At 12:35 5/1/97 -1000, you wrote:
--snip--
> I would also point out that by surrendering objective reality to the
>patriarchy, you also give the "bad guys" sole rights to:
>R Truth
>Knowledge
>Science
>Technology
>Science Fiction.
>
Remember, as long as we don't allow 'real' reality -- and even physics
doesn't any more, Sokal is only partly spoofing that -- "Truth" and
"Knowledge" must still come in as 'true AS FAR AS WE KNOW NOW.' Reality
likewise.
> The territory you claim for feminism seems to consist of:
>Ignorance
>Superstition
>Religion
>Fantasy
>
>I leave it at that.
>
Instead of "ignorance" would you substitute "empirical judgment"?
(See, e.g., _Women's Ways of Knowing_ which does NOT downplay the
kind of knowledge and conclusions that women operate from!)
"Science" simply refers to the operating system of current
superstitions. It's always open to revision (or it isn't science),
although this may come hard (see, e.g., the fuss about Einstein's
theory of relativity in the 'teens and 'twenties of this century.)
Perhaps a better way of speaking about that would refer to the
contemporary mythology, which also encodes technology -- and that
refers simply to "science worked out so we can use it" or else
"things that work that science hasn't figured out yet" (like the
steam engine, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution).
"Fantasy" -- GOOD fantasy -- explores psychological "reality" or
psychological experience. Not a bad place for women, IMHO. (Men
too often don't have the imagination to handle that well, or else
they don't remember their own experience clearly enough. Some do,
of course -- our excellent male fantasists.)
Joanna Russ has discussed women's relationships to technology, and
claims that women don't have the freedom either to "like" or to
"reject" it, because it is not under their "control." However, a
great deal of today's technology seems aimed at women (even if the
designers don't realize it), because women make most of the money
decisions now, at least in the U.S.
Case in point: computers, "user friendly" and GUI -- when
computers were really new, very few women used them. One spoke to
a computer in machine language; even the most basic compilers were
not available. But most MEN couldn't do this, either. So various
computer "languages" have been written; if you can program your
databse or spreadsheet, or rearrange the icons on your desktop,
it's because more and more MEN couldn't work within the limited
parameters of the old machine languages. Eventually, Apple came up
with the Mac, Microsoft invented Windows, and then decided that
users (read "women") couldn't handle that, so the put out something
called BOB with their product. It is/was so simple (and so useless)
that it's pretty well disappeared. WOMEN didn't want it. We know
what something that "helpful" does to our hard disks. But this was
a "technological fix" for those poor computer users who couldn't
figure out how to open a file in Windows. (Meaning, women.) Think, if
you will, about technology today. Heinlein had the right idea in
_Door Into Summer_ -- women use most of the current technology, but
it's not designed to make their life easier. He "invented" a device
to wash windows, and to scrub bathtubs without leaning over. For
once, a man really noticed what would make a woman's life easier.
(And to my knowledge, no one has yet really put those useful devices
on the market.)
Let me catch my breath and lower MY bloodpressure.
>
>As for hard science fiction:
> I think you have to try to write in the hard sf mode; novels do not
>become hard sf by accident any more than they become Gothic. For example,
>Nicola Griffith certainly seems to know enough about waste treatment to write
>a hard sf treatment of the subject, but IMHO she was going after something
>different in _Slow River_ -- maybe something bigger. She said something
>similar to this in the SFWA bulletin, about how when she added characters to
>her knowledge of biology, everything changed.. I don't see it as a criticism
>of _Slow River_ to say that it does not fit within the hard sf canon.
>
I HOPE I'm not reading you correctly here. Are you saying that fiction with
believable, true-to-life characters CAN'T be "hard SF"?
The old, knee-jerk crticism of "hard SF" always included "cardboard
characters" but I thought a whole lot of excellent writers had dumped that
idea. And I also hope that relating any technology/science in the story to
well-developed characterizations and believable social situations does not
automatically exclude the work from any consideration as "hard SF."
Martha Bartter
Truman State University
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:09 PDT