NP? "the formerly colonised coming back to haunt us"

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cyrus" <cyrusgeo at netscape.net>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: NP? "the formerly colonised coming back to haunt us"
>
>
> Otto wrote:
>
> >I agree, but precisely that makes it inevitably racist like the
overwhelming
> >part of our literature. And sexist too, remember there's even a female
> >monster to be killed in it.
> >
> You know I respect you 100%,
>

Hi Cyrus,

I don't think that this is a question of mutual respect (or disrespect) but
let me assure you that I absolutely respect you the same and have seldom
missed to read a post that has come from you.

>
> but I cannot understand this kind of
> reasoning.
>

I cannot deny being influenced by John Barth & Margaret Mead in this. Gender
studies are a part of postmodernist critical theory:

"(...) she went on to deride the male-supremist character of the great body
of our classic myths (...) which she held to be the fabulated record of a
bloody overthrow, by male pig patriarchs in ages past, of the original and
natural matriarchy of the world. "Mythology is the propaganda of the
winners," she declared, adding that the grand myth supported by all those
particular mythlets was the myth of heroic maleness (...)"
(John Barth, "Chimera," _Bellerophoniad_, New York 1972, p. 287-88)

"Fuck or die, Bellerophon," Anteia said. "We'll do it any way you like; you
can even be on top. But frig we must."
(ibid, p. 295)

Nobody should miss to read this wonderful novel.

>
> What if there were only male monsters?

Why did Tolkien chose the spider, the most horrible prototype of a female
monster that eats her male counterpart after coupling? He could have chosen
a giant mole or rat as well but he did not.

>Wouldn't the absence
> of the female element qualify it as sexist too?

Yes.

The following is no joke but actual Amazon.de-text:

Male Fantasies: Women Floods Bodies History (Theory & History of Literature)

von Klaus Theweleit, Chris Turner (Übersetzer), Barbara Ehrenreich (Unknown)

--I mean the last: "Unknown"


> What if the "good"
> characters were all female and the "evil" ones all male? Would that be
> sexist?

That would merely be an upside down turn.

>What if there were only female characters? My point is, one can
> "discover" sexist aspects in everything, if one wants to.
>

I don't *want* to discover sexism in everything but I think that pre-modern,
19th Century style literature like LOTR is inevitably sexist, because the
society which has "produced" this literature was sexist.

> I understand the open-minded white males' collective need to make up for
> all these centuries of oppression against women and "non-white people"
> (sorry I can't find a more suitable term), but I don't see why we should
> demonize everything along the way.
>

Demonizing Tolkien wasn't my point, therefor I wrote that I still love LOTR
(and "The Hobbit" too, I'm eagerly waiting for my daughter to grow a little
bit older to read it with her), despite the fact that I now consider it as
partly racist and sexist, an insight I did not have when I read it the first
three times (twice in German, once in English) back in the Seventies. Seeing
those "weak points" (which, and this is an honestly meant excuse, hardly
could have been avoided by Tolkien) in it now doesn't diminish my admiration
for it. I think like Barth's "Chimera" "Gravity's Rainbow" is a good example
for great literature working this out (and "playing" with it) in a very
conscious way to make us aware, for example in the Episodes 31 and 49:

"Life is good, and nobody's looking forward to redeployment. There are
fräuleins for screwing, cooking, and doing your laundry." (GR 298)
http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/gr31.htm

"Girls are to go in from the front, singing, dancing, vamping the
woman-hungry barbarians. Otto will try to knock out the car, Haftung will
get everybody rounded up and ready to rendezvous with the boat. "Tits 'n'
ass," mutter the girls, "tits 'n' ass. That's all we are around here."
"Ah, shaddap," snarls G. M. B. Haftung, which is his usual way of dealing
with the help." (GR 507)
http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/gr49.htm

>
> Now, as for racism, a writer of fairy tales (and the LOTR is one) has to
> use sterotypes. A Hindoo writer might have described things differently;
> or a Chinese; or a Congolese; or an Aboriginal. Or maybe they would put
> into the story their own "racisms", if any. But the fact is, for Tolkien
> and his first audience, white was good, and black was bad. Why associate
> it with "white supremacy" and "fear of or contempt towards coloured
> people", and not with "joy of daylight" and "fear of the dark", traits
> common to many people of many nationalities even today?
>

Right, "it's gard to invent any extravagant hero" (as Barth says) and
because these stereotypes are racist LOTR is inevitably racist.

> Why see racism in everything?

Not in everything, but there's a lot of it in the world:

BLACK:
DIRTY, SOILED - hands black with grime
5a: characterized by the absence of light -a black night-
b: reflecting or transmitting little or no light -black water-
c : served without milk or cream -black coffee-
6a: thoroughly sinister or evil : WICKED -a black deed-
b: indicative of condemnation or discredit -got a black mark for being late-
7: connected with or invoking the supernatural and especially the devil -
black magic -
8a: very sad, gloomy, or calamitous - black despair-
b: marked by the occurrence of disaster -black Friday-
(Webster's Dic, see also GR Episode 10)

Just look at Trent Lott or Edmund Stoiber as latest examples of incorrible
racists.

> Why not simply ignore race altogether and treat everybody the same way?
>

Well, I could imagine a Science Fiction novel that presents the whole
mankind in a mixed (maybe lightbrown-skinned) race in a faraway future with
no recognizable and distinctive features of black, white, yellow or red, but
I've read none up to now. Or maybe I did but didn't realize it.

> Cyrus

As always a pleasure to discuss with you.

Otto

    Nightly, when I wake to think myself beworlded
    and find myself in heaven, I review the night I
    woke to think and find myself vice-versa.
    (Barth, _Perseid_)

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