I responded to part of this by another comment. Here let me say that I think there's a big difference between Fred Lerner's line-drawing and Rosemary Jackson's. (Yes, it's Attebery who talks about her.)
The difference is that Fred is aware of the limitations on critical discourse that he discussed in his article, and Jackson is not. The provenance-based definition of SF is not intended to mark other definitions as wrong. It is an attempt to define a particular region of discourse, and is as legitimate as narrower salami-slicing for the same purpose, like "hard SF" or "space opera". All these really exist, and are specific regions of discourse.
Jackson's mistake is not that she chooses to discuss subversion in fantasy. That's a legitimate topic, and much could be said about it. Her mistake is to use that characteristic to define fantasy, when its writers and publishers and readers don't. She's a critic, she doesn't have that privilege. As Attebery writes, she sets up her own a priori definition, and then gets angry at authors who don't fit it.
Fred Lerner is not angry at Huxley or Orwell at not having come up through the SF magazines. He's only angry, as the rest of us in SF are, at people who claim they invented the conversation that's actually been going on for nearly a century, and who claim that the SF community is incapable of having it.
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Date: 2009-06-05 05:03 pm (UTC)The difference is that Fred is aware of the limitations on critical discourse that he discussed in his article, and Jackson is not. The provenance-based definition of SF is not intended to mark other definitions as wrong. It is an attempt to define a particular region of discourse, and is as legitimate as narrower salami-slicing for the same purpose, like "hard SF" or "space opera". All these really exist, and are specific regions of discourse.
Jackson's mistake is not that she chooses to discuss subversion in fantasy. That's a legitimate topic, and much could be said about it. Her mistake is to use that characteristic to define fantasy, when its writers and publishers and readers don't. She's a critic, she doesn't have that privilege. As Attebery writes, she sets up her own a priori definition, and then gets angry at authors who don't fit it.
Fred Lerner is not angry at Huxley or Orwell at not having come up through the SF magazines. He's only angry, as the rest of us in SF are, at people who claim they invented the conversation that's actually been going on for nearly a century, and who claim that the SF community is incapable of having it.