Oh, Robin Hobb...

[theotherbaldwin]

Today, while I have 3 articles to work on and write, and a migrane headache from hell, user raanve done a fine job of deconstructing why Hobb missed the clue train, so I can spend my energy elsewhere. Because seriously... saying that manic depression and artistic temperament are the same thing?

Comments

[erf_]

On the subject of marginalizing, othering, and dismissing out of hand, a friend of mine, who is a political science PhD student at UPenn, recently wrote an entry complaining about philosophy students in a course he was TAing who wrote their papers on Hobbes in the form of "Hobbes is bullshit, and here's why: rebuttal A to one of his points, rebuttal B to another, rebuttal C." My friend was appalled by how common this approach was. When you're reading about viewpoints as offensive to modern sensibilities as Hobbes's, it's intellectually bankrupt to just say "but Hobbes was wrong because of X," because the moment he offends you you are already reading the text in terms of how to take him down. The truth is, an extraordinary amount of thought, research, and insight went into Hobbes's philosophical systems, and truly understanding them involves the difficult task of seeing how he came to his conclusions and why he deduced that they were, out of the set of all possible conclusions, the correct ones. A proper rebuttal to Hobbes all but requires this approach, as ultimately it was the deconstruction and re-exploration of the process by which Hobbes derived his conclusions, not the lawyering away of individual assumptions and conclusions, that allowed philosophers to construct the contemporary set of Western philosophical values as an alternative. Two platitudes here, but they're good ones: a) Know your enemy, and b) It is ten times as hard to create as to destroy.

(I would love to link that entry, but as it involves his current students, he's locked it. That's a real shame, because no one on the Internet, no one, really seems capable of rebuilding viewpoints from step one instead of responding to cognitive dissonance by immediately dismissing points out of hand. It seems the dominant pattern in the blogosphere is to be incensed first, then think of reasons why the person you're responding to is wrong. This is a problem.)

And that's why, even if Hobb's comments themselves feel dismissive of the viewpoints of people suffering from psychological disorders, it is vitally important that we do not dismiss her own viewpoint out of hand. Only once we truly understand where she is coming from and how she arrived at where she is can we construct a worldview that both accurately reflects her own personal experience and the bigger picture from which we are coming from. That this is a matter of privilege doesn't make it different, it in fact makes it all the more important--let's not make her inability to see our side impede our own ability to see hers, as much as we may find it personally offensive. If her privilege obscures her vision that just means we have the option, should we choose it, of being her eyes. She's never been truly manic-depressive before, or had ADHD before--how would she know what it's like? How would she know how upsetting it is to hear her say what she did? Generally it's not our obligation to educate her on these matters, but once she becomes a target of accusations of prejudice, it actually is. I read comments on links in your entry and I see calls for boycotts of her books--as good as that may feel, and as effective as it could be in getting her to recant, it would leave her just as ignorant as she was before--and now indignant about it, now that she's been set up as a punching bag for all the bottled up anger of anyone who's ever had to deal with grossly misinformed remarks like hers. If we're genuinely serious about changing attitudes, we have to see attitudes as the problem. Not people.

[theotherbaldwin]

I totally agree re: attitudes not people and why a boycott might not be effective. I could see if she were writing offensive fiction but not so sure you this would be aiming energy in the right direction unless she was, like writng a non-fiction book all about how as she says "(Artistic temperment is sometimes spelled ‘t e n d e n c y t o m a n i c d e p r e s s i o n.’)"

[theotherbaldwin]

Also:
http://ephemere.dreamwidth.org/16818.html
and
http://bossymarmalade.livejournal.com/519691.html

and intersting sides of the coin too