More Wiscon: Day 2, the Beginning

[bcholmes]

My first big debate with myself about which panel I was going to see was Saturday morning. I couldn't decide between an Intersectionality and Feminism panel, and a Class panel. Both had good lists of panelists. I ended up going to see the class panel:

Class Issues in Science Fiction and Fantasy

It's not been easy for the SF community to come to terms with class. In a society where the working poor and the unemployed are growing in number, and the middle class is being destroyed, it's vital that we discuss class. Let's build on our discussions of class at Wiscon 34, which included a powerful Class Basics panel, to discuss class and class warfare in SF as well as the real world.

Eleanor A. Arnason, Jess Adams, Beth Plutchak, Fred Schepartz, Alexis Lothian

This panel was the first panel in which I started to develop an opinion about a dynamic going on at this year's con. I feel like we have an interesting influx of people who've become politicized by the protests in February/March. And I don't want to sound as if I'm saying, "oh noes we're totally being invaded by people who are not us", but I do feel like the content of their contributions has been much more "worker power rah rah rah" and not quite in the geeky analytic way that I'm accustomed to.

I mention this because I feel like the panel was very divided in the way it wanted to explore the panel topic. One part of the panel very much seemed to want to voice this idea that something profoundly important was happening in Wisconsin at the moment, whereas the other part of the panel wanted to analyze the nooks and crannies of class hierarchies, looking to expose how the operate. These two halves of the panel, in my opinion, often didn't seem to be talking to each other.

Eleanor opened the panel with two different ways of "defining" class. The first was a traditional Marxist categorization: worker, capitalist, and petite bourgeoisie. The second seemed to be a more modern Western categorization. You're poor if you fall below the government's definition of poor. There is no government definition of rich, but we all know that the rich are up there. And everyone in-between is middle-class. Eleanor clearly did not want to get too mired in definitions and wanted to move quickly away from that part of the panel, but I think that it deserved some thought.

Alexis did a good job of trying to broaden the definition. She talked about a few things: the expectation that, in the US, education was often perceived to be a way to move up the class ladder, whereas in the UK, people retained their identification with their class background even if they went on to higher education. Some groundwork was laid for viewing class as multidimensional.

(Note to self: think about the relationship between the multidimensionality of gender and the multidimensionality of class. There are many axes of gender: presentation, socialization, bodies, etc. Why am I not better versed in language to talk about class similarly?)

I particularly like where Alexis was going with this. I think there is something to the US/Canadian (I think they're more alike than dissimilar) view of class that is bound up in valuing "skill" rather than "work". Most criticism of unions seem (in my opinion) to have, at their root, a belief that there are people who do certain types of jobs don't deserve to make a decent wage because they're the jobs that people with choices don't choose. Education/skill gives you choices ("I had to spend 4 years in university getting drunk and partying a lot so I deserve a white collar job!") whereas people who pick up the garbage... well, that can be done by anyone.

One exchange that was in equal parts hard to watch and hilarious was observing orangemike trying to educate Alexis on how, in the US of A, simple things like one's accent can be a very strong class marker. Because Alexis, coming from the UK, must clearly have no frame of reference for this. Alexis responded kinda sharply, and understandably so in my opinion.

Then the panel moved on to writing about class, and I can't say that I loved any of this analysis. Except, maybe, for the way that Jess really pushed for more concreteness. It's one thing to say, "I address a bunch of class issues in my latest book," and quite another to elaborate on what "address" looks like. I don't feel like we got a good example of "address", but I really liked the way that Jess tried to push the question.

There was a very brief discussion about agitprop. I wish we could have pursued that more. It occurred to me that if one is looking for somewhat bolshy SF, one kinda has to find some good recommendations from people. There are certain subgenres that lend themselves to a particular political viewpoint: if you pick up any military SF, you probably have a good idea about what political viewpoint it'll echo. Is there any subgenre that is more obviously aligned with any leftist political position? ("China Mieville" is not a subgenre) Jess made a funny comment about how she reads fantasy, liking to identify with characters that seem a bit more like her crowd of people, except that occasionally the main characters are secretly the king.

Pretty much by this point, we were open to questions, and a lot of the questions were grounded in the recent protests. There wasn't much more geeky analysis in the panel. Which kinda saddened me. I'm reminded of a panel, oh, four years ago, I think, at which Eleanor said: "A rally is an action that is lacking in analysis." That comment went through my head a lot during the panel in a way that was probably not particularly useful.

A few times, I considered asking a question, but was half-hearted about it. I'd put up my hand for a while, and then drop it, and then put it up for a bit again later. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get called. I was waffling between asking the question about bolshy subgenres and asking about how one looks at the way average people react around things like "unions" and not conclude that people have been persuaded to act against their own class interests. I hadn't fully figured out the wording -- I didn't want the question to essentially argue that people are dumb. Like I said: half-hearted.

It wasn't quite the class panel that I wanted, but I appreciated it for some moments.

Comments

[futuransky]

Thanks so much for this writeup! I have been waiting for you to post about this panel & love how reliable you are about doing so.

I also appreciate your analysis of the panel. I found it quite frustrating, although also with some moments that were very useful. I do think something important is happening in Wisconsin, and in lots of other places as well, but I was hoping we might get to join the dots between that and other issues/locations/concerns.

"China Mieville" is not a subgenre.

Ha. But that's an interesting question... My feeling is that politically aware sf is sort of its own subgenre, one I get to stay in touch with mainly through WisCon. The leftist utopian tradition is one of the things I was alluding to on the panel when I talked about histories for sf other than the US-pulp tradition, but I don't know that it has obviously separable heirs in current fiction. But it would be interesting to see if PM Press's new line of sf has noticeable leanings toward particular subgenres!

[jiawen]

Thanks for the write-up!

Sounds like the panel needed to pre-discuss things more. There were at least two directions it could've gone in; maybe it'll spawn a few, more highly-focused panels next year?

I recently watched I Not Stupid with my students. It's a Singaporean movie about the education system there, and how streaming gets used to devalue people. Feels like it was dealing with similar issues.

[merielle]

China Mieville" is not a subgenre

*snort*

I hear you, oh do I hear you, on not wanting to argue that people are dumb. I don't think it's dumbness so much as that they've been sold a bill of goods. I certainly had. To my knowledge, I had never met anyone in a union besides cops until I was 25, but growing up in Texas I knew I was supposed to be against them. Then in Pittsburgh I met big burly steelworkers who spoke passionately about equal pay for their union sisters, and it broke my worldview. And then I thought about exactly how hard that sell had been, from school textbooks to public policy to movies, just decades of soaking in it, and then I felt really angry
and sad. Because wow, that is a lot of energy the kyriarchy throws at programming us with a mythology that perpetuates it. The fact that it does take such an enormous amount of programming is, I think, actually a hopeful sign.

[onceupon]

I think we saw different panels on class - though now I'm all fuzzy about when the one I went to was - it was moderated by Liz Henry and I think they tried to recover a bit from this panel by really focusing on ways in which class has been addressed in sci fi previously.

China Mieville was invoked quite a bit, though. Ugh.

There was one unfortunate moment where a guy in the audience started rambling about Marxism without bothering to define any of his terms.

I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of the panel in general.

[bcholmes]

I think we saw different panels on class

Yeah, I think you saw the one just before dinner on Saturday. I caught the one in the morning.

China Mieville was invoked quite a bit, though. Ugh.

Uh... are you the only person I know at Wiscon who does not believe that China Mieville is a God?!?

[onceupon]

I don't hate Mieville but I am BAFFLED at the constant adulation. Like, what?

The other god of Wiscon: Terry Prachett. Also brought up at the panel I went to - because one of his characters is a regular soldier (who rises to be, like, king or something). I remain skeptical that it was an applicable example.

Honestly, the whole thing made me want to do a close reading of the Star Trek TOS episode Devil in the Dark - the one with the Horta. Because it's an actual example of class clash in sci fi.

And you're right - I think that's the time slot the one I went to fell into. It just felt... vague. And strangely impotent.

[redbird]

Thanks for posting this: I went to the intersectionality panel instead, and am glad to have this write-up. (I am not at all sure I will post about that or any of the panels I saw: I spent the con slightly behind on sleep, and not taking notes, which does not lend itself to good narrative.)

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for lovely write up.

[firecat]

orangemike trying to educate Alexis on how, in the US of A, simple things like one's accent can be a very strong class marker.

Hee!