felis_ultharus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
felis_ultharus) wrote2005-11-15 02:23 pm
felis_ultharus) wrote2005-11-15 02:23 pm
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Yay! More theory!
Well, now we're wading into the "appropriation of voice debate" in Canadian Lit this evening. This is going to be very interesting.
The question is, "Should writers have the moral and legal right to write about members of a minority they don't belong to?"
The stuff we're reading is mostly focused on Native writers. A few years ago, a group of Native writers asked white writers to stop writing stories about Native writers -- even sympathetic ones -- and give Natives a chance to write their own stories.
The problem became more complicated when the Canada Council said it would take "the appropriation of voice" into consideration when giving out money to writers. This is, of course, de facto government censorship, because Canada Council grants determine a lot about who can afford to write and who can't.
It's an issue I've thought a lot about, since I'm gay, and you almost can't find a positive portrayal of a queer person written between AD 1300 and 1940 -- not unless you sift through unpublished magazines and dimestore paperbacks published in France -- and even after 1940 it's pretty spotty.
But I don't think I'd ever inflict censorship on a homophobic author. I really do believe that the best answer to bigoted speech is more speech, not a silencing.
And I can't think of a single time censorship has been used for progressive ends that didn't end up backfiring. Canada's obscenity laws were kept intact at the request of prominant feminists with the best of intentions, and now those laws are being used to kill bookstores like Little Sisters.
On another note, it's going to be very interesting to see how the followers of Roland Barthes deal with this debate. Most of our class falls into that category. But Barthes believes that authors don't matter at all -- this is his famous "Death of the Author" -- so it wouldn't matter if a white person wrote Native lit. I have a feeling though none of them will be gutsy enough to say that out loud. Likely, they'll avoid bringing it up.
If the author is dead, the Native author is dead and the queer author is dead -- their voices silenced. The followers of Barthes have to learn that whyen you kill the author, sometimes you're commiting a hate crime.
The question is, "Should writers have the moral and legal right to write about members of a minority they don't belong to?"
The stuff we're reading is mostly focused on Native writers. A few years ago, a group of Native writers asked white writers to stop writing stories about Native writers -- even sympathetic ones -- and give Natives a chance to write their own stories.
The problem became more complicated when the Canada Council said it would take "the appropriation of voice" into consideration when giving out money to writers. This is, of course, de facto government censorship, because Canada Council grants determine a lot about who can afford to write and who can't.
It's an issue I've thought a lot about, since I'm gay, and you almost can't find a positive portrayal of a queer person written between AD 1300 and 1940 -- not unless you sift through unpublished magazines and dimestore paperbacks published in France -- and even after 1940 it's pretty spotty.
But I don't think I'd ever inflict censorship on a homophobic author. I really do believe that the best answer to bigoted speech is more speech, not a silencing.
And I can't think of a single time censorship has been used for progressive ends that didn't end up backfiring. Canada's obscenity laws were kept intact at the request of prominant feminists with the best of intentions, and now those laws are being used to kill bookstores like Little Sisters.
On another note, it's going to be very interesting to see how the followers of Roland Barthes deal with this debate. Most of our class falls into that category. But Barthes believes that authors don't matter at all -- this is his famous "Death of the Author" -- so it wouldn't matter if a white person wrote Native lit. I have a feeling though none of them will be gutsy enough to say that out loud. Likely, they'll avoid bringing it up.
If the author is dead, the Native author is dead and the queer author is dead -- their voices silenced. The followers of Barthes have to learn that whyen you kill the author, sometimes you're commiting a hate crime.
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I think authors are morally responsible for what they write -- I think they should be taken to task for unfair portrayals, and even sympathetic-but-clueless portrayals.
But I don't think it should ever transfer into outright censorship.
I described the scenario you mentioned in our class discussion tonight, using Being John Malkovich -- the scene where Malkovich enters his own head -- as an metaphor for the kind of writing we'd eventually wind up if we're all barred from trying to imagine each other's experiences.
I've often felt portrayals of gay men written by straights are pretty awful -- ranging from out-and-out hate literature to just run-of-the-mill clueless. But I feel the solution is more dialogue.
As for the reverse situation -- the one you describe, where I've felt a portrayal of me as a member of a dominant group by a minority writer didn't work -- there's an example of that at the beginning of Giovanni's Room. James Baldwin puts thoughts into the head of his white character that just don't work. But without the history of prejudice (as in the portrayals of gay men) the sting was gone -- it was just amusing, not irritating.