Everybody knows that racism is bad, but somehow hating diversity is cool. Thus, Felicity Savage over on the Amazing Stories site has a post where she chastises non-white people for wanting to see themselves in science fiction stories. She concludes by praising the work of Stephen Baxter, which she says provides the following insights.
Speculative fiction this good achieves something no other genre can do: it makes you realize, really realize, that we’re all in this together. Black, white, yellow, brown, male, female … to the Big Bad lurking on the dark side of the moon, we all look like snacks. That kind of perspective shift is what I read the genre for.
This is simultaneously honest and oblivious — the first predicated on the second. Because, of course, the reason that it is important to include diverse characters and diverse voices in speculative fiction would be because the assertion “we’re all in this together” is not, in fact, a pure, shining, unimpeachable truth, handed down by the gods of speculative fiction for our enlightenment. The statement “we’re all in this together” is, instead, an ideological presumption which is not supported by most of the extant facts. Kids in segregated schools on the south side of Chicago aren’t in this together with folks on the north side who have buttloads of tax money dumped into their science labs. Folks who were enslaved weren’t in it together with the people who pretended to own them with the collusion of the law. Women who lost their property rights during marriage weren’t in it together with the men who controlled them. And so forth. Proclaiming that justice and equality have been achieved because you’ve imagined some big old space monster is not profound. It. is. bullshit.
To say that human difference is not part of good sci-fi is to erase the thematic concerns of many of sci-fi’s greatest writers, from Philip K. Dick to Ursula Le Guin to Octavia Butler to Samuel Delany to Joanna Russ and on and on. It is, moreover, to admit to an almost ludicrous poverty of imagination. Sci-fi is dedicated to telling stories that haven’t been; to exploring the entire range of what might be. And yet, the only story you can think of, the only future you can see, is one in which white people’s experiences are the sole benchmark of importance, in which all people’s troubles and traumas are subsumed in white people’s traumas; in which, somehow, racial (and gender?) difference has ceased to matter,and in which that “ceasing to matter” means, not a blending of diverse races and experiences, but an erasure of all races and experiences which aren’t the dominant one right now, at this particular time.
“Nothing is gained by mapping our fragmented ethnic and sexual identities onto our fiction with the fidelity of a cellphone camera photo,” Savage says. To which one can only ask, who is it that gains nothing exactly? Ethnic and sexual identities are a big part of how we live; exploring them has been a huge resource for science fiction in the past. Admittedly, if you’re committed to a world in which you never have to think about others, and in which the one sci-fi story is a story about how your particular concerns, no matter how boring and blinkered, should erase everyone else in a lovely rush of imperialist amity, then, yes, diversity is an irritating distraction. If, on the other hand, you think that sci-fi should be as rich and complicated as the world we live in, then including difference is not a failure, but a necessity.
HT: N.K. Jemisin.
I’m reading a Zizek book where he gets into the weeds of his knee-jerk anti-multiculturalism. He quotes this lengthy unpublished response to him by Sara Ahmed, whom he respects but disagrees with, and whom, I think, takes him down. The designation of a liberal multicultural hegemony is hegemony, she says, which is, she also says, one ironic way in which racism can be smuggled in (i.e., calling people who discuss racism racist, like this Felicity person). Ultimately I aim for the imitation of MLK, integration over “respectful” segregation, and oppose (like Zizek) the comfortable demonization of poor whites, but Europeans who haven’t actually tried changing their shared identity to include people of color have just as little ground to stand on as white Americans who refuse to acknowledge that, if you want to say “we are all the same,” that means not that your ancestors didn’t murder and abuse people, but that the people they murdered and abused were ALSO your ancestors– in a way that matters for morality, not reparations.
This is Sara Ahmed’s new blog, “feminst killjoys,” where she “cheekily” discusses the practice of using “critical” to exempt yourself from the thing you critique. http://feministkilljoys.com/
I’d say that Savage seems to be erasing the difference of class as well as race.
I agree with many of the critiques of multiculturalism from liberals (more or less, it stereotypes individuals for their own supposed good and traps them into this representation), but that AS essay was truly stupid. Manohman.
Even though most of the SF stuff I read is by white guys most of them make an effort to present a gender and race diverse cast, of course because that’s how you’d think the future (like the present) would be.
Just finished two stories set a few hundred years in the future by Kim Stanley Robinson and Alastair Reynolds where most of the characters are of African, Chinese or Indian descent, like the majority of the world’s population.
What old fogeys is she reading?
I would hardly accuse Octavia Butler’s characters of being trapped by representations.
In Xenogenesis, they are, and dealing with such representations is, to me, exactly what the book is about.
I think it’s confused to suggest that it’s multiculturalism which traps people in representations. Racism traps people in representations. Ignoring racism doesn’t free people, though, which is why “I don’t see race” is not an effective response to racism.
I think it is the case that Butler deals with the way people are trapped in representations, and struggle with it. But she’s able to do that because she’s attentive to race and is willing to write about people who are not default white.
Does it have to be an either/or? Not to me.
I agree about Butler. (Regarding default whiteness, you might get a kick out of my take on the last Thor film.)
Not sure what you mean by either/or. I think that multiculturalism can tie into racist tropes at times. But I don’t think it has to, and it’s definitely the racism which is the problem, to my mind, not the multiculturalism.
Just because racism pins people into a stereotyped cultural role in no way entails multiculturalism’s not also doing the same. That’s what I meant by either/or.
Ah, I see. But racism comes first, right? Multiculturalism is a reaction to the way people are stereotyped and discriminated against. It attempts to make the thing that is despised into a thing to be proud of; that is, racism says to people of color, you are worthless and marginal, and multiculturalism responds, no, people of color are valuable.
You can then say, well, it’s a stereotype and constricting to define yourself by difference. But to do that you have to ignore the context, which is that the alternative to valuing difference as difference is not the absence of difference, but the devaluing of difference. Same with gay politics; gay identities can be constricting in some ways, but given how homophobia works, the creation of a gay identity was a major step in getting gay people rights and enabling them to organize. Or same with black power, or any other effort by marginalized groups to organize and assert their worth as human beings. So…I really think equating racism and multi-culturalism is extremely wrong-headed.
Who’s equating racism and multiculturalism?
And, no, racism doesn’t cause the problems within multiculturalism for many reasons that I could think of (e.g., categorization is behind both, people ignore contrary evidence, etc.), but here’s a definitive one: multiculturalism isn’t just about race.
It’s pretty centrally about race, it seems like. But of course there are other forms of marginalization too.
My point was that discrimination precedes multiculturalism historically and structurally. Ignoring that context seems like a mistake.
And the finitude within which we reason precedes both. Ignoring their commonality seems like a mistake, too.
Try being born Amish and breaking away. In the interest of respecting religious identity, you’re fucked, more or less. What does the multiculturalist have to say about genital mutilation? I think liberals are correct about the horrors of treating individuals only as representations of some group.
Oh come on, Charles. They aren’t just related by accident; one is an effort to deal with and confront the other. I didn’t say it was perfect, but the enthusiasm with which people want to pretend that the second is responsible for the first seems really problematic, don’t you think?
Lots of people who value multiculturalism are not fans of genital mutilation. And leveraging women’s rights as a way to talk about the inferiority of other cultures is not getting you out of identity politics, in case you hadn’t noticed.
I said I agree with critiques of multiculturalism, not that it’s worse than racism. Bringing up the evils of racism doesn’t address problems of multiculturalism. I’d say they’re related in this way: if bigotry is a disease, multiculturalism is its attempted homeopathic cure.
And I’m sure multiculturalists aren’t fans of genital mutilation. It’s just that their ideology doesn’t give them a reason to condemn it.
Maybe you could provide an example of a multiculturalist whose ideology wouldn’t allow them to condemn genital mutilation? Multiculturalists are often quite able and willing to critique cultural expressions. It’s a critical ideology, after all.
Here’s a paper that discusses that very thing. The conclusion (trying to be balanced) is this:
It’s not hard to see what’s going on here: too fucking bad individual woman who doesn’t want this; don’t be a tool of the imperialist west. The multiculturalist wants to preserve your culture (she needs an exotic place for vacations, after all — yeah, yeah, cheap shot).
Oops, the link.
Yeah…the problem is that women’s rights are in fact often used as an excuse to bomb people, which doesn’t necessarily help women all that much (since they’re among the people who are bombed). RAWA in Afghanistan is a woman’s organization which is not super into the US controlling the country in the name of women’s rights.
I mean, what’s your policy takeaway here? We need to invade all countries that practice genital mutilation? Sanction governments that legalize genital mutilation? Stop being imperialist assholes so that when we speak on genital mutilation we have some sort of moral standing? I presume multiculturalists would prefer the last one; do you disagree with them on that?
My “policy” is that individuals shouldn’t have to suffer various forms of mutilation, persecution, and oppression if they don’t want to and we should be allowed to condemn heinous acts as such, even if they happen to individuals in other cultures. If an individual doesn’t want to follow some traditional behavior and not following that traditional behavior really doesn’t harm anyone else, then that individual should be allowed to not follow it. I believe this of foreigners just like I believe it of all the subcultures in America.
“do you disagree with them on that?”
Yes, you have to often watch people suffer around the world, because our intervention only causes more problems. I think that’s called realpolitik. Multiculturalists and Kissinger aren’t so far apart.
I mean, “no.” A practical worldview with compromised moral stances is unfortunately a necessity. But I was arguing about how to morally suss out behaviors in the world, not for practical ways of dealing with moral beliefs.
“we should be allowed to condemn heinous acts as such, even if they happen to individuals in other cultures.”
Who’s stopping you? Or are you saying that discussions of imperialism and power disparity between cultures are restricting your ability to complain about genital mutilation on the internet?
I guess I’d point out that there’s no particular sign in this discussion that you (or I, for that matter) care even a little bit about genital mutilation. You’re using it as an example to defend your own right to feel comfortable saying whatever it is you feel like saying. If you actually cared about the issue, understanding the cultural context involved and speaking in a way that would allow you to be heard would be more important than scoring debating points or than defending your own right to babble on about whatever you want to babble on about.
I think it’s actually really difficult to care about stuff happening on the other side of the world to people you don’t see. Recognizing the limits of one’s own empathy seems like it’s pretty important to dealing with people as if they’re problems might matter, rather than as if your recognition of their problems is the most important thing. The article you quote is trying to say that loud denunciations of genital mutilation can make things worse for the victims, rather than better. Does that matter to you? Are people who point that out restricting your rights? Are your rights the most important issue here? Or what?
Edit: I think this comes off more harshly than I intended. I know that you’re trying to figure out moral grounds rather than practical actions. My point is just that the focus on moral grounds has practical effects; I don’t think they’re that easy to separate. And in practical terms (and therefore in moral ground terms) I think the to-do about multiculturalism isn’t especially helpful.
“Who’s stopping you?”
Well, the argument against multiculturalism is that it, if accepted, does stop you.
All the other stuff isn’t that important regarding this argument. (For example, you can believe that some act is absolutely evil, regardless of culture or tradition, and still not think it’s best to start a war or invade a country to stop that act.)
As for empathy, does one empathize with a category or an individual? That seems important to me.
“does one empathize with a category or an individual?”
Not sure what you mean by that? Could you clarify a little?
Multiculturalism is about defending perceived categories that group individuals. What about the empathy for individuals, rather than caring about the preservation of their supposed membership in some category?
I think that’s somewhat confused. You’re assuming that individuals can be separated from their ethnic and cultural identities in some sort of absolute (or even marginally logical) manner. I’d say that that’s a western enlightenment dream embedded in cultural and to some extent ethnic identities, myself.
I’d say that people ought to be seen as capable of transcending their cultural backgrounds. Otherwise, everything is just going to be the way it’s been. Basically, you’re just offering Rorty’s pragmatism. The best critique of that is: why would anyone ever want to make changes to anything?
Nah. People have multiple cultural backgrounds and multiple commitments. Choosing between them is complicated. But erasing them in the name of a supposedly uberculture is just insisting that your perspective transcends all others. Which can also be used as a way to argue that you don’t need change, right? (i.e.; our culture is better than their culture — more transcendent — so they should be psyched we brought them over here as slaves and gave them all the advantages.)
We should also note that traditionally, attempts to erase a culture in the name of some better culture actually produce more rather than less resistance. It also brands internal reformers as traitors, and actively harms their ability to produce local change, within the context of their culture. If you seek to impose something from outside, and declare it to be superior, expect resistance, even from those you’re trying to help. Furthermore, your import may last only so long as you have guns backing it up.
What “uberculture”? If you’re capable of choosing or thinking an alternative that’s not given to you or encouraged by your upbringing, then you can transcend the determination of your culture(s). This doesn’t erase your culture, or the set of possibilities that you’ve been raised with, but it means you’re not merely a program.
Where are these ideas that transcend your culture coming from, again? Out of the noumena straight into your moral self? I thought you didn’t believe in God though, right? So what are you doing believing in Kant?
People are enmeshed in lots of different cultures. An idea that isn’t part of one is still part of some other culture. Not sure why that turns you into a robot — though, of course, the paranoia about losing free will if all your ideas aren’t god given (not to mention the incoherent reliance on religious frameworks from which God has been removed) are both hallmarks of our particular culture. (As is the critique of same.)
Also, the idea that if you rebel against your upbringing you’re free, but if you don’t you’re not seems pretty silly. And why is upbringing where culture stops? You don’t have a culture when you’re an adult?
I prefer Kant over crass empiricism and its swerve of atoms in the head, yes, but my general metaphysical view is one of emergence over determinism. Did your culture teach you to respond in just the way you responded to me, just in case I happened along and wrote my prior post (which the same “culture” told me to write)? Was this written in a book for you somewhere? I think it’s pretty clear through all the rebellions in history that people can transcend what they’ve been raised with (even without bringing in the big question of whether we’re just projections of God’s already filmed movie: i.e., that rebellion had to occur, which you’d understand once you trace the atoms smashing into each other back to the beginning of time).
Who can answer where ideas come from? Analogical reasoning, maybe? Yet, where does the idea to make a relation between A over here and B over there come from? Inherent similarity between A & B? But everything is similar in some way given a context. And where does that context come from? And on and on …
Anyway, I agree with you about the original article you were criticizing.
Crass empiricism or crass transcendence; they end up at much the same place, it seems like.
Saying that your self can’t be separated out from your culture is different than determinism. People are too complicated to predict what they’ll do or how they’ll interact with their various cultures. That means that crass arguments about how culture determines us or about how you need to transcend your culture are silly; how can you even tell where which culture ends or doesn’t, or where your self is? (and even discourses about the self and culture are social and cultural (and embedded in the self) after all.)
I mean, I’m not going to solve the question of free will in a blog’s comments section, obviously. But trying to do it by contrasting individuals with their culture or upbringing is hopelessly simplistic.
If you encounter an idea, even one from another culture, and that idea is contrary to your tradition (it might even violate the morality with which you’ve been raised), you have at least 2 options: (1) accept the new idea as true and your tradition as wrong, or (2) reject the new idea and uphold your tradition. So without bringing up free will, a kernel self, or whatever, this option presenting itself is transcendent of your tradition. You have to choose. Now, if it’s just cultural upbringing that determines this, then you can’t choose 1 unless it’s already part of your tradition. I say you can choose 1 even those it’s transcendent of your tradition.
“how can you even tell where which culture ends or doesn’t, or where your self is?”
Then why are you arguing about it? Clearly, you don’t know, don’t feel that you can have an opinion, and it’s a complete metaphysical mystery to you. Of that which you cannot speak … etc.. Furthermore, how could you ever hold anyone responsible for racism? It’s just a way the self-culture blob operates, so who cares?
I think the way people reach their opinions is really mysterious, yeah. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make moral choices. Those moral choices are grounded in culture and community, but that doesn’t make them groundless. You don’t need a transcendent morality to believe that moral choices matter.
“If you encounter an idea, even one from another culture, and that idea is contrary to your tradition”
People don’t just have one tradition. And nobody wanders around like some computer inputting ideas. The enlightenment just can’t get away from treating human beings as androids….
If everyone is a combination of multiple traditions, what’s being protected by multiculturalism? Preserve a tradition, why? We’re all just combinations of traditions. You’ve pretty much just come around to individualism through the backdoor.
And are you now saying that ideas aren’t being inputted by culture? Social determinism aka a robotic view of humanity is exactly the idea you’ve been promoting here.
Well, the argument for multiculturalism is that different traditions and different perspectives have value in themselves, and shouldn’t just be obliterated. I think some multiculturalists view cultures as unitary, but I think that’s a mistake.
I never said ideas were inputted by culture. I said selves and cultures (and ideas for that matter) can’t be teased apart.
I’m a little confused at this point. What does culture mean, exactly? My impression has been that a given culture is itself a shifting dialectic whose norms and values are subject to change over time by the engagement of its members, not a fixed mandate with normative rules to be followed by everyone within it. Can a culture not be self-correcting?
When people rebel against their culture, is it necessarily a rebellious transcendence away from that culture or can such rebellion be informed as much from outside the culture as within it? It’s entirely possible that I may be working from too broad or too malleable a view of what culture is, hence my confusion.$