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HeerJeet's profile
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer
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@HeerJeet

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Jeet HeerVerified account

@HeerJeet

1. Writer, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/authors/jeet-heer/ … 2. email: jeetheer1967 at gmail dot com 3. Twitter essayist 4. Drawn by Joe Ollmann

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Joined June 2012

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    1. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      1. So, a few thoughts about Ursula K. Le Guin, Boasian anthropology & trajectory of 20th century science fiction.

      11 replies 169 retweets 456 likes
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    2. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      2. Le Guin was the daughter of Alfred Louis Kroeber & Theodora Kracaw, two extremely distinguished anthropologists, in the tradition of Franz Boas.

      2 replies 10 retweets 99 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      3. Boas, of course, was a major figure in moving anthropology away from hierarchical judgements & trying to understand cultures on their own terms.

      3 replies 9 retweets 107 likes
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    4. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      4. If we ask, what was the science of Le Guin's science fiction, the clear answer is anthropology: the ability to imagine & populate societies with rules very different than our own.

      2 replies 64 retweets 244 likes
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    5. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      5. Le Guin's anthropological imagination of course went hand in hand with her feminism, since part of what she imagined was societies without contemporary gender binary.

      3 replies 20 retweets 138 likes
      Show this thread
      Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

      6. On the whole, with a few noble exceptions, early 20th century American science fiction & fantasy was profoundly xenophobic, in ways both subtle & profound.

      8:21 PM - 24 Jan 2018
      • 12 Retweets
      • 124 Likes
      • Brandon O'Brien 𓆩𓁿𓂏𓁿𓆪 Ʀobb Sturtcmaƞ sanjagrozdanic Anar Parikh, PhD Frankie Roberto Greco Matthew Elliot Carol Marshburn
      1 reply 12 retweets 124 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          7. It wasn't just the bug-eyed monsters, but also that many SF writers had a hard time imagining future or alien societies that didn't just replicate norms of 20th century America.

          8 replies 15 retweets 122 likes
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        3. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          8. Of E.E. "Doc" Smith, one of the great pioneers of space opera, @john_clute wrote that his work had "a lunatic insensitivity to lifeforms (i.e. Jews)...not found in small America circa 1930."pic.twitter.com/tsx5cKNJ2H

          2 replies 5 retweets 49 likes
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        4. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          9. John W. Campbell, a foundational editor of sf who shaped field for decades, had a rule that no alien species could be smarter than humans (by which he meant white people, since he rejected stories with black heroes).

          3 replies 7 retweets 100 likes
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        5. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          10. Even someone like Heinlein, more cosmopolitan than most pulp writers, struggled with diversity. He often had people of color in books but they thought, acted & sounded like middle class white Americans.

          10 replies 4 retweets 88 likes
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        6. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          11. Le Guin was part of a great shift in science fiction, often called New Wave, which had many dimensions (literary, countercultural, feminist) but was also a move from xenophobia to xenophilia.

          3 replies 25 retweets 167 likes
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        7. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          12. It's interesting that the move from xenophobia to xenophilia all involved writers who, at an early age, had encounters with non-western cultures.

          4 replies 10 retweets 114 likes
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        8. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          13. Aside from Le Guin there was Paul Linebarger (a.k.a. Cordwainer Smith) who grew up in China & Alice Sheldon (a.k.a. Alice Tiptree) whose mom was a travel writer & who spent youth traveling in Africa & elsewhere.

          8 replies 5 retweets 71 likes
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        9. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          14. Cordwainer Smith claimed he dream in Chinese (Mandarin, I think). Mind you, he used his cultural sensitivity to dubious ends (he was a CIA expert on psychological warfare). Still, it informed his fiction

          1 reply 2 retweets 42 likes
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        10. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          15. And Sheldon/Tiptree (also CIA!) had ties to Africa that were redolent of colonialism, as in this photo when she was a child. But her adult work was a critique of colonial hauteur.pic.twitter.com/4f5E4sJi08

          3 replies 3 retweets 60 likes
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        11. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          16. Slightly tangential but Le Guin's anthropological science fiction was bastardized by Hollywood: both Return of the Jedi & Avatar are riffs on Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest.

          5 replies 23 retweets 163 likes
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        12. Jeet Heer‏Verified account @HeerJeet 24 Jan 2018

          18. To conclude, if we want to situate Le Guin historically, she's part of the great shift in s.f. where there is a move to genuinely imagine alien cultures and to imaginatively live inside them.

          5 replies 33 retweets 228 likes
          Show this thread
        13. End of conversation

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