Ursula Le Guin

[girliejones]

And from Ursula Le Guin's Guest of Honour Speech at Wiscon 20:

And ain't I a woman? And ain't I a feminist? And ain't I an American, and a radical, and ain't I politically correct? Yes I am. I'm as politically correct as I know how to be , and nobody is going to shame me out of talking the way I think is right and working for what I love and

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

I am for some reason really bad at articulating my issues with cultural appropriation, but I'll have a go:
Here's a general discussion of Cultural appropriation.

The way I see it, there would be nothing wrong with Ursula K Le Guin quoting any part of Sojourner Truth's speech which was talking about the rights of all women. And there would be nothing wrong with her being inspired to make a speech which had the same general feel, eg saying "You may think that being part of group X (black women, feminists, etc) means I'm not really a woman, but I am".

But to use the specific words "Ain't I a woman", which have huge cultural baggage in America and in their original context meant "Am I not as much of a woman as white women?"(*) is to implicitly equate her position as a white feminist with that of Sojourner Truth's as a black slave woman being oppressed by white women. Which is just...worse than Godwin's Law imo.

I read an eye-opening essay about a very similar situation at Wiscon a few years ago but it is now locked, I did find a bunch of other posts on the topic.

(*)Reading the wikipedia page I am reminded that it's not clear that Sojourner Truth actually said those words. But if they were said, that's what they meant. Afaict.

[bibliofilen]

And that is in turn a paraphrase of the Merchant of Venice and Shylock's famous speech "Am I not human..." talking about the oppression of jews.

[alias_sqbr]

That never occurred to me. I'm no good at telling the difference between deliberate allusion and coincidence.

[girliejones]

That's the bit I struggle with, the jumping onto people for misappropriation when it might also just as easily be allusion or reference. I come from a personal background where allusion happens a lot and the game is to pick what the reference is or where the quote comes from, so for me I don't immediately assume appropriation.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, it's often very blurry, and it doesn't pay to be too rigid. But I personally think there is a line, and she crossed it in this particular case. Especially since when you say "I'm as politically correct as I know how to be" I think it's reasonable to be held to a fairly high standard. There are times when using a quote is a fun game of allusions, but this was not imo an appropriate time for that sort of thing. You could argue that I'm being too politically correct, but Ursula K LeGuin is basically saying in her speech that you can never be too politically correct.

Also, following on from bibliofilen's point: I googled "if you prick me do I not bleed" and most of the first page wasn't about bigotry, and none of them seemed to be about antisemitism. I googled "Ain't I a woman" and every single link was about Sojourner Truth. This is not an ambiguous usage.

(edited to fix really unfortunate spelling mistake)

[bibliofilen]

First I'd like to thank you for introducing me to Sojourner Truth's wonderful speech (in both recorded variants) and second I'd suggest you make that google-search for "if you prick us do we not bleed".

[alias_sqbr]

Ah. Good point *blushes*

[girliejones]

Another possibility is that Shakespeare's been quoted for an additional 300 years and many more of his phrases and quotes have been assimilated and appropriated into everyday language.

[alias_sqbr]

That and I got the words wrong *cough*

[bibliofilen]

I had never heard of Sojourner Truth before you mentioned her(not being American), my first association was Shakespeare and Mary Woolstonecraft.

When I studied literature I learned that references and allusions go back and forth and only rarely is it possiible to pin down the very first source. No doubt Shakespeare, and perhaps even the stories in the Bible, have even earlier references that are now lost to us.

[alias_sqbr]

In general, yes. I still think the specific phrase "Ain't I a woman" has not entered "vague non-specific allusion" territory yet. But I don't know, I guess really the only people who can judge this properly are Americans (since that's the relevant context).

Sorry I took a while to reply, life got in the way!