Romance of the Revolution (WisCon 31 panel)
Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing SF&F•Assembly• Sunday, 1:00-2:15 p.m.
In authors ranging from Heinlein to Macleod, Spinrad to Cordwainer Smith, the revolution is glorified — sometimes a violent one, sometimes (but far more rarely) a peaceful one. How do we avoid making the same errors of glorifying violence and hero worship when coming at things from a revolutionary perspective in fiction? (Some people may not find these to be errors — they're welcome to come discuss that POV too.)
M: Paul Kincaid, L. Timmel Duchamp, Laurie J. Marks, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Lyn Paleo
Notes, reports, transcripts
- Oyceter
- L. Timmel Duchamp
- More discussion of Nakashima-Brown's comment on Pol Pot
Transcript
notes by Laura Quilter
- LJM Laurie J Marks (Scheduled, but I don't think she was at the panel)
- LTD L Timmel Duchamp
- PK Paul Kincaid
- LP Lyn Paleo
- CNB Chris Nakashima-Brown
- aud audience
[ ... ] (1:00 to 1:35)
notes starting at 1:35:
aud: The french revolt regularly & will until they get it right. ... but revolutions do affect life. People get the right to vote, to own credit cards, to own property, etc. ...
timmi: yes women couldn't buy a house in the 60s
aud contd: part of a process and we have to go back and do more. the changes in my lifetime have been quite amazing.
aud (Pamela Taylor) - picking up on Chris' comments, on what you had to say is who is the revolution going to be against. i know a lot of people in the world are against the US. i know a lot of leftists are teaming up with islamists and i think it's a problem because i'm fighting against ...
PNB - mediajammers, adbusters, the billboard liberation front. that's a bonified viable road forward trying to appropriate those images of capital that are infiltrating our heads and trying to turn them back around. you can imagine as you have this convergence of institutional media hollywood stuff fully distributed fully hackable media - interesting to see if some of that gets turned on its head.
PK - back to the idea of the islamic revolution as a brit i am disgusted with my govt not just becuase of what it's done in iraq and how it's kowtowed to - sigh - mr bush. but how that has led to ... people in ritain treating ... people who are either islamic or look islamic. and there is increasing police repression against large chunks of the population. and i suspect that you're probably finding the same things hapepning here? looks @ audience to nods. if we're talking about political power revolutions anyone who comes to power tends to then exercsise that power as strongly as they can b/c that's the way they seem to keep hold of the power ... and i think that's what's happening @ the moment and the results are frightening & are going to go on behind frightening for some time.
aud: i was wondering if you could talk about revolution in non-am non-european countries and how that works.
chris - i like the pol pot revolution - scraping everything clean. kill all the people and start from scratch.
LP - i hope you're not serious.
chris - well of course - i'm serious sort of - no it's a horrible thing. but i'm serious in that you can't retrain people, you have to start from scratch. it has a sort of sick cogency to it.
timmi - what's happening in southern mexico is very hopeful.
lp - chiapas?
timmi - not just chiapas but oaxaca. the women are running things. the teachers started occupying govt buildings. women have a very feminist community. they had taken over most of govt bldgs. they took over radio 7 tv stations. and they were demanding ouster of the governor who was corrupt of course. and the US actually pushed them to use violence to bring it all to an end which they did but it's not over. it will just keep -- they're so well-organized. they know how to use the media. and they have artists involved - i mean the art that has come out is just gorgeious.
PK - commandante zero
timmi - they're related but not the same
PK - indigenous?
timmi - yes yes
LP - colleague of mine ... talked about revolution of eritrea - women fought alongside men no rifles etc no conditions & when it was over they wanted their share of power and they did a cultural change in that fashion. through a breakaway in one country theyturned some systems over in their own.
timmi - but quite often women fight alonside the men and when they've won women are no longer in power.
lp - exactly and this was different
chris - i was in nicaragua in 1984 and women fought alonside the men in the jungles for 20 years following the ideals of sandino etc - and you go there and it was men throwing cocktail parties
LP - ... interesting ... sometimes dice go against you
LTD - postcolonial context is more complciated
paul - i suppose i'm colonialist. ... ? is india. when britain subverted local indian rulers what we actually subverted was a very culturally divided land with a few people with immense amounts of power and a lot of power and a lot of people w/ immense amount of poverty and no consistent way of governing ... india was in a messat the time ... difficult because we wanted to trade. we took over not because we wanted to rule india but b/c we wanted idiana goods to trade and a market for british goods. what we actually did was intro a system of govt similar to our own b/c that's what colonial govts always did. and then we were astounded b/c the local people seemed to be quite good at this. that's not what you expect - you expect a little sinecure for the younger sons of landed gentry. but the administrators proved to be quite adept and wanted to do things for themselves. and then they had the most extraordinary revolution under the leadership of gandhi . b/c they had a rev where they provoked us to be violent while being nonviolent themselves which is not something that happens very often. we like to think of ourselves as a moral people & suddenly in a very morally uncomfortable position. and then the war came along & we had indian soldiers fighting the war alonside us & proviing at least as adept at elast as brave at least as conscientious as our own soldiers and it became v v difficult to resist calls for independence. but the only reason they actually got independence was b/c america w/drew their loans immed after the war & britain was actually broke and couldn't afford to carry on the war. ...if america hadn't withdrawn its loans we'd probably stlil be in there. ... revolutions don't always work that way. ... it's not the revolution that works, it's the weakness in the ruler that makes the difference.
aud (Margaret McBride) - want to come back to science fiction ... and talk about some of the authors that you think have done interesting things with cultural & political change or ones that you think haven't done a very good job.
timmi - let's see, suzy mckee charnas - her one --
laughter in audience b/c suzy just came in
timmi - oh dear there are quite a few but now i am discombobulated.
suzy, making exit from room - i have a flight i have to catch.
LP - you are describing your book which calls to mind Cecilia Holland's Floating Worlds.
timmi - oh yes
lp - it's a tennis ball turned inside out. yours is anarchists impose revolution on earth. what Floating Worlds does is an anarchist society could it withstand invasion from an authoritarian military structure. ... but not a lot of detail about how it works. a few scenes here or there, the woman picketing.
timmi - i have a lot of coalition politics in the Marq'ssan series b/c i think coalition politics is where it's at in terms of bringing about change. ... larger groups with each other in negotiation & share power
PK what about something like Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After
LP it's a wonderful example - not a revolution exactly but people coming together to protect sf.
timmi - but isn't it magic.
PK - isn't that just science fiction - it's aliens or magic
LP - floating worlds the aliens are the problem
chris - Dhalgren - no mcguffin to explain how we got there. but a vivid emotional sense of state of total emotional liberation ... interregnum b/w 1972 and 1973 of infinite possibility of personal liberation and the way he kind of explores that territory
timmi - what about film Born in Flames made in 1979 by Lizzie Borden - socialist revolution has already taken place. there - winners are slugging it out over how winners ...
chris - critter jameson in archaeologies of future claims most important is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
LP yes - and again there's no magic. i agree with you (PK) - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, classic - i didn't say good - but magic is computer and when it resorts to the magic i think we're failing as opposed to true envisionment - like mars series or even california series. californian series is fabulous - if things go on - orange countiy - same place with three different what-ifs - that's what i think science fiction can be brilliant
aud - Ursula's late hainish novels - the planets getting rid of their own slavery those are fabulous, Four Ways to Forgiveness, "A Woman's Liberation".
aud / neal - with reference to time i'll make only half the comments accumulated rather than blob of them. there's a story an interview asks - french revolution - answer is "it's too soon to tell" - i think that's a fabulously illustrative - i don't know if it really happened b/c there's so much wonderful suggestion. american revolution in my opinion is an astounding success -- it's not over. we all know about ups & downs we all know about more prominent areas where it's incompelte. but in 1787 white men who owned land were voters only. that is v diff from situation today. and also am rev has inspired the world. when ho chi minh wrote decl for vietnam he begn when in the course of human events. so i htink that given again a real historical timescale and given the intractability of human nature i think the am rev has been a tremendous success.
chris - khalid sheikh mohammad in his military tribunal calls himself george washington
neal - there have been several references to hippies. and several people here are in weird process of having part of their lives becoming myth and weird swiss cheese checkerboard in which parts get frozen and part disappear. hippies were famous for sex drugs & rock'n'roll but not for SF which was just as famous.
LP and not for food distribution
timmi - (something?)
neal - ... to a v great extent by people who wanted to change the world. dispersal of personal capability to make a diff to do what you want to enact your agenda has just begun. counterrev against it is immense & whole tech counterrev is a totally diff panel but info rev which is just beginning has already redefined what constitues wealth. when i read Charlie Stross's lobsters and this guy was a venture altruist i laughed so hard i almost fell out of bed.
PK - to one of your points - when the am rev began white male landowners were the only ones that could vote. today millionaires are the only ones that can rule. i'm not sure there's a big diff.
aud (Lenny Bailes) - i believe the starting point of a beneficial revolution is willingness of people to reject an oppressive status quo. one of the things failling to start a revo in this society is not neough willingness to reject a status quo that many of us feel is oppressive to intolerable. there's a reason we're not getting that wlilingness b/c ... fighting a diff enemy. ... money has a way of coopting na revolution. has become strongest opponent to a modern rev b/c people won't reject oppressive status quo until it's suppressive.
chris - rebel rock'n'roll
aud (Lenny Bailes) - yeah this was going to be about aliens
timmi - i have the opportunity in the series to have a natural hero b/c she starts out the hero in the first book & i knew i couldn't have a hero figure - that would just reduplicqte the process that i wanted to get rid of. you can't have one person who's the leader. and os - a rock band would be differnet - what about Gwyneth Jones' Bold as Love series if you're going to talk about using rock band in politics.
aud (Lenny Bailes) - the line b/w teacher & hero - when is a teacher a teacher & when it is going to turn into hero worship. i think one of the major diffs b/w info rev we're in now & cultural rev we had before is less hero worship. teachers seem to be coming more from teachers - we're not basically learning from top down. & in cultural rev of 60s there was a willingness to reject status quo but from top town
timmi - oh very much so
aud (Lenny Bailes) - those are the things we have to think about. does a revoultion have to be populist or just getting people to reject represssion. ... people sometimes feel that about the 60s that it failed b/c it was topdown 7 that's why it didn't stikc.
LP - if tehre's this contcept that comes up in many fields that overlap now - popular ed, public health which has adopted redist of wealth of a public health goal, which is not leader but animator. there has to be someone in the group who is the animator who keeps people going in the group, keeps them excited. there's always going to be around us people who have that spark, they just do, and you can't really diminish their light. we can do something other than say you're my leader and my hero and we're going to follow you. but we don't want to in the process say affect low affect low no leaders etc. because that ruins the spark.
timmi - yes i do have animators in my book
lp - because otherwise we go to sleep
aud (F) - inspiring people to oppose oppression - strikes me is that people who are expreiencing oppression are not us. but it's nothing compared to grand scales on africa south america etc. so getting people to care about the other - brownskinned people et.c so revolution has diff challenge than when it affects your own life. ... one of the books i've always enjoyed was A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski which talked about nonviolent revolution. after dharfur, rwanda, ghujarat, etc., i think that it's unrealistic that a nursing woman could stop a war because she would be slaughtered. ... we haven't talked about this.
paul - it's easy to talk about the people underneath who are going to revolt. but you can't forget there are two sides in any revolution. there are those who are being revolted against. it only comes when there is a sickness a weakness there. i'm thinking in particular of zimbabwe. there's going to be ar evolution but it's not happening.
lp - south african revolution came about -
aud (Pamela Taylor) - this is why islamic revolution is going to fail b/c those people are way sicker than the climate they're fighting against.
aud (F) - we've been talking about revolutionaries as if they have agency - they're affecting change. ... zimbabwe - visibility ...
paul kincaid - there is the problem that anything that happens in africa tends to be less visible (here)
aud (Rich Dutcher) - we have to stop being afraid of failure. scientists have learned this very well. appropros of your cmts on the sickness of the rule - the two miracles of 1989 fall of soviet union and south africa were because people who were running said we don't want to keep doing this. they said they didn't want to have kill millions of people to stay in power - they didn't want to give up power - but they didn't want to kill. ... the failed rev of 1989 peace in israel was b/c people decided they'd rather kill their leader than give it up. ... whole business in US is that our poverty levels & our oppressions are so less intense -what's our responsibility. the real answer is obviously that to gfigure out ways to geto our govt to leave them alone - so their animators who if given an opportunity - ... if you're higher up the oppression food chain get your people off their backs. one of the reasons we have peace marches in us demonstrating for people in dharfur.
lp - well there's many ways - i would say that's one way richard. but the microloan project is truly radical & revolutionary to get lots of little bits of money into many hands.
richard - absolutely - many things to do. but if you're voting & looking for political responsibility. alright bill clinton was really a severe disappointment in many ways but he won all his wars and didn't kill american soldiers doing it.
LP - there's a website where any of us can donate small amts of money to microloan programs -
rich microfinancing to go with microloans
LP - they're loans & the loan return rate is huge.
aud: what's the site?
LP: Don't remember. Google.
mod: any more questions
aud: Eric Fynt - 1632 et seq. science fiction models.
aud (Neal)- it's a mary sue.
chris - i'm lost.
aud - it's a pejorative. (explains Mary Sue). 1632 has some little american town thru ... fall into the middle of 30 years war and they spread peace and light and civilization and marksmanship and of course the lead cheerleader's a crack shot and gets a great husband and if you're a libertarian you just get all ...
aud (Rich): (reflecting) That's an accurate description but I liked it a lot.
paul - I'm going to ask panelists to sum up & move on.
timmi - I think I've already spoken quite a lot.
lyn - i guess i would just wind us back to the start that we can't rely either in reality or science ficiotn on the great events that will clear the slate - we start from here - damned hard work
chris - i think this is an important topic because i think spec fic has a really impt role esp in a society where there's an absence of coherent visions of better world. garden of earthly delights that um there's some real value if people can take advantage of romanticiziation of revolution and taking heroic archetypes and vehicles in popular culture to help people envision it's useful.