{"id":263,"date":"2012-03-22T00:35:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T00:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/?p=263"},"modified":"2012-03-22T00:35:30","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T00:35:30","slug":"nick-wood-augsep-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/?p=263","title":{"rendered":"Nick Wood – August\/September 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is anti-racism blog week currently: http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/ibarw\/<\/a> – so I guess it's only fitting I've recently read Steve Biko's<\/b> I write what I like<\/i> - a collection of political essays banned at the time in apartheid South Africa. The official (white) line at the time was obviously that his ideas were of extreme, radical demands and a 'terrorist' inspiration. So it was with slight - but not completely unexpected - surprise, that I read the essays with a feeling they were both eminently 'common sense' and restrained, laying out the need for a positive 'black consciousness' to develop in order to challenge the denigratory and oppressive system then facing black people. Even Biko's assertion that a black liberation movement needed to remain undiluted by involvement with (liberal) whites made sense in his philosophical justification of the need to develop a strong black 'antithesis' to the dominant 'thesis' of white power. (The black political opposition had been severely curtailed after the Rivonia treason trial in 1964. This effectively robbed anti-apartheid organizations such as the ANC of their leadership structure.) <\/p>\n

The 'antithesis' did grow of course, burgeoning in the aftermath of the Soweto uprising in 1976 and the subsequent detention and murder of Biko in 1977: http:\/\/africanhistory.about.com\/library\/biographies\/blbio-stevebiko.htm<\/a>. It's a tragedy that he and so many others never got to see the eventual 'synthesis' that emerged from the (dialectical) conflict of 'black' and 'white' political forces into the non-racial democracy of South Africa in 1994 - when the 'Rainbow Nation' was born, with both its' ongoing triumphs and difficulties. <\/p>\n

One of the obvious implications of Biko's philosophy is that it highlighted the experiential chasm between white and black in South Africa at the time, implying little – if any – point of meaningful contact. I have a feeling, however, that there may well be similar sorts of experiential chasms currently operating across the world. For a writer trying to create characters that represent a more-rounded and diverse world, this translates into how does one write authentically about characters of significant difference from one's own background and experience? <\/p>\n

For a start, there has been some useful guidelines and suggestions developed in Writing the Other: a Practical Approach<\/a><\/i> by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward<\/b> (2006), as well as perhaps more ironic guidelines such as 'How to write about Africa': http:\/\/www.granta.com\/extracts\/2615<\/a>. Further to that, I think one cannot skimp on where people come from - I'm not taking nationally here, but socio-culturally and politically. Which is why I think science fiction and fantasy in its richest form has an advantage - being not just able to illustrate past or current systems, but additionally being able to speculate and create future or alternate systems too - and to keep pushing the boundaries of experiential understanding, fostering the development of imaginative empathy - for all humans, animals, 'aliens' ('illegal' or science-fictionally otherwise)\u2026<\/p>\n

And for those who need reminding that today's so-called 'terrorists' may be tomorrow's – or even today's – 'freedom fighters', there's always Farah Mendelsohn's<\/b> edited collection Glorifying Terrorism<\/i>. rackstrawpress.nfshost.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

Finally, I would like to thank Tanya Barben<\/b> from the University of Cape Town (UCT) for her excellent article on the wonderful work of Timlin, from Kimberley in the Cape, who wrote and drew a rare classic fantasy entitled The Ship that Sailed to Mars<\/i>. Tanya's article has been uploaded into the section on SF in South Africa; part 4, as the work was written in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Nick Wood – Aug\/Sep 2007<\/p>\n

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It is anti-racism blog week currently: http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/ibarw\/ – so I guess it's only fitting I've recently read Steve Biko's I write what I like - a collection of political essays banned at the time in apartheid South Africa. The official (white) line at the time was obviously that his ideas were of extreme, radical demands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2007blogs","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}