Part I is here on the LJ, as a crosspost from the other blog:

There's this thing about specfic that allows us as writers and readers, both, to thoroughly examine themes of other, in ways that other literary traditions simply don't flex to accommodate. When you turn the idea of other on its head the way specfic can, you get some pretty interesting and disturbing stuff -- like Ursula Le Guin's Hugo-winning "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." (Available in The Wind's Twelve Quarters.)

The rest of it is here.

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Part II, wherein Mac returns to the Magical Negro discussion (and shamelessly swipes parts of it):

Other is a term to describe the phenomenon of the outsider, particularly in fiction, who represents some kind of threat to the community -- but often, also serves as the agent for the community's salvation/redemption.

Familiar examples of other from stuff you've read or seen: Queer characters, like Tara in BtVS; Brown characters, especially as the highly-refined Magical Negro; Women, in almost anything pre-1900; Gypsies in any fiction I've ever seen them appear in; Fairies, in pretty much any fiction that takes them seriously -- but especially in medieval texts.

When we left off, last, I'd just started discussing the Eileen Joy essay, found here.

Again, the rest of it is here.

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Part III, wherein Mac answers some of the commenters, and ventures a bit further afield:


Okay -- from Eileen Joy's comment: I think you will see that I am: first, arguing that "queer" can never divorce itself from "woman," which will always--on a cultural level, anyway--be the foundation of "queer" [in the eyes of, say, the most hetero-normative communities]; and second, arguing, mainly following Elizabeth Grosz [a feminist, I might add] that, evolutionary-biological-wise, we are, all of us "hetero-queer"

Right -- that's all well and good, as far as it goes. The problem is, it doesn't go far enough. So let's push the idea a bit, eh? The idea that the concept of queer cannot be divorced from the perception of woman, and therefore fear of queerness = misogyny, has been around very nearly as long as I've been alive, at least. It goes in sort of chicken-and-egg circles, though, unless you can introduce something new into the equation.

To find something new there, we're going to have to make some extrapolations, and maybe even a leap or two. That is, we have to get to the "So what?" part and apply the raw idea in a way that it has relevance. We can do that. And maybe we can do that without the academic-speak wanking that mostly just serves, frankly, to obfuscate the discussion.

Eileen points out that one way to push the idea is to assert, as feminist Elizabeth Grosz does, the "hetero-queer" spectrum "produced through endlessly transmogrifying yet partially dimorphically fixed chains of sexual difference" which is a start -- but not all that helpful, honestly, in terms of defending the relevance of the assertion that "queer" cannot be divorced from "woman."

Once again, you can follow the link for the rest (so far.)