This is me theorizing away based on my personal experience!
It's not just people in fandom: I think that the knee-jerk habit of universalizing is built into human beings (I admit I have NO evidence whatsoever for it)--i.e. we generalize from what we see, and often darn fast which makes sense in some situations, but rarely in regard to complicated cultural issues.
On a more limited scale: I think public education in the United States generally tends to emphasize the 'reach' for authority by making universal statements, so students come into college wanting to state things like "since the beginning of time" and "throughout history" and so on and so forth. Why not? They've been doing it, and gotten good grades (good enough to get into college). They've never been taught that the best arguments are limited and qualified. And add in Dunning Kruger (the less a person knows, the more they THINK they know--the more one knows, the more one is aware of how little they know), and you see a lot of people making falsely universal claims based on their own experience.
I agree with others that this tendency is going to be dominant in dominant groups--who are indoctrinated into the idea that they are the universal/default.
I spend a lot of time trying to teach my students in everything from first year composition (not so much anymore, but I taught a lot of comp for a lot of years) to their doctoral dissertations that less is more, that more limited and qualified claims can be much more strongly supported, and the desire to make a grand universal foundational claim (which as I understand it was a big part of Enlightenment theory)is a great way to end up flat out on one's butt with egg on one's face.
That said: the best example I have to hand right now is Helen Merrick's Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminsms:
From the last paragraph of her preface: "Thus my opening confessions, intended to contextualize what is a necessarily partial, situated and invested account of the nexus of feminisms and sf. If nothing else, this book might provide an answer to white I have found feminist sf so engaging. Hopefully it does much more, and reveals what all kid of feminist readers might find illuminating, challenging and inspiring about the production of sf feminisms" (v)
My overview notes for my students (relating to Chapter 4) on how she achieves that more limited set of claim and moves beyond universalizing her own experience: Merrick is doing a cultural history: she says so right in the title!
Her cultural history focuses on a specific sub-culture (the science fiction community), in English-speaking countries (United States, Britain, Australia). The science fiction community is defined as consisting of the writers, editors, readers, and fans (with the understanding that some people can participate in the community from any of those subject positions—many readers of sf become writers or editors).
Her more specific focus is on women and feminisms in that community: this compound noun ("women" and "feminisms") is important to her argument because she wants to separate "women" as a group from "feminists" as a group in order to make certain arguments about how feminisms originated and developed in the science fiction community. She also wants to emphasize the plurality and diversity amongst both those groups ("women" and "feminsts.")
As an academic, she situates her topic in the context of relevant scholarship on similar and related topics, including the origins and development of science fiction and the sf community (since the 1920s), and the origins and development of feminist literary criticism (meaning, academic criticism), and, to some extent, in the context of the mainstream feminist movement and feminist theories.
By "situates her topic," I mean that she summarizes the scholarship on the related topics: academic scholarship requires showing the knowledge of other scholarship on the topic(s).
But she also writes about her personal experiences (with English as an academic discipline, with science fiction, with feminism) to emphasize throughout that her argument(s) in this book are partial, subjective, and incomplete (that is, she does not have the goal of giving a completely authoritative, single-universal, claim as to what feminist sf is, or what sf feminism is). Instead, in the best new historicist tradition, she attempts to tease out and show the multiple, overlapping, contradictory, diverse, competing ideas and texts relating to her topic.
One of the ways (methods, or praxis/practice) that she embodies that new historicist theory is by focusing on a wide variety of texts (from letters and fanzines, to academic monographs) by fans, by the writers and editors themselves (including not only their stories and novels but the anthologies), and by academics, and by focusing on materials from three different countries (which, as a number of you note, is unusual in moving outside the United States).
Her major arguments (so far) include the argument that:
Women were always present in the community of science fiction readers and fans and writers and editors;
Their presence was historically (and is still, currently) questioned and debated by the men in the community on various grounds, ranging from the impact of female characters in the genre (sex! and romance, not science), and the relative inferiority of women (in the community) to men in relation to science and writing and fandom activities;
"Science fiction" as a genre has been ignored by literary criticism (in general), and that mainstream feminism as a social movement *and* academic feminist literary criticism has also ignored the presence of feminist science fiction (and feminisms in sf);
The development of declared feminism in sf during the 1970s rests on a foundation of decades of activities and contributions by women (who did not identify as feminist) who wanted to create spaces for themselves within the community and did so in various ways (some of which can be described as proto-feminist and served as the foundation for the later feminist work);
There are different approaches on the question of how to talk about the sf produced by women and its relation to science fiction, and its relation to feminism:
One of these approaches can be called woman-centered or gynocritical: the works in this approach focus on any works by women as important. The assumption in this approach is that any text by a woman (i.e. note the emphasis on the author's sex) is important to read and think about, and perhaps celebrate.
A competing approach can be called feminist: the works in this approach construct definitions or criteria for what elements in the text (fiction, novel, criticism) can be identified as feminsts (which requires defining "feminism"). This approach opens up the possibility that male authors could write feminist texts since the theory rests on the idea of feminist knowledge. The Tiptree Award is based on this theory: men have won the award because the focus is on recognizing the works that question gender, not on celebrating women authors as a group.
In addition to the arguments that Merrick makes about women and feminisms in science fiction (which she supports by a range of evidence in different chapters), she is also presenting arguments on the best way for scholars to do this sort of work—i.e. she is making a methodological argument. This argument comes into clear focus in Chapter 4 and is exemplified in Chapter, but has been present since the preface (page 6) where she talked about her focus for the book, specifically "a number of the discursive communities that have contributed to the production of feminist sf: the sf field generally, proto-feminist and feminist fan communities, feminist sf critic, and feminist scholars of science and technology" (6). She immediately notes that all these discursive (or discourse) communities overlap to some extend except the last one (feminist scholars of science and technology).
What is a discourse (discursive) community? Good question!
A short definition that basically says a group of people who share similar ideas about communication (written or spoken), and assumptions about the topic that their community focuses on, as well as some common language. The example they give: "Computer Programming: Anyone unclear on the concept of discourse communities simply needs to listen to a discussion among a group of computer programmers. Clearly, this is a community that requires highly specialized knowledge, expertise, and a grasp of a complicated lexicon of terminology and jargon."
Here's a link to an "issue brief" on the National Council of Teachers of English (important professional organization for those of you who plan to teach):
This points out (in more academic language) the same characteristics as the short and simple one above--and provides additional information: that the term is rooted in sociology, and that there are criticisms of it, especially in regard to writing/discourse communities (including the fact that, like any category, it's inaccurate, and focuses more on similarities than differences, and ignores power hierarchies).
All of you belong to some discourse communities already: you just probably don't call them that!
This class is a discourse community in formation!
You belong to the discourse community of your major (or minor), and to the larger discourse community of "college student."
But your churches are discourse communities, as are your jobs (past, present, and future!).
So, Merrick's argument is that if an academic is writing about women and/or feminisms in science fiction, the best method is not to focus only on the book(s) or other texts (games, comics, films), but on the fans and readers, the community itself, not through surveys/questionnaires (though such scholarship is done in some disciplines), but through close textual readings of the primary documents (which she's been providing), and interviews (which she did as part of her research process), as well as on the criticism produced (in fandom and academia), and, finally, on the texts themselves (though to a much less extent than the other types of evidence).
This chapter is key: Merrick argues that just working with the tools of regular literary criticism or even feminist literary criticism is not the best approach for talking about feminist sf because those methodologies (how to talk about feminist sf) remove the literature from the means of production (i.e. who is writing, who is editing, who is publishing, who is running cons, etc.), and from the community. She traces the development of literary feminist sf criticism, then notes the shift to cultural histories (like her work).
And, from my notes on her conclusion in Chapter 8:
Future Cabals: The conclusion! *pause for cheering* This section summarizes, briefly, the main argument(s) of the book and sets the ground for future work (by other scholars). Your project for this class is meant to be a scholarly work (yes, I consider you scholars even though you are students—as far as I'm concerned, that makes you apprentice scholars!) doing exactly what Merrick talks about at the end here, filling in the gaps:
Each chapter could be seen as a preliminary survey, a potential nucleus for a myriad of other investigations into feminist cultural productions that could produce provocative reflections on mainstream (dare I say "mundane") feminist theory and criticism, as well as on the sf genre. So many untold stories beckon from the gaps of this book: histories of sf feminisms focused on alternative sexualities or the nexus of race and feminism, ; a detailed history of the women in fandom and their various communities; the transformation of the sf feminist "public sphere" through electronic communication; or the vital intersections between the ecofeminist movement and feminist sf (287).
And while I'll do a separate handout now that we've finished the book, expanding on this, I'd like to end by noting that what Merrick is talking about here (describing what she did) is something that I want you all to consider and think about as part of your methodology (how you write your projects): 1. Understand that "locations of publication are political" (Katie King, quoted by Merrick) 2. Understand how different types of publications from different locations construct different types of feminisms, with many different individual productions. 3. Different types of publications include: the literary texts and the meta-textual (outside the texts) discussions in academic and fan communities. 4. The field of sf is the location for these productions. 5. Feminists in sf have been able to model a close relationship between theory and practice, and criticism and activism, in ways that could benefit the mainstream. 6. Differences in the feminist sf community are constructed in hierarchical categories often expressed in binaries (with one half the binary being considered the "best" or "default"): genre/literature, feminist/non-feminist, critic/fan. 7. The primary focus in sf feminisms up into the 1990s was on work by and for white, straight, middle-class women. 8. Merrick notes the "ease with which our histories can be lost, rewritten, or, as Gomoll notes of the '70s, recast as boring and trivial," (288) and argues for the need to document the challenges (historically and currently) to make more a more "inclusive...grand conversation" for the future.
I consider Merrick's work a model and inspiration.
no subject
It's not just people in fandom: I think that the knee-jerk habit of universalizing is built into human beings (I admit I have NO evidence whatsoever for it)--i.e. we generalize from what we see, and often darn fast which makes sense in some situations, but rarely in regard to complicated cultural issues.
On a more limited scale: I think public education in the United States generally tends to emphasize the 'reach' for authority by making universal statements, so students come into college wanting to state things like "since the beginning of time" and "throughout history" and so on and so forth. Why not? They've been doing it, and gotten good grades (good enough to get into college). They've never been taught that the best arguments are limited and qualified. And add in Dunning Kruger (the less a person knows, the more they THINK they know--the more one knows, the more one is aware of how little they know), and you see a lot of people making falsely universal claims based on their own experience.
I agree with others that this tendency is going to be dominant in dominant groups--who are indoctrinated into the idea that they are the universal/default.
I spend a lot of time trying to teach my students in everything from first year composition (not so much anymore, but I taught a lot of comp for a lot of years) to their doctoral dissertations that less is more, that more limited and qualified claims can be much more strongly supported, and the desire to make a grand universal foundational claim (which as I understand it was a big part of Enlightenment theory)is a great way to end up flat out on one's butt with egg on one's face.
That said: the best example I have to hand right now is Helen Merrick's Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminsms:
From the last paragraph of her preface: "Thus my opening confessions, intended to contextualize what is a necessarily partial, situated and invested account of the nexus of feminisms and sf. If nothing else, this book might provide an answer to white I have found feminist sf so engaging. Hopefully it does much more, and reveals what all kid of feminist readers might find illuminating, challenging and inspiring about the production of sf feminisms" (v)
My overview notes for my students (relating to Chapter 4) on how she achieves that more limited set of claim and moves beyond universalizing her own experience:
Merrick is doing a cultural history: she says so right in the title!
Her cultural history focuses on a specific sub-culture (the science fiction community), in English-speaking countries (United States, Britain, Australia). The science fiction community is defined as consisting of the writers, editors, readers, and fans (with the understanding that some people can participate in the community from any of those subject positions—many readers of sf become writers or editors).
Her more specific focus is on women and feminisms in that community: this compound noun ("women" and "feminisms") is important to her argument because she wants to separate "women" as a group from "feminists" as a group in order to make certain arguments about how feminisms originated and developed in the science fiction community. She also wants to emphasize the plurality and diversity amongst both those groups ("women" and "feminsts.")
As an academic, she situates her topic in the context of relevant scholarship on similar and related topics, including the origins and development of science fiction and the sf community (since the 1920s), and the origins and development of feminist literary criticism (meaning, academic criticism), and, to some extent, in the context of the mainstream feminist movement and feminist theories.
By "situates her topic," I mean that she summarizes the scholarship on the related topics: academic scholarship requires showing the knowledge of other scholarship on the topic(s).
But she also writes about her personal experiences (with English as an academic discipline, with science fiction, with feminism) to emphasize throughout that her argument(s) in this book are partial, subjective, and incomplete (that is, she does not have the goal of giving a completely authoritative, single-universal, claim as to what feminist sf is, or what sf feminism is). Instead, in the best new historicist tradition, she attempts to tease out and show the multiple, overlapping, contradictory, diverse, competing ideas and texts relating to her topic.
One of the ways (methods, or praxis/practice) that she embodies that new historicist theory is by focusing on a wide variety of texts (from letters and fanzines, to academic monographs) by fans, by the writers and editors themselves (including not only their stories and novels but the anthologies), and by academics, and by focusing on materials from three different countries (which, as a number of you note, is unusual in moving outside the United States).
Her major arguments (so far) include the argument that:
Women were always present in the community of science fiction readers and fans and writers and editors;
Their presence was historically (and is still, currently) questioned and debated by the men in the community on various grounds, ranging from the impact of female characters in the genre (sex! and romance, not science), and the relative inferiority of women (in the community) to men in relation to science and writing and fandom activities;
"Science fiction" as a genre has been ignored by literary criticism (in general), and that mainstream feminism as a social movement *and* academic feminist literary criticism has also ignored the presence of feminist science fiction (and feminisms in sf);
The development of declared feminism in sf during the 1970s rests on a foundation of decades of activities and contributions by women (who did not identify as feminist) who wanted to create spaces for themselves within the community and did so in various ways (some of which can be described as proto-feminist and served as the foundation for the later feminist work);
There are different approaches on the question of how to talk about the sf produced by women and its relation to science fiction, and its relation to feminism:
One of these approaches can be called woman-centered or gynocritical: the works in this approach focus on any works by women as important. The assumption in this approach is that any text by a woman (i.e. note the emphasis on the author's sex) is important to read and think about, and perhaps celebrate.
A competing approach can be called feminist: the works in this approach construct definitions or criteria for what elements in the text (fiction, novel, criticism) can be identified as feminsts (which requires defining "feminism"). This approach opens up the possibility that male authors could write feminist texts since the theory rests on the idea of feminist knowledge. The Tiptree Award is based on this theory: men have won the award because the focus is on recognizing the works that question gender, not on celebrating women authors as a group.
In addition to the arguments that Merrick makes about women and feminisms in science fiction (which she supports by a range of evidence in different chapters), she is also presenting arguments on the best way for scholars to do this sort of work—i.e. she is making a methodological argument. This argument comes into clear focus in Chapter 4 and is exemplified in Chapter, but has been present since the preface (page 6) where she talked about her focus for the book, specifically "a number of the discursive communities that have contributed to the production of feminist sf: the sf field generally, proto-feminist and feminist fan communities, feminist sf critic, and feminist scholars of science and technology" (6). She immediately notes that all these discursive (or discourse) communities overlap to some extend except the last one (feminist scholars of science and technology).
What is a discourse (discursive) community? Good question!
http://shrike.depaul.edu/~jwhite7/discoursecommunitydef.htm
A short definition that basically says a group of people who share similar ideas about communication (written or spoken), and assumptions about the topic that their community focuses on, as well as some common language. The example they give: "Computer Programming: Anyone unclear on the concept of discourse communities simply needs to listen to a discussion among a group of computer programmers. Clearly, this is a community that requires highly specialized knowledge, expertise, and a grasp of a complicated lexicon of terminology and jargon."
Here's a link to an "issue brief" on the National Council of Teachers of English (important professional organization for those of you who plan to teach):
http://www.ncte.org/college/briefs/dc
This points out (in more academic language) the same characteristics as the short and simple one above--and provides additional information: that the term is rooted in sociology, and that there are criticisms of it, especially in regard to writing/discourse communities (including the fact that, like any category, it's inaccurate, and focuses more on similarities than differences, and ignores power hierarchies).
All of you belong to some discourse communities already: you just probably don't call them that!
This class is a discourse community in formation!
You belong to the discourse community of your major (or minor), and to the larger discourse community of "college student."
But your churches are discourse communities, as are your jobs (past, present, and future!).
Fans (geeks, nerds, etc.) are also a discourse community: here's the WiseGeek's answer (I'm liking this site the more I find stuff on it):
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-discourse-community.htm
So, Merrick's argument is that if an academic is writing about women and/or feminisms in science fiction, the best method is not to focus only on the book(s) or other texts (games, comics, films), but on the fans and readers, the community itself, not through surveys/questionnaires (though such scholarship is done in some disciplines), but through close textual readings of the primary documents (which she's been providing), and interviews (which she did as part of her research process), as well as on the criticism produced (in fandom and academia), and, finally, on the texts themselves (though to a much less extent than the other types of evidence).
This chapter is key: Merrick argues that just working with the tools of regular literary criticism or even feminist literary criticism is not the best approach for talking about feminist sf because those methodologies (how to talk about feminist sf) remove the literature from the means of production (i.e. who is writing, who is editing, who is publishing, who is running cons, etc.), and from the community. She traces the development of literary feminist sf criticism, then notes the shift to cultural histories (like her work).
And, from my notes on her conclusion in Chapter 8:
Future Cabals: The conclusion!
*pause for cheering*
This section summarizes, briefly, the main argument(s) of the book and sets the ground for future work (by other scholars).
Your project for this class is meant to be a scholarly work (yes, I consider you scholars even though you are students—as far as I'm concerned, that makes you apprentice scholars!) doing exactly what Merrick talks about at the end here, filling in the gaps:
And while I'll do a separate handout now that we've finished the book, expanding on this, I'd like to end by noting that what Merrick is talking about here (describing what she did) is something that I want you all to consider and think about as part of your methodology (how you write your projects):
1. Understand that "locations of publication are political" (Katie King, quoted by Merrick)
2. Understand how different types of publications from different locations construct different types of feminisms, with many different individual productions.
3. Different types of publications include: the literary texts and the meta-textual (outside the texts) discussions in academic and fan communities.
4. The field of sf is the location for these productions.
5. Feminists in sf have been able to model a close relationship between theory and practice, and criticism and activism, in ways that could benefit the mainstream.
6. Differences in the feminist sf community are constructed in hierarchical categories often expressed in binaries (with one half the binary being considered the "best" or "default"): genre/literature, feminist/non-feminist, critic/fan.
7. The primary focus in sf feminisms up into the 1990s was on work by and for white, straight, middle-class women.
8. Merrick notes the "ease with which our histories can be lost, rewritten, or, as Gomoll notes of the '70s, recast as boring and trivial," (288) and argues for the need to document the challenges (historically and currently) to make more a more "inclusive...grand conversation" for the future.
I consider Merrick's work a model and inspiration.