Skip to main content

TED: Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

  • fetsiboomsticks: Cultural ghettos are places where we congregate with people just like us. Where we otherise others by affirming ourselves and by actively ennumerating what differences the differences of others.
  • frustration is very stimulating. Learning a language, being frustrated that you can't express in fine detail keeps you trying.
  • a reader wants to see the manifestation of the identity of the author in the story
  • fetsiboomsticks: you are not a creator, an actor takes roles that he 'agrees' with, that he is prepared to endorse, that's what we think.
  • multicultural writers are expected to write their culture, English writers are allowed to be more imaginative
  • she was prosecuted for words she had written and she objects because it is fiction writers are entitled to their opinions, but it is not politics its fiction, separate things
  • fiction is a connector, politics is a divider
  • Muslims read books by Palistinians and vice versa, they connect. Politicians stop you from listening
  • She likes not knowing what she will write about next or what characters will do in the next ten pages
  • Perhaps we should not teach students to write what they know, instead write what we can feel outside of their cultural ghetto

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On 'natural'

I don't think 'natural' is good. There are many things that we apply (some almost arbitrary) (some ignorant and backward ideas of natural and not-natural agenda-propagating) rules of morality. I think 'natural' is a political rhetoric, profoundly abused.  'Diversity' is the only defensible rhetoric for 'thinking' beings. We are not, of course, the only creatures that do thinking, but we are the only creatures with the power to oppress others and other creatures whose languages we don't understand.  Us (badly) thinking creatures, slowly, ponderously gathering the evidence of our badness (I see no reason for your (god's) patience with us), have the ability to decide to be better than (the fashionable) 'natural' of the day.  It is our responsibility to transcend our vileness. Just that. That one task. Our thinkingness I believe is for that. A world (constructed by god) to demonstrate this point. And we will find every rhetor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism , coining the word "bright" (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified. intelligent design is creationism redressed creationists are right that evolution is hostile to evolution statistical improbability of the complexity of design - intelligent design but the intelligent designer wouldn't have made such a hash - why would the designer be bothered with disapproving of our sex lives, favor our side in the war Dawkins suggest rocking the boat - attack religion as a whole taboo of speaking ill about religion - Douglas Adams said, sacred ideas at the heart of religion, holy cows, you can support any operating system you want, but the challenge of religious ideas is off limits science and religion are corrosive to each other - religious explanations are trivial and improbably, teaches people to accept authoritarianism takes the example of famous scientists and imagines ...
6 comments
Read more

Mary Daly explains the pejoration (of one) of the words related to women

Of Death and Conscience: Brief thoughts on gender role and the values of the dominant culture in medicine : "“Under the influence of the Church and the newly formed male-dominated medical establishment, the word “witch,” which originally meant “wise one,” became a term of scorn. It took a reign of terror lasting several hundred years to radically alter a way of life thousands of years old. Millions of women who carried the healing lineage were systematically killed (see The Church and the Second Sex by Mary Daly).”"
4 comments
Read more