Linky thinky things

[megwrites]

PSA: (One Way) Not To Look Like An Offensive Jackass (link goes to dreamwidth) by deepad.

To quote her words directly:

To not know, in 2008, 2009, 2010, that outsider ethnography is a fundamentally flawed source of information only acceptable when supplimented by insider testimony? Or knowing, not to care?

That violates the standards I require from published authors. (Or anyone on the internet who expects their pronouncements to even be taken seriously enough to argue with.)

I agree with everything deepad has written. Absolutely, 100%. Though I would tack on that it is not only revolting but a sign of lazy scholarship to rely only on Western sources when writing non-Western ethnographies.

I find it so funny that historians will, when writing about a group they feel they must respect, go through great lengths to make sure they're talking to direct sources.

I recently read a biography of Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser who is a British woman writing about a French Queen and the court surrounding her. If you turn to her bibliography, it is filled with the works of French people. She consults French sources, thanks French people in her Author's note and even mentions that she went straight to a French museum to view the Queen's Book of the Wardrobe. In short, though Fraser herself is British, she values and privileges French sources and scholarship in her book.

More than that, in the book Fraser does cite Austrian or British or non-French sources but is careful to note that they were distant, they had national biases, that many came from ambassadors or courtiers who had political agendas and thus had reason to lie or stretch the truth or give weight to unfounded rumors.

And this is what I could call rigorous, thorough, respectful scholarship.

So why is it that so many Western authors cannot do the same for non-Western or Native subjects? I think it comes down to respect in the end. That may sound over simplified, but I really do think there is a fundamental lack of respect that a wide swath of Western academics bring to bear when writing about say, India, China, or even Native Americans.

I think, also, there is a sense that Western academics are doing these other groups some sort of favor by writing histories about them, as though it's enough just to scrawl down some information garnered from OTHER Western sources without once considered how devalued that information is or what kind of bias comes with it. It's as though one is supposed to be content that their group was even written about at all, and out of that gratitude shouldn't complain about whether the finished product is any good.

I think it also comes from some absurd notion that somehow Western academics will manage to be unbiased about a culture when native sources will be biased, that a Western academic comes in with clean hands or some such nonsense. As though consulting the French about a French ruler would be perfectly fine but daring, for instance, to consult actual Indian people concerning Indian history would be too fraught for publication.

It makes me angry when I see this, because I really believe in the study of history as a validating, empowering experience - especially for those who desperately need empowerment. History has the unique function of being able to show a people what they have survived, what they are capable of, who they are, what they should be doing, where they came from, what their place is.

Don't believe me? Note how many times during this recession we're in that American media has referenced the Great Depression, shown pictures and statistics and film clips of the era. In doing this, American people (or at least white, middle class Americans) are shown, "Here, look, you survived something really bad in the past, something worse than this and you recovered and became strong. Thus proving you can do it again."

While that doesn't solve anyone's individual problems, it does solve a lot of collective problems. People aren't making runs on the banks, people are panicking, nobody's trying to overthrow the government through a violent revolution, the lines and lines of unemployed aren't charging on Washington.

Because we have evidence, in the form of our history, that we don't need to do those things and that they don't really work. We are shown that waiting it out, hoping for the best, and trusting our system to correct itself is a better strategy.

And if you don't think a stable government, even in bad economic times, isn't vital to survival, well - go spend a few weeks in less stable areas of the world and tell me how you fare there. Tell me how commerce, education, or even simple safety are affected.

So when the history of a people is erased or even edited, there's a shared cultural trauma inherent in that act. You erase their evidence, you move the points in their trajectory, you change where they're going by changing the story of where they've been.

To borrow from a European folktale, you're eating the bread crumbs they leave behind themselves to get home at night. And yes, people need to get home at night. They need to reference their origins to establish identity. When you edit the tale of those origins, you edit the identity.

And the thing about editing is that it always is to the benefit and tastes of the editor. This is a great thing when it comes to novels - bad when it comes to outside scholarship of ethnography. These authors are, piece by piece, making an effort to edit the identity of those they write about without once consulting those very people.

Which is why it is important that we as readers try our best to return the privilege of editing and conserving identity to those who should have it. I'm not a published author, have about zero pull anywhere, but I do have a choice in my reading and purchasing - and that means that I can make sure that when I seek out histories and biographies that I make sure I'm getting them from authors who are from that culture where possible and making sure that if I read from outside authors, that those authors have been rigorous and consulted members of that group and made sure to value their sources and information about those from outside.

All of which I'm pretty sure deepad said better and more succinctly.