personal_mythos

I've been trying to think about the politics of textbooks, and why they usually feel so remedial. This stems in part from my membership in Wikibooks (a wiki textbook site run by the same foundation that runs Wikipedia). I'm considering working on the book about feminism, which is absolutely terrible right now. There is very little content, a lot of red links (removed or never created pages), no readily visible activity, and what little content there is is very textbook remedial (possibly because some of it came from Wikipedia) and fairly U.S. and Europe-centric. Bleurgh.

I'm really not sure if anyone would use even a more complete version of the book, and I like the idea of course readers as opposed to textbooks, because a reader always has a sense of being incomplete, and because readers mean you get into materials used by theorists and whatnot right away as an undergrad. Then again, a wiki is also never complete and it's somewhat egalitarian (depending on access to and comfort with technology). A wiki textbook, then, is odd - although I suppose traditional encyclopedias reflect similar institutional viewpoints and privilege to textbooks. I feel like a feminist textbook ought to look very different from most textbooks, and a wiki might be able to do it, but by definition, of course, I couldn't do it alone, and I'm afraid I'd have to.

My other problem is that though I've been on Wikipedia for a while, I've never felt up to writing an article about feminism - the only article I wrote from scratch was the one about Drakkar Entertainment, a German company that owns several record labels and does other services for bands as well (the current version is probably quite changed from that). That article was mostly an abbreviated form of the English version of the about page on their site. My most significant other contribution was to translate most of the NASA article from English to French a couple of years ago (before that the French version was only a short article corresponding mostly to the introduction from the English one). I've always felt nervous about writing a complete article, especially on a complex and contested subject like feminism. But I suppose I should be bold.

Anyone want to pitch in?



By the by, I ran into a classmate today, and we were talking about wikipedia for some reason. When I mentioned I had an account, she seemed surprised and asked if that meant I could edit it. I said that anyone could edit most articles, even without an account. She seemed impressed and asked if I had done so. This whole incident made me wonder if I'm unusually nerdy or tech-savvy, or if she was unusually the opposite, or a little of both. Hmmm.

It's beautiful, is it not? As you can see, I bought it from the Vagina Monologues group on campus. Around the edges, the flyer reads: Whats special about your vagina - What does your vagina remind you of - what does it smell like - if your vagina got dressed what would it wear - if it could speak what would it say

Very thought provoking. When I attempted to imagine my vagina getting dressed, I could only imagine a sort of butch dyke look (although how it manages that I couldn't tell you).

Also, I was going to get into some long introspection about why I'm sometimes shy and how much it sucks, but then it occurred to me that it would be far more entertaining to post Anaïs' "Mon coeur, mon amour", (my heart, my love) which explains part of how I feel these days. Basically it's a song about finding self-absorbed couples really annoying when one is single.
( Video and English translation after the cut )

The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley is one of my favorite series of novels. I discovered it thanks to my parents, who own copies of Exile's Song and Sharra's Exile, which sparked off my love for the series, as well as The Heirs of Hammerfell, which I thought was rather terrible. I haven't read all of the books by any means, but loved Exile's Song, The Shadow Matrix, and Traitor's Sun, which form a kind of a trilogy, as well as the various bits about the Renunciates. I've also read Stormqueen, which was enjoyable, Two to Conquer, which is weird in an interesting way, Rediscovery, which I liked, and The World Wreckers, which made me rather uncomfortable at the time. I was somewhat disappointed by The Alton Gift, published posthumously. I just read the much older The Bloody Sun, which I'll discuss below. There might be others I'm forgetting.

Darkover is interesting from a feminist or a queer perspective. Many of Bradley's works contain some critique of gender roles, including Darkover. Darkover itself is a cold planet settled by humans who end up losing their advanced technology. Over the course of hundreds of years they develop psychic power and a feudal system ruled by a class containing many psychics. There are also several other intelligent races on the planet - Chieri, isolationist telepaths who sometimes interbreed with humans (usually under the influence of the local halucinogenic/aphrodisiac pollen), Trailmen, the equally shy carriers of Trailmen's fever (deadly to humans), and Kyrri, occasionally used as servants, among others.

Darkovan society is basically patriarchal, but it has local groups that contest this, as well as the occasional well-meaning offworlder once explorers from Earth reestablish contact (in Rediscovery). More unusually for a series of science fiction/fantasy novels, many of the protagonists are female. Some are gay or lesbian ('lovers of men' and 'lovers of women') or bisexual. 'Lovers of men' find an outlet in certain traditional relationships - oaths of brotherhood, the paxman/lord relationship. 'Lovers of women' find it in the Renunciates or Free Amazons, a group that renounces traditional subservient types of marriage, takes their mother's name instead of their father's surname, and passes their own name onto their children. Of course not all of them are into women, but it's basically a friendly place. Then too, the Chieri are hermaphrodites as one character finds out to his surprise and consternation. There are a lot of stories about forbidden love here.

One wonders if the conflict between the Terranan, who wish to add Darkover to their Federation and the Darkovans, who by and large wish to remain independent in order to change at their own pace and preserve their culture is not in fact an allegory about post-colonial contexts or development. Certainly the context is very different, but some aspects are similar, such as the Terranan sending numerous anthropologists, musicologists, cartographers and so forth to the planet. It's amusing to see descriptions of Darkovan reactions to these people. One of the areas where the analogy really breaks down (besides, you know, the whole history thing) is that the saturation of Darkover with Terranan and their projects would appear to be rather lower than that of many countries with development projects. Bradley offers several explanations for this - Darkover is remote, it is cold, and Federation law limits the amount of permissible interference.

Onto The Bloody Sun. This is the story of one Jeff Kerwin, Jr., a character who shows up in Exile's Song and the subsequent books. I was eager to read it, but what surprised me was that The Bloody Sun felt like a prototype for Exile's Song in some ways - both are the story of a Darkovan raised primarily offworld who has suppressed some memories of their early childhood on Darkover. They come to the planet for different reasons - Jeff to seek his heritage and return home, Margaret from Exile's Song for work, but both find the planet of their birth at times confusing, at other times familiar. Locals treat them with a mixture of friendliness, suspicion, and confusion. On the other hand, The Bloody Sun offers a fairly different view of life in the Towers - the centers of psychic activity on Darkover. In the time in which The Bloody Sun is set, the Keeper, a woman leading a Tower, who is as much symbolic as actually powerful, is required to lead a very isolated and virginal existence. By the time of Exile's Song, this has changed, but the later books do not mention the otherwise high degree of sexual activity in the Towers - polyamory is considered not only a-ok but expected! There is also a level of cameraderie even in the stodgiest of the Towers, Arilinn, that surprised me.

When I got The Bloody Sun, I also bought a book by the same author called Witchlight, because it also reminded me of Exile's Song. Perhaps I'll write about that when I finish it.

Also, I was telling one of my classmates about it, and she said she would love to have a class on feminist fiction. I agree, especially if it can include 'genre' fiction (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, etc.). I often finding myself exchanging book recommendations based on which books have interesting female characters, relatively positive portrayls of same-sex attraction, gender-bending, etc.