The thing that had been bothering me
I will be reading Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings. However, I am wary of the class politics involved. I read the first chapter and red flags kept popping up. In particular, there was one phrase that made me stop and stare at my screen in dazed 'I did not just read that' shock.
the devastated countryside that surrounded them all beyond the wastelands of the Periphérique
I realise that non-French people might not notice that there are five red flags in those words, much less what those red flags are, so I will try to explain them as best as I can, in the words I do not have because this is an issue we Do Not Talk About.
First and least, Periphérique is a mispelling of Périphérique. It could be shoddy editing, though, so I will give de Bodard the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Next is the fact that nobody calls it that. Everyone always refers to it as 'le périph'. The only people who call it that are people who do not refer to it regularly, ie people who do not live with or next to it on a daily basis, ie people who live and work inside Paris (and whose family members also live inside Paris), ie people who have a certain amount of class privilege and are often unaware of said privilege. I would not say that it is impossible for an author who has unexamined class privilege to write a book that treats class issues carefully and respectfully, but I have personally never read one.
Then there's the fact that that what people call the périph is irrelevant on account of the Périphérique not existing at the time the story is set in. De Bodard should have been referring to the enceinte de Thiers if she wanted to distinguish between Paris intra muros and the banlieue.
That's right, referring to what's outside the périph as "countryside" is also a research fail (and a really impressive one, at that). The outside of Paris intra muros is not the countryside, it's the banlieue, in the original sense of the term: "ban lieu", those who are "outside the place". In the early 20th century, they called it la Zone. It was and still is where poor people live. (Using les zonards to refer to the banlieusards was in use at least until the 80s, as the opening credits song of Starmania, Quand on arrive en ville, nicely demonstrates: Qui met l'feu au building / C'est toujours les zonards / Alors, c'est la panique sur les boulevards / Quand on arrive en ville. This line and the whole song basically sends up the attitude of Parisians, especially the upper class ones ("les boulevards" is pretty explicit on that count) towards people from outside Paris who are almost uniformly working class.)
Not only does de Bodard completely fails to reference the banlieue properly, but she turns it into nothing more than a 'devastated countryside, where presumably everyone has either died or is now dying.
But who cares, right? It's where the poor people live.
Lastly, de Bodard's name is an additional red flag. It means I can tell you where she likely grew up, where she likely lives, what kind of school she went to, what secondary education she had, what kind of car she drives (if any), what newspaper she reads, etc. Because her name is de Bodard, and she is literally a noblewoman. As in: she has relatives in the succession line to the throne of Monaco (which you can see if you ctrl+f for "de Bodard" in the appropriate Wikipedia entry). In my experience, these are not people who are aware of their own class privilege. In de Bodard's case she is also likely financially privileged.
It is entirely possible that I am wrong and the rest of the novel is in fact a critique of the French class system. I really hope it is.
If it isn't, I feel the need to inform you all that classism is, for various reasons, an issue close to the bone for me and if the novel fails on that front, I might not be able to see any redeeming qualities to it. It will not mean they're not there, just that I won't see them and so you might want to read other reviews. I'm saying this now, while I am still relatively calm, in case I'm too blinded by rage to do so later.
There are other red flags. A lot of them and no words for how much I hope I'm wrong.
(FFS one of the good things about Anglophone SFF was that I could escape this shit.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/88671.html and has
comments over there.
the devastated countryside that surrounded them all beyond the wastelands of the Periphérique
I realise that non-French people might not notice that there are five red flags in those words, much less what those red flags are, so I will try to explain them as best as I can, in the words I do not have because this is an issue we Do Not Talk About.
First and least, Periphérique is a mispelling of Périphérique. It could be shoddy editing, though, so I will give de Bodard the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Next is the fact that nobody calls it that. Everyone always refers to it as 'le périph'. The only people who call it that are people who do not refer to it regularly, ie people who do not live with or next to it on a daily basis, ie people who live and work inside Paris (and whose family members also live inside Paris), ie people who have a certain amount of class privilege and are often unaware of said privilege. I would not say that it is impossible for an author who has unexamined class privilege to write a book that treats class issues carefully and respectfully, but I have personally never read one.
Then there's the fact that that what people call the périph is irrelevant on account of the Périphérique not existing at the time the story is set in. De Bodard should have been referring to the enceinte de Thiers if she wanted to distinguish between Paris intra muros and the banlieue.
That's right, referring to what's outside the périph as "countryside" is also a research fail (and a really impressive one, at that). The outside of Paris intra muros is not the countryside, it's the banlieue, in the original sense of the term: "ban lieu", those who are "outside the place". In the early 20th century, they called it la Zone. It was and still is where poor people live. (Using les zonards to refer to the banlieusards was in use at least until the 80s, as the opening credits song of Starmania, Quand on arrive en ville, nicely demonstrates: Qui met l'feu au building / C'est toujours les zonards / Alors, c'est la panique sur les boulevards / Quand on arrive en ville. This line and the whole song basically sends up the attitude of Parisians, especially the upper class ones ("les boulevards" is pretty explicit on that count) towards people from outside Paris who are almost uniformly working class.)
Not only does de Bodard completely fails to reference the banlieue properly, but she turns it into nothing more than a 'devastated countryside, where presumably everyone has either died or is now dying.
But who cares, right? It's where the poor people live.
Lastly, de Bodard's name is an additional red flag. It means I can tell you where she likely grew up, where she likely lives, what kind of school she went to, what secondary education she had, what kind of car she drives (if any), what newspaper she reads, etc. Because her name is de Bodard, and she is literally a noblewoman. As in: she has relatives in the succession line to the throne of Monaco (which you can see if you ctrl+f for "de Bodard" in the appropriate Wikipedia entry). In my experience, these are not people who are aware of their own class privilege. In de Bodard's case she is also likely financially privileged.
It is entirely possible that I am wrong and the rest of the novel is in fact a critique of the French class system. I really hope it is.
If it isn't, I feel the need to inform you all that classism is, for various reasons, an issue close to the bone for me and if the novel fails on that front, I might not be able to see any redeeming qualities to it. It will not mean they're not there, just that I won't see them and so you might want to read other reviews. I'm saying this now, while I am still relatively calm, in case I'm too blinded by rage to do so later.
There are other red flags. A lot of them and no words for how much I hope I'm wrong.
(FFS one of the good things about Anglophone SFF was that I could escape this shit.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/88671.html and has
comments over there.