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bcholmesI was up relatively early on Saturday morning and realized I had a caffeine headache. So I went off to Michaelangelo's to grab some coffee. Unfortunately, the entire city of Madison was already in line at Michaelangelo's. But eventually I got my coffee.
The long coffee line made me a bit late to the first panel:
It Are Fact: Science and Oppression Intersect
The scientific method is intended as a tool for discovering truth, no matter where truth lies. But science has historically been used for many kinds of oppression: in racism, in sexism, in exiling those who fail to meet standards of normal. Science has a bad reputation among oppressed groups. How does science fiction address this ambiguity; do we see this question addressed at all; should we?
I wish I could say that I enjoyed the panel more than I did, because I think the topic is really interesting. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
veejane brought some interesting stuff to the panel, but I was pretty underwhelmed by some of the other comments. When I came in, one panelist was talking, at length and glowingly, about Gould's book The Mismeasure of Man, but some of the comments were a little cringe-inducing.
At one point, she was trying to cite how, even if you take certain badly-defined concepts such as IQ or whatnot, and measure them, you get different results than the one the measure seemed to be biased for. In one such example, she said, "oriental" women ranked the best on one particular test. Me, I sat there thinking, "oriental" women? Yeesh. There were a coupl'a comments like that. At one point, the moderator did chime in with, "I think that if I were describing this, I might use more finger quotes." I'm not convinced that the panelist got it, though.
I don't have very many notes for this panel, but I think all the points that I do have were uttered by veejane:
- the idea of reliable but not valid tests
- "how come peer review isn't working?"
- peer review is considered adversarial (better your friends find the problem than your peer reviewers)
- repetition of experiments is not valued by the academic institutions
There were other bits of the panel that were interesting: a quick discussion about the educational system and selecting kids for certain streams (this kid is headed for university; this kid is headed for the trades). Benet raised a comment about how scientific findings get reported by "science news", and the effect that has on popular perceptions of science.
I didn't stay for the end of the panel, though.
I chatted briefly with maize in the lobby while waiting for the next time slot. He was headed to "SF and Anarchism 101: It's Not Chaos" (I'm interested in finding a good write-up about that) and I headed off to another science panel:
The Mismeasure of Man, and the Rest of Us, Too: Science, Colonialism, Genocide, and Science Fiction
A number of recent works have examined the relationship between science, colonialism, historiography, and science fiction, from Rosemary Kirstein's stealth SF Steerswoman series to M.T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing historical re-visions to SF tv such as Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. How are SF and related genres envisioning and revising the ethical and social dimensions of science? What role does the idea of Science play in maintaining or subverting power inequities of empire, nation, race, and gender?
This panel was pretty much everything I wanted the previous panel to be. Two things really stood out to me:
- Rachel Swirsky, while saying she was a first-time moderator, did an outstanding job. Before the panel began, she solicited ideas from the audience about topics that the audience hoped that the panel would cover. There was also a really good moment when she called someone on the use of ablist language in a way that really worked.
- Micole brought a lot of really good stuff to the panel, raising important points and questions.
One of the points that Joyce mentioned a coupl'a times, that I feel didn't get a lot of discussion was about open source as a product of white geek culture and how the idea of "information wants to be free" relates to cultural knowledge thats not free to take. Sadly, there was no real discussion about this idea; it would have been interesting to me, 'cause I stick my nose into a lot of open source stuff.
This panel made a lot of stabs at what it described as "The War of the left on Science", and the ways in which that's different than "The War of the right on Science". There were questions about whether or not the scientific method could be extricated from the social structures in which is exists. jhkim talked about the way people articulate the "problem of science": the "problem" we're told, is not science, but the misuse of science. But John asked: is there some "pure" science out there? Science unsullied by ideology.
And then we were in to specific examples: the role of anthropology, for example, in finding better ways to colonize. There was a bit of discussion about MammothFail, and the erasure of pre-Colonization history.
Micole talked about how in one particular museum there's a discussion of a particular conquistado who was the first person (!) to stand in the spot where one could see both the Atlantic and the Pacific. As if, none of the people who lived in the Americas before the Europeans came would ever have thought to stand there. Part of the function of a successful colonialist narrative is make pre-colonial peoples invisible. She went on to articulate that one of the objections to The Thirteenth Child is that it replicates this kind of colonialist narrative.
There was an interesting conversation about The Sarah Conner Chronicles: about how it challenges science as both individual and team achievement. The show seems to follow the "Steam Engine Time" theory. If you prevent one person from inventing thing X that's implicated in the rise of the machines, someone else comes along and invents thing X. This does seem to subtly undermine the idea of scientific advance happening because of the greatest of the greatest minds.
This is also the first panel I went to in which there was some discussion about "the book that exists in the writer's text" versus "the book that happens as the readers interact with the written word" (an idea that was central to Sunday's "Authorial Intent" panel).
Micole also mentioned the idea that the first atomic bomb was dropped on non-white folk. She said, at some level, the implicit racism of that decision is so obvious that it's almost embarrassing to raise, but that if you don't say it out loud, people are pretty successful about not thinking about it.
A question raised by the panel was: "how do you get people to look at a narrative that they don't want to look at?" Rachel raised the most interesting point, here: often, she said, when she publishes work that is anti-racist, there is a particular segment of her readership (often white, male, self-identified libertarian and often with a military background) who complain that the story was about nothing. They just can't parse it (one audience member shouted out "They don't see race, Rachel!" LOLs, I tell ya!)
At this point, Micole raised a point, saying that she wanted to problematize[*] the panel: she argued that the western tradition of science is not the only tradition of science. And yet, part of a colonialist narrative is to select the rise of Western science as "the" scientific revolution, and render the other scientific traditions as uninteresting to discuss. Micole acknowledged that, really, nobody on the panel was capable of talking from a position of experience about these other scientific traditions, but that she felt that it was an important point to raise.
Relatedly, later, when we were making book recommendations, one woman in front of me mentioned Vandana Shiva, and I was surprised that people didn't seem to recognize her name. C'mon: this is supposed to be Wiscon!
During question and answer, I asked what the panelists thought about how "the market" played a similar role in neo-colonialism that science played in colonialism. Micole asserted that she viewed colonialism as an existing process and she didn't neo-colonialism as a distinct thing. I get her point, but I think that there are meaningful things to discuss about differences between colonialism versus so-called post-colonialism versus neo-colonialism. Mostly, the panel acknowledged that economics was a similar "science" that was being used to colonize.
It was just simply an excellent panel. (I've written down one other book recommendation: Pythagoras's Trousers, which sounded interesting. A full book list is going to be posted to Ambling along the Aqueduct.)
After that, I had lunch with firecat, maize and eeyorerin. It was the sort of great lunch discussion where you sit gabbing around the table while the restaurant empties out. maize talked about the false dichotomy of "stuff we enjoy" versus "stuff we're supposed to enjoy". Some books came up that I wrote down, so they must have been stuff sounded like I'd be interested in them: Never Let Me Go and The Investigation.
Then I went to the green room to prep for my panel, Food in a Post-Oil Economy:
Food in a Post-Oil Economy
In Danny Boyle's SF movie epic Sunshine, the spaceship crew dine on eggs and fresh vegetables grown in their "oxygen garden," in stark contrast to the algae or food cubes seen in most space fiction. The production of food in a post-oil economy has many similarities to the task of feeding space travelers with minimum resources. SF offers MREs and meals-in-a-pill as well as greenhouse space ships. Here on Earth we've got dirt, grass and stock farming, the symbiosis of hydroponics and aquaculture in aquaponics, integrated pest management and other permaculture techniques. What can we take from SF to help our current food issues, and how can we use our experience with sustainable urban agriculture to navigate a path to the future?"
I think the panel mostly went well. The prevailing opinion of the panelists seemed to be "things will get a lot worse before they get better" but that the perspective was fairly optimistic. Me, I'm not so optimistic. I think things will get a lot worse and they'll ultimately get better for Canada and the US and other first world countries. And places like Haiti will have bodies in the streets.
The last panel I attended was about bisexuality in SF:
Bisexual and Pansexual Characters in SF/F
Where the heck are they? Many bisexual fans still feel pretty invisible in the genre after decades of queer activism. With a few notable exceptions like Torchwood, Elizabeth Bear's Col. Valens in Scardown/Hammered/Worldwired, Laurell K. Hamilton's vampires and Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, positive portrayals of bi and pansexual characters in SF/F seem to be rather scarce. What is being overlooked? Bring examples of your favourite bisexual characters to discuss, and also feel free to bring up common problematic tropes about bi and pansexual characters (fickle, murderous, untrustworthy) in SF/F TV, film and books
This was a much more "fun" panel. I didn't take notes. At one point, charliegrrrl complained about Willow's sexual identity, in much the same way I've complained about her in the past (why couldn't she be bi?). But I did use that complaint to ask a question about people whose sexual identity change over time, and if there was a way to represent that in stories that didn't seem to also reject the idea of bisexuality or whatnot. The panelists quickly cited Chasing Amy, which hadn't popped into my head.
Unfortunately, I can't recall anything else that came up on the panel.
I had a good dinner with jiawen and then, afterward, we went off to the auction, which was funny and fun (albeit with some squicky elements). I've already mentioned my two purchases.
And then I went up to the sixth floor, where I chatted in a group with people like Ian H., erik, lcohen, and hypatia. Other people dropped in and out of the group. And then jiawen suggested I play Zar with a group of Minnesotans.
I'd never played Zar before, so I was terrible. Mostly, I kept forgetting to say "Zar" when I laid down my second-last card. And then I'd think I could go out, but I'd be forced to pick up a card because someone matched my card, and I'd forget to say, "Zar". And then I'd be forced to pick up another card.
Of course, being a total "think outside the box geek", the solution was obvious. Just say "Zar" all the time. Unfortunately, I'm not the only geek who has ever come to this game (shocking!) and there's actually a rule for that.
It was interesting how the game required such concentration that the rest of the con suite just sort of fell away and we focused on the table in front of us. Suddenly, the con suite was mostly empty and badger2305 was trying to get our attention. It was 2:45 in the morning and he wanted us to: a) stop playing Zar; and b) help tidy up the con suite. jiawen and I stayed until the bitter end, doing the con suite's dishes. I probably hit bed around four, and then got up at 8:00 to meet someone for breakfast. Ouchies!
* does that translate as "bullshit-ize"?
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Date: 2009-05-30 05:58 pm (UTC)Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem
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Date: 2009-05-30 06:56 pm (UTC)