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  #21  
Unread 07-06-2019, 06:38 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Well, Mark, I guess we'll disagree. Over and over they took responsibility in ways that strike me as much more than "administrator-speak."

• We accept full responsibility for this harm and intend to take measures of accountability and transparency moving forward, in hopes of honoring those who experienced violence as a result of our negligence. [This is literally the next sentence after what you quote.]

• As creative director, I accept responsibility for allowing and perpetrating this harm, not only in a programming capacity but also as a person in attendance who remained silent.

• It was reckless and irresponsible to structure this program without allotting more time for dialogue and discussion, offering thorough warnings, contextualizing the work, and by excluding voices from people with lived experience. Regrettably, we set up the participants and the audience to face harm.

• We subjected all in the room to a responsibility that they should not have been made to hold. We are deeply sorry for this and intend to hold space for the feelings left unresolved.

Other than Quillette, nobody seems to be suggesting Leach was treated as if she's a racist. We talk about systems of racism a lot in the US because sometimes you can participate in racism without yourself being racist, and sometimes--sometimes in concert with the former, and sometimes not--people can be made to feel like a situation was racist even if the, say, presenter, is not.

I used to teach Huck Finn and have a class discussion about how to handle the language. Older me recognizes this was a problem--it isolated and tokenized kids of color and it opened up avenues for abuse. In that scenario I was participating in racism without myself being necessarily racist. I think that's how most people would see this in the OBEY crowd if and when Leach continues a dialogue with them. Quillette, on the other hand, would have you believe she's being tarred and feathered as a racist so some of its readers can feel better about reading Stormfront.
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  #22  
Unread 07-06-2019, 07:01 PM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Yeah. We'll have to disagree. I've read the whole apology. To me it sounds like a (very) long winded way of saying 'We're sorry. We take full responsibility for letting this old, white racist into the room and not doing enough to stop her.'

Are you secretly working for Quillette? You seem determined to make this all about them.
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  #23  
Unread 07-06-2019, 09:20 PM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Julius is laughing thunderously from beyond the grave.

One think should be made clearer, Mary Jane is not just someone who co-authored a book, she is someone who devoted over ten years of her life to recovering Julius's legacy, tracking down tapes and scores, seeking out dozens of people who were peripherally connected to Julius. All for the sake of the man and his music--and for no remuneration. She has so much invested in this project that she has every right not to suffer fools like those mealy-mouthed administrative cowards that wrote that ludicrous apology.

Nemo
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  #24  
Unread 07-07-2019, 12:43 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Nemo, I like that thought, I hope he is. Fwiw I've amended my list of 'facts that we know' on post #14 to include those important details about Leach.

Sorry Andrew, I think it's a disgrace. Obviously the whole thing should have been better organised, but accepting the reality that it wasn't, here's what should I think should have happened: when the complaints began, the festival organisers should have listened politely and respectfully, acknowledged the validity of the complainants feelings, explained that the deliberately provocative titles were ones that Eastman chose — were, in fact, part of the art — and that to censor them at an art event (as opposed to, say, afternoon radio) would be to do the man a disservice, offered to refund any money to audience members who wanted to leave and then continued with the scheduled programme. In other words, show a little guts and start defending the art and the artists.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-07-2019 at 01:39 PM. Reason: Added 'acknowledged the validity of the complainants feelings' which seems reasonable
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  #25  
Unread 07-07-2019, 11:35 AM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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That's fine Mark. I think that a festival that pitches itself as avant-garde and desiring to attract and promote POC would be comical if it ignored their complaints.

It's no surprise that the people who complain about censorship in media and art are universally white. They are all cis-gendered. They are almost all men, almost all straight, and predominantly middle and upper class. In other words: the most powerful and least censored group of people in the world.

When you find yourself continually agreeing with those in power instead of the marginalized, and with those who look like you and have similar life experiences to you, I think it's worth evaluating that.

You and I have, I think, respectfully and (hopefully) fruitfully disagreed on this and related topics for a while. We, though, are two white straight cisgendered men in the middle class. I don't mean this to be patronizing because I'm not saying it would change your mind, but this board is largely white middle class, and you live in England rather than the North American context this occurred in; it might be worth your time to find an American POC sympathetic to the audience members and have this conversation. At the very least it would mean you weren't talking to someone projecting how the audience might feel and instead get something more authentic. This is a topic that is clearly near and dear to your heart, and I'm sure you'd like to understand the other side better than I can offer.
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  #26  
Unread 07-08-2019, 02:28 PM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Quote:
That's fine Mark. I think that a festival that pitches itself as avant-garde and desiring to attract and promote POC would be comical if it ignored their complaints.
Absolutely. I didn't suggest it should ignore their complaints. As I said above I think it should have heard and acknowledged the complaints but ultimately stuck by the speaker who was there to present the work of a marginalised, gay, black artist. I associate a certain fearlessness with the avant-garde. Capitulating to complaints I associate more with a corporate mindset afraid of losing its audience. I imagine there may have been many POC in the festival audience who didn't complain and were disappointed with the decision.

Quote:
It's no surprise that the people who complain about censorship in media and art are universally white. They are all cis-gendered. They are almost all men, almost all straight, and predominantly middle and upper class. In other words: the most powerful and least censored group of people in the world.
It seems you're trying to present a stereotyped picture here of a group of conservative 'straight, white men' railing against identity politics and bemoaning the fact that people can't 'say what they want these days' because of the scourge of political correctness. I agree there's a lot of that about, but these issues are more nuanced than that. There's so much sweeping generalisation in your statement, and so much that is self-defeating to your argument. First of all, your first sentence: "It's no surprise that the people who complain about censorship in media and art are universally white". Are you saying that no black person ever complains about being censored or silenced? This sounds like an argument someone on the right might equally make to suggest that POC have nothing to complain about! And of course that's not true, just as your statement isn't true. It just works to reinforce your stereotype of who is doing the complaining and about what. If we take censorship in its broader sense to include non-representation, then black artists, quite rightly, complain a lot about this. It feels like you're ok with some kinds of complaining but not others.

From memory, and with a little googling, some people who have been particularly prominent recently complaining about increasing censoriousness in the arts, media and academia include Germaine Greer (female, longtime feminist campaigner), Peter Tatchell (longtime British gay-rights campaigner, gay), Douglas Murray (journalist, gay), Rachel Custer (female poet, lesbian), John McWhorter (linguist POC), Lionel Shriver (female novelist), Stephen Fry (comedian, actor and writer, gay), Julie Bindell (longtime feminist campaigner, lesbian), Zadie Smith (novelist, female, POC). Of course, Salman Rushdie (POC) had quite a lot to say about censorship as, closer to the issue at hand, I'm sure Julius Eastman (gay POC) would. Nemo (gay) seems fairly strong in his views about this particular case, though I can't speak for his views on the issue more generally. I won't mention Milo Yann-whatsisname (gay quasi-fascist attention seeker) because nobody wants him supporting their argument. Oh damn. The people who get to be heard in the media are nearly always middle-class, whatever the subject, so that is a different issue really, though a very important one. We could be here for days arguing about the validity of all these people's individual complaints, and we both might find some of them objectionable (or at least problematic ). But the point is that your statement about the group identity of people who complain about censorship is a bit of a reductive stereotype.

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When you find yourself continually agreeing with those in power instead of the marginalized, and with those who look like you and have similar life experiences to you, I think it's worth evaluating that.
This is too general to really argue against and if the 'you' here is meant to include me, I don't recognise myself in it at all. I don't 'continually agree with people in power' or on the basis of whether they look like me. I could bore you with many examples. My instincts are absolutely always to side with the less powerful, but I'm not going to agree with a viewpoint just because it comes from a marginalised group, or, which is much more often the case, a self-appointed 'spokesperson' for a marginalised group. I try to think carefully about each situation. In the two cases we've mostly argued about, this and the 'Nation' poem, I think the outrage and the subsequent lengthy apologies were totally incommensurate with the 'offense'. If we try to be specific and stick with the incident we're discussing, then I feel like the person I'm 'agreeing' with here is Julius Eastman, a marginalised, gay, black musician who looked nothing like me and had very different life experiences. I agree with his right to have his art performed as he intended it, however uncomfortable it might make people. The objections to, and particularly the subsequent apologies for, both of the examples we've argued about do a disservice to art and artists, in my opinion. No, worse than that, they're anti-art. And, more importantly, I don't think these identity politics inspired 'appropriation' scandals/apologies do anything to make life better for actual POC who are marginalised by day to day, real world racism or economic hardship. Not a thing.

Quote:
We, though, are two white straight cisgendered men in the middle class. I don't mean this to be patronizing because I'm not saying it would change your mind, but this board is largely white middle class, and you live in England rather than the North American context this occurred in; it might be worth your time to find an American POC sympathetic to the audience members and have this conversation. At the very least it would mean you weren't talking to someone projecting how the audience might feel and instead get something more authentic. This is a topic that is clearly near and dear to your heart, and I'm sure you'd like to understand the other side better than I can offer.
So many boxes for me! It's a topic clearly near and dear to yours too. I would love to have that conversation. I enjoy discussion. I suspect that if I attempted it with some of the audience at the OBEY festival though, the discussion would be stymied before it could start. Just as 'Leach’s use of language and handling of Eastman’s life and legacy were called into question and identified as problematic and an example of colonial oppression' (from the apology) I think my having any opinion other than the correct one would be viewed in the same way and I would be asked to leave before I inflicted further 'harm'.

Oh, and I still identify as working class. But I'll let you off. Cheers.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 07-10-2019 at 01:45 AM. Reason: Added Zadie Smith to the list.
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  #27  
Unread 07-08-2019, 07:05 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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We disagree. That's fine. As I said in my initial post, I feel bad for what happened to Leach. I look forward to hearing from her.

Last edited by Andrew Szilvasy; 07-08-2019 at 07:31 PM.
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  #28  
Unread 07-09-2019, 08:02 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Thanks, Andrew. I hope we've respectfully disagreed again. I look forward to her response too.

Well, that was exhausting. I suppose I expected more voices in this thread, which has over 700 views but only four people who seem to have an opinion on it.

It always feels sort of embarrassing taking this 'free speech' stance, because it has been co-opted by right wing goons in some quarters and I want nothing to do with them. But there are left wing goons I want nothing to do with either. If I learned my anti-censorship instincts anywhere, it was from Jello Biafra and 'The Dead Kennedys' back when I was a teenager, and he was fighting the moral majority and gleefully mocking right and left.
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  #29  
Unread 09-15-2019, 09:27 PM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Her response is online at ART NEWS at last!!

Nemo
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  #30  
Unread 09-16-2019, 03:18 AM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is online now
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A worthwhile read and an excellent, quietly powerful, piece of writing. Her dignity has my respect.
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