Yay! More theory!

[felis_ultharus]

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can't find a positive portrayal of a queer person written between AD 1300 and 1940 -- not unless you sift through unpublished magazines and dimestore paperbacks published in France -- and even after 1940 it's pretty spotty.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.

Comments

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. And you've basically outlined my objections, really. ... it somehow strikes me that saying 'stop writing about us so that we can write our own stories' is flawed on more than one level, too. First of all, because it assumes that the reason the minority isn't being heard is because they're being crowded out by members of the 'majority' (however you want to define THAT one), and I find that premise to be inherently flawed. For example, this would assume that the reason 'queer' books aren't widely read is that they're being pushed out by straight writers writing about the community - which is something I think is inherently false. If we want to talk reasons for readership or lack thereof, that's a whole separate discussion, but this isn't the cause. Furthermore, assuming that a writer that isn't part of the minority s/he is writing about is telling that community's story isn't necessarily the path to take. If I write a story that's set in a native community, I'm telling A story - the story of a few characters, in a given setting. I'm giving a setting with some basic facts, with some details that are open to interpretation when viewed from an outsider's perspective. I'm not telling THEIR story - that is, the community's history and experiences. If they want to tell that, it's up to them (with interpretation biased from the INSIDER'S perspective, I suppose). *shrugs* Honestly, I'd need more time to articulate this properly - I have very defined feelings about the matter, but I'm not entirely sure how to formulate them. I'd be interested in hearing what conclusions you guys come up with, if any. Because the entire situation just gives me a feeling of 'what the...?', so another, more articulate perspective might be interesting. If I'm making any sense at all (if I'm not, just ignore me).

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

the real problem that i have with the idea of appropriation of voice is that at its extreme, it pigeon holes authors in what stories they can and cannot tell - as in, a black woman could never write about a white male. i know that that is not the intention of the consideration, but the idea still makes me uncomfortable