And against whom is this censorship directed? By way of answer, think back to the big subcultural debates of 2011 – debates about how gritty fantasy isn’t really fantasy; how epic fantasy written from the female gaze isn’t really fantasy; how women should stop complaining about sexism in comics because clearly, they just hate comics; how trying to incorporate non-Eurocentric settings into fantasy is just political correctness gone wrong and a betrayal of the genre’s origins; how anyone who finds the portrayal of women and relationships in YA novels problematic really just wants to hate on the choices of female authors and readers; how aspiring authors and bloggers shouldn’t post negative reviews online, because it could hurt their careers; how there’s no homophobia in publishing houses, so the lack of gay YA protagonists can only be because the manuscripts that feature them are bad; how there’s nothing problematic about lots of pretty dead girls on YA covers; how there’s nothing wrong with SF getting called ‘dystopia’ when it’s marketed to teenage girls, because girls don’t read SF. Most these issues relate to fear of change in the genre, and to deeper social problems like sexism and racism; but they are also about criticism, and the freedom of readers, bloggers and authors alike to critique SFF and YA novels without a backlash that declares them heretical for doing so.
It’s not enough any more to tiptoe around the issues that matter, refusing to name the works we think are problematic for fear of being ostracized. We need to get over this crushing obsession with niceness – that all fans must act nicely, that all authors must be nice to each other, that everyone must be nice about everything even when it goes against our principles – because it’s not helping us grow, or be taken seriously, or do anything other than throw a series of floral bedspreads over each new room-hogging elephant.
We, all of us, need to get critical.
Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA
Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until
someone decides to clean it up.
Blog Post: Love Team Freezer
Stichwörter: writing criticism narratives minorities ya
If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.
George SteinerStichwörter: love criticism laws kafka
أي فن من الفنون يجب أن يحمل معه فكر. سواء كان الفكر أو الرسالة فلسفية أو اجتماعية أو عقائدية، دون أن يتخذ ذلك نبرة عالية زاعقة مباشرة يظهر الفن فيها بمظهر الوسيلة الثانوية. الفن متعة قبل كل شيء. إن لم تستطع إمتاعي فلن تستطيع إقناعي
توفيق الحكيمStichwörter: art literature criticism
...like the emperor striding confidently along without clothes, convinced by them and their inward monitions that their criticism is effecting changes in society.
Samuel F. Pickering Jr.Stichwörter: criticism
Mega biblion, mega kakon (Big book, big evil)
CallimachusStichwörter: poetry criticism classics greek
Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.
Fredric JamesonStichwörter: criticism revolution theory
To call you my critic is to call you my friend.
Karen E. Quinones MillerStichwörter: criticism life-lessons value-of-the-truth
I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.
Criss JamiStichwörter: morality cooperation society criticism working challenges jobs job-interviews immorality judgmental resume
Surely it is the one who fears he is wrong who avoids criticism. The one who is sure he is right invites it. It only illuminates the strength of beliefs and makes them more available to others.
David L. WolfeStichwörter: confidence criticism insecurity
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