Yes! Thanks so much for the pointer re: Polwart, I do love her songs, or what I've heard of them, and Waterlily is amazing. And now doubly sad. :)
I'm beginning to wonder if there's a difference between white readings of these sorts of texts, which do note the race-based failings of the texts, don't get me wrong, and mine, which is something like "omg, he means me... does he mean me? oh, now he means me, oh shit" - etc. Does that make sense? There is a whole lot more discomfort there, which I can separate out entirely from my liking for Kipling's writing and from my own serious criticisms of racism in literature.
I would say, though, that Kipling probably doesn't fall into the same trap as the one Conrad allegedly does - his writing about India is genuine in the sense that it is not just background, it flavours everything he writes, in a way.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2010-02-05 12:08 am (UTC)I'm beginning to wonder if there's a difference between white readings of these sorts of texts, which do note the race-based failings of the texts, don't get me wrong, and mine, which is something like "omg, he means me... does he mean me? oh, now he means me, oh shit" - etc. Does that make sense? There is a whole lot more discomfort there, which I can separate out entirely from my liking for Kipling's writing and from my own serious criticisms of racism in literature.
I would say, though, that Kipling probably doesn't fall into the same trap as the one Conrad allegedly does - his writing about India is genuine in the sense that it is not just background, it flavours everything he writes, in a way.