D&D and Racial Essentialism

[pemerton]

Tolkien once said "we were all orcs in the Great War."

Dear god.

The entire world is Turkish.

Putting my point another way: given that the Great War was fought predominantly between the English, the French, the Germans and the Russians, why did Tolkien not use a European archetype rather than a European-constructed Turkic/asian archetype to represent orcs?

In my view, it's not irrelevant but central to understand what cultural process led him to make the choice that he did. That cultural process, which has no room for Europe (especially western Europe) being the examplar of barbarity, is what I have been labelling "racialised thinking".

 

[S'mon]

In my view, it's not irrelevant but central to understand what cultural process led him to make the choice that he did. That cultural process, which has no room for Europe (especially western Europe) being the examplar of barbarity, is what I have been labelling "racialised thinking".

If he *had* used western Europe as the exemplar of barbarity, would that then be "non-racialised thinking"? Would "The Men of the West are the cancer of Middle Earth history" be non-racialised?

 

[Merkuri]

HaHA! I have already seen the great thing!!!

Reported for signature spam.

 

[Desdichado]

Calling species races really is one of the most embarrassing elements of D&D. I can understand why Mr. Gygax included it given the strictures he was under to fit fantasy creatures in a roleplaying game as the practice was understood in the 70's, but that does not make the lasting term any more palatable.

I see no reason why that should be embarrassing. Just because we've, in recent years, saddled the concept of race with a bunch of localized baggage doesn't mean that Gygax's use of the term has any relevence to the political landscape in America right now, or that it's not completely correct.

 

[Desdichado]

Putting my point another way: given that the Great War was fought predominantly between the English, the French, the Germans and the Russians, why did Tolkien not use a European archetype rather than a European-constructed Turkic/asian archetype to represent orcs?

He did. What makes you think Huns are not a European archetype? And why do you keep calling them Turkish? There's absolutely no academic agreement around that hypothesis.

In my view, it's not irrelevant but central to understand what cultural process led him to make the choice that he did. That cultural process, which has no room for Europe (especially western Europe) being the examplar of barbarity, is what I have been labelling "racialised thinking".

My opinion is that your view is quite wrong. There weren't any cultural processes, there were literary processes that led him to make that one claim that he made in that one letter, which has since been blown completely out of proportion and taken completely out of context by people on the internet, including you, for years now.

 

[Ariosto]

given that the Great War was fought

... nothing follows, any more than anything follows from the particulars of the Vietnam War to David Drake's Lord of the Isles. Orcs were not stand-ins for the Central Powers, because LotR was not a polemic on the politics of the 1914-18 war.

 

[Hussar]

Hrm, if species is defined by what it can breed true with, wouldn't that make like every single species in a D&D world draconic?

 

[Mark]

"Affirmative. I poked one it's dead."

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64]YouTube - Flight Of The Conchords - The Humans Are Dead[/ame]

 

[nightwyrm]

Hrm, if species is defined by what it can breed true with, wouldn't that make like every single species in a D&D world draconic?

Maybe we should restrict the definition to creatures in their "natural form"
...although, maybe dragons do have sex with everything while in their natural form...

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Has anyone ever come up with a good term to collectively refer to the PC races that doesn't compare them to humans like the terms above? I'm talking about something that can be used in character (so "PC races" is out).

Do you think eladrin and drow would appreciate being called "elvinoids"?

The Elder Scrolls series has the distinction between mer (elves) and men (humans).

Funny enough, that leaves out Khajit and Argonians, which are classified as "beasts." Not coincidentally, those two races are also the most abused, stereotyped, looked down on, and enslaved.

The words you use to classify things does, indeed, matter.