Feminism: The Art of Othering

[Content Note: Othering, Orientalism]

Question: Is there a place on this earth to which the following edited* statement from Ancestry.com cannot be made to fit?
About Your Region

You're from [region].

This is where [literary person] wrote [hir] plays and poems. It's home to the legends of [legendary figure]. It's produced some of the world's most adventurous explorers and greatest political and military figures—[examples].

The history of the region is one of periodic invasions and settlements by various groups including [peoples]. [Language] is obviously the primary language spoken. But a few of the older languages spoken by the ancient [other peoples] still exist.

The people of the region have been witness to sweeping political changes and amazing technological progress through the centuries, from [period] to [period]. But despite their penchant for reform and progress, they have always found a way to preserve the past. From [ancient governing bodies] to [modern governing bodies], ancient languages to international diversity, from thousand-year-old [ancient buildings] to [modern buildings], their culture is a fascinating blend of old and new.

On the one hand: I get it. Ancestry.com is selling a product that is largely a luxury good straining to stand out from a broken economy. When faced with the prospect of putting food on the table versus paying for a scientist to analyze saliva in order to place a pin in a map ("YOU WERE HERE"), most people are going to opt for the food. (Which is why I logged into Ancestry.com today; we need to cancel the subscription that I bought for my father a Christmas ago.)

So faced with the fact that their product is not a necessity that sits high on Maslow's hierarchy, the marketing teams at Ancestry need to make their map-pins as compelling and mysterious and exotic as possible. You aren't just from X, you're from a patronizing and essentialized version of X! It's basically Orientalism but applied writ-large to the whole world. I understand the allure, I understand why it works, and I understand the impulse to engage in it. And I additionally understand that in the great, grand scheme of things this is just another drop in the ocean of othering.

But having said all that, I do think that this is almost a template for othering people and places, in large part because it takes statements that are largely true for everywhere on earth -- such as pointing out that old buildings exist alongside new ones, and that the dominant local language isn't the only local language -- and making them sound mysterious and exotic and unusual when they genuinely are not. Which is not to say that those buildings and languages and places aren't special and beautiful and neat -- they may or may not be from a subjective-personal-opinion point of view, and of course objectively-speaking everything is 'unique' in the trite tautological sense of the word. But a large part of othering revolves around exoticizing as unusual things that are actually not unusual at all, such as when we exoticize women of color for doing the same things that white women daily do (gardening, keeping pets, etc.) without themselves being actively exoticized. Or, as I wrote at the time:

The issue is not with the portrayal of their daily life through picture. The issue here is with the words that people use to describe those pictures. As Liss said, no one sees the many pictures of her with her dogs in their backyard and marvels aloud at her deep harmonious connection with nature and the way in which she communes with her animals and her beautiful traditions and [insert various other Othering statements so common that I could type them in my sleep].

If your response to a picture of a woman of color in a garden setting with animals is markedly different than your response to a picture of a white woman in a garden setting with animals, then you need to check why that is and adjust your language accordingly. The issue is not that people of color need to be "de-exoticized"; the issue is that the language you used is actively exoticizing them.

Recently I spoke with a friend about how we express appreciation for other cultural artifacts (language, clothing, etc.) without exoticizing those cultures. Her response, which I thought was very insightful, was that the issue isn't with liking or not liking aspects of other cultures, but how you express that interest. It's one thing to appreciate an article of clothing or a dish from another cuisine; it's another thing to start hauling out words like "fascinating" and "harmonious" and acting as though you've never encountered the concept of food before. (As she put it: "It's a stuffed pepper not deep space imaging!") It's the difference between an appreciative glance at something versus an ogling stare at its supposed otherness -- the difference between appreciating a subject versus reducing it to an object.

I think Ancestry.com means well. I think the people who work there probably believe that they're helping people to reconnect with their roots, and to understand and appreciate a "homeland" that they may never have laid eyes on before. I think they hope that by exoticizing places, they are helping to create interest in the welfare of those places, and helping to build a global community. I think those goals are good, worthy goals to have and to hold.

But I also think there's a difference between appreciating, for example, northwestern Europe and exoticizing it. And I think that difference is worth understanding so that we can modify our own language and work to make sure that we don't exoticize other people and other cultures when we're trying to express our appreciation. Like ableist language, exoticizing language pervades our cultural communication, and we can't effectively avoid it until we learn how to recognize it. 



* Original text from Ancestry.com:
About Your Region

You're from North-Western Europe, an area including the modern-day United Kingdom and Ireland. It is a group of islands separated from France and the rest of continental Europe by the narrow English Channel. It is the rolling, emerald-green hills of Ireland, the craggy, weathered peaks of Wales, the rich history of the city on the Thames, and the deep, mysterious lochs of Scotland.

This is where Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems. It's home to the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood. It's produced some of the world's most adventurous explorers and greatest political and military figures—George Mallory, Winston Churchill, Admiral Horatio Nelson. Brilliant scientific minds such as Sir Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell laid the foundations of modern physics. And it's the place where a rainbow can lead to a pot of gold. Maybe.

The history of the region is one of periodic invasions and settlements by various groups including the Angles and Saxons from Germany, the Jutes from Denmark, the Vikings, the Normans from northern France and, of course, the Romans. English, a Germanic language brought by the Angles, is obviously the primary language spoken. But a few of the older languages spoken by the ancient Celts still exist—a rarity in post-Roman Europe.

The people of the region have been witness to sweeping political changes and amazing technological progress through the centuries, from the Glorious Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. But despite their penchant for reform and progress, they have always found a way to preserve the past. From royal families to prime ministers, ancient languages to international diversity, from thousand-year-old cathedrals to glass skyscrapers, their culture is a fascinating blend of old and new.

21 comments:

duckbunny said...

I am fairly sure, without having had genetic testing done, that the majority of my ancestry is from mainland Britain, with bits of Scandinavia and other European smatterings. I look Welsh, favouring my mother's side of the family; my brother is obviously a Viking, after my father's side. Honestly, I'm pretty comfortable with that. We know we have Welsh ancestry through Grandad, we deduce we have Scandinavian if you go back far enough, we know that my great-great-grandad Jack was Italian from the more ordinary kind of genealogical research, and all of that adds up to being perfectly ordinary and unremarkable British people. Bit of this, bit of that, mostly local.

I suspect, though I don't know, that this kind of testing is more interesting to people whose families have emograted and who have lost the details of that emigration. If you know your ancestors must at some point have crossed the oceans, I think knowing where they came from would seem more urgent than if, like me, you can be pretty sure that a thousand years on the same islands stand behind you. I think there's probably a desire to feel connected that, for some people, doesn't mesh well with having unknown oceans between you and your ancestors.

I do tend to get irritated with people who mythologize England as the magical old country of legend, and in the process expect our here-and-now to be quaint, old-fashioned and obviously related to our semi-historical legends.
Forsooth, it is not thus.

(I'm actually slightly insulted that Ancestry.com picked Nelson and Mallory over, say, Isembard Kingdom Brunel. Nelson has a statue, but Brunel we're really proud of. I'm not even sure who Mallory is. Which might tell us intersting things about the relative importance of historical events from inside and outside a culture.)

Makabit said...

Ancestry seems to be peddling this stereotype as a means to make money, offering the opportunity to trace your line or origin country so that you can use it for your own self-aggrandizement or as an excuse to be appropriative without guilt or worry.

For the obverse of this problem, study the main line of attack used by Scott Brown against Elizabeth Warren in their recent Senate contest.

Well, maybe. What is the line between appropriation and heritage? Who owns being Irish, or German, or Spanish?

The Elizabeth Warren thing upset me a lot. My husband's family has non-registered Cherokee ancestry. It's such a cliche to claim that that you do get attacked, but on the other hand, for many, many families, it is simply true. Family members in living memory had Cherokee given names, and spoke Cherokee. I was mortally offended at the number of (non-Native) people who seemed to think they could look at Elizabeth Warren and decide if she was Indian enough for them to allow her to claim that identity. Who's appropriating what, in that case?

Betsy said...

Sounds exactly like the sort of 'family tree' enterprise that would send you a lovely poster of your 'Scottish clan and crest' based solely on your last name. Totally disregarding the thought that one of your ancestors might have changed their name, and chosed the 'Scottish' one randomly, or that in the intricacies of the clan system, there might be several groups using the same name. Or, that one marriage over the centuries may give you the name, but that would have no more weight than all the 'invisible' ancestors.

duckbunny said...

Oh dear. That says a lot about what they think their customers want, doesn't it? Here are the myths you're familiar with and the places you've heard of and more-or-less the language you speak, all neatly packaged for you. Ignore the continent across the Channel, it would be less cosy to be descended from there.

Ann Unemori said...

The one place that the Ancestry comment might not fit would probably be Antarctica. I know it's a rhetorical question, but a little rhetorical exercise can be fun.
On the topic of describing other cultures, one issue is it is often the "otherness" that people are intrigued by, want to portray or describe, even if it's as simple as having tea instead of coffee for breakfast. How accurate that is conveyed is never easy to describe.

Will Wildman said...

The one place that the Ancestry comment might not fit would probably be Antarctica. I know it's a rhetorical question, but a little rhetorical exercise can be fun.

See above.

one issue is it is often the "otherness" that people are intrigued by, want to portray or describe

But we can distinguish between portrayals that are about widening perspectives and learning about the variety of peoples' experiences and the portrayals that are superficial, inaccurate, and support the marginalisation of folks who Ain't From Around Here. Being intrigued by that which is different and fetishising that which is different-and-therefore-strange-and-alien are very different beasts, regardless of how frequently they run into each other.

duckbunny said...

"You're from North-Western Europe, a region we shall henceforth reduce to Britain."

I think what they mean is "You're from Britain, which is in North-Western Europe." But that's not what they said.

Also, there are some serious inaccuracies in that waffle about languages. But that's not actually the point, except in the way that inaccuracies are very likely when you're writing for romance.

storiteller said...

I think it's similar to the way my mom used the word "cute" to describe way too many small English villages when they were visiting. I don't have a problem with the term cute when you're referring to cats, but I found "cute" to be quite infantilizing when referring to a very old village.

[redacted in response to a deleted comment]

Also, just because Ancestry.com highlights them doesn't mean that people who relate to older traditions are terribly respected in Europe. The folks who speak the Irish tongue as their first or close second language in Ireland are quite unfairly seen as uneducated and provincial by folks from Dublin.

AnonaMiss said...

K. Upon rereading the comment policy I'm still not sure where the violation was but I respect your judgment.

AnonaMiss said...

Did my comment get deleted or eaten?

I don't really know what it would have gotten deleted for...

Will Wildman said...

[This comment is in response to a comment no longer published]

I think it would be missing a large part of the context here to read this as being Ana's thesis on why the word 'fascinating' is a terrible word and the tool of the oppressor.

Being fascinated is often good, and thus the existence of things that are fascinating is also good. But there is a difference between "Omigosh, Asia is so strange and fascinating!" and "I am fascinated by the linguistic history that has led to Japan's hybridised use of two distinct syllabaries and modified Chinese characters to compose a single written language". The difference there seems pretty obvious to me; does it seem vague to others?

Will Wildman said...

It was obviously a rhetorical question, but when the main exception that leaps to mind is the only continent so remote and hostile as to not have any meaningful history of habitation, I think that you're mostly emphasising Ana's point.

Will Wildman said...

It was obviously a rhetorical question, but when the main exception that leaps to mind is the only continent so remote and hostile as to not have any meaningful history of habitation, I think that you're mostly emphasising Ana's point.

Steven Damer said...

Antarctica (or was that a rhetorical question?)

AnonaMiss said...

I know that you're being rhetorical/facetious in your opening question, but yes, quite a few places don't fit that structural mode. Most of America & Australia, for starters, don't have ancient buildings and their ancient cultures have been mostly to completely wiped out/suppressed.

I'm kind of sad about the "fascinating" thing though because I love doing that and didn't realize I was othering people :-\ Is that still true when you do it about things that are familiar to you too? Like when I learn that something about the English language is unusual typologically. "But the really fascinating thing about English verbs is in our weird two-part verbs, where a new verb is constructed out of a preexisting verb (often but not necessarily of motion) and a preposition. What makes this so neat is that it's not just a prepositional phrase with an implied object, but a completely separate lexical entry, such that omitting either part of the two part verb will have a completely different meaning, or more often, be completely nonsensical!"

(Examples: 'look up', 'wipe out', 'read over', 'chew out', 'run along', 'do over', etc.)

storiteller said...

But I think it's a symptom of the problem, of how we experience other countries/regions and how we're taught about them. (Weirdly, tourist boards are usually not on board with "this place, a lot like yours but with different flavor text".

I think that's one reason why descriptions like this are particularly off-putting. They're presenting this neat little package of a place that makes you feel like you know something about it without inspiring a huge amount of curiosity to learn more. It's the Epcot World Showcase approach to learning about a country and culture. Rather than hearing things in the voices of people from that culture, it presents a stock number of familiar symbols as an unfortunate and oversimplified substitute. (I still enjoy visiting Epcot though, so maybe I'm hypocritical.)

Will Wildman said...

"this place, a lot like yours but with different flavor text"

This phrasing is, like, the best phrasing.

And yeah, sometimes I think the hardest angle to appreciate here is that, for lack of a better term, cultures have privileges over cultures, so that a theme-park version of the UK or USA has less harmful potential than theme-park India, or Africa (speaking of good phrases, I love 'the countrified continent' (the framing, obviously, not the phenomenon itself)).

I hope that it's possible to get an actual insight on cultures by accessing their native arts and sciences (reading the works of authors and historians and such who are actually part of the culture in question), but even then, if I do hear about a beloved book coming out of Laos, chances are good that its popularity (here in Canada) partly comes from how approachable it is for Canadians. I fear it's hard to tell when I've reached the genuine article.

Dav said...

I think the differing patterns of historical figures and colonialization and architecture and languages are interesting, though. (And there are some countries where actually, no, there aren't ancient native tongues still being spoken, or are genuinely multilingual. So.) I think it's interesting to compare figures. Everyone has ghost stories, but what's the difference between having the headless horseman and having la llorona?

This is sort of touristy travel writing: hey, remember the Vikings? Sure you do! They were here! Also King Arthur! Also Shakespeare! I'm not sure how you write a four paragraph blurb that gives you some kind of positive reminder of some place you're not really familiar with without being weird and superficial and, yeah, a little othering. But I think it's a symptom of the problem, of how we experience other countries/regions and how we're taught about them. (Weirdly, tourist boards are usually not on board with "this place, a lot like yours but with different flavor text". I'm minimally troubled when this happens to areas with huge cultural presences; I can more or less taste genuine British pop culture and news and history with basically no effort. It's much more of a problem when all we get is the packaged deal: I struggle to get a grip on "real" Estonia or Sudan or Thailand, and my only sense of them is through very targeted ads or my-culture-centered news.

Makabit said...

I do think it's interesting to address this as 'othering', since while it is that, the point of this kind of thing is essentially...I don't quite know what you'd call it. "De-othering"? "Exoticizing of self"? The point is to provide a person with evidence of their genetic connection to this or that part of the world, confirming or revealing their 'real' roots, and providing them with a sense of connection to one or more of these places.

Do people on here think of this as something they'd like to do themselves? Why or why not? My feeling about this sort of genetic testing is really that I know who I am, and finding out I've got some random bit of something I didn't know about, with no names or dates or information attached seems...irrelevant.

What would be significant to find out? What would it mean to you?

Makabit said...

I do think it's interesting to address this as 'othering', since while it is that, the point of this kind of thing is essentially...I don't quite know what you'd call it. "De-othering"? "Exoticizing of self"? The point is to provide a person with evidence of their genetic connection to this or that part of the world, confirming or revealing their 'real' roots, and providing them with a sense of connection to one or more of these places.

Do people on here think of this as something they'd like to do themselves? Why or why not? My feeling about this sort of genetic testing is really that I know who I am, and finding out I've got some random bit of something I didn't know about, with no names or dates or information attached seems...irrelevant.

What would be significant to find out? What would it mean to you?

boutet said...

It's an interesting/difficult situation, trying to make your product exciting enough to get customers without being entirely disrespectful of the subject material. I guess it's one of the troubles of marketing in general. Not that I think most marketing makes any effort to avoid be direspectful, so in that case it's not so much "difficult" as it is other words I won't use publicly.
I have never had a subscription to Ancestry so I have no direct experience with it. Having just visited the site it looks like you can't really access anything without a subscription. I would be interested to know how they approach (if they approach) any kind of facilitation to help people explore connections that they might genetically/historically have to other cultures. If, for example, it would find out I'm Metis and then encourage me to go to some godawful arts and crafts lesson to make dreamcatchers, or link to some information site written by non-First Nations, non-Metis people. Or would it give me the contact information for the Circle of Life Thunderbird House here in the city and encourage me to look into the classes and things they offer to help people understand First Nations cultures. Or maybe it doesn't offer that sort of service at all.
It would be pretty cool if they did offer that sort of facilitation in a respectful way. That way it wouldn't just be a Culture Badge for you to tack onto your vest and claim, and never look into at all.

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