knivesout said:
Just got my copy. I am looking foreard to getting into this one after all the interesting points littlemiss mentioned. BTW, what exactly do the terms etic and emic mean?
Sorry, knivesout. That's my anthropological background speaking. Basically, etic means the view of a culture from outside that culture, and emic means the view of a culture from inside that culture. There seems to be a great controversy over whether it is really possible for anyone not native to a culture is able to describe it from an insiders point of view, even if that person has lived in that culture for years. Even so, that is the point of view that some anthropologists strive to achieve in their ethnographic profiles of cultures they have lived in and studied, sometimes for years.
And that, to begin the discussion, I guess, is one of the things that really intrigued me about "Transformation". If you look closely, it actually speaks to issues concerning how we see different cultures from our own and how we see our own culture if, for example, we have lived in another culture for a long time.
POSSIBLE MILD SPOILERS
Once Seyonne and Aleksander have reached the remnants of the Ezzarians, and sees how that culture treats anyone who they consider to be "unclean", Aleksander reflects on Seyonne's comments about the cruelty with which the Derzhi treat their slaves, and wonders which culture's practices are really the more cruel. This, in my opinion, is a great example of how most people naturally see the cultural practices of others in a harsher light than the practices of one's own culture. (You'll find this on page 259.)
It is also interesting to me how easily and naturally Seyonne seems to slip back into his role in his own culture, even though that initially consists primarily of accepting his role as "unclean" and therefore invisible. Even though this is horribly painful for Seyonne, he respects this judgment of his people, finds it perfectly natural and appropriate, and even facilitates it as much as he can by acting invisible when any Ezzarians are present. He even defends his actions to Aleksander, when Aleksander questions Seyonne's actions in this regard.
I guess my question for you all is, are these issues as easily seen in the story as I think they are? Or are they only obvious to me because I have been trained to see cultural issues like this, since I studied anthropology and intercultural issues at university. I mean, these things really jumped up off the page at me, so much so that I will probably recommend this book to my mentor from university (who I had the privilege of introducting to science fiction and fantasy) as something she would be interested in reading with a possible view to using the book in her teaching, as she has expressed interest in incorporating such novels in her teaching.
Well, probably best to start off with just this one issue of cultural perceptions within "Transformations". What do you all think? Is it true that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy? Or, in other words, can we ever really transcend the culture we were raised in? And is that even a good goal to have?
go ahead and post them here.
