Your daily cup of fail.
Mar. 12th, 2009 22:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyDisclaimer/reminder: This post is not about me.
That said, though, I find that I do have something more to say that's at least tangentially related to, or somewhat inspired by, the ongoing racefail contretemps (it's sort of like the Worm Ouroboros at this point--the Internet is an echo chamber, not a series of tubes), namely the intersection (as in Venn diagrams) between genre, racism, and place.
In one of the many posts I've read on this topic, someone (and I'll try to find the link) said that racism is the systematic privileging of white people over everyone else (I'm paraphrasing), which is very true. But when I read that, I immediately added an "in America!" on at the end of the sentence in my head, since there are very definitely countries (cough! Japan! cough!) where the racial hierarchy is not quite so clear. A number of people asked me about race in Japan after I got back, and I think I've finally come up with a pithy way to formulate what I observed, a la what my 9th grade history teacher taught us about Confucianist yin-yang theory: yin is superior to yang in all areas in which yang has no presence. Similarly, in Japan white people occupy a distinct position of privilege, but one that is very much subordinated to Japanese-ness, and Japanese people. But that's a different discussion.
All of which is to say, I think that most of the discussion so far as I have encountered it has been centered implicitly in America, the excellent posts of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deepad notwithstanding--which is completely valid, though sadly unexamined, as most of the genre publishers are either explicitly American or local subsidiaries of global companies, and I think that most people in the discussion are residents of the States. [Why yes I am generalizing, and am open to specific corrections/rebuttals.] Moving along, I think part of the reason sff is still full of people who just don't get it is that it is explicitly characterized (I'm tempted to type "ghettoized") as a genre, out of the "mainstream" (though publishing in general is pretty white, judging by my bookshelf). I think another part of the problem is the paucity of literature in translation in America in general, and of science fiction and fantasy in particular. I mean, is Japan Sinks even still in print in translation outside of an academic context/edition? What about all the other Japanese science fiction that's great and completely untranslated? And while Japan is the only non-English speaking country I can speak of from literate experience, I'd be willing to bet the situation is quite similar in other countries. We're missing out on a lot of the world, and we don't even know it.
I think the root cause of the paucity of translated literature in this country is part of a story likecindy_pon's, or the white-washing of the Avatar movie. I think both of those stories are primarily artifacts of racism/the institutionalized privileging of white people/whiteness, but there's that xenophobic provincialism I hate at work too. In other words: I'm not sure that the thing keeping white Nobel laureates from having their work published and/or read in the States is exactly the same as what's keeping more chromatic authors, settings, characters, etc out of sf/f, but I'm dead certain they're related.
I had more to say about "genre" versus "not-genre", but I'm going to call it a night instead. I'll try to add specific links to this post as time permits.
That said, though, I find that I do have something more to say that's at least tangentially related to, or somewhat inspired by, the ongoing racefail contretemps (it's sort of like the Worm Ouroboros at this point--the Internet is an echo chamber, not a series of tubes), namely the intersection (as in Venn diagrams) between genre, racism, and place.
In one of the many posts I've read on this topic, someone (and I'll try to find the link) said that racism is the systematic privileging of white people over everyone else (I'm paraphrasing), which is very true. But when I read that, I immediately added an "in America!" on at the end of the sentence in my head, since there are very definitely countries (cough! Japan! cough!) where the racial hierarchy is not quite so clear. A number of people asked me about race in Japan after I got back, and I think I've finally come up with a pithy way to formulate what I observed, a la what my 9th grade history teacher taught us about Confucianist yin-yang theory: yin is superior to yang in all areas in which yang has no presence. Similarly, in Japan white people occupy a distinct position of privilege, but one that is very much subordinated to Japanese-ness, and Japanese people. But that's a different discussion.
All of which is to say, I think that most of the discussion so far as I have encountered it has been centered implicitly in America, the excellent posts of
deepad notwithstanding--which is completely valid, though sadly unexamined, as most of the genre publishers are either explicitly American or local subsidiaries of global companies, and I think that most people in the discussion are residents of the States. [Why yes I am generalizing, and am open to specific corrections/rebuttals.] Moving along, I think part of the reason sff is still full of people who just don't get it is that it is explicitly characterized (I'm tempted to type "ghettoized") as a genre, out of the "mainstream" (though publishing in general is pretty white, judging by my bookshelf). I think another part of the problem is the paucity of literature in translation in America in general, and of science fiction and fantasy in particular. I mean, is Japan Sinks even still in print in translation outside of an academic context/edition? What about all the other Japanese science fiction that's great and completely untranslated? And while Japan is the only non-English speaking country I can speak of from literate experience, I'd be willing to bet the situation is quite similar in other countries. We're missing out on a lot of the world, and we don't even know it.I think the root cause of the paucity of translated literature in this country is part of a story like
cindy_pon's, or the white-washing of the Avatar movie. I think both of those stories are primarily artifacts of racism/the institutionalized privileging of white people/whiteness, but there's that xenophobic provincialism I hate at work too. In other words: I'm not sure that the thing keeping white Nobel laureates from having their work published and/or read in the States is exactly the same as what's keeping more chromatic authors, settings, characters, etc out of sf/f, but I'm dead certain they're related. I had more to say about "genre" versus "not-genre", but I'm going to call it a night instead. I'll try to add specific links to this post as time permits.