtered through race. Klingons are a race (and a culture); Vulcans are a race (and a culture); Bajorans are a race (and a culture). The producers don't set out to make any grand racial statements, but in setting up each alien race to have a monolithic monoculture, they end up reinforcing the basic underlying logic of racism: because you look like X, I can presume you will be like X. --Because you look like a Klingon, you will be savage and laugh loudly and wave sharp objects in my face and ultimately, you will be honor-bound, if a little dim. Because you look like a Vulcan, etc. So forth. (It should be noted that the books and even some of the gaming materials attempt to get beyond this: most notably Diane Duane's Vulcan stuff, which shows all that logic hullabaloo to be, indeed, cultural, adhered to more or less by a majority, honored as much in the breach as the keeping; it's the TV show that has the poverty of imagination. But it's also the TV show that is seen by by far the largest audience; it's the TV show that reinforces the "because you look like X, I can expect you to be just like all other Xes" logic that is, basically, the underlying logic of racism.)
But to provide an answer Ginger's question about writing to archetypes: if the archetype's essence is defined by race, then you're writing a racist story. --I'm assuming a terribly narrow definition of race, mind (that excludes for the moment questions of culture; solely nature and no nurture at all), and assuming further that reinforcing the idea that one's essence and archetype can be isolated and segregated by race and race alone reinforces (by reinforcing the underlying logic of) the power dynamic of racism. --I think it is possible to write to archetypes or essences without reinforcing this logic: by subverting it whenever possible. Disrupt expectations as often as you fulfill them; "Keep your fiction up to the real," to quote Delany quoting somebody else whose name escapes me.
But I think I've sufficiently established both my geek cred and my familiarity with Delany's parenthetical asides. If not his admirable clarity. (Late nights. Too much work. Not enough coffee.)
As for the five-paragraph question, how about a short and pithy answer: without an Other, it's just masturbation.
Or is that too pat?
(Birthday? Cool.)
[5 bullets, not parag's & my German sucks.]
1) The Other exists as That Which Is Not Self [fort-da]. Thus, it is a trope bound up in the process of self-definition.
2) Freud would argue that this fact alone [Other does not equal Self] makes the Other sexy.
3) Cultures that retain a close relationship to their archetypes [through folklore, tradition, etc.] usually [undoubtedly many exceptions exist] also maintain traditions of self-conscious self-discovery/exploration/awareness- often quite complex and central to cultural expression.
4) I posit that in cultures that have lost track of their archetypes, this process of self-definition occurs with a much more essentialist [there's that word] Other than cultures that have retained their archetypes. If you're not thinking carefully about 'fort', you can hardly think complexly about 'da,' yes? Here's where we can get into issues of essentialism & racisism.
5) So can one write and not confuse archetypes and essentialist/racist depictions? Leaving the issue of audience/reception aside for this post, I suggest not if the author is part [or in a subculture in antagonism with] a culture that does not utilize its archetypes in self-conscious processes of self-definition, etc, as described above.
5 bullets. How'd I do?
Hanne, the Cleis Press page for the Best Lesbian Erotica collections doesn't list contributors. Was she in any besides the 2002 edition? Er, not that I'm asking you to do my research for me or nothing. . .
Heather, thanks, love.
VASpider, um, I find this reaction slightly disturbing
George, thanks. I feel I've been slacking in the evil department of late, and shall endeavor to do better this year.
'course, according to the lovely and talented Mary Cay "Batz" Marubio, 33 is the Jesus year, which sort'a works against the evil thing.
Guess I could read the books or see the films so I can at least try following the LotR discussion.
Nah.
Yes, Aaron. That was exactly the point.
Well, you've been slacking, you know.
Someone's got to help keep the Evil Quotient up around here.
Look, I was doing a search on "Tacitus" and got to this site which I thought said "uppity-nero.com". I don't know what the hell you lot are talking about. I'll go now.
Oh, but won't you stay for some pie?