We still struggle with prejudices that developed at the end of the 19th century while at the same time wrestling with ideas from the 21st century. Many of them are mixed in terms of consequences. I'll mention one and reflect on the other.
"Indians" or indigenous peoples are tagged with a massive complex of qualities, racisms, fantasies, and consequences. One that has capitalistic consequences is the idea that that "Indians" are mystical, privileged by innate nobiiity, yet perpetually needy, can confer special status on other "races" by adopting them, and so on. Their sacred artifacts are strange and therefore compelling, though the people who made them "alive" are missing as is the culture that gave them meaning. "Indians" are endangered "species" and will soon be missing, doomed, and therefore you'd better get yours now. Anyone enrolled is Indian and only "Indians" can be experts about Indians. All Indians are alike. All worship "Turtle Island" and all mythic characters are equivalent to Christian characters in the Bible. This is all highly related to Said's analysis of "Orientalism," making something exotic into something simple and easy to sell.
But what I really want to talk about is the idea of mythologized "writing." It is also full of racisms, fantasies and consequences. This is the success of the idea promulgated by publishers that writing quality can only be certified by publishers, and that better publishers mean better writing. And that you should pay more for it. To them all publishing is a matter of sequential pages between protective covers, which makes it into something that can be sold and acquired. Every library is an automatic "good" though it may only be junk on shelves.
Many, if not all, aspects of culture are socioeconomic. The "middle class" or bourgeois demographic formed in a time period of craftsmen, shops, professionals like teachers -- so their interests formed with them. One of the "proofs" and perqs of the middle class was literacy and books. Oral tales existed far earlier -- first humans -- and electronic screens, sound recordings, and videos developed much later. Books in the form of "codexes" to put on a shelf or lie on a table as advertising became prized possessions at this time, and were linked to middle-class Christianity through the Bible, newly translated and available. Pianos, cuckoo clocks, wind-up curiosities, toasters, sentimental and religious art, linens and tablecloths, china and crystal, all the things your grandmother cherished and protected. Artifacts. So many nice things to buy to show how prosperous you were, so many of them Middle European or British. Then American.
This is still the model of writing that many people carry and which leads them to scoff at blogs, or columns in a newspaper, or letters to the editor -- all of which are assigned to politics of some kind. There's no money in them, you see. But now there's little money in formal books as well.
Publishing is not done with a magic wand. Even composing the actual "print" letters in their inky sorting boxes were very skill-demanding work, so keyboards were a breakthrough. Then, slowly and with the urging of those pesky French philosophers like Derrida and Foucault, some of us realized that any sequence of marks or images or sounds that can carry thought or story can be sold to the public: published. Not likely to happen unless there is money, which means advertising and so on, carrying the material someplace. Bookstore or internet.
The illiterate can do this now. Any level of income can do it. The socio-economics of published books is deeply changed. Not only is posting material on the internet inexpensive, it is also convertible. It can change size and shape, be printed out in a hundred fonts on as many kinds of paper as there are, spoken aloud or projected on a building or tattooed on a body.
Another part of the mystique is sustained by people who can't "write" -- or think they can't-- because no one taught them how to get into the frame of mind that allows it. The mammal brain operates by filaments of neuron extension pulled together into circuits, each assigned to monitoring some aspect of thought. If a new circuit is needed, it is invented; if one is used, it is expanded; if one is never used, it shrivels. Going to sleep is unconscious but works the same way. One quiets, relaxes, slides into a hypnogogic state, and is asleep. A lot of little things happen: you can't move, your brain cells are washed and debris of the day may float by as dreams.
The circuit for writing is built by reading. Brain circuits are built by experience, but experience can be acquired second-hand by reading. While you're learning the content of the writing, your brain is also recording the style and organization of the writing. Or the images you might use for cartoons or story art. All in the unconscious which can only be reached by settling down, being still, letting the mind roam. THEN writing what comes to mind.
Reading takes time and money -- and interest. Many people don't know what to read that will propel them. make them WANT to read. Those things might not be in libraries or bookstores or even schools. They might be labeled propaganda or porn or ethnically offensive or above or below your socioeconomic level.
Adrian Jawort was bugged by people who consider his blogs to be "lesser" writing, though in the context of NA indigenous people he is highly significant. In fact, he IS a publisher. He knows that publishing is making available printed books of a traditional kind. When people want to know whether he is published, of course, he is, because he publishes! Why would he not publish his own books?
Because kids are the only ones unprejudiced and curious enough to learn blogs or games or to figure out how to get into forbidden stuff, the middle-class whites whose heads are stuck in a previous century's need for prestige and respectability, excuse themselves by considering computer writing to be childish, empty, without skill. They're just ignorant. And intimidated. And uneducated.
Beyond that, they have lost the appetite for that incredible moment when a person realizes that they are riding a bike, or playing an instrument or understanding deeply what another person is thinking and feeling. I'm hooked on that burst of understanding when I "get it", maybe without knowing it was there. Even better is being able to "get it" when writing so that is suddenly under your pen or key or image.
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