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Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?
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<blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 2302565" data-attributes="member: 8394"><p>You've never heard of tragicomedy?</p><p></p><p></p><p>It is perfectly obvious. You've failed to prove the impossibility of SF and F having unique narratives. That's what I demonstrated.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I criticized your belief that you could demonstrate that something is not unique to SF or F. By the method you have used so far, you can't.</p><p></p><p></p><p>As you can see from the part of your post I quoted, I wasn't replying to this, so can't have mis-stated it. I was stating an altogether different argument of yours. To clarify the above, it's missing a piece. In order for X to exist at all, it needs Z. Your Z is imagery. It is a priori true that Z is the definition of X, so in your case imagery is the definition of SF. In order for X to have literary value in itself, Z must have literary value in itself. Imagery in itself has no literary value, so if Z is imagery then X has no literary value in itself.</p><p></p><p>A genre doesn't need a unique element to be literature; a genre <em>is</em> a unique element. If the unique element that a genre is has no literary value, then the genre has no literary value because it is nothing more or less than this element. Of course this has nothing to do with mixed writing styles--mixed writing is the reason you can't <em>disprove</em> the uniqueness of the element that a genre is, and thus cannot discredit the idea that, for example, narratives of power are unique to F, because non-F works also contain narratives of power. A perfectly legitimate response to this is that non-F works don't just contain narratives of power--they contain elements of fantasy!</p><p></p><p></p><p>Content is the product of an interpretive process. A chair might be made of wood. That is its surface, but the wood does not define the chair. It is only a chair when I give it an end and a definition. Content is intepretive, can have functions, is directed and so on. If you try to define a chair by how it looks or its material, you'll fail. I can use all kinds of odd things for chairs, and your definition can't exhaust all my options. The content and narrative potential of the chair is deeper, and can even change over time. I'm distinguishing not between narrative and content but between plot and narrative. I used content to make the difference between the two more clear, since plot and narrative are easy to treat as synonyms.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Although I disagree that this "Nightfall" story can only be told on an alien world with an alien race, I would rather pretend that it can. You say this story can only be told by SF (and its precursor mythology, which is the common precursor of all literature, so it's easy to assume most literature can already do much of what mythology can do--the fact that there's such a thing as Bloomsday bears this out), because of a number of narrative elements. So now SF can do anything other literature can do, in your opinion, and it can also do things no other literature can do? I find that a ridiculous thing to say, but we'll skip that and move on to the fact that you've just isolated narrative elements or themes unique to SF, in direct contrast to your belief that SF should be defined solely as imagery.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, all writing is mixed. The type is pure, if it is to be defined in the way most of this discussion has been aiming at (which is not my way; I am only defending the logic of the approach, I have nothing invested in it). All writing contains a multiplicity of types, so exclusion can never be <em>proved</em> according to writing because writing is never exclusive. If I define SF in terms of some narrative element present since Sumeria, the fact that it exists outside SF is not an argument for its not being the definition of SF, because I can simply say that elements of SF were present in Sumeria without that threatening my definition of SF in the least. Which is why I said "they need to be able to do something other literary <em>types</em> cannot do," which is a very different thing than if I had said "they need to be able to do something other literary <em>works do not</em> do."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Good luck defining human psychology. I know a number of "history of systems of thought" people who will effectively disagree with you no matter what position you take there. I will simply say that I can imagine otherness appearing plenty outside SF (not that that's an effective argument against it mind you, if you really want to stick to it), not that I have to, since the analysis of otherness is an enormously popular theme of contemporary literary theory, postcolonial studies, postmodern ethics and so on.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wayside, post: 2302565, member: 8394"] You've never heard of tragicomedy? It is perfectly obvious. You've failed to prove the impossibility of SF and F having unique narratives. That's what I demonstrated. I criticized your belief that you could demonstrate that something is not unique to SF or F. By the method you have used so far, you can't. As you can see from the part of your post I quoted, I wasn't replying to this, so can't have mis-stated it. I was stating an altogether different argument of yours. To clarify the above, it's missing a piece. In order for X to exist at all, it needs Z. Your Z is imagery. It is a priori true that Z is the definition of X, so in your case imagery is the definition of SF. In order for X to have literary value in itself, Z must have literary value in itself. Imagery in itself has no literary value, so if Z is imagery then X has no literary value in itself. A genre doesn't need a unique element to be literature; a genre [I]is[/I] a unique element. If the unique element that a genre is has no literary value, then the genre has no literary value because it is nothing more or less than this element. Of course this has nothing to do with mixed writing styles--mixed writing is the reason you can't [I]disprove[/I] the uniqueness of the element that a genre is, and thus cannot discredit the idea that, for example, narratives of power are unique to F, because non-F works also contain narratives of power. A perfectly legitimate response to this is that non-F works don't just contain narratives of power--they contain elements of fantasy! Content is the product of an interpretive process. A chair might be made of wood. That is its surface, but the wood does not define the chair. It is only a chair when I give it an end and a definition. Content is intepretive, can have functions, is directed and so on. If you try to define a chair by how it looks or its material, you'll fail. I can use all kinds of odd things for chairs, and your definition can't exhaust all my options. The content and narrative potential of the chair is deeper, and can even change over time. I'm distinguishing not between narrative and content but between plot and narrative. I used content to make the difference between the two more clear, since plot and narrative are easy to treat as synonyms. Although I disagree that this "Nightfall" story can only be told on an alien world with an alien race, I would rather pretend that it can. You say this story can only be told by SF (and its precursor mythology, which is the common precursor of all literature, so it's easy to assume most literature can already do much of what mythology can do--the fact that there's such a thing as Bloomsday bears this out), because of a number of narrative elements. So now SF can do anything other literature can do, in your opinion, and it can also do things no other literature can do? I find that a ridiculous thing to say, but we'll skip that and move on to the fact that you've just isolated narrative elements or themes unique to SF, in direct contrast to your belief that SF should be defined solely as imagery. Again, all writing is mixed. The type is pure, if it is to be defined in the way most of this discussion has been aiming at (which is not my way; I am only defending the logic of the approach, I have nothing invested in it). All writing contains a multiplicity of types, so exclusion can never be [I]proved[/I] according to writing because writing is never exclusive. If I define SF in terms of some narrative element present since Sumeria, the fact that it exists outside SF is not an argument for its not being the definition of SF, because I can simply say that elements of SF were present in Sumeria without that threatening my definition of SF in the least. Which is why I said "they need to be able to do something other literary [I]types[/I] cannot do," which is a very different thing than if I had said "they need to be able to do something other literary [I]works do not[/I] do." Good luck defining human psychology. I know a number of "history of systems of thought" people who will effectively disagree with you no matter what position you take there. I will simply say that I can imagine otherness appearing plenty outside SF (not that that's an effective argument against it mind you, if you really want to stick to it), not that I have to, since the analysis of otherness is an enormously popular theme of contemporary literary theory, postcolonial studies, postmodern ethics and so on. [/QUOTE]
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