Dancing The Other
Posted by Niall Harrison
18 January 2012
Social Text has a Periscope feature on Speculative Life, featuring an interview with China Mieville, essays on Cuaron's Children of Men and Speculating Queerer Worlds (among others), and Andrea Hairston's "Disappearing Natives: Notes for Future SF&F Stories":
In the Disappearing Native Narrative (DNN), so-called body knowledge (intuition, passion, compassion, experience, non-linear metaphor) is pitted against reasoning (linear, literal deduction, dispassionate objectivity, logical reflection). Reasoning processes are not conceived as body knowledge. Calculating truth is superior to dancing truth. In postmodern empire, the metaphorical mind is neglected, disparaged but still operating. The literal mind garners full cultural support. The metaphorical mind is childish, playful, primitive, and feminine. The metaphorical mind is to be colonized and dominated by the superior, rational, literal mind. Thus the "Native" in all of us can be indulged, but never allowed free reign, never allowed to define reality, our society. We mourn this loss, but liberating "Native" impulses threatens empire.
According to the DNN, long ago, we were all spirit-beings. Our specific stories were rich with hard-earned communal wisdom that emerged from particular lived experiences. Supposedly, the noble (savage/wild) cultures of say Africans, Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines are the last to disappear. Google for truth now. Beyond the gates of postmodernity we are all consumers and commodities, an exploitable resource of empire.
Mythology is powerful technology. Empire uses its dominant mythology to ignore, repress, defuse, denature, destroy alternate stories/realities.
