Comments on my last post have become bogged down in a debate that makes it hard to think clearly about the things I’ve been discussing in this series of posts about Tolkien and racism. Specifically, I think we’ve drifted off the main thread of the arguments, and become distracted from the issue of racial essentialism in Tolkien by a nasty debate about whether Tolkien’s work was fascist. So this post is an attempt to regather my thoughts (I find the cut-and-thrust of internet debate can cause me to drift off of the main thread of a thought).
I think my interlocutors have become a bit bogged down in defending Tolkien against a misinterpretation of scientific racism, which gives it a stronger set of conditions than it actually and historically carries, so I’m going to try and clarify that. In this post I will remind my readers of the way scientific racism works, and discuss the additional properties of Nazi racism. I’m also going to try and set out a method by which an author can unintentionally make a Nazi racial model for their work through combining two quite separate narrative ideals, and I’m also going to try and set out an alternative plot for Lord of the Rings that would be almost exactly the same as the original but substantially less concerned with the inherent moral differences of races, in an attempt to show how a very similar text could be less vulnerable to scientific-racist interpretation.
Scientific racism and racial essentialism
The fundamental property of a theory of scientific racism or racial essentialism is that it ascribes moral properties to a race, and assumes they’re racially inherited. This is different to, say, racism, which ascribes moral properties to a race but assumes they’re not genetic; or scientific analysis of cultures, which assigns certain properties to a culture and assumes that you have to grow up in the culture to get them; and connects this to a race only inasmuch as a race is connected to the culture.
When scientific racism assigns a moral property to a race, that assignation isn’t absolute or invariant – it’s an average level around which the race is generally assumed to deviate, and in most models it’s not absolute. As we’ll see, the exception to this is Nazism which (pretty much) assigns immutable, eternal and unvarying evil motives to a single race (Jews). So in general a scientific racist theory will make statements like
- [Race A] is less moral than [race B]
- [Race A] is inclined to savagery and barbarism [with the implicit contrast to race B]
- [Race A] cannot rise above their base instincts, and will never aspire to the higher art or culture of [race B]
These statements tend to allow for diversity within the framework, and specifically they allow members of race B to be degenerate. In fact, the concepts of degeneracy applied to [race A] tend to be grounded in discussion of the “worst types” of [race B], and historically they’ve often been taken from descriptions of the poor and working class members of the society of [race B]. Saying [race B] is better than [race A] is not a statement that is everywhere and absolutely true; it’s sometimes (or often) the case that members of [race B] behave like [race A] or can be corrupted to so behave – this is the essence of the fear-mongering and salacious marijuana scare books of the 50s, for example.
Further, it’s important to note that a lot of scientific racism is based on an underlying fear of [race A], and especially of [race B] becoming like [race A]. For such a fear to be viable, there has to be some real life risk that [race B] will occasionally (or frequently) behave like [race A]. This is especially evident in racial essentialist arguments against cultural mixing. The fear isn’t just that the races will interbreed, but that the mere presence of large numbers of [race A] doing bad things will cause [race B] to do more of them.
As a concrete example, consider some more modern racial essentialist theories based in pop pscyhology. Under these theories black people have “poor impulse control.” This means that, for example, young black girls can’t resist the urge to have sex, and get pregnant as teenagers. This theory doesn’t preclude white teenage pregnancies, because it allows for the existence of white girls with poor impulse control (usually it sees these girls as poor or working class, often living in neighbourhoods with lots of black people). But it is used as an explanation for high black teenage pregnancy rates (and is often followed up with an argument that special funding for programs to reduce teen pregnancy in black communities are a waste of money because the problem is “biological”). This racial essentialist theory will be stated as “blacks have poor impulse control” but it doesn’t actually exclude poor impulse control in whites.
Nazism’s special additions
Nazism is unique among these theories for adding a narrative of purposeful evil and corruption to the racial model. Jews are seen as not just immoral but always and everywhere evil, as represented in the essay The Eternal Jew. This evil is racially inherited, so immutable, and the deviousness and evil of the race is seen as such that mere exclusion is insufficient – extermination is the only solution. This model does not, however, preclude the possibility of evil in the “superior” races of whites. It presents a heirarchy of corruption, in which Jews are, for example, much better able to manipulate blacks than whites, and Germans and British are much more resilient to manipulation than, say, slavs or (sub-human) Russians. In fact, this racial theory was adapted quite neatly to explain the importance of Jews in American life, and a theory of cultural isolation and racial and cultural mixing was used to explain the “special vulnerability” of Americans to Jewish manipulation.
Nazi racial theory doesn’t assume that all white people are pure though; in fact, it allowed for the possibility of genetic flaws in whites, and had eugenic programs to manage them; and it had a criminal justice policy which, though racially-oriented, also assumed that white people could do bad things. The key point here is “could.” The Nazi view of race was that white people could do good or evil according to their free will (though they were always looking for genetically eradicable causes of propensity to do certain things); but Jews could only do evil. This kind of model is essential to explaining the presence of gay Aryans, and of Aryans who voted against their racial interests (i.e. voted Social Democrat).
Nazism also has a narrative of corruption, with the Jew whispering in the ear of the white man to corrupt him from good. Such a narrative doesn’t preclude people choosing to do evil acts by themselves, but the big movements of the time were all seen in the light of Jewish corruption: Bolshevism was Russians being corrupted by the international Jewish plot of Marxism; British views of Germans were the fault of the Jewish media; and Germany’s defeat in world war 1 was the fault of Jews corrupting Germans at home through fear and hunger.
Tolkien and racial essentialism
Tolkien’s work fits perfectly into a racial essentialist model, presenting tiers of morality in the races. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and humans have the power to do good or evil by their own free will; Orcs and Southrons do not, with Orcs being always and everywhere evil and Southrons somewhere in between. Amongst humans, levels of goodness are genetic, with the Rohirrim and Gondorians at the top, then the men they interbred with, and then the Dunlendings, and then Southrons etc. (all the servants of Sauron). These traits are clearly presented as racially inherited – even halflings’ resistance to the siren song of power is racial.
Note here that “level of goodness” is defined as a propensity to do good; a race doesn’t have to be presented as everywhere and always good in order to fit a racial essentialist model. It simply has to be more moral than other races.
Tolkien’s model has the further unfortunate property of mapping these genetically-inherited racial differences to a geographical and morphological scheme that fits our real world, making the races very easily interpreted in real-life terms.
Tolkien and Nazi racial theory
In addition to presenting a race as immutably evil, just as Nazis do, Tolkien’s work includes an additional narrative of corruption, which brings it closer to Nazi racial theory. The evil races are corrupted by a pair of evil Gods, and the most evil movements in human and elvish history are related to corruption and deception by these evil Gods. From a Nazi racial theory perspective, this is Morgoth as Marx and Sauron as Lenin. They deceive and corrupt other races to following an evil creed, but unlike the real-world versions, they don’t rely on races being created inferior; they corrupt them with their magic so that those races become their permanent servants. The inclusion of this additional magical element to a fantasy text doesn’t rescue the racial theory from the interpretation it deserves; and the use of supernatural figures to do the corrupting, rather than representatives of the evil races, is simply a device of the genre. These points don’t fundamentally change the narrative, which is one of corruption of basically good peoples by the representatives of an evil race. In this case the representatives are magical, not political activists; but the effect is the same. The single difference is that these representatives pre-date the races they control, and created the (genetically-inherited) corruption in those races, rather than arising from it. This is not a hugely important element of the narrative structure of the Nazi racial theory represented in the text, though it suggests a way in which a Nazi racial theory can be constructed by accident.
Creating and recreating racial stories
In this section we will consider narrative structure and intent, but by inferring possible intents we shouldn’t assume that we’re commenting on the author’s actual intent or character. It’s generally assumed, I think, that because Tolkien put a great deal of thought and work into his world then any representation of racial essentialism must also have been intended. I don’t think this is necessarily the case. All Tolkien had to do to put a racial essentialist context in his books was to a) want to put non-human races in and b) recreate the social and cultural theories of his time uncritically. Having spent years developing the languages, geography and histories of his world, it’s entirely possible that he didn’t put any specific effort into thinking about the underlying racial cosmology; he just assembled it unthinkingly from the standard model of his day. Just as today many sci-fi authors unthinkingly write the democratic and liberal structure of their own culture into their novels, so he may have reproduced the racial theory of his time.
I think this seems hard to believe to some people because of the detail of his effort, but I’ve been reflecting on gender and fantasy recently and I don’t think it’s so unusual. Ursula le Guin put a great deal of thought into the race of her protagonist in A Wizard of Earthsea, she outlined the geography of the world and the peoples therein, and she is generally respected for creating a detailed and internally consistent magic system that formed the core of the narrative of the stories; but when she sat down to write the book she unthinkingly reproduced the gender conventions of the genre even though she’s a feminist. By contrast, Tolkien seems to have been a bit of a radical in women’s issues and I think this shows in the text – I think he consciously chose to eschew the gender politics of the genre he was writing in (which at that time was not fantasy). In order to eschew the conventions of a genre or a social order, you have to make a decision. Reproducing them merely means writing within the genre without effort. If le Guin could do this with one of her central political ideals (feminism) I don’t see any reason to believe that Tolkien wouldn’t have done it with a political ideology that may or may not have been his central concern (I don’t think it was). The result is a powerfully racially essentialist narrative.
Unfortunately for Tolkien, he also put in a narrative of corruption and downfall, probably based on his Catholic principles (though again he may not have thought about this). I think it’s very easy to write two separate themes – one of corruption, and one of racial essentialism – in a text and produce by accident a Nazi racial theory. That’s pretty much what the Nazis did – they combined pre-existing religious ideas about corruption and downfall with a particularly strong racial theory of evil, and the result was an exterminationist racial theory. They did this deliberately, but I think you could do it by accident and get a quite similar politics. If you unthinkingly reproduce racial theories of the interwar era and consciously put in a narrative of corruption, you’ll probably get Nazi theory.
Another way of looking at this is to consider a modern version. Suppose you write a fantasy book in which one race – from amongst whom you select the protagonists – go to war to save another race from an evil magical ruler who has enslaved them. Now, without thinking about it at all, simply make the society the good guys come from be a democratic liberal society – that’s what you know and politics isn’t your central concern, so you just write it that way. Then, because you’re really concerned with censorship, or because you want to make the evil magical ruler an allegory for the Wizard of Oz, or because you want to make a feminist comment on beauty culture, or for some other similar reason, suppose that you write into your story that the evil magical ruler has banned all images of himself. Without meaning to, you’ve produced a fantasy text which is a perfect image of modern liberal interventionism, with the bad guy a model of the Prophet. It’s US vs. Iraq all over. Having done this, I don’t think you can complain if your novel is trumpeted by the Hitchens and Abramovitch’s of the world as the next Orwell.
An alternative racially neutral text
Now I’m going to present a slight modification of the original story which would make it less racially essentialist, though I don’t claim this version would be better – I’m doing this just as an example. First, suppose that Tolkien had written the Orcs as humans, whose savagery was caused by a curse invoked on them by Sauron. This curse is tied up in the one ring, which has been lost. The one ring maintains all its other properties, too. So long as this ring exists, any descendant of the original nation cursed by Sauron is reduced to barbaric savagery – i.e. behaves like an Orc, but is human in form. The books proceed in exactly the same way, except that at the end when the ring is destroyed it undoes the curse, and the cursed humans resume normal human traits. This provides an explanation for the sudden victory at the Black Gate, it allows us to understand what happens at the end of the story, just as does the original, but it removes the genetically inherited trait from the Orcs. Even if the enslaved humans at the end of the story remain evil, their children will have free will. In such a story the inherited evil is a transient curse, rather than a genetic property. I think this version probably still is open to criticism, but it’s also much more defensible because an inter-generational curse that can be lifted by killing the magical source is (within the genre) completely different to an inherent trait that is genetically transferred and renders a race of “mongoloid” people evil by birth.
A final note on racial theory and free will
It’s important to understand that in all of its incarnations racial theory isn’t just a piece of pointless propaganda or a catechism to be invoked in foxholes. It’s a model of how society does and/or should work, and as such it has to take account of the real properties of the people it describes. This is why the Nazis had to write a special pamphlet explaining why the Japanese are superior to other Asians, and this is why racial theories in all their hideous variety have to accept that the “good” races aren’t purely good. This is usually done by ascribing to the “good” races more control over their baser instincts, and the free will to choose between evil and good, between delayed impulses and immediate drive, and between their personal desires and their racial survival. But such free will has to include the possibility of being a traitor to one’s race; being an impulsive criminal; or being evil. All racial theory arguments – even in their purest form under the Nazis – rely on acceptance of variation between individuals within a race, and build a structure based on averages and tendencies. The singular exception to this is the representation by the Nazis of Jews as especially and unavoidably evil; and this is a trait that the Nazis’ imaginary Jew shares with Tolkien’s imaginary Orcs. If the parallel stopped there then it would be meaningless, but the additional tale of corruption in the novel, and the geographical and morphological similarities to Europe, make it ideal Nazi propaganda, which is what we see in action today.
Conclusion
One doesn’t have to accept the similarity between Tolkien’s model and modern Nazi theory to accept that the races in the Lord of the Rings are based on a racially essentialist model. It’s important to note that Nazi racial theory gives no explanation for the genesis of Jewish evil (or black/slavic/Russian inferiority) – there is neither a natural selection nor a religious depiction of this. This means that the order of corruption in the Lord of the Rings – Morgoth corrupts the orcs, rather than being a political leader of that corrupted race – is not an important determinant of whether this book’s racial model is essentially Nazi. There is only one racial model in history which assigns one race to be pure evil, on a genetic basis, and sets them against a race capable of moral judgment and attainment of superior moral qualities. That model is Nazism, and Nazi racial theory has a lot in common with the racial theory of the Lord of the Rings.
This commonality, however, should not distract from the broader, and more insidious problem of scientific racism. Racial essentialism survived the Nazis, and has been reborn multiple times – most recently in the contentious IQ debates in the US. Tolkien’s works accept racial essentialism in full, and make it an essential part of the story; and there is nothing in the novels that contests this.
Compromise and Conceit 
October 6, 2010 at 12:07 pm
“The fundamental property of a theory of scientific racism or racial essentialism is that it ascribes moral properties to a race, and assumes they’re racially inherited.”
You keep saying this. Can you please give me the link that says racial essentialism allows for exceptions, because you’re immediately going to handwave the exceptions that are presented and I’d like to know why. The description you use does seem to be consistent with what I’ve read (just now in Wikipedia) with scientific racism, so I don’t know why you’re insisting on the term racial essentialism.
Furthermore, why are you investigating only the moral dimension of scientific racism? Why not the intelligence one that looks like it’s more common in scientific racism? The moral aspect is used to justify genocide, but the intelligence one is used to justify slavery and apartheid.
“modern racial essentialist theories based in pop pscyhology”
There are modern racial essentialist schools of thought? I can’t find a reference to it after the 1930s. I know this doesn’t mean the way of thinking went away (only the term) but why are you calling it racially essentialist instead of scientific racism? Is there a more modern source for your naming? Does it obey the description of Essentialism?
“Jews are seen as not just immoral but always and everywhere evil, as represented in the essay The Eternal Jew.”
Now this is racially essentialist. But the descriptions of the Aryans is not racially essentialist as they are not always possessing the trait. They’re described in scientific racism terms it seems.
“Note here that “level of goodness” is defined as a propensity to do good; a race doesn’t have to be presented as everywhere and always good in order to fit a racial essentialist model. It simply has to be more moral than other races.”
Except for, yes it does (unless you have something that suggests otherwise). What you’re describing is a scientific racism model. And I’m not even sure that scientific racism has anything to say on moral grounds, it may just say that Aragon is 4 times smarter and cooler than you and Elrond is 1000 times smarter and cooler than him.
“Tolkien’s model has the further unfortunate property of mapping these genetically-inherited racial differences to a geographical and morphological scheme that fits our real world,”
As I understand it, that’s deliberate, though I’d heard he intended LotR as an alternate past for our world (and I think we’ve established he didn’t deliberately setup racist interpretations, they just can be seen in his work as either a property of the authers inherent biases or the little voices in the readers head).
Doesn’t your alternative storyline for the source of the Orcs give another reason for the genocide of the Jews? After all they’re the “corrupting influence” in the Nazi story. Sure this excuses brown skinned races, but I don’t think your re-writing has made this a non-fascist text. In fact, because your attempting to remove the race that can be interpreted as being non-white you’ve actually also just made the entire story a whites only production.
I’ll think about this some more and try to distil what you’re saying down to some testable rules. Can you please check your meaning of racial essentialism, and if you want to come up with some rules for your test then I’m happy to play by them instead.
October 6, 2010 at 1:11 pm
You could try this as an example of a definition of racial essentialism. I’m not really distinguishing between scientific racism and racial essentialism in these posts – strictly speaking scientific racism refers to scientific research to justify racism, but I’m using it to mean a model of racial superiority based on (spurious) evidence.
I don’t think the intelligence theory of modern racism was used to justify slavery or apartheid. Slavery was illegal and abolished long before IQ or any similar multi-dimensional test for intelligence had been invented, and indeed the methods weren’t even around until the early 20th century. Apartheid and slavery are justified retrospectively by a few kooks on the basis that blacks are too stupid to understand their own lives, but slavery was justified by other, more open means. There was no subterfuge in the justification of slavery. Apartheid was justified on the basis of the survival of a superior white race cut off from its ties to Europe. Of course, racial separation/extermination theories have always claimed that blacks are of inferior intelligence, but it’s always been one part of a broader theory – that’s why a lot of people are suspicious about modern intelligence/race theories, even where they claim to stand alone [and no I don’t want to discuss intelligence and race specifically on this blog].
Not only are their modern racial essentialist theories (go check stormfront if you doubt me!) but the American Association of Anthropologists had to publish a statement opposing them in 1998, though it didn’t use the term explicitly (for which it was criticized, I think).
Racial essentialism is at the heart of the Nazi description of Aryans, as well as Jews. It’s just a little more forgiving of real world conditions for Aryans (i.e. it includes the possibility of them doing wrong, making mistakes, having disabilities, committing crime) because it’s hard to tell white Joe Blow that his race is perfectly good when he knows his neighbour is collecting 2 dole cheques; but it’s very easy to tell him that Jews are everywhere and always evil if he’s never met a Jew.
I think what’s going on here is that you’re confusing a strict philosophical definition of essentialism (which requires the object to have the property) with the definition of racial essentialism, which can talk in terms of propensities. There is also a bit of confusion going on between wording – I’m talking about races being essentially “good” or “evil” in the context of the heroes of LoTR, but in general racial essentialism doesn’t say this, it says that one race has more of a certain property (impulse control, intelligence, creativity, emotional affect, etc.) than another, and those properties that it has are generally the ones that people read as “good.” In Tolkien these properties are replaced by absolute concepts of “good” or “evil,” because it’s a fantasy text, but that’s a matter of context, not essential form. And, of course, for narrative reasons the “good” races still need to maintain free will – there’s no sense of threat or danger of moral collapse and corruption if the “good” races are incapable of being evil by choice, and the story would reach a Dune level of tedium if everyone on the side of “good” was incapable of making mistakes or doing wrong.
Yeah I didn’t say my alternative was perfect! It could be just as nasty without being racial essentialist.
October 6, 2010 at 7:54 pm
The evil races are corrupted by a pair of evil Gods, and the most evil movements in human and elvish history are related to corruption and deception by these evil Gods. From a Nazi racial theory perspective, this is Morgoth as Marx and Sauron as Lenin. They deceive and corrupt other races to following an evil creed, but unlike the real-world versions, they don’t rely on races being created inferior; they corrupt them with their magic so that those races become their permanent servants. The inclusion of this additional magical element to a fantasy text doesn’t rescue the racial theory from the interpretation it deserves; and the use of supernatural figures to do the corrupting, rather than representatives of the evil races, is simply a device of the genre. These points don’t fundamentally change the narrative, which is one of corruption of basically good peoples by the representatives of an evil race. In this case the representatives are magical, not political activists; but the effect is the same. The single difference is that these representatives pre-date the races they control, and created the (genetically-inherited) corruption in those races, rather than arising from it.
I don’t have time right now to go through the rest of your post, but this bit is just flat wrong. Firstly, Nazis believed Slavs to be inferior as well as Jews (and Roma, blacks, etc.); it wasn’t just all down to Lenin and Marx, as the corruption of the orcs was all down to Morgoth. Slavs were considered inherently inferior, not because of what Lenin did but because they were so because of their nature. The comparison therefore just doesn’t hold up – if anything the Slavs in Nazism and the orcs in Tolkien have entirely opposite fates.
Secondly, as I’ve written numerous times, the corruption of the orcs is considered a gross evil. Authors depict gross evils all the time in their work; are you suggesting that since Hamlet murders his uncle Shakespeare’s text is fundamentally a pro-murder play? Is War & Peace pro-war?
What Tolkien is saying, with the story of the orcs, is that causing racial essentialism is a terrible wrong. That Morgoth chose to corrupt an entire race, forevermore, without hope for redemption, was one of the greatest of his sins.
October 6, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Noisms, I think you need to reread this paragraph; I’m not talking about Orcs here.
That Marx, Lenin and the German Social Democrats “corrupted” two entire races (the Russians and Germans) is presented as their greatest sin by the Nazis; the Jews are presented as constantly sinning against all moral codes. I think this is an interesting defense of Tolkien but it’s a defense of Tolkien, not of his work, and I thought we’d agreed not to go there again…?
October 7, 2010 at 8:18 am
Sadly Faustus is right. The Nazi’s aren’t pro-corrupion of others they’re arguing that the others are corrupted by “evil jews” because they’re weak and that such corruption by jews is bad. As such, if Tolkien had made the corruption of the Orcs a good thing then it would be a pro-racial essentialism story, but not a story the Nazi’s would find resonates for them as much.
OK, I’ve read through the links you provided (without signing up for the research paper trial) and based on that I’m comfortable to say you are definately using racial essentialism incorrectly. The AAA statement doesn’t reference racial essentialism as it’s talking (and debunking) about scientific racism. The other paper has “We might define [racial essentialism] as insisting that a person’s character and conduct rests entirely on his or her racial identity.” Note the word entirely. It matches up with the definition I’ve provided and not with yours (which allows for exceptions). Examples of the essentialism that this link uses is “The evolutionary anthropologists insisted that every people had to “progress” from one distinct stage to another, from “Barbarism” to “Savagery” to “Civilization.” Among those nineteenth-century adepts of the first rank who popularized evolutionary anthropology were Karl Marx (1818-83)…”[1] Now you see, saying a race is always uncivilised and has to evolve past it is essentialist. It’s an “always” statement.
Orcs savagry and evil are a racially essentialist example consistent with the sources you provided and I found. Numoreans goodness is not. Elves being immortal is a racially essentialist statement, but it isn’t a racist statement. [1]
Now the Nazi theory on the Jews is racially essentialist based on your description (they’re always evil) so is saying that black people are always inferior or have poor impluse control (as that statement implies “always have poor impulse control”). But saying black people are more likely to make bad choices is scientific racism as its not an always statement.
[1] Me saying that elves are always 1000 times cooler than humans and 2000 times cooler than hobbits is a racist statement. [2]
[2] By the way, if you think about it hobbits are almost certainly human. Ea only made two races and the Dwarves were created by one of the Valar. No one made the hobbits therefore therefore they must be a type of another race. They’re mortal, so they’re not elves, which means they’re humans, dwarves or a cross breed of the two. I’d say it’s probably “short human”.
October 7, 2010 at 9:04 am
The problem with this interpretation of racial essentialism is its determinism. You seem to expect that statements about character (e.g. “has bad impulse control” or “is good”) can be somehow absolute predictors of behaviour, similar to an essentialist statement about clouds (“always contain water vapour”). But the nature of people precludes this. For example, if you’re biologically predetermined to be good does that mean you won’t kill another human being if you’re both starving and there’s not enough cake to go around? What if you have children to feed and the other person doesn’t? What about selfishness and envy? I think it’s possible to define people as “inherently good” without including an absence of jealousy and selfishness in the mix but your version of racial essentialism – at least as far as morally abstract statements like “good” are concerned – seems to be more like Asimov’s robot rules, and removes the free will of its inheritors. This is something of a problem for a novel where you occasionally want the good guys to make mistakes and behave less-than-perfectly. It’s also a problem for a racial theory that has to explain real life behaviour[1].
Are you instead arguing that we can’t interpret the protagonists of the Lord of the Rings as “good”? Is it possible that you are willing to apply a moral category to the protagonists of the story but unwilling to countenance its use in connection with a racial theory? Because while you or I might see that as reasonable, I don’t think that a racial essentialist would.
Consider, for example, these two quotes from the German Propaganda Archive. The first is from a series of 10 arguments to counter those who oppose anti-semitism. The fourth argument is that some Aryans can behave as badly as jews (the so-called “white jews”):
This indicates that though Nazi racial theory clearly defines different moralities for Jews and Germans, it accepts the possibility of Germans lowering themselves to the level of Jews. Then there is this, from an SS racial policy pamphlet:
Which again seems to admit the possibility of imperfection in the perfect. And finally we have this advice from Neues Volk, a Nazi magazine, to a woman who wants to know if she should follow her mother’s advice and marry a Chinese man to whom she has become pregnant:
Note here that the girl and her mother, though assumed to be “perfect” Germans, are accused of having “forgotten” their “racial nature” and fallen from grace.
Racial essentialism in practice always allows failure, and in some cases even allows for elevation (the above anti-semitic propaganda pamphlet has instructions on how to argue against the example of the few “good” jews, like Einstein). This is because humans are uniquely diverse. Genetic theory is always about variation around mean levels.
But, if you want to have a theory of racial essentialism that only allows absolute characteristics, not variance around means, you can insteead look at the representation of the races in Lord of the Rings in terms of the sets of core characteristics they possess – higher creativity on the one hand, the capacity for honour, etc. Or, you can see a simpler division into “Orcs are always evil and incapable of good” vs. “Humans are generally capable of good and sometimes evil” or “Orcs are evil with no free will” vs. “humans are neutral with free will and the capacity for good.”
All of those versions of racial essentialism are consistent with the novels, and they all clearly exalt humans above Orcs. Unless you want to claim that the book somehow portrays humans as equal morally to Orcs?
—
fn1: which is why, obviously, racial essentialism doesn’t work as a predictive theory with morality, because there’s no race of pure good people. However, at the time that racial theories were popular they got around this by talking about propensity and allowing wiggle-room.
October 7, 2010 at 9:10 am
Or consider the following example of the vagueness of racial essentialism. Here an infertile German woman asks if she can marry a half-Jew, and Neues Volk tells her:
Here there is a concept of German honour, which Germans are presumed to have; but here the German woman wants to offend this honour. So her desire to offend her own honour must be somehow consistent with the property she possesses of being racially predisposed to a higher state of honour.
Racial essentialism in practice allows for variation of morality within racial groups. It’s necessary because morality is not morality if you can’t fail to live up to it; so to state that one race is more “moral” than another, you are implicitly giving them a greater set of possible failures and mistakes that they can (and, in order to give morality meaning, at least occasionally must) fail.
October 7, 2010 at 11:07 am
“The problem with this interpretation of racial essentialism is its determinism. You seem to expect that statements about character (e.g. “has bad impulse control” or “is good”) can be somehow absolute predictors of behaviour, similar to an essentialist statement about clouds (“always contain water vapour”). But the nature of people precludes this.”
I agree. That’s why the racial essentialist statements we see are either broad without directly testable conditions, i.e. “whites are better than blacks”, or specific but based on assumptions, i.e. “Jews are evil”.
That’s why I’m saying your describing scientific racism, which is where statements like “Blacks have poor impulse control” or “White people are smarter” are found.
Note that this doesn’t change your argument. I just want to see the correct word used because an essentialist description of me is definition focused and small minded. You’ll see that despite being an essentialist definition it doesn’t describe my attitude to cake or evil.
“Are you instead arguing that we can’t interpret the protagonists of the Lord of the Rings as “good”? Is it possible that you are willing to apply a moral category to the protagonists of the story but unwilling to countenance its use in connection with a racial theory?”
As above, I’m just using the right term to describe what you’re talking about. By all means we can describe the Fellowship is good, but the only one we can make an essentialist statement above good or evil with is Gandalf, who, as an angel, is always good.
“But, if you want to have a theory of racial essentialism that only allows absolute characteristics, not variance around means, you can instead look at the representation of the races in Lord of the Rings in terms of the sets of core characteristics they possess – higher creativity on the one hand, the capacity for honour, etc. Or, you can see a simpler division into “Orcs are always evil and incapable of good” vs. “Humans are generally capable of good and sometimes evil” or “Orcs are evil with no free will” vs. “humans are neutral with free will and the capacity for good.””
Yes these are all essentialist statements, even the relative ones look like they are [1] as long as they are always true (i.e. Humans are always more honourable than orcs).
”Unless you want to claim that the book somehow portrays humans as equal morally to Orcs?”
No, I want to say that such statements are scientific racism, as per the sources you provided, and then get back to the topic of the debate. This is ultimately just a sideline, but I can’t try to find a compromise position or agree/disagree with you while your saying something that is just technically wrong.
Once we can settle the definitions then I can get back to disagreeing with you because whatever race I am are always contrarians. This may make me a race of 1, but does describe my behaviour perfectly.
[1] I’m no expert on essentialism, I’m just in favour of trying to obey the rules I can find on it. If an actual essentialist wants to enlighten me, then they’re welcome to have at it.
October 7, 2010 at 11:20 am
I think it’s a fair statement of fact to say that “inherently, essentialists never read blogs.” So we’re not going to get any enlightenment from that quarter.
So, let’s drop the essentialist language (except as an aside regarding “humans are less evil than orcs,” which seems a safe bet as far as I can tell from the stories). Stick to scientific racism.
Do you think Nazi racial theory goes beyond scientific racism in any way? [Putting aside the obvious “it’s even dumber”]. And if so, does that additional element of Nazi theory differ in any way from the racial theory shown in Tolkien?
My opinion is that Tolkien mixed his scientific racist world structure with a corruption story without realizing that in combination they become very close to Nazi race theory. I think this is very easy to do because Nazi racial theory is so beyond the pale of ordinary mortal thought that no one (let alone a respected University professor) can suspect their reasonable opinions when combined could create that particular alchemy.
I suppose another example is le Guin’s world in A Wizard of Earthsea. I have no doubt that she intended her cosmology of magic (words control nature) to be just that; and she didn’t think about the gender tropes she was reproducing. But in combination, they produce the rather unsavoury conclusion that only men are biologically suited to hold temporal power. Even in the 70s when that book was written this theory was fast going out of vogue, and le Guin herself admits she didn’t hold it. But the conservative limitations of the genre can bugger you if you aren’t careful about how you use them.
October 7, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I think that Nazi racial theory goes into the space of essentialism, which is where part of it’s nuttiness comes from – “Jews are always evil! Except that guy! Don’t pay attention to the counterexamples, pay attention to me!” Its an inherent contradiction in their school of “thought”. In other schools of though an inherent and easy to find contradiction is regarded as a flaw in the school but those wacky Nazis would probably just chalk this up to a Jewish conspiracy.
Don’t you just love people who have the same answer for everything? It really saves on that “thinking” process, don’t it?
If they do have any particular manner for dealing with these contradictions other than burning a cross on someone’s lawn [1] then I’m not going to go wading into the swamp that is Nazi philosophy to find it. Some things I’m willing to label as beyond the pale without closer examination. The Game that Must Not be Named taught me that.[2]
I agree that a story that can be interpreted as a corruption story and a racist story can then be interpreted as a Nazi story. But lets see what this lesson tells us?
Proposition 1: Le Guin should have been more careful about gender in her Earthsea story
How? I agree the “weak as a woman’s magic, wicked as a woman’s magic” is a stupid line, unless you do feel like tarring 50% of the populace with weak evil magic (which you may want to sometime, especially if you want to then examine how weak, evil magic can be used in non-weak, non-evil ways). But do you really want to say that all settings must have equal opportunity magic? And the heroes must be represented by both genders? That’s not a recipe for better stories, that’s a guarantee of homogenised crap as the authors struggle to avoid offending anyone.
Proposition 2: Fantasy has uniquely conservative roots that it should attempt to avoid
Hmm, maybe. But the charge is equally valid against other genres. For example, Sci Fi is dominated by liberal and utopian themes. Examples of this are the Culture novels, Star Trek and the crap dumped on Heinlein for being seen as too pro-military. When I think of conservative Sci Fi, I have to think of ones where the military is lauded, but in those cases its still lauded for supporting democracy (i.e. Weber’s novels, the Independence Day movie).
In fact, given I’ve mentioned them I want to point out the themes you can pick out from the Culture novels:
1. Democracy is for chumps. Enlightened rule by superior intellects is the only way a society can succeed. Furthermore all of these intellects will belong to a single race (Minds). – The Nazi’s wouldn’t object to strongly to that. Of course we all know that Banks means Nazi’s when he says minds. The utopian economics in there wouldn’t be objectionable either (the Minds ultimately control most of the productive resouces)
2. Aliens need to be carefully assessed before they can be assimilated into the Culture. – Sounds like Australia’s refugee policy to me. Culture resources for Culture citizens! We decide what aliens come to our shores and the circumstances in which they come!
3. It’s OK for superior minds to interfere with other cultures as long as they have “good” intentions. – How is this different to Bush deciding that the Middle East would like more democracy?
If you were to have a Culture novel about a corrupting virus made people behave without morals but a Mind came up with a cure then you’ve managed to hit most of the themes required to be a white supremacy message. Remember that intellect was one of the things frequently cited in scientific racism!
I suppose that means I agree with your thesis (it’s possible to combine two themes and accidentally create a story that resonates with a group you don’t really endorse). But I’m worried what solution you want to nominate. My preference is “Accept that someone, somewhere will attempt to use an otherwise good resource for a bad reason. It’s because they’re dicks. Get over it.”
That’s the same reason I oppose internet censorship, ID cards, racial profiling and basically every other control that could make our lives better. I don’t think the benefit is worth the cost.
And I’d use the same answer for Tolkien. OK. Assholes are referencing his work. We should argue against them a little (I’m not going to put much effort into convincing Nazis), ignore them a lot and make sure that our message on what the text says is the one that gets out. To chance who we are because of Nazis is the classic “If you stare too long into the Abyss”. Do you really want to risk having a policy of “Once the Nazi’s quote something I’ll avoid the themes they quote”? Because if you don’t then all your analysis does nothing. And if you do then you’re letting Nazis decide what stories you can tell.
[1] I know that’s a slightly different bunch of nutcases in theory. I also know in practice that racial hatred is pretty flexible on what hat their wearing as they persecute people.
[2] I still cry and attempt self harm sometimes for reasons my mind shies away from. I’m ashamed to think that I share DNA in common with the being that spawned that abomination. Only the fact that I suspect it’s the same DNA I share with amoebas can ease the pain.
October 7, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I’m only saying this because the internet has no tone of voice indicator (Not till IP5 anyway! Demand they include smileys in the protocol!)
“Of course we all know that Banks means Nazi’s when he says minds.”
That is, of course, a nonsense proposition intended to purely show how once a negative perception is established some people will treat it as fact rather than opinion.
Also, I should have capitalised Minds.
October 7, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I have guests here till Sunday so unfortunately I can’t reply to this comment (or any others) until then…
October 13, 2010 at 8:59 am
first, please go out and read george steiner’s in blubeard’s castle for very good insight into anisemitism as a part of hitler’s ideological narrative. if you have time and inclination to do some research please do read nolte’s fascism in its epoch. those can help you to understand that nazi’s didn’t care for ‘good’ or ‘evil’ (reading nietzsche and misunderstanding him) and that their antisemitism is not just one of many racial theories but, just like the holocaust, unique development in modern european history as well as the central pole of their ideology. for example, marx for them was first jew and then communist and bolshevism couldn’t corrupt slavs in their eyes more than we are already racially ‘inferior’.
second, that might help you understand that tolkien is primarily writing about the end of the mythical time and beginning of the historical time. to use walter benjamin’s phrase he is submerging mythical into historical. unlike nazi’s myth of the XX century that sought to do just the opposite: to replace history with the myth. this probably makes tolkien closer to joyce than moorcock ever will be (ulysses anyone?).
third, if you repeat something that doesn’t make it true. men of darkness are not more inherently evil or barbaric. they are just living under the shadow and have the same shot at redemption as everybody else with banishment of sauron. they are simply men.
it is easy to find quotes in lotr for that:
It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace-all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.
fourth, i hope that these danish nazis of yours know that toliken dwarves owe their language to semitic languages and have been influenced by jewish history and religion (and there is your only bit of ‘racial’ essentialism in his opus). basically, tolkien is uplifting those that were prosecuted by nazi’s (and rest of the pre WWII europe) into privileged position of the first-born. again i should mention that based on or inspired by doesn’t equal same.
fifth, basically, you are helping danish fascist appropriate something. no reading is definite. books do not speak that clearly. as spinoza wrote of prophets so we might say of someone reading a book: readers just hear thunders that they try to interpret as voices possessing some meaning. so while books do not speak men who read them do. reading a book, especially one as popular as lotr, is political struggle to discover and explode its emancipatory potential.
lotr in a way offers just that. opportunity to tangle with the ideas of redemption and myth and history. paradoxically your reading has just brought you to the same position as those you set to criticize: fascists.
October 14, 2010 at 9:05 am
opossum, thank you for your comment. I agree with you that the Nazis already saw slaves as racially inferior, but they did see bolshevism as a further corruption (a political corruption, promulgated by a race). The Nazis also were concerned about “good” and “evil,” good examples of which can be found for example in the German national catechism which clearly delineates the good from the evil. That the Nazis chose not to use those particular words, and instead chose to present the races in terms of noble and ignoble characteristics, is only of passing interest when the general picture is clear.
The early twentieth century was a period when many people were attempting to turn history into myth, and that Tolkien wrote against that is interesting. It doesn’t change the racial underpinnings of his work, though, and his purpose in writing the book is not of central concern to me.
Your claim that “men of darkness are not more inherently evil” is empirically and factually untrue. They were corrupted at their inception by Morgoth and they are presented throughout the books as inherently barbaric. The Dunlendings, the Easterlings and the Haradrim are all presented as such. They are not “simply men” but are racially inferior to the Dunedain. The races of men are divided racially by events at their inception.
Your quote by Sam doesn’t say anything about these men. It does offer the possibility for these men of redemption in death; it does not suggest any potential redemption after Sauron has passed, and to assume that such redemption exists is to make assumptions about the weakness of racial inheritance that aren’t supported in the book. There is no evidence that the Easterlings, for example, constantly need Sauron’s touch or the effect of his magic to remain barbaric. They were barbaric for 1000 years while he hid, and all it needed was for him to talk to them again and they returned to their practices.
I agree that the redemptive potential of a book like the LoTR transcends its politics, but when I talk about the effect of this book I am primarily concerned with its effect on the genre (despite its power as a novel I don’t think it is relevant politically). The book has left a legacy of racially-determined cultures and authoritarian political systems in the genre, a genre where genocide is considered pretty normal and justifiable (see, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons) and racial cruelty is excused by determinism. I think one can take this back, and fight it, but not by pretending it isn’t there or that the book says something it doesn’t. I would add that the modern European political landscape is stacked with nations whose governments are lurching to the far right, because for years the left and the centre thought that if we just ignore these peoples’ ideas they will go away. They didn’t, and the single best way to get rid of these people is to confront their ideas. So, rather than reclaim the books by ignoring their politics, I think one should observe that politics, and confront its influence. Isn’t that how Nietzsche was reclaimed?
October 14, 2010 at 11:18 am
I am not saying that we should ignore the politics but that you are taking them as a given, essential, and not brought about by your intrepretations. Interpretation is a form of political struggle. For example, modern European left (if you can call it that) is on the wane not because it ignored right-wing ideas (racism and intolerance) but, just the opposite, because it allowed those same right-wingers to move and appropriate its discourse (humanist secularism, social justice, solidarity…) and use it for their own ideological ends (ban the head scarves, stop the immigration, promote ‘european’ identity…). In other words they lost a struggle for a right to interpret these terms (because they have, like you, exchanged universal class issue for identity politics).
I guess that my point is that you are essentially (pardon the pun) inventing the ‘true’, racially charged, ‘meaning’ of the lotr and at the same time overestimating its influence on D&D and early roleplaying. Probably the only instance of ‘justifiable’ genocide in fantasy literature that has influenced early gaming is found in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion.
So once again: you are trying to give away to right-wingers a book that stresses need to overcome myth and to enter into history, strongly features potential for the universal salvation for men and has as its hero weak ordinary working class hobbit (sam is the true hero of the epic) and absolutely has no clear claims for essential racism as far as the humankind (which I have shown by one quick quote from the book something that you still have to provide to substantiate any claim to contrary).
whatsmore, your plea for multicultural fantasy as opposed to tolkien’s dogma of universal salvation (multiculturalist particularism vs. emancipatory universalism) puts you squarely into postmodernist right-wing camp (the same one on the rise in europe). I suggest that you read zizek’s text multiculturalism, or the cultural logic of multinational capitalism for a good insight into how this stuff operates.
October 14, 2010 at 1:48 pm
opossum, I am not taking the politics as a given and I have repeated said that this is about interpretation; the Danish fascists are an explicit example of this.
It’s interesting that you accuse the European left of allowing right-wingers to capture its discourse, because the concepts on which the far right is campaigning in Europe are explicitly racial and cultural, and these are the areas that the “hard” left (communists, marxists and a lot of Unions) refuse to recognize as valid areas of political struggle. Instead, the “hard” left accuses anyone on the left who attempts to discuss these issues as engaging in “identity politics” rather than “universal class struggle.” It’s no coincidence that the far right’s ascendancy on race grounds corresponds with the left’s unwillingness to debate cultural issues. Except, of course, in Australia and Canada, where the far right have been singularly unsuccessful politically, because since the 1970s the left-wing parties have introduced policies of multiculturalism which specifically address the issues you mention (movement of peoples, headscarves, immigration) from a cultural perspective. Result? Despite having much higher rates of immigration than a lot of Western European countries, these two nations don’t have a successful far right.
You mention a class analysis of Tolkien, with Sam as “weak ordinary working class man.” This is fanciful at best. Sam is a slavish follower of his ruling class boss, following him unquestionably through thick and thin and ultimately enabling the ruling class of his own country to revive an authoritarian, colonialist pre-industrial caste-based society, ruled by a hereditary king and organized on explicitly racial lines. This is like a Marxist fairy tale about a capitalist running-dog lackey. Were Sam working for the bad guys to achieve the same goal you would dismiss him as a class traitor with no class consciousness, an “Uncle Tom” of the working class. The fact that he happens to win in a book you happen to like doesn’t suddenly render him free of this accusation. Now if you had a cultural rather than a class-based analysis of the book, you could recognise that he betrays his class in the service of his boss out of a sense of deep-seated loyalty, a common phenomenon throughout history which the real, objective marxists of our own period have treated with very little respect – people like Sam don’t get accolades after the revolution, they get shallow graves. You could argue that he was in service to a dubious leadership out of loyalty to another ideal that didn’t necessarily exclude class analysis, but the evidence of how real-life communists treated people who did that is now clear; it’s buried in the forest at Katyn. Or you could argue that he was aiming for reform rather than revolution given his circumstances; but we’ve seen how real actual marxists treated people who did that in the work of Solzhenitsyn. These are the class-based analyses that overcame myth and entered into history; then turned history into an open grave.
I can only say again that there is no evidence of salvation for most races in Tolkien, only death, and the quote you have provided is an explicit statement of the man’s achievement of some kind of redemption after death. You clearly haven’t read all the other topics here, or you’d be aware that I have already presented evidence that the men of LoTR were divided at their creation by the touch of Morgoth; quoting Sam’s distress at a dead man doesn’t change that. I’ve given multiple quotes about the essential racism of the books, you’re welcome to go back and find them.
Finally, your comment about my plea for multicultural fantasy placing me in the “postmodernist right-wing camp” is quite entertaining. I don’t think anyone would misinterpret my politics as falling into that vein, or neglecting class analysis, and I can only assume that you don’t know anything about what multiculturalism is, its political origins or its acceptance by unions and social democrats in the countries where it has been applied. Again, you here show yourself to be fleeing the cultural space you claim that the left should occupy and reclaim. In the post-war era the population of Australia swelled by 7 million (>50%) in 50 years, all of them migrants from countries as diverse as France, Lebanon, South Africa and Vietnam. To claim that these people could all be united by a common analysis of class is just laughable, and to claim that a successful attempt to get these people to live together, enacted by successive left-wing governments to the benefit of everyone in the nation is somehow a postmodernist right-wing project, shows ignorance of the history and practice of multiculturalism. I would guess this is an ignorance you share with Zizek, and a good example of a launching point to reassess the validity of class analysis for every problem.
You’re right that interpretation is a form of political struggle, but before you can win the battle you need to understand the terrain. You can’t present Tolkien as a work of universal salvation using a marxist or a class-based analysis; you can’t defend its interpretation as a racist text if you refuse to recognize the strong themes of racism in the book. Tolkien could be used as a model for the failure of scientific racism, a world fractured by war and racial essentialism; but you can’t do anything politically meaningful to interpret the book if you won’t recognize the central themes.
January 6, 2012 at 7:29 pm
“The evil races are corrupted by a pair of evil Gods, and the most evil movements in human and elvish history are related to corruption and deception by these evil Gods. From a Nazi racial theory perspective, this is Morgoth as Marx and Sauron as Lenin.”
From Tolkien’s Nordicist POV, Hitler is as much of a corruptor as Marx and Lenin. Hitler is worse, because he, a mere ruddy Alpine, corrupts the pure Nordics of northern Germany, whereas Lenin merely corrupts the Slavs, a lesser folk. Hitler’s crime is thus akin to Sauron’s corruption of ancient Numenor – the brightest star turned to darkest night.
January 6, 2012 at 10:55 pm
I’m not sure that Tolkien subscribed to anything resembling that detailed a concept of racial qualities in real life, and presumably someone will be along soon with some evidence. I read his racial essentialism as being essentially unthinking – he put it into his story but didn’t necessarily apply the theories openly to his everyday life. But I have read on wikipedia that he subscribed to a theory of racially-inherited language traits, so maybe I’m wrong …
January 7, 2012 at 5:48 am
Faustus defending Tolkien?!
Everyone! Don’t plan any long campaign arcs and prepare to wind your game down gracefully. For truly the end times are upon us!
January 7, 2012 at 11:17 am
Hey! I’ve always said that I don’t think Tolkien is personally racist, though I don’t know and have every reason to expect he adopted the scientific racist principles that were believed to be true in his time. I’ve also consistently tried to stick to the principle of commenting on the books not the author! I’m happy to defend Tolkien where he deserves it!
Anyway, isn’t the preferred 2012 end-time a Mayan prediction? Surely has nothing to do with my stance on Tolkien. But this year I’m going to put up a post in defense of Dragonlance, so I guess there is a risk I could cause a global catastrophe…
January 14, 2012 at 8:50 pm
By the same logic every fairy tale with an evil dragon or ogre is racial essentialist.
Aside from looking up nazi racial theory on the internet, you obviously don’t know much about early 20th-century thought or culture.
January 14, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Well Optimus Prime, you’ve certainly made a valid contribution with that comment. Aside from failing to understand the logic you claim to then apply, you’ve given nothing to support your second sentence. Please do try, or go away.
October 13, 2012 at 6:58 pm
There is some very interesting (and refreshingly civil, given that I got here via the “requireshate” wordpress site) discussion and analysis on this page. My apologies for this post appearing somewhat late in the game.
While a huge fan of Tolkien’s works (in addition to being a “previously advantaged” resident of a hugely divided and politically tense South Africa), I will not deny the clearly visible racial elements within, and won’t attempt to spew apologia for things that I’m still forming opinions about, but I have some small issues to point out in terms of the discussion above.
I’ve read 90% of Tolkiens published work and will soon finish up with son Christopher’s “History of” series, and I’m not yet sure I agree with the blanket statements that “ALL” races of men other than the Numenoreans were immediately and irreversibly corrupted by Morgoth upon awakening. Admittedly not many of the pointers are explicit in the published texts, and might require judgements of the author as opposed to his work, but still…:
A) Though Gandalf “goes not” into the East, wizards were sent there and apparently had some success in changing the stakes so that the combined might of the rest of the world’s population was not knocking on the gates of Minith Tirith at the end of the Third Age. Unless these Wizards just went around exterminating Easterlings and Southrons, it’s hard to believe that these populations were entirely unsympathetic to the arguments and causes these wizards must have brought. I suppose on the other hand one could read into it that the Wizards simply brought with them very effective colonial propoganda…
B) Additionally, I just read last night in C. Tolkiens “The War of the Ring” that in Tolkiens original conception of the muster of the Rohirrim at Dunharrow, that many Dunlendings who fought against the protagonists at Helm’s Deep, as well as those who “hated orcs more than the men of Rohan and stayed home, refusing the call of Saruman”) actually came over to their side to join the forces against Sauron. It’s been a while since I read LotR proper, so I can’t remember how much of this made it into the final story.
C) I remember something (maybe spoken to the hobbits in Ithilien) about past trade between Gondor and Harad (that admittedly broke down). It’s hard to reconcile this with the idea of Men of Numenor vs Evil Everyone Else.
Right now, in my country of birth – the apartheid state that become the “Rainbow Nation” – showing anew signs of building racial and class tension, I’ve been reading much lately on the issues of racism and power, class struggles, lefts vs rights, liberalism/multiculturalism vs conservatism etc. and through this trying to discover who I am and where I stand, so these intense discussions about my favourite work of fiction in so relevant a sphere is enlightening. Nonetheless it remains difficult for me to reconcile in myself an innate acceptance of The Other (I believe one should judge an individial on merit, tempered with an understanding of cultural differences – I generally reject the essentialist/scientific “-isms” discussed above), with a pride of one’s history and culture. How can one balance these seemingly opposed forces?. Is Tolkien wrong, through pride, to ennoble his own race? Does multiculturalism eventually destroy individual cultures? If it does, is that a bad thing? Could it be (tinfol hats on!) that multiculturalism and political correctness is a grand plot to weaken “group” (ie national/racial/etc) resolve and usher in a monolithic, homogenised and more easily controllable “Utopian” New World Order? Difficult questions along many axes…
Cheers and Thanks!
October 14, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Thanks for commenting, R’rephistöch Örpherischt. Nice site, btw. I think your points a) b) and c) are just moderating effects, that is they don’t change the fundamental moral imbalance in Tolkien’s world, just its severity. It becomes a kind of statement on averages (the average easterling is evil, but some are still good, type stuff). That his racial vision isn’t monolithic doesn’t change its fundamental message much, I think.
As to multiculturalism and the destruction of cultures … I don’t think that happens or has happened in any existing multicultural society. Colonialism and imperialism can destroy cultures, but multiculturalism just mingles them. Multiculturalism is also the opposite of the creation of a “Monolithic, homogenised” order – it’s about people retaining their unique cultural traits, not blending them. Also, when you talk of group resolve being weakened by racial mixing, you’re straying directly into exactly the kind of racial essentialism that is common throughout Tolkien’s books …
October 14, 2012 at 10:38 pm
@faustusnotes:
I appreciate your thoughts on my site. Thanks.
In terms of moderating effects, I agree. Going from blanket statement of absolutes to a blanket statement of averages is no real improvement.
With regards to “racial visions” perpetuated by the work, which no doubt exist (I’ll attempt to ignore any presumed intent of the author), it becomes to me a “slippery slope” situation that in my mind echoes the multiculturalism argument. If we remove racial/cultural bias from works of art, we end up with very homogenous looking art, and extended to the macro-realm of over-arching “culture”, we end up with culture that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Is this desirable? I’m not sure yet, as much as I have no inherent problem with interacting with individuals of other cultures, or even the larger structures of those cultures themselves.
In addition (author defense here…), it was no fault of Tolkiens’ that his work has become a benchmark, and spawned a huge corpus of derivative work perpetuating the issue.
As a European South African I have seen first hand what I have to call the destruction (or if that word is too strong, it might be called a “blurring assimilation”) of culture at the hands of a Rainbow Nation imperative, and it saddens me. To truly debate these issues though, we have to define culture and demarcate it’s facets and boundaries. For example, how far can the members of a traditional African tribe integrate themselves into western colonial society before they can be said to have “lost their own culture”? My mother, a pre-primary school teacher for most of her life, has watched and participated in the transition here in SA from white exclusivity to cultural “melting pot” (hmmmm, interesting terminology there) and how it affects the parent-child relationship, and there are many situations where, for example, a Xhosa child is growing up effectively learning English as a first language, spoken in a completely westernized accent. The child becomes the “middleman” between the parents and the rest of western society for that generation. What happens in the next generation?
I looked up your use of “mingle” and their are differing uses: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mingle
The softer meaning where there is less “destruction”: “To mix; intermix; to combine or join, as an individual or part, with other parts, but commonly so as to be distinguishable in the product; to confuse; to confound.”
Another meaning, a bit harsher: “To deprive of purity by mixture; to contaminate. ”
And another, with interesting echoes of the NWO postulation: “To make or prepare by mixing the ingredients of. ”
In terms of defining culture I’ll use the example of African tribes (I do so because as a displaced minority European in a land where white solidarity and perception of inherent culture is rather minimal unless you’re part of some Afrikaaner “radical group”; part of a society called by some a “cultureless society”, and also because I’m currently studying the subject in preparation for my campaign setting):
What is the culture of an African peoples? Language? Architectural styles? Celebration traditions? Traditions of greeting? Stories told around the fireside? Rules and custom surrounding marriage? The ability to carry large baskets of heavy goods on one’s head for many miles? The uncontested right of a tribal ruler to kill anyone for any reason? In my opinion, all of these things are disappearing or morphing under the light of a Rainbow Nation into something else.
One interesting debate began around the incidence of a traditional cow-slaughtering ceremony that apparently happened on a balcony of a suburban flat, which…caused a stink in the news and no doubt elsewhere – apologies for the pun. I’m struggling to find an exact link right now, but here are some related ones:
http://www.property24.com/articles/when-your-neighbours-kill-a-cow%E2%80%A6/8715
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Police-shoot-man-slaughtering-cow-20120806
http://www.durban.gov.za/Resource_Centre/bylaws/Pages/Public_Health_Bylaws.aspx
Apartheid sympathizers will state that the righteous goal of the policy was to enable these cultural components to continue to survive, as long as they were carried out within demarcated homelands. Of course that does not excuse the implementation or solve the knock-on issue of the actual land demarcation…
In the end, sure, we can criticize the racial vision of the works of Tolkien or that of the man himself, and be unhappy that it’s massive popularity has created a overpoweringly “conservative” High Fantasy genre, but if I was to pick up and read a fictional or even historically derived lore-book written by an African, such as the awesome Indaba My Children by Credo Mutwa, I’d prefer it remain pure to its cultural and racial roots, rather than be “corrupted’ by western sensibilities, even if it means that it comes across racist or proud of it’s own inheritance.
Thanks again for the soap-box!
October 15, 2012 at 9:11 am
@Faustus:
”That his racial vision isn’t monolithic doesn’t change its fundamental message much, I think.”
What? It would totally undermine the conceit that he was preaching racial essentialism (for easterlings at least)!
October 19, 2012 at 2:09 am
@re mingling and culture clash: “Give African Kids African Names”:
http://www.parent24.com/Pregnant/think_about/Give-African-kids-African-names-20121016
November 28, 2017 at 9:53 am
“an inherent trait that is genetically transferred and renders a race of “mongoloid” people evil by birth”
Where is the evidence that orcs have genes, or that they even engage in s*xual reproduction?
November 28, 2017 at 10:43 am
I don’t think this kind of quibble makes a difference. Obviously in a fantasy world people don’t talk about genes, but that doesn’t mean traits are not transferred by birth. You can see this in the constant references to people being of noble birth, and the entire history of the Dunedain’s specialness being diluted through sexual mixing with non-Dunedain (this is a cornerstone of the fallen earth narrative in LoTR). Yes, it’s possible that Orcs aren’t “born” but are created, but this is irrelevant – whether they’re born evil or created evil, the key point is that their evilness is essential to their race.
November 28, 2017 at 1:11 pm
No, it makes a huge difference.
Firstly, because talk of “noble birth” is a concept that goes back centuries (millennia?), whereas you were explicitly trying to draw parallels between LOTR and scientific racism, a much more recent concept that inherently is genetic.
Second, you yourself stressed numerous times “genetic” in the original post, if you don’t think it was relevant, why mention it several times?
Third, the very bit that I quoted from was a passage where you had a thought experiment supposing that orcs evilness had been non-genetic. To give a more extensive quote, you say: “I think this version probably still is open to criticism, but it’s also much more defensible because an inter-generational curse that can be lifted by killing the magical source is (within the genre) completely different to an inherent trait that is genetically transferred and renders a race of “mongoloid” people evil by birth”. That is, you clearly claim that the (supposed) fact that orcs are evil through genetic inheritance is what makes Tolkien’s writing so especially problematic.
Fourth, do we even know that orcs are “born” at all? Were they not originally elves that were corrupted? Presumably they have as long lives as elves do, so why do you assume all the orcs we see in LOTR are new orc offspring, rather than being ones that have been around for millennia?
November 28, 2017 at 1:50 pm
The parallels between LoTR and scientific racism don’t arise from just noble birth, but from the clearly told story of races losing their goodness and purity by interbreeding with “lesser” races. This is the entire story of the Dunedain. It is an explicitly genetic story, and the fact that Tolkien never uses the word “genetic” in his fantasy story doesn’t change the fact that it is a genetic story. In LoTR noble birth isn’t just a thing for kings and families of kings – it is a fragile genetic trait that is possessed by an entire race and is undone by interbreeding with other races.
My example of the inter-generational curse is of an inborn evil that can be extinguished at some point (liberating the people from their born curse). This is not possible in LoTR. Hence the distinction between my example and the original stories. I should also remind you – this seems to need to be done a lot in dealing with defenders of LoTR – that the racial distinctions and racial morality in LoTR is not unique to the orcs. It is also a fact about the Haradrim and the Easterlings (and all the “men of darkness”) that they are uniquely vulnerable to Sauron’s corruption by birth. So yes, it is possible that Orcs are not “born”, but even putting aside the Orcs entirely, there are whole human races that are born morally inferior – and one of these races is black skinned, comes from the south of the area the story is set in a land full of deserts and jungles, and is characterized as cruel and primitive and vulnerable to Sauron’s evil. Do I need to join the dots for you?