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Is Dany a White Savior?


Corvo the Crow
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1 minute ago, SeanF said:

@the trees have eyes"Problematic" is one of those words that should be removed from literary and artistic criticism.  It's used not to criticise a work for its artistic merit, but rather to judge it insofar as it corresponds to the political opinions of the critic.

Art should not be the servant of politics.

I quite liked the word "problematic" at one time. It's a good way to make subtle critiques of stuff that come off as clunky or somewhat thoughtless, but you don't want to write off completely, as it's something you love.

Or that's what I thought. But then I realized that there's a whole subfield of pseudo-intellectual academics who "problematize" every aspect of culture without ever having to think about workable alternatives. And even that was before the real advent of social media, when terms like "problematic" became even more flattened, and now basically functions as a call for censorship. 

(but I still say "problematic" sometimes, at least in conversations with people who know what I mean when I say it)

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On 3/12/2023 at 6:41 PM, SeanF said:

Thank you.

The arguments that are made against Daenerys' anti-slavery campaign, are all (in-universe and out of universe) made from the viewpoint of the slave owner, and those pampered pets like Xaro's "friend", who make their living from selling luxuries to slave owners, or working for them as overseers, accountants, etc.

I mean, there are plenty of arguments to be made against the mistakes that Daenerys made (mostly, being far to lenient and naive in her treatment of slavers) , but no argument can be made that freeing people is morally wrong.

I think one should differentiate between Daenerys' aims and means.

In short: yes, her anti-slavery campaign is commendable. But what, exactly, has she done to make it stick?

So far, not a whole lot, it seems. And she has made a lot of mistakes and morally questionable decisions.

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14 hours ago, Aldarion said:

I think one should differentiate between Daenerys' aims and means.

In short: yes, her anti-slavery campaign is commendable. But what, exactly, has she done to make it stick?

So far, not a whole lot, it seems. And she has made a lot of mistakes and morally questionable decisions.

Well, we’ve been waiting on a cliffhanger for 12 years.

If, as I expect, the slavers are defeated outside Meereen, and Volantis erupts in revolution, then I think that Slavers Bay will be free permanently.  

The slavers’ monopoly of violence will have been broken, and the Dothraki will no longer be providing the raw material for slaving.

That’s not to say everything will be sweetness and light.  Doubtless the same dictators and tyrants will emerge as did in Europe and the Americas, after 1789.

But, the ancien regime will be gone for good.

Edited by SeanF
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13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, we’ve been waiting on a cliffhanger for 12 years.

If, as I expect, the slavers are defeated outside Meereen, and Volantis erupts in revolution, then I think that Slavers Bay will be free permanently.

Insofar as their culture is concerned, it also seems that their over-the-top slavery hinders them to actually make some societal progress. Volantis, for instance, is clearly in decline, most likely because of the crippling effects too many slaves would have on the economy. They have a chance to really extend the liberties the free landowners of the Freehold have to a larger percentage of the people who live within the state.

If the place is going to have a renaissance it will come only after slavery is ended.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

@the trees have eyes"Problematic" is one of those words that should be removed from literary and artistic criticism.  It's used not to criticise a work for its artistic merit, but rather to judge it insofar as it corresponds to the political opinions of the critic.

Art should not be the servant of politics.

I'm inclined to agree with @Phylum of Alexandria on this. The word is, or at least was, useful. But the more it's used the more its meaning gets diluted until it's really just a way of throwing shade. In this kind of field, language is always evolving and trends towards the lowest-common denominator of use, as the majority of users are writing (or speaking) sub-undergrad-calibre commentary in which hyperbolic buzzwords get thrown around carelessly until the casual use drowns out any the considered, useful application.

By the standards of social-justice polemic (on either side) "problematic" is relatively measured, but overuse has robbed it of a lot of its meaning. We can replace "problematic" in commentary with something else and we no doubt will, but the same thing will happen to that in turn.

These things go round and round. Words that were considered politically correct in the 70s are now deeply offensive. Words which were considered offensive in the 70s have now been "reclaimed" and are perfectly fine.

 

2 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

I enjoyed this post and your discussion with @SeanF.  However, I don't agree that you can really compartmentalize real life and literary "white saviour" tropes: both are intended as criticisms, whether you want to tear down a statue or call for a work to be boycotted.  It's precisely because the last time I heard the white saviour trope mentioned was in connection to calls by indigenous groups for Avatar: The Way of Water to be boycotted that I responded to this thread in the way I did.  The OP may not have been advocating censorship but this is where this leads.

The author has created Dany as an open-minded cosmopolitan, character, who moves seamlessly from culture to culture and whose empathy for the suffering of the downtrodden is repeatedly emphasised.  The idea that her actions and mindset are "problematic" because of skin colour (and therefore the author's mindset too), that she should only interact with "her own" people in a meaningful way, or that the author should only have the various fictional peoples of his world interact meaningfully with culturally / racially aligned groups or, worse, that he should only write about "his own" people, baffles and saddens me. 

The fact that you can point to all of ASOIAF, Avatar and Star Wars as "problematic" shows just how much of an issue this form of soft pressure to self-censorship along with the open calls for boycotts is.  None of these authors / directors are doing anything other than trying to create enjoyable and compelling stories and the idea of fantasy is to embody imagination and escapism, free from real life pressures and political dramas.  The stories and characters aren't intended as allegories (except in rare instances) but they do, of course, spring from the authors' imagination and there is nothing else to shape their worlds, cultures and histories, other than the examples of our own. 

GRRM has, for me, done a good job of making the Valyrian area of influence hard to pin down racially or culturally in terms of making real world comparison and this is entirely intentional but as some of the people are "non-white" and Dany is "white", here we are, which is a shame.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed my post. It's funny: normally I would probably be on the same side as SeanF et al on this, or more likely stay out of it altogether (I have heard it said that the whole language in which privilege etc. are discussed is deliberately constructed to make "people like me" feel uncomfortable venturing into this territory. But I felt that the discussion in this topic was largely missing the point: engaging with the premise on a very superficial level, or dragging in too many diverse elements and definitions which weren't applicable in order to refute the overall idea - and I thought it would be helpful to try to nail down what we're talking about and why it matters in order to help have a more productive discussion.

I do agree up to a point that the real-life and in-media "white saviours" certainly come from the same place in terms of their tropaic conception, although I think when it comes to definitions, there are some elements which apply to one and not the other - or rather, that the ideological criticisms which would be directed at a RL "saviour" themselves are instead in this context directed at the author (or equivalent in a filmed setting). And you're right that this criticism is, I think, often misdirected (or rather, sprayed around). Someone mentioned Dances With Wolves earlier, for instance, which was a sensitive, well-intentioned, really very good movie (for which matter I think Goodfellas, while good, is overrated) but, well, see the link.

I also think this kind of thing can drown out legitimate criticism. I think The Phantom Menace is a bad movie, and I think Watto is deplorable, but it's not a bad movie because of Watto. It may count against it but it's basically a blip overall. Holiday Inn is a good movie despite the blackface scene. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a good movie despite Mickey Rooney. And so on.

And I do think that the Ghiscari and the Dothraki in ASoIaF are a problem, because the world-building for those areas and the character exploration is notably shallower (worse)  than in Westeros, and that feeds into the orientalised aspects which are the subject of criticism. That is really the problem with the story from a race-awareness perspective, more than any "white saviour" narrative anyone seeks to impose.

But in my view at least, the real problem with the Ghiscari is that their involvement in the story goes on for too long and isn't interesting enough to sustain its length. It's notable I think that the Dothraki are in general (particularly when it comes to names and the like) much less unpopular with the fans than the Ghiscari are, at least as far as I can recall witnessing. And I think we would be much better off focussing our attention on that rather than getting hung up on whether or not Dany is a "white saviour" or not.

So to return a point I made while discussing with SeanF, I think that if someone asks "is Dany a white saviour" and you fundamentally reject the premise of the question because you think that this kind of discussion is pointless and damaging, then that's fair enough - and I might even agree - but I wanted to be sure that that rejection was fully considered and understood, hence my somewhat lengthy posts on the subject.

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Regarding Daenerys, I think George missed an opportunity to other Dany during her interactions with POVs from Westeros, namely, Quentyn so far (Barristan's chapters only start after her disappearance). Dany did grow up in the Free Cities and only spoke the Common Tongue with Darry, Viserys, and perhaps a couple of other people before she met up with Jorah.

The Westerosi POVs could and perhaps should note her Braavosi or Tyroshi accent.

4 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

And you're right that this criticism is, I think, often misdirected (or rather, sprayed around). Someone mentioned Dances With Wolves earlier, for instance, which was a sensitive, well-intentioned, really very good movie (for which matter I think Goodfellas, while good, is overrated) but, well, see the link.

I mentioned the movie earlier, and the article you link doesn't even seem to get the plot - Costner's character never actually saves the tribe he joins with. He helps them and narratively him handing them the army weapons he earlier buried is the point where he completely joins with them, cuts his ties with his past. The weapons do help them fight their tribe war, but they are not necessary to fight or win it. They just make the fighting easier. The ending apparently diverges from the book ending where he stayed with the tribe - an ending that would make more sense since the army would never actually never stop messing with the tribe since they could never actually make them believe that he went away. But even the ending they have has him cause danger for them since they have to save him from the army first - he is a problem for them, part of the reason they are facing problems later.

And things like the criticism for 'Lincoln' are childish - the point of that movie is to tell Lincoln's story at that time, it isn't supposed to be a movie about black people fighting slavery in the US. Such films should be made, of course, but whether they are made or not has little bearing on whether 'Lincoln' works as a movie dealing with its chosen subject matter or not. And it remains a fact of history that the Civil War had to be fought an won before slavery was gone. It wasn't something the black community pushed through nor, sadly, was it something the abolitionists in North and South could push through without a war.

I don't think the Ghiscari evoke much orientalism with a reader who actually knows the concept and ASoIaF.

Ghiscari slavery with its silly aspects and its breeding programs is actually more akin to American slavery than Greek or Roman slavery. Yes, the Dothraki provide Slaver's Bay with a constant influx of slaves, but the Ghiscari pride themselves providing their customers with slaves for every task. Slaves they breed and train. This is what was done in the US after the British effectively ended the slave trade in the early 19th century.

In light of the fact that George did his research on the Old South and slave trade along the Mississippi for 'Fevre Dream' it is hardly a surprise that the exploits we see and hear about in ADwD are clearly more in accord with modern slavery than ancient slavery.

It is easily overlooked since slavery isn't racialized in ASoIaF - but the practices, the inhuman attitude, and, especially, the in-universe arguments in favor of slavery are all inspired by American examples, not ancient ones.

In a sense, the people you should look for among all the Grazdans and Hizdahrs and Yezzans is Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and so forth ... not some weirdo oriental clichés. They don't look like them, of course, but they effectively are these people. They are rich landed gentry, they don their version of the rich man's garment, they meet in their equivalent of Congress, they praise liberty and freedom and the civil virtues and duties of the patriotic citroyen. They are republicans and firm fighters against despotism and monarchy.

And the basis for their wealth and their raison d'etre is still slavery and the slave trade.

Edited by Lord Varys
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2 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

Someone mentioned Dances With Wolves earlier, for instance, which was a sensitive, well-intentioned, really very good movie (for which matter I think Goodfellas, while good, is overrated) but, well, see the link.

Omg, the author of the article you linked to says: "the whole story is about a white guy who saves the day." 

If anything, it's a tragic inversion of the white savior narrative! it's fucking depressing, ending in defeat. And the Sioux save him from captivity! WTF!  :bang:

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I mentioned the movie earlier, and the article you link doesn't even seem to get the plot - Costner's character never actually saves the tribe he joins with. He helps them and narratively him handing them the army weapons he earlier buried is the point where he completely joins with them, cuts his ties with his past. The weapons do help them fight their tribe war, but they are not necessary to fight or win it. They just make the fighting easier. The ending apparently diverges from the book ending where he stayed with the tribe - an ending that would make more sense since the army would never actually never stop messing with the tribe since they could never actually make them believe that he went away. But even the ending they have has him cause danger for them since they have to save him from the army first - he is a problem for them, part of the reason they are facing problems later.

And things like the criticism for 'Lincoln' are childish - the point of that movie is to tell Lincoln's story at that time, it isn't supposed to be a movie about black people fighting slavery in the US. Such films should be made, of course, but whether they are made or not has little bearing on whether 'Lincoln' works as a movie dealing with its chosen subject matter or not. And it remains a fact of history that the Civil War had to be fought an won before slavery was gone. It wasn't something the black community pushed through nor, sadly, was it something the abolitionists in North and South could push through without a war.

I agree that the criticism for Dances With Wolves in this respect is ill-judged. That was my point in bringing it up. But it's there, it's part of the discussion... I've seen Open Range (another good film) described by otherwise sensible reviewers as Costner's "apology" for Dances With Wolves, as if such a thing were not only needed, but generally accepted as needed.

If DWW falls within the purview of the white saviour complex then Dany certainly does. As I say, you're free to reject the premise.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I don't think the Ghiscari evoke much orientalism with a reader who actually knows the concept and ASoIaF.

Ghiscari slavery with its silly aspects and its breeding programs is actually more akin to American slavery than Greek or Roman slavery. Yes, the Dothraki provide Slaver's Bay with a constant influx of slaves, but the Ghiscari pride themselves providing their customers with slaves for every task. Slaves they breed and train. This is what was done in the US after the British effectively ended the slave trade in the early 19th century.

I greatly respect your knowledge of the books, but you do have an unfortunate habit of coming across in a rather condescending and dismissive, bordering on rude, way at times.

I am familiar with the concept of orientalism, thank you. I wouldn't have brought it up otherwise. And while I don't claim to have the same knowledge of ASoIaF that you do, I have read the books, quite thoroughly.

When I look at the Ghiscari I'm not thinking Rome or Greece, I'm thinking Persia, the Arab world, the Ottoman Empire. The stepped pyramids, the relative age of the civilisation, the naming patterns, the climate, the skin colour, the relative location to everything else, all of it screams "Middle East".

And what we see of their culture - enuchs, cloying perfume on men and women, a whole city that produces bedslaves, veiled women, slaves fanning masters with palm leaves, sacred prostitutes, obsequious seneschals, and so on. An ancient culture effectively stopped in time, beholden to tradition, derisory of foreign influence. All of these are textbook orientalist tropes, far more than they apply to Greece or Rome or anywhere in the west: indeed, an ancient Greek or Roman asked about Persia would probably cite many of the same tropes.

I'm not talking about the ancient Middle East, either (although I'm not not talking about that) but the way that that region and its culture(s) was contemporaneously perceived and portrayed by western sources into the 20th century.

As to the institution of slavery, yes, it clearly bears similarities to the US slave system but the differences are also marked. American slaves were taken from a specific part of the world (generally purchased from local states from among captives taken in warfare) while the trade was operating, and thereafter slaves were "home-grown", such that the distinction was clear by race as well as by free status. Not all black people were slaves, but almost all slaves were black.

The Ghiscari meanwhile acquire their slaves indiscriminately from people captured in raids all over the place, including raiding foreign shipping, which looks a lot more like the slave practices of the Barbary corsairs and their ilk - the other extensive early modern slave trade - than it does the transatlantic trade. Heck, they grab slaves from other cultures and turn them into soldiers: that's something Rome and Greece never did, and nor did the transatlantic trade, but it was de rigeur under the Ottomans.

I have no doubt that GRRM also overlaid the attitudes of American slavers and other things that he's learned through reserach of American slavery onto this backdrop, just as he has the tokar (evidently borrowed from Rome) and a couple of other motifs. But what it's overlaid onto is - and the characters into whose mouths these sentiments are put represent - a culture that is distinctively non-western, and I would argue, very distinctively western Asian.

Edited by Alester Florent
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26 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

When I look at the Ghiscari I'm not thinking Rome or Greece, I'm thinking Persia, the Arab world, the Ottoman Empire. The stepped pyramids, the relative age of the civilisation, the naming patterns, the climate, the skin colour, the relative location to everything else, all of it screams "Middle East".

And what we see of their culture - enuchs, cloying perfume on men and women, a whole city that produces bedslaves, veiled women, slaves fanning masters with palm leaves, sacred prostitutes, obsequious seneschals, and so on. An ancient culture effectively stopped in time, beholden to tradition, derisory of foreign influence. All of these are textbook orientalist tropes, far more than they apply to Greece or Rome or anywhere in the west: indeed, an ancient Greek or Roman asked about Persia would probably cite many of the same tropes.

I think this thing takes strange turns when you use it on fantasy - at least if it is evident that the point of the fantasy is not to recreate a cultural hierarchy between a 'Western-based' and a (degenerate) 'orientalist' culture. You do have to want to view it through that lense to criticize it that way. But you don't have to because the elements in the work do not create an orientalist cliché.

Many of the examples you give can also be found among (classical) Greek and Roman culture. Palace eunuchs were common at the imperial courts of the Roman Emperors in late antiquity, perfumed men are a part of many cultures, veiled women were actually invented in classical Greece, sacred prostitutes were a part of Greek/Roman culture, etc. And since the Ghiscari and Valyrians both seem to be based on ancient Empires (Valyria loosely based on Rome, Old Ghis both on Rome - legions of free citizens - as well as Greek and various oriental examples) I'd rather look for the actual inspirations in more ancient times rather than, say, Ottoman parallels.

An ancient Greek or Roman would most likely connect many of those things with his very own culture, his way of doing things, and not with Persia - that would be the far away place where the barbarians have no gods and instead worship fire.

Not to mention that from Alexander all throughout the middle ages the orient was high culture and civilization and everything else ... was not. I mean, the Alexander Romance was the most popular genre of medieval literature. The Byzantine Emperor remained the true Emperor throughout most of the middle ages, etc. The notion of a decadent or degernate orient is a modern invention.

And as I think I showed - in ASoIaF this modern invention has never been made. The cradle of civilization and high culture is still in the east, in Essos. Valyria was the pinnacle of civilization, and it was in the east. The Free Cities are there, Qarth is there, Yi Ti is there. There is no west of note there, though. No Spanish or British Empire, no Americas. If Westeros is 'the West' of Martinworld, then this West has never offered anything of note to the world. And it is seen exactly like that by the world. A savage backwater no actual meaningful civilization bothers including on a map of the world. 

If you view the non-slavery parts of Ghiscari or Valyrian culture as degenerate or decadent or inferior, etc. then you make a mistake. We can easily show, for instance, that a properly tended, dyed, and perfumed beard is something that is viewed as very much masculine and manly in the eyes of Daenerys Targaryen - somebody representing 'Western culture' in such a scenario. After all, Daario Naharis does have such a beard. He is not Ghiscari, but his mannerism and behavior is not all that different from that of Hizdahr. And I daresay that Daario looked as bland and unimpressive (essentially a lot like me, especially the second actor) as he did in GoT is due to our culture viewing dyed beards and gaily dyed garments as unmanly and silly. But that is decidedly not the view of both author and novels.

26 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

The Ghiscari meanwhile acquire their slaves indiscriminately from people captured in raids all over the place, including raiding foreign shipping, which looks a lot more like the slave practices of the Barbary corsairs and their ilk - the other extensive early modern slave trade - than it does the transatlantic trade. Heck, they grab slaves from other cultures and turn them into soldiers: that's something Rome and Greece never did, and nor did the transatlantic trade, but it was de rigeur under the Ottomans.

I didn't say the slavery in ASoIaF is completely based on American slavery - I pointed out that the slavers are resembling the American ruling class as a class - and that they are using the same kind of arguments to defend the institution of slavery. The fact that freedmen are pretty much nonexistent in Ghiscari or Valyrian culture is also quite noteworthy - and doesn't fit well with ancient slavery (the Romans really liked to free their slaves in their last wills, indicating they actually viewed them as people - at least those they interacted with on a daily basis). Also, of course, there being no mentioning of the elites having slaves as teachers, tutors, scientists, scholars, etc. - something that was quite common in Rome after they conquered Greece. Slavery in ASoIaF is akin to American slavery in the sense that it is (mostly) restricted to using slaves for unpleasant physical tasks.

I also pointed out that slavery is not racialized. That is a difference. However, the slave trade as such (the 'lot' talk, auctions, etc.) is based on the American slave trade. The fact that Ghiscari have partners providing them with fresh slaves rather than doing it themselves is also an interesting parallel.

Slave soldiers as an element might have been taken from the Ottoman Empire - or simply invented as a plot device to give Dany some soldiers since they are more like fantasy slave soldiers, conditioned into absolute obedience. The slave soldiers of Volantis might be more based on Ottoman slave soldiers.

Also, of course, the breeding of slaves seems to be something that's more common in Lys than in Slaver's Bay - there they seem to be less keen to buy new slaves and instead focus more on breeding slaves with ever more stunning Valyrian features.

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Martin himself views his version of slavery as being that of the ancient Mediterranean world, as per the interview he gave, upthread.  I do think there are multiple influences:-

1. From the USA, the Sons of the Harpy are plainly based off the original KKK, with their habit of brutally murdering freedmen, especially freedmen who have prospered.  The justifications for, and ideological commitment to, slavery, are those of the ante-bellum South.

2.  The huge imbalance in numbers, between slave and free, resembles Haiti and other sugar colonies.  Because of this imbalance, the slaves have to be treated with extreme cruelty to keep them in line.

3.  New Ghis is basically Sparta.  The free citizen minority is heavily militarised, to keep down the helots/slaves.

4. Slave soldiers are an institution from the Islamic world, although the Unsullied themselves don’t resemble Mamelukes or Janissaries in the slightest.

5.  The non-racial nature of slavery is that of the ancient world.  In the Middle East, although there were both European and African slaves, the former were generally prized over the latter.  African eunuchs had the entire penis removed, unlike white eunuchs, an operation with a much higher death rate.  Europeans captured on raids were frequently ransomed.  That was rarely an option for Africans.  The death rate for Africans being transported to the Middle East was dreadful.

6.  The idea of slaves being the hub of the import/export trade is taken from Delos, or slave ports such as Bristol.  In reality, no national economy has ever depended upon slave trading to the extent shown in the books. In 18th century Britain, slave trading was profitable, but it was only one of multiple sources of profit from trade. Sugar, grown by slaves, was bigger than slave trading.  The Baltic trade, in grain, fish, and ships’ supplies, was bigger still. 

7.  The gladiatorial contests, and the creative sadism of the slavers, are drawn from Rome.  Here, Martin actually pulls his punches.  Household slaves were generally highly prized by Romans, and frequently manumitted.  OTOH, slaves condemned to death were tortured and executed in grotesque fashion.  Feeding them to wild beasts, or having them raped to death by animals, was considered most entertaining. The crucifixion of 163 children resembles Crassus’ crucifixion of 6,000 on the Appian Way.

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16 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I quite liked the word "problematic" at one time. It's a good way to make subtle critiques of stuff that come off as clunky or somewhat thoughtless, but you don't want to write off completely, as it's something you love.

Or that's what I thought. But then I realized that there's a whole subfield of pseudo-intellectual academics who "problematize" every aspect of culture without ever having to think about workable alternatives. And even that was before the real advent of social media, when terms like "problematic" became even more flattened, and now basically functions as a call for censorship. 

(but I still say "problematic" sometimes, at least in conversations with people who know what I mean when I say it)

Argument’s around “privilege”, “white saviorism”, “cultural appropriation”, too often degenerate into a case of playing the man, rather than playing the ball.  That is, treating a person’s opinions and actions as malign, simply on the basis of what social group they belong to.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Argument’s around “privilege”, “white saviorism”, “cultural appropriation”, too often degenerate into a case of playing the man, rather than playing the ball.  That is, treating a person’s opinions and actions as malign, simply on the basis of what social group they belong to.

Yeah. There's plenty of cheap stereotyping from blue collar conservative types. But at least that stuff comes from ignorance; this social justice version comes from academia.

Even if they don't take many statistics classes, they should know better than to conflate individuals and groups--particularly when buzzwords like "lived experience" and "intersectional" are in the discourse.

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52 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Yeah. There's plenty of cheap stereotyping from blue collar conservative types. But at least that stuff comes from ignorance; this social justice version comes from academia.

Even if they don't take many statistics classes, they should know better than to conflate individuals and groups--particularly when buzzwords like "lived experience" and "intersectional" are in the discourse.

I'd call it pseudo-academia.  I've just completed a dissertation for a Masters' Degree in military history.  I've found the vast majority of academics and librarians to be remarkably helpful, and willing to judge an argument on its merits, rather than on the basis of who is making it.

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3 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I'd call it pseudo-academia.  I've just completed a dissertation for a Masters' Degree in military history.  I've found the vast majority of academics and librarians to be remarkably helpful, and willing to judge an argument on its merits, rather than on the basis of who is making it.

I did call it "pseudo-intellectual academic" in an earlier comment. :)

Congrats! Yes, I imagine military history majors are not subjected to the moral orthodoxies or information bubbles that currently plague a lot of the social sciences. I got my PhD in psychology 11 years ago, and it was a great experience, though even then there were wannabe-radical-activist breezes that I would later learn would turn into more potent gale forces.

They'll weather the storm though. Eventually they'll get sick of cowing to the loudest voices shouting everyone else down. But I don't know how long it will take.

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14 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I did call it "pseudo-intellectual academic" in an earlier comment. :)

Congrats! Yes, I imagine military history majors are not subjected to the moral orthodoxies or information bubbles that currently plague a lot of the social sciences. I got my PhD in psychology 11 years ago, and it was a great experience, though even then there were wannabe-radical-activist breezes that I would later learn would turn into more potent gale forces.

They'll weather the storm though. Eventually they'll get sick of cowing to the loudest voices shouting everyone else down. But I don't know how long it will take.

Critical Theory, which it all stems from, seems to view all intellectual discourse from the basis of who/whom.

There is the privileged group, and the underprivileged group, and intellectual arguments are really just a fig-leaf to justify the retention of power by the privileged group.

That can sometimes be a valid way of looking at things, but it is a long way from being a universal truth.

As you say, Military History is largely untouched by this.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Critical Theory, which it all stems from, seems to view all intellectual discourse from the basis of who/whom.

There is the privileged group, and the underprivileged group, and intellectual arguments are really just a fig-leaf to justify the retention of power by the privileged group.

That can sometimes be a valid way of looking at things, but it is a long way from being a universal truth.

As you say, Military History is largely untouched by this.

Yeah, the little I've read of critical theory was interesting, though it often begged the question: so now what? I'm all for acknowledging nuance and complication, but not if it's ultimately an exercise to stop trying to find actual workable solutions to real life problems. Self-licking ice cream cones of any kind are undesirable, but self-perpetuating nuance-gazing is particularly corrosive in academia.

And then there is the problem of activist identity and sentiment within intellectual enterprises. I'm not going to say that intellectual rigor and activism are mutually exclusive, but they do exist in real tension with one another, as the more you care about something, the less likely it's on the table for discussion and dissection.

What I think is so particularly strange about this new academic left is that it is an uncanny combination of both of these problems. Much of the discourse stems from the terminably pessimistic critical theory and the nuance-gazing of post-structuralism...and yet it has also embraced a stance of radical activism, made even more powerful by social media mob dynamics.

So there's a thirst for action and radical, revolutionary change, but mostly of the performative, symbolic, and endlessly self-flagellating variety. Meanwhile, the problems remain fundamentally addressed, which happens to be great for validating pessimistic worldviews.

 

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48 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Critical Theory, which it all stems from, seems to view all intellectual discourse from the basis of who/whom.

Critical Theory is decidedly Marxist, if you go back to Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse. Standpoint theory isn't really their thing but rather how society as a whole - and especially culture - is shaped by the power of various factions of capital and people working in the culture industry.

Talk about 'privilege' in that context is a much modern phenomenon and has actually more to do with your own self-analysis and how aware you personally are about your place in society - and how progressive you can signal you are - than with an actual analysis how things are.

2 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

The 'problem' is not what Daenerys is doing. The problem is the trope. It is so broad that it can cover every instance of someone helping people not of the same race as them.

I'm not sure it is a very good way to analyze (high) fantasy stuff. Stuff like Robert E. Howard's stories you can interpret with his racism in mind since his world is supposed to be earth's past and also deliberately reflects racial and cultural hierarchies he very much believed in. Similarly, you can use such an interpretative matrix if it is really evident or easy to demonstrate that the work in question just moved a real world racial/cultural hierarchy take into a fantasy setting.

The white savior is more a real problem in the sense that black or indigenous people are often enough still portrayed as people needing saving from some white person (a white woman, say, in the case of adoption black kids from Africa). And historically the white savior narrative goes definitely hand in hand with the more blatant racist 'they are all savages without culture' narrative. The stories about the noble savage welcoming the white person's wisdom and help is the nicer, fairy-tale version/justification for colonialism, etc.

But we don't really have that kind of thing in ASoIaF.

In fact, while, say, wildling culture is kind of ridiculous the author makes it clear while there is certainly a strong exotic allure to their lifestyle (best illustrated, I think, in the sidebar in TWoIaF about that maester writing about them who 'went native' after he finished his book) it is clear that the whole wife-stealing and raiding practices do suck. The books never present a given culture or society as being completely or even predominantly good.

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

2.  The huge imbalance in numbers, between slave and free, resembles Haiti and other sugar colonies.  Because of this imbalance, the slaves have to be treated with extreme cruelty to keep them in line.

While Volantis also has a very bad free people-slaves ratio (1:5) we don't know if they are treating their slaves as cruelly as the Ghiscari. If they don't, it might have to do with the fact that Volantis is more a slave-using society rather than a slaves-creating society - meaning new slaves are imported to Volantis already properly broken and trained.

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

3.  New Ghis is basically Sparta.  The free citizen minority is heavily militarised, to keep down the helots/slaves.

While that is true, we don't know how many slaves are in New Ghis. Could be more like early Rome.

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

4. Slave soldiers are an institution from the Islamic world, although the Unsullied themselves don’t resemble Mamelukes or Janissaries in the slightest.

Yes, the Unsullied are really more like fantasy slave soldiers addicted to a fantasy magical drug. The tiger soldiers of Volantis could turn out to be more based on real world slave soldiers, although they are, so far, not very developed. If they end up rebelling in the near future we might learn more about their history and perhaps also of the general history of slave revolts in the Valyrian world. If George is smart he gives the Valyrian Freehold its Spartacus.

It wouldn't surprise me if we learned that the tiger soldiers serve only a fixed period as slave soldiers and then live out the rest of their lives in honorable retirement, possibly even with the prospect of buying themselves some land (perhaps not in Volantis but in the territories of some of the smaller cities up the Rhoyne). Tessario the Tiger from FaB seems to be a former Volantene slave soldier and he was apparently freed (or successfully deserted).

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

5.  The non-racial nature of slavery is that of the ancient world.  In the Middle East, although there were both European and African slaves, the former were generally prized over the latter.  African eunuchs had the entire penis removed, unlike white eunuchs, an operation with a much higher death rate.  Europeans captured on raids were frequently ransomed.  That was rarely an option for Africans.  The death rate for Africans being transported to the Middle East was dreadful.

I think racialized slavery as I meant it was really the modern construction that there is a group of people whose color of skin color identify them as slaves. That is really a modern phenomenon. That outsiders, foreigners, unbelievers, people at the vicinity or beyond the borders of 'the Empire'/the civilized world was a thing throughout the history of slavery as a human practice. Although, of course, the fact that a lot of slaves came from region/land X really shaped people's view of the people (like with 'slaves' and 'slavs' or the way black people were viewed in the Islamic world in the middle ages).

If George were to ever write a history of Valyrian slavery I'd not be surprised if Valyrian culture stated that only Valyrians were 'fully human' and all other people can be enslaved (and magically experimented on) since it seems Valyria really destroyed many Essosi peoples completely to have the necessary slaves for their mines as well as to maintain their spells and have lab rats for their magical experiments.

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