_NP?_ �"the_formerly_colonised_coming_back_to_haunt_us"

[Dave Monroe]

On the one hand ....

--- The Great Quail <quail at libyrinth.com> wrote:
> 
> Imagine an African writer of Tolkien's generation,
> creating an epic set in a distant and mythologized
> Africa, based perhaps on a hodgepodge of legends
> borrowed from various African cultures. Would you
> find it racist if they "left out" a bunch of heroic
> white guys? 

No, but ...

> To argue that his writing is racist or sexist,
> well, you might as well argue the same for the
> Arthurian legends, the Niebelungen, Beowulf, or
> the Eddas. Tolkien wrote for a primarily white
> audience who already had a culturally-programed
> storehouse of archetypes. That's part of why his
> story is so powerful for many of us.

... but the real issues in re: such "isms" are the
valorizations, or, more concretely, the power
differentials involved: White/black, European/african;
Masculine/feminine, Men/women.  And the real problems
involve precisely such "cultural programming,"
precisely in how it tends to naturalize, legitimize,
whatever, such differentials, and the uses and abuses
thereof.  Issue is, it's not a non-issue ...

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