Marine [and] his-story; rape; "Negro"

Sat Oct 16 20:05:21 UTC 2010

At 10/16/2010 12:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>"Argus-eyed, prissy journal editors" whose gaze is fixated on what exactly
>in this case?

Fixated on an author's use of "Negro" outside a
quotation.  The following was during discussion
about editing of an article of mine on an event
in18th century colonial American history, when
"Negro" (and with a capital N) was predominant,
"African-American" was not used, and "black" was
rare.  I quote the then (Dec. 2007) editor of
_Slavery & Abolition_, Dr Tim Lockley, Dept of
History, University of Warwick, in email to me:

"If you think that any respectable journal would today publish the word
'negro' without it being in quotation marks, you are mistaken. It is a word
that is no longer acceptable in academic parlance."

Note that he did not write "without it being
within a quotation", which leads me to infer that
he would object to an article author's using the
single word itself without putting it within quotation marks.

(However, he managed to write it to me without an
initial capital, as though he were back in the
19th or early 20th century.  I had never written it with a lower case "n".)

The editor of the South Carolina Historical
Magazine, which printed my article, also wrote me
(excuse the "shout" capitals; he used all
capitals for his interpolated responses to my email messages):

"WE DO NOT USE THE WORD NEGRO OR ANY OF ITS VARIATIONS EXCEPT WITHIN QUOTES."

We did manage to achieve conformance to this
rule, in a couple of cases via my suggestion of
expanding quotations to move "Negro" inside
them.  I was willing to compromise with him on
this because he was willing to compromise with me
on other editorial changes that he wanted and which I had resisted.

>I hesitated to mention the use of _rape_ for exactly the reason Joel give,
>but in context it seems to be intended to convey none of the violence
>usually associated with similar usages.

I didn't have the extended context that might
have told me Adhikari did not mean "violent".

>It's just a distortion, or matbe
>even an imposition.  I've read enough recent lit-crit to get the feeling
>that, like other terms I've posted in the past, it's just becoming one of
>those words a certain kind of writer likes use. But more evidence is
>required.
>(Don't forget that all human relationships, including "reader/writer" are
>regarded by many cultural theorists as "victim/perpetrator" relationships,
>of which "victim/colonizer" is a subset. In fact, I just saw a reference to
>"the violence of reading," but charitably declined to post it.

I do my violence by burning such lit-crit,
especially when it intrudes into writing about
history.  Like Adhikari's article.

>Also, I should have thought that one example of "Negro" within scare quotes
>would have been enough to protect all concerned.  But there are several in
>quick succession. Since when are academic writers supposed to encourage the
>presumed ignorance of their presumably academic audience?  Don't answer
>that.

OK, I won't.

>...
>
>"His-story" is worth notice, I think, because it's a new word used by a
>professional educator in a professionally edited journal. It also alludes to
>the well-established, unfunny _herstory_, which alludes to the well
>established, unfunny _history_.

Did Adhikari use a hyphen in "his-story"?  (Jon
has written it both ways.)  Does that matter?  Is
it new to Adhikari?  I suspect not, but it's more
than a bit difficult to locate relevant citations via Google.

Ultimately, I really don't think it alludes to
gender at all, but, as I said, to "(factual)
history" vs. Michener's "his story (invented) of history".

For someone who uses quotes around words and
phrases ceaselessly, see Michael J. Colacurcio's
_The Province of Piety: Moral History in
Hawthorne's Early Tales_ (1995).  It would take
me a while to dig up an exact analogy to
Adhikari's use. But for something I feel is
similar, in one example of Colacurcio's use of
quotation marks to clue the reader that the word
he's using may mean more, or less, than what it
normally means, he writes "Hawthorne may have
wished fully to 're-cognize' the sense of his
sources as significant expressions of
intellectual culture, and thence to speculate
about the Influence of Puritan Literature on American Life" (p. 3).

Joel

>As I've said before, I don't search for these things.
>
>BTW, I too noticed _empirical_ 'factual,' but didn't think it was worth
>noting. Dave has changed my mind.
>
>JL
>
>
>  On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: Marine [and] his-story; rape; "Negro"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > A few comments on the linguistic aspects.  I may
> > make some (negative) comments on Adhikari's
> > hiostoriography later, after I've read his article.
> >
> > At 10/15/2010 01:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >P. 52: "In Michener's 'his story,' Tony Fry becomes a hero."
> >
> > [And later, Jon wrote:]
> > >Though not "herstory," it seems absurd to call Michener's book
> > "his-story,"
> > >since one of his major characters is a Navy nurse and another is a
> > To[n]kinese
> > >woman. But maybe "his-story" means "history (which includes fiction)
> > written
> > >by a man." Who knows?
> >
> > I think "his story" is merely an attempt to be
> > clever and call attention to the writer's
> > (Adhikari's) distinction between "history", as
> > commonly thought to mean the facts, and "his
> > story", meaning "what Michener creates as having
> > happened".  (Too cute for my taste.)  Thus it is not an allusion to gender.
> >
> > >Also, _rape_ = 'serious distortion.'
> > >
> > >P. 44: "Plausible documents need to be created to bridge evident gaps [in
> > >historical records]. This is not a rape of history but a generous act to
> > >give credibility and continuity to it."
> >
> > If we instead take "rape" = '*violent*
> > distortion', this does not seem to me to be
> > unacceptably far from rape n.3 sense 2.c, "In
> > extended use".  A few quotations from the OED:
> >      1677 R. GILPIN Dæmonol. Sacra I. xii. 94 If
> > thou yield, will not God account it a rape upon thine integrity?
> >      a1704 T. BROWN Satire French King in Wks.
> > (1707) I. i. 92 Old Jerom's Volumnes next I made a Rape on.
> >      1815 J. HUTTON Fashionable Follies Pref.,
> > Sir, you have committed a rape upon my play.
> >      1975 Times Lit. Suppl. 10 Oct. 1217/5 It is
> > his job to save Juli from the hangman and, in the
> > final court scene, he does it by the public rape
> > of the boy's secret personality and the destruction of his genius.
> >
> > If one can rape integrity, volumes, plays, or
> > genius, surely one can rape history, which is
> > merely (apart from artifacts) what is written in volumes (and other
> > documents).
> >
> > At 10/15/2010 09:58 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >Why _Negro_ is repeatedly in scare quotes I can only guess.  That is
> > indeed
> > >the word Michener uses - the same as most polite people of every race in
> > the
> > >1940s.
> >
> > The answer, I think, is:  "Because 'Negro' is a
> > word polite people of every race are not supposed
> > to use today, therefore I put it into quotes to
> > show that I am not using it either, I am just
> > displaying to you that Michener used it."  But I
> > sympathize with authors today who are faced with
> > earlier documents using various forms of the
> > N-word (and with Argus-eyed, prissy journal
> > editors) -- where and how does one admit it
> > (them), or does one not use it/cut it out
> > entirely?  (It should not be altered in quotations.)
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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