I don't think that authors take on the language of the privileged (or whatever you want to call it); I think it's that the privileged adopt the language of ownership rights. The author uses the language of ownership rights because his culture tells him he has ownership over his book. (He probably doesn't understand the history that would help him see the separate problems with that statement, any more than I understand about minor league baseball, because neither of us have ever been much interested in making studies about those respective topics.) The unfairly privileged use the language of ownership rights because their subculture also couches things in terms of their ownership, doesn't it? I don't think there's anything so awful about the language, except maybe that it's disturbingly easy to co-opt.
Forgive me, the rest is going to be less academic and a lot more controversial. You did ask for longer.
...But I get profoundly uncomfortable when I see things like:
"Maybe that's where my innate discomfort lies, with the author/writer tension: because I cannot justifiably condemn all authors as blind to their privilege (in the way I might with imperialism or sexism or the rape culture).
Of course, that's just from your post, but I see that kind of incredibly exclusive language all over fandom, and it makes it hard for me, very nearly the "cissex, cisgender, het, protestant, white man", to participate. I often feel like fandom, or at least the most meta oriented part of fandom, increasingly defines itself by opposition to the institutions of power. Along the way, the people who occupy the institutions of power become both alienated and misunderstood, and so we haven't 'checked privilege' at all; we've created a subculture of privilege that happens to use language of opposition. I often think that an author, looking in on fandom, must sometimes see things the way I also sometimes see them: "It doesn't matter what I say; so long as they know who I am and what I look like, it won't matter."
So, in terms of educating people about discrimination, and oppression, and Othering, fandom is a massive success.
no subject
Date: 23 Feb 2011 07:25 am (UTC)Forgive me, the rest is going to be less academic and a lot more controversial. You did ask for longer.
...But I get profoundly uncomfortable when I see things like:
"Maybe that's where my innate discomfort lies, with the author/writer tension: because I cannot justifiably condemn all authors as blind to their privilege (in the way I might with imperialism or sexism or the rape culture).
Of course, that's just from your post, but I see that kind of incredibly exclusive language all over fandom, and it makes it hard for me, very nearly the "cissex, cisgender, het, protestant, white man", to participate. I often feel like fandom, or at least the most meta oriented part of fandom, increasingly defines itself by opposition to the institutions of power. Along the way, the people who occupy the institutions of power become both alienated and misunderstood, and so we haven't 'checked privilege' at all; we've created a subculture of privilege that happens to use language of opposition. I often think that an author, looking in on fandom, must sometimes see things the way I also sometimes see them: "It doesn't matter what I say; so long as they know who I am and what I look like, it won't matter."
So, in terms of educating people about discrimination, and oppression, and Othering, fandom is a massive success.