Entry tags:
- colonialism,
- cons,
- fandom,
- links,
- panels,
- race,
- social justice,
- wiscon
Decolonization in SFF panel at Wiscon
I am at Wiscon online! I posted about the general con experience, including how panels work, at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alias_sqbr.
I didn't get to see this panel in person, but I watched the recorded stream and read back over the chat.
Panelists: Sarah Guan, K. Tempest Bradford, Claire Light, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nisi Shawl
Some links:
Metis In Space An indigenous geeky podcast
We need more Aboriginal superheroes, so I created Cleverman for my son
Italicizing “foreign” words in English text
Authors I remember being recced: Hiromi Goto, Nisi Shawl, Octavia Butler, Samuel R Delany
They talked about a bunch of interesting things. Something that stood out to me: Two different but equally valid forms of decolonised speculative fiction are stories set a world where we move past colonialism, and ones set in a world where it never happened, or didn't happen the same way. A cool launching point for the latter is all the moments in history where things could have gone better, especially since this is a reminder that the way history played out was not inevitable. One of the panelists mentioned a bunch of interesting US historical moments I hadn't heard of and didn't write down >.>
At one point a panelist made a basically reasonable point in a very unfortunate way. I was sitting there feeling annoyed until an audience question came in pointing out the issue, and the panelist and chat participants ended up having a fairly civil and productive conversation about it. (EDIT: a commenter had a very different experience, and looking back I think the fact I was skimming through the chat to get the basic gist, and started by reading the end, means I didn't get a sense of how frustrating it was in real time. Also...ok I am about to go to bed and too sleepy to articulate it but there's other stuff affecting how I interpreted things)
As far as I am able to judge, the chat was overall pretty good for such a complex topic, though sometimes white chat participants would try to be Openly Supportive of POC in ways that seemed counterproductively empty to me. Like instead of saying "YES I AGREE, IT'S SO IMPORTANT FOR WHITE PEOPLE NOT TO DOMINATE THE CONVERSATION ON RACE" maybe just...stay quiet and let the POC talk until you have something useful to add? But hey, what do I know.
Something I always notice in US based discussions of social justice is how central racism ends up being as a topic and point of focus. I mean obviously it was the topic of THIS panel, but there's just generally this air of everyone Thinking About Race you don't get in Australian social justice focussed fandom spaces (which are generally SUPER DUPER white)
Like, the PAX Australia safer space thing had like 5 queer groups and a bunch of panels about gender and sexuality, a little to do with disability, and basically NOTHING to do with race. Everyone is assumed to be generally anti-racist, and it comes up a topic sometimes, but it's just...really not a focus beyond obvious Big Topics like refugee rights. Kinda get the feeling this sucks for Australian geeky POC!
On the other hand...being an American geeky POC in (still very white) social justice focussed fandom spaces like Wiscon seems like it would be exhausting, with all these white people thinking I MUST PROVE MYSELF NOT RACIST at you all the time. I watched the start of "THE NOT HUGO AWARD-WINNING BUT VERY IMPORTANT NOT ANOTHER F*CKING RACE PANEL" which is a group of POC panelists doing fun audience participation stuff that is very pointedly NOT ABOUT RACE, and afaict was created in response to always and only being invited to be on Serious Panels About Race. And yeah, I can see why they need that and their dedicated safe space.
I mean white Australian fans (myself included) can still be Earnestly Aware Of Race, and white American fans can be oblivious, this is just my impression of the trends as an Earnest White Australian.
Anyway! I also have some thoughts on the "Learning Social Justice While Disabled" panel but those are being trickier to articulate so may take a while.
alias_sqbr.I didn't get to see this panel in person, but I watched the recorded stream and read back over the chat.
Panelists: Sarah Guan, K. Tempest Bradford, Claire Light, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nisi Shawl
Some links:
Metis In Space An indigenous geeky podcast
We need more Aboriginal superheroes, so I created Cleverman for my son
Italicizing “foreign” words in English text
Authors I remember being recced: Hiromi Goto, Nisi Shawl, Octavia Butler, Samuel R Delany
They talked about a bunch of interesting things. Something that stood out to me: Two different but equally valid forms of decolonised speculative fiction are stories set a world where we move past colonialism, and ones set in a world where it never happened, or didn't happen the same way. A cool launching point for the latter is all the moments in history where things could have gone better, especially since this is a reminder that the way history played out was not inevitable. One of the panelists mentioned a bunch of interesting US historical moments I hadn't heard of and didn't write down >.>
At one point a panelist made a basically reasonable point in a very unfortunate way. I was sitting there feeling annoyed until an audience question came in pointing out the issue, and the panelist and chat participants ended up having a fairly civil and productive conversation about it. (EDIT: a commenter had a very different experience, and looking back I think the fact I was skimming through the chat to get the basic gist, and started by reading the end, means I didn't get a sense of how frustrating it was in real time. Also...ok I am about to go to bed and too sleepy to articulate it but there's other stuff affecting how I interpreted things)
As far as I am able to judge, the chat was overall pretty good for such a complex topic, though sometimes white chat participants would try to be Openly Supportive of POC in ways that seemed counterproductively empty to me. Like instead of saying "YES I AGREE, IT'S SO IMPORTANT FOR WHITE PEOPLE NOT TO DOMINATE THE CONVERSATION ON RACE" maybe just...stay quiet and let the POC talk until you have something useful to add? But hey, what do I know.
Something I always notice in US based discussions of social justice is how central racism ends up being as a topic and point of focus. I mean obviously it was the topic of THIS panel, but there's just generally this air of everyone Thinking About Race you don't get in Australian social justice focussed fandom spaces (which are generally SUPER DUPER white)
Like, the PAX Australia safer space thing had like 5 queer groups and a bunch of panels about gender and sexuality, a little to do with disability, and basically NOTHING to do with race. Everyone is assumed to be generally anti-racist, and it comes up a topic sometimes, but it's just...really not a focus beyond obvious Big Topics like refugee rights. Kinda get the feeling this sucks for Australian geeky POC!
On the other hand...being an American geeky POC in (still very white) social justice focussed fandom spaces like Wiscon seems like it would be exhausting, with all these white people thinking I MUST PROVE MYSELF NOT RACIST at you all the time. I watched the start of "THE NOT HUGO AWARD-WINNING BUT VERY IMPORTANT NOT ANOTHER F*CKING RACE PANEL" which is a group of POC panelists doing fun audience participation stuff that is very pointedly NOT ABOUT RACE, and afaict was created in response to always and only being invited to be on Serious Panels About Race. And yeah, I can see why they need that and their dedicated safe space.
I mean white Australian fans (myself included) can still be Earnestly Aware Of Race, and white American fans can be oblivious, this is just my impression of the trends as an Earnest White Australian.
Anyway! I also have some thoughts on the "Learning Social Justice While Disabled" panel but those are being trickier to articulate so may take a while.