Your Orientalist Genre Anthology of Exoticism (or, WTF, Ticonderoga?)
Ticonderoga Publications is currently reading for an anthology called Dreaming of Djinn. All well and good, right? Things get rather strange, however, when you read the description: This anthology, with the working title Dreaming of Djinn, will look at romantic Orientalism through a speculative fiction lens. You might find lost cities, magical lamps, mummies, thieves, intrepid explorers, slaves, robotic horsemen, noble queens, sorcerers, outcast princes, harems, dancers, djinn, assassins and even smart-talking camels and cats, set in exotic Persia, Egypt, Arabia, the Ottoman Empire, or a modern incarnation of these. Oh boy, here we go! The Middle East isn’t exotic. The oceans of Europa are exotic, because fuck-all lives there; if you stuck someone in them, I suspect their first reaction would be “Holy shit, I’m miles under ice in an ocean on another planet.” Hell, even the oceans on Earth are exotic for the same reason (“Holy shit, I’m inside a submarine in the Marianas Trench!”). People live in the Middle East, that oh-so-exotic place with all the different countries and peoples and histories (it’s a country like Africa, right? Right? Ha!). I know, that’s shocking, right? Maybe I should say “people.” That’s better. That way you can question whether they are people, since they’re all exotic and whatever. Unless, of course, if you take your head out of your ass and you realize that, hey, people from the Middle East live in this country, and other Western countries, and many of them have kids, so to say “oh, hey, those weird people from Persia are exotic weirdos” is sort of like saying “My left arm is strange, but my right one is el normal!” And that’s really the problem. Are there “exotic” cultures on this planet? I don’t know. I don’t know about all the cultures on this planet. I’m sure there are cultures that seem strange to me, but I’m in tune with my own reality enough to know that that opinion is not relevant because it is subjective. Other cultures are exotic because they are not my own culture. And this is really the problem of Orientalism as Edward Said articulated it, and as so many academics and non-academics alike now understand it. The moment we start producing these binaries, in which one culture is “normal” and the other is “exotic” (read: savage, wrong, not-us, etc.), then we are engaging in orientalist behavior. That the editors used Orientalism in the description without noting this profound irony is disconcerting. I’m sure they mean well, and that what they really want is to find are stories which show pulpy adventures taking place in the Middle East and other places once identified as part of “the Orient.” There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s even a pretty good idea. But I certainly hope they think through the implications of their call for stories, or they might end up with an actual anthology of Orientalist Romances, chock full of racism, ethnocentric stereotypes, and so on. Something like this: Anywho… ——————————————————– What does everyone else think about this?
Basic Conference Etiquette: Don’t Be THAT Guy
Anyone who attends conferences (academic or otherwise) knows there are three kinds of annoying people who attend: People who run way overtime. People who do not come prepared to give a talk. People who don’t actually ask a question during the Q&A. There are probably more, but I’d like to talk about just these three for anyone thinking of attending a conference. There may be a bit of snark to follow… STFU Already When I say that people who run way overtime are annoying, I am not referring to people who add 3 minutes to a 15-minute presentation. That’s practically normal, in all honesty. Rather, I’m referring to douchebags who run 5-10 minutes over time. Because when you run over time, you’re in fact saying “I did not prepare at all.” You’re saying “I’m more important.” “Who cares if I suck time away from the others? They’re dumbasses anyway.” And here’s the truth: you’re not that interesting that we want to hear you talk for longer than the allotted time. Really. You’re not. While you drone on and on about your topic, we’re hoping you’ll shut up so we can get a drink, or shift in our chairs, or move on to another person with a different topic. Some of us even hope you fall down so we can laugh. Others hope for worse things (perhaps you’ll catch an STD from the chair, or one of the lamp fixtures will accidentally fall on you, or a gorilla will run into the room and kidnap you…if only…) If you go to a conference, don’t be that guy. Practice. It’s okay if you go over a little bit. It happens. Things never go exactly as planned. But don’t bring a 20-page paper to a conference where you’ve got 20 minutes to present. 3 minutes a double-spaced page — that’s the average. Rambling About Nonsense Does Not a Talk Make Let me tell you a story about an annoying person. This person happened to have flown all the way to Florida from a foreign university (no, the foreign-ness isn’t relevant except to say “he came a long way for a conference”). He came with some papers in hand — presumably his presentation. And so, when said person went up to give his talk, you’d assume he gave something like a talk, right? Wrong. Said person decided that he’d ramble about a famous philosopher for close to 20 minutes (5 minutes over time; see previous point), read three paragraphs from his presentation, and decided his presentation would be a good time to hawk his book and the conference he’s putting together elsewhere. Oh-ho! You sly devil. People come to conferences for two main reasons: To meet people (network) To hear new ideas They don’t go to conferences to be lectured to about things that make no sense, nor to be inundated with advertising. When you go to a conference, it is essential that you actually have something prepared. It need not be an essay proper. I’ve seen great talks given by people working straight from notes, and people working from PowerPoint. But you have to have something to say, or you’re wasting everyone’s time. And that pisses people off, especially if they have academic standards. Is There a Question in There? I once suffered the consequences of a rambler at an academic conference. Ramblers are a kind of pernicious virus that can’t actually infect anyone with anything but annoyance. This rambler decided to use all 15 minutes of the Q&A section to launch critiques at one of my fellow panelists. No questions. Just “I disagree, and here’s why, and also there’s this, and here’s why that is relevant. Oh? You answered? Well, how about this…” If it takes you more than one minute to lay out your question, then you should save it for afterwards. Q&A is about getting answers; it is not your soapbox. We don’t want to hear your voice for 15 minutes. Get your own panel! If you want a soapbox, get a blog (hey, look at that — I’ve got one!). Otherwise, ask your question, sit down, and shut up. And Moving On Don’t do these things. If you want to be taken seriously. If you want people to be interested in what you have to say. If you actually want people to respect your opinion (that doesn’t mean they like you, but it does mean that when they listen, they actually want to engage). If you want all that, then you have to act like a professional. Come prepared with an appropriate-length presentation. And make sure that you don’t spend forever trying to ask a non-question question. Or you can be a douchebag. Up to you… Any questions?
#NaPoWriMo Entry #9: “Great Fictions for a Maiden”
No need to explain the inspiration for this one. It’s self-evident. I know what you might be saying. “Another love poem? When did you become such a sop?” One might answer “when he got a girlfriend,” but that wouldn’t really account for it. I’m simply a hopeless romantic at heart, and so I write these little poems, bad as some of them are, as expressions of that silly habit. Do with that information what you will. (Yes, I am four poems behind now. So sue me…) Here goes: “Great Fictions for a Maiden” For you I give my lion’s roar until the mountains quiver in their foundations and beg for mercy. Only you can give it to them with your milk honey touch. For you I raze cities and continents so that they might know what it is to be willing to sacrifice worlds for another. For you I pluck the moon and the stars from the sky with sad little fingers until skin burns to ashes and the atoms split. For you I tell great fictions, for there is no other way to express the inexpressible except to indulge in fibs and drudge up centuries of falsehoods trapped in men’s hearts. For you there is no end to that journey, to the day-by-day expressions which threaten to terrify mountains and destroy continents and split atoms. For you I give these little things as proof for a theory with no answers.