推 kamadevas: 09/15 00:41
"But I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would
have been dishonest to do otherwise. If I'd pulled the poem then I would have
been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet's
Chinese pseudonym.
"If I'd pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously
and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and
aesthetic injustices in the poetry world."
--
Regardless of the politics, this simply doesn't make sense. Only by keeping
the poem in is he denying that he's trying to right past "wrongs." Think
about it: He picks the poem for its ethnic markers--the ethnicity is revealed
as faked--he pulls the poem. That's totally logical.
And this is why I don't really care that much about this particular case: The
editor isn't worth arguing against.
Two other issues are at stake here: 1. What intersection, if any, should the
selection of poems for excellence have with cultural politics? and 2. Is it
wrong to assume another ethnicity in art?
Regarding 1., I would say that any such selection, implicitly being marked as
"the best," is already political. When one book is published for the
consumption of all groups, the groups themselves are implicitly compared, and
this politico-cultural judgment is reflected in the chosen poems. So I don't
support such a project (unless the anthology is subdivided by theme/genre), but
given that this project exists, I believe racial considerations should come
into play when an ethnically marked poem appears.
As for 2., a part of me wants to cry "Death of the author!" and have done with
it--but that would be ingenuous. What matters here isn't name or skin color but
cultural identification. There have been a number of cases recently of people
claiming to be of a race different from their skin color, but we have to
remember that race is not a scientific classification, it is a social one:
18th- and 19th-century anthropology merely "uncovered" scientific evidence for
racial classifications to support preexisting ideas of racial difference. So
since race is a cultural thing, creating art on behalf of "another" race is
fine as long as one can relate one's own connections to and artistic
inspirations from that race.
TL;DR: As long as this white guy is channeling actual ethnic experiences and
isn't just making things up, it's fine by me.
--
p2: defenestrate
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