The Wisdom of Isaac Asimov

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

The Wisdom of Isaac Asimov

A few days ago was Isaac Asimov’s 99th birthday. (Rather, his official birthday. He knew he was born between Oct 4, 1919 and Jan 2, 1920, and since he hated the idea of being old, he took the latest date possible as his birthday.) One of the comments on a blog I was reading that day about the Good Doctor was the following:

“Story that Isaac told: Isaac sat in on a class where the professor was teaching about one of his stories.  He approached the professor after the class and said, ‘That story doesn’t mean that at all. I should know. I wrote it.’  And the professor looked at him and said, ‘So?’

And at that moment, Isaac said, he realized that the professor was right.  No matter what the author intended, what the reader got out of it was what was really there.”

If only JKR had his wisdom. I suggest that the official motto of DTCL should be the following:

Saith Isaac Asimov: No matter what the author intends, what the reader gets out of the story is what is really there.

P.S. Don’t stop commenting on sunnyskywalker’s thread below just because I’ve started a new one. The intricacies of the Fidelius Charm are entirely worth a thorough thrashing out.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Okay, I have to laugh at the idea that identity politics have "taken over." Even if you're just talking about US politics, they have always taken identity as one of the major issues. You don't even have to go back as far as the 19th century to see it. Lots of 20th-century politicians made no bones about representing white men, valuing that group especially, and making preserving segregation a major point of their campaigns and administrations. The anti-suffragists were adamant that only men should vote, which is hardly an identity-neutral position.

Academics weren't shy in praising the superiority of white people, or in nodding sagely about how women are just different and not cut out for business and politics and rational thinking like men are. They were totally up front about thinking that other groups mostly didn't do anything worth writing about, because their white male identity was superior. The US performed tens of thousands of forced eugenic sterilizations based on how mostly-white often-men evaluated different identities (short version: poor people, people of color, and people with disabilities were sterilized far, far more often than middle-class white people with no obvious disabilities). I could go on.

American politics has always been identity politics. This is true of a lot of other countries, too. Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" is a poem about how identity should influence world politics. Just to take one tiny example. It's not that people were neutral and unconcerned with identity and then suddenly those darn universities started brainwashing kids to care about race and sexual orientation. It's that one identity isn't the unquestioned boss of the conversation anymore, so the people who share that identity and so didn't have to think about now do.

Also, incidentally, my experience of college was the opposite of brainwashing. My textbooks in lower levels of schooling usually had very simple narratives that left out a lot, and in college, we got a bunch more information--often by authors who disagreed with each other--and had to learn to sort it out ourselves. So don't go assuming that all colleges or college students who end up liberal are alike ;-)

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Amen to all of this! Also, as to Kipling, "The White Man's Burden" was a justification/praise song about the U.S. attack on the Philippines.

I think when Brad talks about "Identity Politics", he specifically means those people who speak up for marginalized groups. But it's absolutely true that the right wing have always used identity politics to energize their base. I also think its true that the actual left has always spoken for our common humanity, as our so-called extreme left wingers (Bernie, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Greens) are doing today.

[sunnyskywalker]

Probably, but it's such an odd way to frame it. People have always been using identity as justification for politics, but now they're talking about different identities, therefore kids these days have invented identity politics. Does not compute!

What conclusions anyone wants to draw about whether any particular brand of identity politics is good/bad/an extraterrestrial conspiracy/whatever is outside the scope of this discussion, I think, but my inner stickler couldn't let that pass. If the starting premise is inaccurate or incomplete, how can anyone ever have a proper discussion? /stickler