IBARW 4: On knowledge and knowing and audience

[oyceter]

I have spent most of the past year thinking about knowledge, about who gets to know what, about who gets to disseminate that knowledge, about whom people think the knowledge is being disseminated to. It is a mixture of my experiences of year one of grad school, along with a constant debate with myself on the who, what and why of my own blog.

Much of it is prompted by the extremely common fallacy that non-white people/POC do not exist outside of the white eye, that our countries are "discovered" even though we have been living there for centuries, that our cultures are there to be explained by white people to white people. I've seen this play out in person over various iterations of Racefail online, but the important point is that this is not new. This is a tool that has been used over centuries by colonizers to justify their own narratives, to make themselves the heroes of their own stories, and to erase non-white/POC contributions to history. I cannot count how many times I have picked up a book titled "The History of [Subject]" only to have it cover the Western history of [subject]. Occasionally, if the writers are "generous," we get a brief mention of Egypt or China or the Ottoman Empire, but always with the assumption that these civilizations are static ones that existed only in the past, that their contributions are blips on the radar, unconnected to anything coming before or after. Joanna Russ talks about how taking away the context and the narrative disempowers female writers in How to Suppress, and the same tactic is at work here.

My Academic Crisis

I actually come from this from the opposite side, insofar as there are sides. I majored in East Asian Studies as an undergraduate and devoured the many texts written by white men about Japanese and Chinese history; I learned my own history faster and better in the United States. I swallowed the lie that scholarship by those outside of a culture is more accurate and less biased, and it was easy to do so when the nationalism in my Chinese—not Taiwanese, Chinese—history textbooks in Taiwan (probably written and approved by the KMT) was so blatant. I very much believed that even though it was not possible to be fully objective, academics basically tried their best to do so, and that that method worked out overall.

I am no longer so sure about this. My final paper for a class last semester was on race and the Internet; I read quite a few articles on how racial and ethnic minorities use the Internet. Many were by POC, but even so, they were talking about "them" and what "they" did. It was incredibly disconcerting to read, and even though the studies were not about me per se, they made me feel like a bug under a magnifying glass, something to be examined and poked at and written about. It was many things that did so, particularly the contrast between informal quotes from those being studied and the academic language explaining and discussing and dissecting those quotes. It was all done with the intent of being objective, but I found I preferred the lack of that intent. I wanted to know how the authors defined race and racism and if they agreed or disagreed with the people they were quoting. By attempting to take on a veneer of objectivity, it read as though the writers had positioned themselves above the people they were writing about.

I did find articles and books that did not strike me this way, particularly ones from the school of Critical Sociology, but I did not cite them. I was too worried my professor would think my sources were "biased," that I was not constructing a "proper" argument, that I could not simply define things like race and racism for myself, but had to look for definitions of things like "aversive racism" or "POC" from "authoritative" sources.

It hurt to write that paper. It hurt every time I had to cite things I knew, every time I had to "prove" things that are common knowledge with most of the people I talk to online. It hurt to have to go through something with an obvious sexist, Western, white, middle-class, ablist, heteronormative slant and to not be able to just say "unmarked position defaults to the mythical norm" and have people be able to piece it together themselves.

Yes, academia in the United States is based on proof and citation. But much of that is also based on what you assume your audience knows and what you think you must explain. The general advice we got is to always assume people don't know, but there are always assumptions of what people know, assumptions of what language to use, of what vocabularly is common to the field. And, of course, when you assume what "most" people don't know, you are establishing a norm for conversation, and that norm is frequently based on that unmarked position.

And it is a conversation I am no longer interested in. Not on those terms.

The right to know and not know

The assumptions of what people know and what is common knowledge runs parallel with defining who has a right to know. If there is knowledge that the "majority" of people can be assumed not to know, then the corresponding action frequently is to discover that knowledge and to make it known. But again, we get the questions of "Who knows?" Who is this supposed majority, and why am I not surprised that it so often defaults to Western and white? Who is "discovering" the knowledge, and is it an actual discovery?

At a Wiscon panel on science and colonialism, I talked about who has the right to know with regard to science and probably derailed the panel quite a bit, as I am more concerned with how this plays out in the social sciences, as opposed to sciences that focus less on humans. This is, of course, not limited to social scientists or academics, but manifests itself everywhere. It's the history of stealing artifacts and bodies from people to display in museums as Other, the taking and naming of land in the name of "discovery," the experiments conducted on the bodies of disenfranchised people for knowledge, the idea that culture (but only some cultures) is free for the taking (but only by some people). It is people saying, "I know what gender you are. I know your body and what it does. I know what race you are and what that means. I know how and why you have sex. I know where your space is in life. I know what your reactions should be. I know who you are. And I will tell you, because I know better than you."

I sound like I oppose cross-cultural learning or scientific discovery, and I don't, not really. But there has been so much abuse carried out under the name of knowledge that I am wary of any blanket statement declaring that all people have the right to know. Because maybe we all do, but the way it's played out through history, only some people have had the right to know. Everyone else gets that knowledge forced upon them, written about them, is left outside of the process even as they are scrutinized.

And those who are most often given that blanket right to know are usually those who most often exercise the right to not know. You see it in the recent Avatar fail, but also in the way common and hidden knowledge plays out, in the way so many histories and stories are not lost, but deliberately destroyed or written out. You see it in how bits and pieces of culture are taken and assimilated, and how people using those pieces of culture do so with the assumption that they now know that entire culture. And when this lack of knowledge is combined with the belief in the right to know, we end up with people demanding explanations again and again, the repeated requests for academics to get into locked spaces so they can observe their subjects in the wild, the simultaneous asking for education even as the askers are hard at work denying all the answers they are given, with so many people wanting access without making ties to communities, without putting in any work.

Presumed audience and defaults

And this all somehow comes back to my blog and the spaces I occupy.

What should I explain? What should I assume people know? Who am I talking to? What should I say and how should I say it?

Over the years, I've been decreasingly inclined to write general posts on race and racism. I feel like I have nothing new to add, and more and more, I prefer to post in non-open spaces or to discuss things over chat or on email or on the phone with people I trust. I don't mind making 101 posts once in a while, but having to deliberately expose the costs of racism on me personally again and again is too painful to do very often.

I emphasize that this is a personal choice for me. I am incredibly grateful for people writing general posts and educating in comments. I have learned and continue to learn a lot from them, and carving out space in white-dominated areas is so hard and so painful.

I'm still trying to figure out how to create a spaces around me that are not default white, how to discourage unthinking demands for knowledge without discouraging all the intra-POC conversations where we are learning about each other and talking to each other about all our identites, how to have these conversations without their being taken and used as weapons against us.

More than that, I keep coming back to Andrea Hairston's closing challenge at the Conquest panel at Wiscon, where she asked (paraphrased), "What are we doing to protect our most vulnerable populations?"

What spaces are we creating? Who are they centered around? What kind of language is being used?

My pronouns here start to vary between "us" and "them" because of where I stand in terms of privilege and social justice, because I am still educating myself about so many aspects of social justice and how they intersect, because I am still trying with varying degrees of success to do anti-oppression work in areas where I have privilege, because I am still learning about how to contribute both to communities where I have privilege and where I do not. And I keep saying "I" because I don't yet know how to change things on a larger level when I am still working on not failing all the time.

I want to change so that my own ignorance is a burden and a statement about myself, not something forced on other people the way POC are forced to bear the burden of proof, to be the outliers and not the norm. I want "hidden" knowledge and "alternate" histories to be common knowledge and accepted history. I want a world that is radically different from the one we have now, where knowledge and knowing aren't constantly used against people.

Comments

[wealhtheow]

I'm so glad to see this post! I was in the audience of the "Science, Colonialism, Genocide, and Science Fiction" panel, and have thought about the comment you made then ever since.

[wealhtheow]

OK, so, I wanted to think about this a little before I responded.

I think your points dovetail with the criticisms leveled at the Singularity Narrative, or Open Source. The concept of "everyone has all knowledge and experience at their fingertips" is nice, but it ignores the fact that we already have a LOT Of knowledge available and don't pay attention to it, and that the knowledge we do get is all too often viewed through lenses greased with our biases. I think it's important for that criticism to loom larger in those debates.

BUT. I can't help but think that true knowledge is all that defeats bad knowledge. The only thing that strikes down prejudice and stereotypes is learning how wrong they are. And I'm sure you know this already, and I don't want to take away from the really excellent points you made in this essay, or dismiss the need for safe spaces. It's just that for me at least, there's a great deal of tension between not wanting to put the burden of education on already oppressed or under/mis-represented groups and wanting to make sure that their voices aren't silenced under the weight of majority groups studying them, or talking for them. I mean, I want to learn true history, or as close to the truth as I can get. And that's just not possible if only one group is speaking, or speaking where I can hear.

[coffeeandink]

The thing is, there are already many categories of knowledge which we exempt from universal dissemination. Nations limit the access of knowledge they consider dangerous to their security. Corporations keep competitive knowledge privileged. Individuals may decide not to disclose many kinds of information and some of these are so important we have enacted laws particularly to protect them (esp. medical). Why do nation-states get to declare information critical to their security and Indian nations within the US not get to declare information critical to their physical security and/or spiritual well-being? Why do corporations get to protect the knowledge that creates their wealth and POC communities not get to declare the knowledge and interactions that create their internal or intra-community bonds privileged information?

I am not myself much in favor of the nation-state or capitalism. I think those categories of protected information deserve a lot more scrutiny. But while we should be examining what the powerful protect as a privilege, we should be also examining what protections we can extend to the oppressed. And part of this is recognizing the built-in exemptions to our "universal" rules which we do not always acknowledge.

I am confused by the leap from "true knowledge defeats bad knowledge" to the belief that all knowledge, everywhere, must be made available to every human being on earth. Specifically, I do not see how you get from the valorization of "true knowledge" --let's say good information instead of disinformation-- to the principle that no individual or group can choose to withhold knowledge. Forcing under or misrepresented groups to disclose information does not benefit them.

I see this as playing out in very concrete ways in racial discrimination. Take RaceFail -- a lot of it involved powerful people insisting on their right to know, to disclose, and to disseminate personal information. Not just legal identities, but also whether POC existed, whether POC were in the conversation, how the conversation should run, what were valid contributions to the conversation, what the conversation should contain. People had to prove their legal identities, they had to prove they were POC, they had to prove were white, they had to prove they were educated, they had to prove they were emotional, they had to prove they'd read the POC touchstones known to white people and in the approved white way. White people kept demanding they had the right to know all of this and the authority to judge it and that POC or white antiracists or just anyone disagreeing with them had to provide them with huge amounts of information in order to be entitled to speak. So I really cannot sign off on a utopian vision of free information, when the "free" nature of the information is paid for by the emotional, mental, and physical costs of the oppressed.

[wealhtheow]

I totally agree with your entire comment. Heh, that'll teach me to type in vague generalities!

"I do not see how you get from the valorization of "true knowledge" --let's say good information instead of disinformation-- to the principle that no individual or group can choose to withhold knowledge."

To my mind, disinformation can only be destroyed by replacing it with good information. And the only way to get the good information out there is to be out there ourselves, handing it out. In a perfect world, the onus would not be upon marginalized groups. Some of our effort should probably go into shifting that responsibility—making sure the media and academia are aware that *they* need to provide trust, safety, and actual informed consent. And the majority of our efforts should be keeping ourselves safe and sane, and having our own conversations. But we need to keep the 101 communities useful, and populated with people who actually know what they’re talking about. We need to keep putting ourselves out there (when we can), because there are plenty of perfectly nice people who will miss out if the only information they see is the dis/misinformation spread by majority groups. And if they’re missing out, then the rest of us miss out too.

For me, there is a tug-of-war between wanting to ensure that people aren’t hurt or further oppressed by information gathered about them, and the fear that information that isn’t gathered together is lost to the rest of humanity. Knowledge is lost, over the years, as people leave communities or the communities themselves dissolve. If the only record of “how racial and ethnic minorities use the Internet” (to use oyceter’s example) is kept within that group, and never shared—eventually it will be gone forever. Websites die, people die—we need back-ups. That those back-ups need to be less biased and use less sketchy power dynamics--that I totally agree with.

[colorblue]

If the only record of “how racial and ethnic minorities use the Internet” (to use oyceter’s example) is kept within that group, and never shared—eventually it will be gone forever.

I don't see how this could be the case unless the group is gone forever, and if that happens then I don't see why it would be a tragedy if the knowledge they didn't want shared with outsiders isn't.

[wealhtheow]

"unless the group is gone forever"
But this does happen. Not necessarily that all the relatives or friends of the original group DIE, but that the language, or cultural norms, or what have you, don't get passed on. And, at the very least, descendants are generally voracious for knowledge about what came before them.

As to whether it's a tragedy--I feel that it's complicated. You're absolutely right that it's the group's decision to make. (A favorite story of mine deals with this--Elgin's We Have Always Spoken Panglish.) But I do think we need every bit of knowledge about ourselves and our world and history that we can get. Knowing the past can prevent terrible mistakes from re-occuring (though it rarely does); it can give people the sense that they're not the first to do this, and that they're not alone. So my opinion is, in situations where one is not part of a minority group being observed, one should do everything in one's power to help the group feel able to share their experiences/traditions/etc. Sometimes it just won't be safe for them to. But if attention is paid to *why* a group doesn't want to be interviewed or observed, then perhaps the obstacles can be removed.

[colorblue]

But this does happen. Not necessarily that all the relatives or friends of the original group DIE, but that the language, or cultural norms, or what have you, don't get passed on.

Yes, I know it happens. And do you know the context it usually happens in? And do you think the descendants are all clamoring for a savior to come (from the people that caused this to happen in the first place; from the people that are quite often still oppressing them) to lift them out of their ignorance?


Knowing the past can prevent terrible mistakes from re-occuring (though it rarely does); it can give people the sense that they're not the first to do this, and that they're not alone. So my opinion is, in situations where one is not part of a minority group being observed, one should do everything in one's power to help the group feel able to share their experiences/traditions/etc. Sometimes it just won't be safe for them to. But if attention is paid to *why* a group doesn't want to be interviewed or observed, then perhaps the obstacles can be removed.

Why is it still a big mystery to you why a group wouldn't want to be interviewed or observed, especially after reading this post? As to the obstacles that need to be removed, lets start with a majority culture that believes that only it has the right to set boundaries and enforce them.

Quite honestly, I find it hard to read your comments as anything other than an example of how it does not matter how many data points some people accumulate, it will do nothing at all to change things. Because Oyceter has put herself out there in explaining how people in academia sometimes seem to be using the hunt for knowledge as a further tool to Other those that they are studying/observing, has talked about how the quest for it oftentimes serves to reinforce hierarchies, and yet you are still here talking about the tragedy of minority people and cultures not being willing to be open books for everyone.

And I do not understand this mentality at all, this belief that knowledge is the cure for everything, because what I see happening is not people lacking access to knowledge but people filtering it to suit their worldviews, what I think is lacking is not information but empathy and respect for what is deemed Other. And until this cultures develops that, the real tragedy, to me, is not when the knowledge of a minority culture fails to be shared but when it is, when people from the majority culture steamroll in, with no respect for other's boundaries, and take knowledge they have no right to and use it and trivialize it and ultimately discard it as worthless, with a thousand and one justifications of why it was for the progress of all mankind.

So, yeah, my opinion is, in situations where one is not part of a minority group being observed, and one knows that said group isn't comfortable being observed, then one should not try to find ways to convince said minority group that it really, really wants to be observed, and doing so would be for the good of all mankind. The best thing to do is realize that the real obstacle might be oneself and stop intruding where one might not be wanted or welcome.

[la_vie_noire]

Co-signed. I wish I could be as articulated as you are.

[wealhtheow]

I am clearly writing very badly, because I don't actually disagree with most of your comment. Nor am I unaware of the problems you're talking about. Even the little history I know makes it clear that majority groups have been using legalities, academic language, pittance amounts of money, and meaningless promises, to get anything and everything they can grab from minority groups. I am arguing that that needs to stop happening. That's what I meant by "one should do everything in one's power to help the group feel able to share..." and I apologize that I was not clear or that my words are shouting connotations I'm not conscious of. I am definitely *not* trying to say that anyone should try convincing minority groups harder, but rather that the entire system of how we currently seek socio/anthro knowledge needs to be shifted.

When I called for attention to be paid "to *why* a group doesn't want to be interviewed or observed" it was not because it's "a big mystery" to me--I was saying that the would-be-observers need to learn to actually look and listen.

The one point I disagree with is that all the knowledge we need is out there, and that it's not being paid attention to or is twisted. No. We've lost methods of food preparation, whole dialects, traditions, codes of law, legends. The knowledge we do have has always been twisted by whatever biases the observers have--no one could argue otherwise. Knowledge, like every other aspect of society, has been used to reinforce existing power structures. But it isn't always. For example--asking people about who's gotten sick in the area can be used as proof to claim everyone there is dirty or unholy or what have you. OR that same information can be used to determine that the well is too close to a waste site.

I'm pretty sure my ignorance and/or poor articulation is turning this thread into a derail, so I'll step out now. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to. But anyway, thank you for trying to put me on the right track.

[colorblue]

I am clearly writing very badly, because I don't actually disagree with most of your comment.

And yet I disagree with yours, including the part where you claim that we agree.

You keep saying things like "I agree with you [that biases and power imbalances affect how we see the world] BUT [insert something that handwaves such things away because what matters is true knowledge that is for some inexplicable reason being lost]." Or "I agree with you [that context must be taken into account] BUT [insert something that handwaves context away because what matters is true knowledge that can *save lives*]", etcetc.

You came into a post that talked about how hierarchies and power imbalances affect how Western academics see the world and how their work oftentimes serves to reinforce those hierarchies and further tilt the power imbalances because they do not acknowledge them, how what is considered knowledge and who has a right to it and who can interpret it is often a product of where a person is standing, and that these power imbalances must be examined... and you said, and keep on saying, "Yes! I completely agree! But we must not forget that *true knowledge* is important!"

I think your decision to step out of the thread was a good one, and after this comment I'll do the same.

[wealhtheow]

"I think your decision to step out of the thread was a good one"

Yeah, apparently I needed a day off to see what was really going on in this thread. I got too caught up in arguing. Thank you for responding so sensibly and eloquently--and not just because *I* clearly needed to hear it.

[colorblue]

I'm glad to hear that's the case. Also, now that you do see what's going on in this post and threads, I'm curious about your answers to Sang's questions too.

[oyceter]

And until this cultures develops that, the real tragedy, to me, is not when the knowledge of a minority culture fails to be shared but when it is, when people from the majority culture steamroll in, with no respect for other's boundaries, and take knowledge they have no right to and use it and trivialize it and ultimately discard it as worthless, with a thousand and one justifications of why it was for the progress of all mankind.

Yes, this.

[sanguinity]

:: And do you know the context it usually happens in? And do you think the descendants are all clamoring for a savior to come (from the people that caused this to happen in the first place; from the people that are quite often still oppressing them) to lift them out of their ignorance? ::

Thank you, color_blue.

[colorblue]

You're welcome. And, I'm sorry if my thread might have minimized the questions & concerns you raised with wealhteow, made it seem as if I thought they didn't need to be addressed, because that isn't at all what I intended.

[oyceter]

Hrm. I generally do tend to go with education as the solution to ignorance and misinformation because I often default to the academic stance. But. I think the solution isn't as easy as simply replacing misinformation with the right information, especially when there's already so much disagreement as to what "right" information actually is.

I want a more thorough overturning of the current system so that the people who are being hurt by both misinformation and having knowledge about them disseminated against their will are put at the center. So that they are the ones making the call as to what is the right information about them and what information they want other people to have and what they want to keep to themselves and what they want to not pass on at all.

Theoretically I do think knowledge is value neutral. But because it is always in context and always created and consumed within power structures, I don't ever think it is value neutral in real life. Like Mely says, we already privilege knowledge for certain groups like corporations and nation-states. And more and more, I feel that changing the structure to put the most vulnerable at the center must come before figuring out what knowledge to disseminate and how to do it, otherwise, we just end up with people in power talking about disempowered people to other people in power.

[wealhtheow]

Agreed!

[sanguinity]

:: ...and the fear that information that isn’t gathered together is lost to the rest of humanity. ::

How is it that the rest of humanity has a claim on that information? It isn't theirs to lose.


:: Websites die, people die—we need back-ups. ::

"We" need backups? Or the people who own such information need backups? You keep saying "we", but I can't figure out who you're referencing by it.

[wealhtheow]

As I wrote earlier, it's the group's information and it's the group's decision whether or not to share that information. Humanity as a whole *has no right* to demand that information. But any other group--whether minority or majority--should *hope* to get knowledge from and about people whose experiences or mind-set do not match their own. If they do have that hope, then, as oyceter wrote, changing the structure to put the most vulnerable at the center must come before figuring out what knowledge to disseminate and how to do it, otherwise, we just end up with people in power talking about disempowered people to other people in power.

"You keep saying "we", but I can't figure out who you're referencing by it."
Sorry. I don't mean a majority group needs the back-ups. When I wrote that I was specifically thinking of fandoms (for which there is thankfully much less societal prejudice than, say, being homeless or a refugee or part of an oppressed ethnicity). When a fandom starts dissolving, or when an author/artist leaves fandom and takes all their content off the internet (for fear of it being found and linked to their off-line identity), they often load their work into a pdf and give it to a few of their friends. That way, all of their work and effort--all the things they were thinking about and working through, often for years--*can* be found...but only at the discretion of the people it actually concerns.

[wealhtheow]

To add to the back-up idea: what I was originally talking about was the importance of having our own information to counter the dis/misinformation spread by majority cultures. There are problems with using one's own records (they can still be used and twisted, and it does play into the very idea of empirical knowledge) but it's another tool that one can choose to use.

I was wrong in what I prioritized and emphasized. It's not anyone's duty to create or keep this knowledge, it's rarely safe or wise to hand out information when majority cultures come a'knocking, and I shouldn't have placed so much importance on humanity-as-a-whole getting all the knowledge we can get our hands on.

[sanguinity]

:: our own information to counter the dis/misinformation spread by majority cultures. ::

So you're speaking as a member of a minority culture?

[wealhtheow]

Yes, but not as a member of an ethnic or racial minority.

[sanguinity]

Thank you. Part of what initially upset me about your original comments was that I was reading you as using the so-called "non-divisive" "universal" we, where majority interests are allegedly neutral and in the best interest of everyone, and thus there is no conceivable need to distinguish between parties in a conversation. Even after you revised your emphasis on majority interests, that usage of "we" seemed to persist -- sometimes "we" meant a majority group, sometimes a minority group -- which bothered me. This clarification helps.


:: It's not anyone's duty to create or keep this knowledge, it's rarely safe or wise to hand out information when majority cultures come a'knocking, and I shouldn't have placed so much importance on humanity-as-a-whole getting all the knowledge we can get our hands on. ::

Agreed, yes. And the line of oyceter's that you quoted, about the need to move some parties to the center of the conversation, is crucial.

[laurashapiro]

Thank you for this. It's very thoughtful and thought-provoking, and I feel lucky to get to see your thoughts like this. It's not something I take for granted.

I still wanna kick that prof you had this year. Hard.

[oyceter]

ME TOO! SO MUCH HATE.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

It was incredibly disconcerting to read, and even though the studies were not about me per se, they made me feel like a bug under a magnifying glass, something to be examined and poked at and written about.

This is why we are so clear that there will be cutting about people attempting to use deadbrowalking and sex_and_race for their academic 'research'.

[oyceter]

Yes! I am so grateful for that!

[ciderpress]

This is a fantastic post; thank you so much for sharing it.

in the way so many histories and stories are not lost, but deliberately destroyed or written out. You see it in how bits and pieces of culture are taken and assimilated, and how people using those pieces of culture do so with the assumption that they now know that entire culture. And when this lack of knowledge is combined with the belief in the right to know, we end up with people demanding explanations again and again, the repeated requests for academics to get into locked spaces so they can observe their subjects in the wild, the simultaneous asking for education even as the askers are hard at work denying all the answers they are given, with so many people wanting access without making ties to communities, without putting in any work.

Yes. In addition, from my own experiences in academia, I frequently feel that relationships between academics and/or those who feel they have a natural right to knowledge and demand knowledge and the disprivileged communit being "observed" largely reflects real world dynamics, the relationship is often abused and is devoid of any groundwork of trust. I've been struck by the ordinary nature of the absence of informed consent in conversation contexts in fandom as well as academia; it's not surprising but the very lack of privileged people asking whether they can ask for education (but rather jumping straight to demanding education and then derailing through recrimination and tone arguments when they are refused).

Eh. I'm kind of rambling but this post has made me very thinky! Thanks!

[oyceter]

OMG yes. And just the—ha, totally going there—the tone in so many of the discussions I've seen, where things like race or sex or class or "third-world problems" are these academic issues to be dissected and written about. All had in classrooms and places where the people being talked about were not present. And I'm sure many of those students and teachers did have connections among the populations they were working with, but it was so incredibly off-putting. It felt like it was so easy to get into nitty-gritty details while ignoring the fact that we were talking about real people.

The worst thing was how easy it was for me to slip into that, because I still default to academic discourse and am so trained in discounting the "personal" and the "emotional."

[dichroic]

What's a better word than "discovery", to describe the moment when two cultures meet and begin to know about each other? I mean, I'm well aware that you're be entirely justified in using "beginning of the genocide" to talk about what happened when Columbus got to the Americas or Captain Cook to Australia. But it's an important moment historically and I'd like to have a word that acknowledges at least the possibility that one of them doesn't end up disappeared.

The best example of a non-genocidal contact I can think of is Marco Polo going to China; typically the word "voyage" is used, but that's not really very descriptive. I suspect his trip wasn't all that much of a new discovery on either side, that at least some level of East/West trade had gone on forever, but it was something of a milestone. I think.

"First contact", maybe?

[nojojojo]

I'm fond of "first contact", personally, as it emphasizes there's someone there to get in contact with. I've also heard that moment described as Encounter, but I'm drawing a blank on where I saw that usage. (Gah! Bad scholarship on my part!)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That's what it's called in science fiction, so why not? It implies alienness for that reason, but as long as it doesn't say which group the aliens are it may be all right.

[shewhohashope]

Ecounter?

That's what i call it.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I guess "contact" or "encounter"?

I also... hrm. I do not want to say China suffered the same under colonialism that other countries and peoples did, because it didn't. But I also can't isolate Marco Polo and the trade on the Silk Road from the increasing greed for Chinese goods centuries later and the very deliberate attempt to find the perfect trade item for China (Let's addict the country! It will totally balance our trade deficit!) when Chinese rulers turned out to be less interested in trading with European countries.

So I do not know enough about Marco Polo to say if his original journeys were harmful or not (I suspect not, given the time lag in travel due to technology and etc.), but it is also hard to forget that it did not end harmlessly. And that even today, trade is still not a neutral tool.

[thistleingrey]

At a friendly tangent: we think of Marco Polo all the time, but we think less often of William of Rubruck, traveling a little earlier, or of ibn Battuta a little later. For all of these, really, isn't it more than "two cultures"? We know about the individuals who went very far indeed, but the ones who had reasons to travel between *only* two cultures all the time tend not to have impressed anyone strongly enough to have their texts copied, recopied, eventually typeset. Or they were too busy being merchants, lawyers, doctors, whatever to write down their observations. For that matter, someone was reading Arabic in a manuscript in SW England (I think Exeter), in the eleventh century.

Re: cultural getting-to-know, my impulse is to think in terms of individual incidents, exposures, and changes (or refusals to change) in personal thought, rather than whole groups coming into contact. But then, I'm a medievalist, not a demographer; I can at least see that the flaw in my preference is that the standard analytical tools work better in terms of groups, synthesis, etc. One person meeting individuals of other cultures doesn't "count"--except for the individuals involved--unless there's a big splash and a bestselling book/film/etc. Maybe? Yet it is still meaningful contact for those individuals. *fumbles around in dark*

[skywardprodigal]

But when Columbus came here, he came using technology garnered from the what the Portuguese would eventually call Angola and claim was actually Portugal (not a colony) and this while hunting for humans to enslave and gold.

That's why they came.

It's not first contact because the sea-faring Africans from whom Prince Henry's techs got the tech for navigating the oceans were already in contact with the Europeans and the native inhabitants of what's now known as the Americans in the common parlance.

[nojojojo]

I want to say -- I've always enjoyed your writing. You make me think differently about things, whether that's manga or Deep Race Issues. I can see how that would be draining, and if you need to step back or stop, do it. I'll be sad, but I think you've inspired your share of others to do the same thing, so you can "retire" in good conscience. =)

Thanks for sharing all this.

[oyceter]

Thank you for reading! It really means a lot to me that you say that, because I really look up to what you write and what you do!

I don't think I'm stopping, but I've been wanting to more incorporate politics in all my posts, so it's not just Big Social Justice Post, kthxbai. And I want more in-depth conversation where people don't have to keep fending off 101 comments.

[dsgood]

One bit of bias you haven't mentioned: The assumption that "the West" is the only heir of classical Greco-Roman civilization. This leaves out a few places, including the Arab and Greek Orthodox worlds.

[oyceter]

Yes, thank you for mentioning that! I hate the canonical scholarly trajectory of (sometimes Mesopotamia and Egypt) -> Greece -> Rome -> (a little Byzantine Empire maybe) -> The Rise of Western Europe! (maybe a little Eastern Europe if we feel like it).

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

This post gave me a lot to chew over, and crystallized some things for me.

And those who are most often given that blanket right to know are usually those who most often exercise the right to not know.

Yeah, that. It's what I've noticed, but couldn't put into words. Presumed objectivity ends up being the justification to pick and choose what knowledge is and isn't valuable and credible. And it took me a while to realize that, because I did believe in knowledge for its own sake and well-intentioned academic objectivity.

I want to change so that my own ignorance is a burden and a statement about myself, not something forced on other people the way POC are forced to bear the burden of proof, to be the outliers and not the norm.

And this, too. I've wondered how you couldnavigate finding commonality and interPoC alliance building, while also avoiding being appropriative of another PoC group's experiences. In other words, how do you avoid reinforcing the racist system and not use people as stepping stones?

Because it's not fun to have your experience and words and identity dissected, twisted, and used as raw material to reinforce someone else's worldview.

[oyceter]

I've wondered how you couldnavigate finding commonality and interPoC alliance building, while also avoiding being appropriative of another PoC group's experiences. In other words, how do you avoid reinforcing the racist system and not use people as stepping stones?

Yeah. And a lot of this I am still figuring out, because there is so much baggage in terms of how much internalized racism there is and how it also interacts with the different groups we're all a part of. And to somehow do it while not denying or policing people's experiences but also while checking yourself to make sure you're not contributing to the problem.

[kothithelegu.livejournal.com]

I'd like to approach your comments from a slightly different perspective of emotional themes. Please feel free to disagree! I apologize ahead of time for what is not clear. :)

First, I believe that feeling disillusioned is a natural process of learning when you realize the limitations of your approach and its ability to describe reality with its complexity intact.

Second, it seems perfectly reasonable that you would feel anger that these studies de-humanize their subjects. Condensing what is "important" about the behavior, activities, actions, thoughts and words of subjects requires a context in which some parts are kept and some discarded. Much is left out that could illustrate important and human qualities of the people studied. Even worse, the information that is garnered could lead those same populations under study to misinterpret themselves based on a limited or myopic understanding propagated by that research.

Third, it makes sense that you might feel it is an injustice to blindly accept a context composed of the "white", "Western", "male" viewpoint as gender/race neutral and objective. However much this perspective creates a useful simplifying tool for analysis, it can also lead to a fragmented and incomplete understanding.

Fourth, with this emotional backdrop it seems eminently sane to become frustrated and withdraw from fruitless argument or dialog. This is especially true when conversation is used as ammunition to propagate ignorance instead of growing mutual understanding.

I think it's great that you're using your experiences as an impetus to search for a new type of conversational space. One idea, these new conversational spaces could be centered on people's common human experiences such as birth, death, work, leisure, family, friends, ceremonies, music, etc. Using inclusive pronouns such as "we" instead of "us" and "them" in discussion, the conversation could focus on the form each of these experiences takes in a particular group or culture. Maybe diverse people can come to understand their similarities, differences and the underlying cultural assumptions that drive them by comparing and contrasting shared experiences among human beings.

[oyceter]

My problem with looking at it simply in terms of emotional themes is that it then becomes centered around "common human experiences" like you talk about. And while it is helpful at times to emphasize people's similarities, I am very wary of doing so when that emphasis ends up denying power imbalances and structural injustices.

I see this happening a lot just in terms of racism, when people extrapolate from feeling left out to being racially discriminated against, or not recognizing that, for example, the Black experience in America, despite commonalities with other experiences, is not something everyone understands or can partake of.

That's why I have a problem with the current definitions of "common" experiences, because with the power structures we have today, those experiences always default to the common experiences of the people already in power and continue to write out other people. I think efforts need to go beyond inclusion and sharing similarities and differences; they need to completely undermine and overturn what people currently consider common or not.

[la_vie_noire]

Thank you for writing this. It was necessary to say.

[oyceter]

Thank you for reading!

[pseudo_tsuga]

I just wanted to thank you for writing this. It's given me a lot to chew over.

[oyceter]

Thanks for reading!

[thistleingrey]

Thank you for this, also.

Mostly, I need to go and chew on your thinky thoughts :) --I've been noticing in my self-ed reading how various scholars have positioned themselves.... In order to assert something and synthesize, one does need a certain visible confidence, I think, but as you suggest, that manner need not cover *everything*, nor extend as far as blind arrogance.

I am not really surprised by the fact that my tossing up an on-topic IBARW post yesterday yielded default-white comments. (Saddened a bit, since the commenters so far are friends or acquaintances, not strangers, but it's not a surprise.) All I did to offset the construction of a default-white space was to assert myself: this is my voice, and it is not default white. It's like litmus paper: if that kind of small act does suffice, one day, things will have changed a little.

[oyceter]

Oof. I just went to read the comments and... yeah. There is so much resistance to the idea of non-default-white-space too so that even small things lead to a disproportionate reaction of people trying to say "No! Let us shift the conversation back to whiteness!"

[daedala]

Thank you for writing this. I kept wanting to say something smart, but now I think I will just give up on that and comment with thanks. :)

And those who are most often given that blanket right to know are usually those who most often exercise the right to not know.

Yes. Most privilege seems to come down to the ability to choose...whatever. Knowledge, integrity, space, privacy, what to do in life, what to say, how to say it... :(

[oyceter]

Thank you for reading!

[skywardprodigal]

Oyce,

Is it possible to get a copy of that paper, or at least the sources you used, and the sources you wanted to use but couldn't?

I'm designing a course on conflict and communication and your perspective would be helpful to me.

I'm struggling with how to explain that hidden knowledge and alternate histories are common knowledge and accepted history. And I'm trying to work this out within the framework of making peace.

[oyceter]

Um, I might pass on giving you the paper itself because it's kind of embarrassing (it's not written very well and in fact was written in maybe 12 hours, haha). But I'll go back and try to find my sources and the ones I didn't cite. And feel free to PM/email me if you have questions or anything!

Your course sounds awesome!