the past seems so far away

[lotesse]

What I'm reading this Wednesday:

I picked up Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus as a treat to myself - a contemporary woman-authored fantasy novel set in Victorian London, what's not to love? Except I'm finding that I kind of don't love it. I'm a little over a third of the way through, and am at present not sure if I'll finish it. I don't see the point of doing a Victorian if you're not going to profit from either the milieu or the language. Morgenstern's prose style lacks the richness that I associate with Victorian pastiche, the kind of thing that Sarah Waters does so beautifully. Her use of the present tense, relatively limited vocabulary, and choppy presentation all seem like odd choices to me given the wonderful descriptive rhythms of so much Victorian prose. Morgenstern's epigraph is taken from Wilde, and imagining what he could've done with this story is giving me a serious sad. But I also just kind of feel like the novel's Victorianism is painted on. The fashion and design stuff in particular keeps frustrating me, because it's almost always general and vague, with broad references to period trends like japanism and monochrome, and all the clockwork stuff that E.T.A. Hoffmann did so much better, without ever feeling real or material or, you know, researched. I'm also more broadly fed up with the portrayal of Spiritualism as a delusional mourning cult led by hucksters - Morgenstern is far from alone in this, but beyond the fact that I was raised by American Spiritualists and actually do believe in afterlife communication and the mediation of the spirit world, this revisionist history totally ignores the sociopolitical radicalism of Victorian Spiritualists, many of whom were early feminist leaders due to the subculture's relative embrace of women in positions of power.

In nonfiction reading, I'm working my way back through Gayle Salamon's Assuming A Body, because I'm stealing her phenomenological account of the relationship between fantasy and sexuality for a paragraph in my dissertation prospectus - although I will admit to feeling a little odd about employing the theory that she develops for trans* liberation in a project on heterosexuality. I guess it does ultimately make sense to turn back to the seat of sexual power, the same way the study of masculinity is a necessary part of feminism, but I still feel kind of ish about it. I keep loading down my footnotes with those kind of caveats and attributions: I got this from trans* theory, Black feminism, queer affect theory. The whole question really reminds me of old fannish conversations about "queer het" back in the days of Spuffy and The X-Files - did we ever solve that one? Or did we just kind of move on?

Also, I am watching White Collar now - I found myself in need of something easy and lovely, and the ot3 caretaking and power dynamics in that show are pretty much aces. And apparently it's one of those fandoms where folk are super type-A and keep organized thematic lists of fanwork, so that is also aces.

Comments

[sahiya]

White Collar is lovely, especially the first two seasons (later stuff is good, too, but the early stuff just delights me over and over). And the fandom is mostly lovely, though there was a tiresome and predictable kerfluffle when a new love interest got introduced for Neal in S2. But things have settled down now.

By "thematic lists," I take it you've found whitecollarhc? Their Whump Lists do make it easy to find stuff.

[lotesse]

Yes that one! I was doing my office hours in a campus coffeeshop when I found that one, and actually said "god I love fandom" out loud before remembering that I was in public.

[zopyrus]

this revisionist history totally ignores the sociopolitical radicalism of Victorian Spiritualists, many of whom were early feminist leaders

From my point of view, that's the most compelling aspect of the movement--I believe there was some overlap with abolitionism as well? I did a bit of research on the 19th-c spiritualist Laura Edmonds Gilmore for a fic I never finished and the stories about her and her friends/family are fascinating.

[lotesse]

There are also super interesting overlaps with anti-Spiritualism and anti-feminism - cases of husbands trying to have wives committed because of seances, and Spiritualist circles physically fighting them back, that sort of thing.

The progressive component is definitely a part of Spiritualism as I know it. Worship means thinking hard about physics, metaphysics, and ethics, reading widely in spiritually serious texts and then discussing them in groups, often with women in central positions. And then going out and trying to live up to ideals through social service and political advocacy. And nobody ever goes to church, or makes too much of a fuss about spirit things.

[ilthit]

I read it, finished and everything. It was a bit dull and with characters whose most interesting features involved their physical appearance and dress sense, so...

Tragic magic lesbian, though.

Speaking of Spiritualists in fiction, the Maids of Misfortune follow-up Uneasy Spirits has fake mediums as villains but also a non-fake medium as a hero (the cavalry kind of hero rather than main character), and is set in San Francisco in the late 19th century, and is very researched, but I don't think I would recommend that either. It's got a lot of stuff I ought to love and some things I appreciate but mainly I found it dull.

What was the fannish conversation about queer het? I've mainly heard the opinion that cis het is never queer.

[lotesse]

The queer het thing - I do think that majority opinion at the moment is that the label is problematic, but I'm not sure that the original point of the designation has ever become moot. As a reader/writer of het ships, I'd love a way to find non-heteronormative fic - one of the things that I really came out of due South wanting was kinky Fraser/female gender/powerplay, probably due to that bit with him and Thatcher on the train (Thatcher: ... because I'm a man and you're a woman), but I've been frustrated by all the more romance-novelly oldschool het I've been finding. Not because there's anything wrong with that - for other het ships of mine, that style is my preference - but because I want a word for that other more deviant thing. So I can see the problems w/ straights appropriating "queer" as a term, but I still want a word for het genderfuckery/rolefuckery/powerscrewing. Idk.

[ilthit]

Kinky het or non-sexist/heteronormative het is great and all, but is it queer? I don't entirely care myself, but just so you know, some gay and nonmonosexual people I know would take umbrage at straight people claiming the title, and in these things it's usually good policy to mind the opinion of the under-privileged minority (even if it's just some of them). And, you have to admit, the title is more commonly associated with people with same-sex attractions.

I share your inclination towards nonheteronormative het pairings, oh boy. I am basically NOT interested in a het ship unless it's either a relationship of equal power or the power dynamics favour the woman, and also straight gender role reversal play is hot. I don't read nearly as much as I write these days so I've never really worried about keywords for it before, though there's probably an indicative tag or two on AO3.

The thing for using queer het for this sort of thing is also that it would probably have to include other kinds of kinky het too, including male tops with female bottoms, which is the opposite of what we'd be looking for.

[emei]

Late comment on queer het and related stuff - I always think that it feels very important to apply the insights from marginalised theory/-ists to the mainstream, to stay away from the idea that queers/women/people of colour/etc are so particular they can only explain themselves, unlike the universalist mainstream. But attribution becomes extremely important then (to avoid appropriation), and also I think to acknowledge the power dynamics underpinning the original theory - what happens to them when its applied to the mainstream/oppressors? Sounds like you're doing that in your footnotes though. :)

I sort of feel the same way about queer het - iffy concept, but perhaps useful. There's a collection on AO3 somewhere called "Het, not straight" along those lines. People don't have to be straight and cis to be involved in het relationships, obviously. And fic about queer people are always queer to me. Otherwise feminist or non-normative het might feel more appropriate, maybe?