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Machine conquest: Jules Verne's technocratic worldmaking
- SnoopJobbyJob 2y ago[flagged]
- billyoyo 2y agoThe article is just correctly identifying that late 1800s french colonial technocrats were predominantly white males. The article isn't really making a particular point about this, it's just a quick aside. What are you referring to when you say "here we go again"?
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoThe role of epistemic superiority structures a persistent division throughout the Voyages between the white male scientist (in the singular) and ignorant natives (in the plural)’ The addition of completely unnecessary (to the comparison) "male" really paints this as flag waving.
- SnoopJobbyJob 2y agoPeople in Europe are white. Of course engineers, politicians, cooks, street sweepers are going to be white. Societies, not only in Europe, have historically been men-dominated. So, again, the elite is going to be mostly men. It is relevant that what you call a "quick aside" was even made because it reveals the mindset and deeper agenda that pervades some parts of academia and political circles these days, which bluntly is anti-white (and, God forbid, male ones).
- jylam 2y agoJules Vernes is a notorious misogynist and racist. Read "The Mysterious Island" for instance. He was a product of his time, but clearly not the best one on those grounds. Also "People in Europe are white" is really something you just hear from people without any European historical culture, and/or people wanting to sell a racist ideology. You have the whole spectrum of colors in Europe, and that's not recent at all. Africa is 30km from Europe, Asia is connected to it, and people travel since before we were modern humans.
- JetSetWilly 2y agoYou must work in the BBC drama department if you believe that people in Britain, France, Germany etc are not historically and overwhelmingly white.
- thrance 2y agoFactually, whites were a minority in the French Colonial Empire of the 19th century.
- e40 2y agoThe empire was much more than the places mentioned in the comment you’re replying to.
- Apocryphon 2y agoAlgeria was considered an integral département of France, so technically they might be right if that population was substantial enough.
- adrianN 2y agoWas Verne more, or less, misogynist and racist than his contemporaries? I was under the impression that both were common during his day. From the little Verne that I've read, I didn't have the impression that he had a particularly bad opinion of "the savages" he describes in his stories.
- Majestic121 2y ago> "People in Europe are white" is really something you just hear from people without any European historical culture, and/or people wanting to sell a racist ideology There's of course a lot of cross-communication with other continents, from the muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula to the Ottoman wars in eastern Europe, and the colonizing empires. But the European history is very strongly predominantly white, and pretending otherwise is something you only hear from politically oriented people, unless you try to push ridiculous ideas like 'Italians are not white' as I've seen here and there
- billyoyo 2y agoIt is only "anti-white" in the sense it's criticizing white men from over a hundred years ago who were doing pretty horrible things in the name of colonialism. And the fact they were white is pretty important as they themselves used this as justification for their superiority and thus colonialism. It would be more productive to engage with the meat of the article rather than dismissing it because they mentioned the race and gender of the subjects and engaging in "anti-woke" dog whistling.
- SnoopJobbyJob 2y agoWhy do you need to refer to Europeans as "white men" then? To me this highlights the deeper thinking, if not obsession, of the person... It's similar to the anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese campaigns in the US in the 40s to 60s that over-stressed the "race" of those people. It's similar to the classic racism of over-stressing how Africans are black.
- thrance 2y agoFunnily enough, white people were a minority in the French Empire of the 19th century, where Vernes wrote his books. You should read about the second revolution of France, in 1848, where women's role in creating the IInd Republic was instrumental, and yet were refused the right to vote. Underlining those thematics in Vernes books is still interesting, it doesn't have to be relevant to today. Also, what's that thing about academia and politicians being "anti-white"? This sounds weird.
- tphyahoo 2y ago[dead]
- seszett 2y agoI'm not sure this analysis is totally correct though, after all without spoiling to much, an Indian prince features prominently in some of the best known stories of Jules Verne, and another of the famous ones is about a Chinese man. And most stories take place with characters that are British or American bordering on parodies, rarely French people. It's true that women are rarely important though. Also disclaimer, I didn't read this article.
- billyoyo 2y agoThe article is talking about how his stories inspired real world colonial technocrats in France at the time.
- tphyahoo2 2y ago[flagged]
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- whearyou 2y agoIt was an interesting point to make 30 years ago when the orthodoxy did not include much of that perspective and general society didn’t think much about it. At this point is it the orthodoxy, suffusing pretty much everything in intellectual public discourse, is no less oppressive than that which it replaced, and, subjectively, feels trite and reductive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KineticLensman 2y agoThe foreground message is quite blunt >> Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen’s clubs, scientific associations, millionaires – not governments. They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries, and interlocutors. But I found this article useful for the perspectives on 'worldmaking'. This helps to understand the elements in game dev (immersion) and speculative fiction (narrative transport) that make (or not) a successful game or book. Something that I find fascinating
- delichon 2y agoI long used Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minute" as evidence that privately funded space flight isn't so unimaginable. In that case by the Baltimore Gun Club. Then there is The Man Who Sold the Moon by Heinlein where the moon is first visited by "the last of the Robber Barons". Of course here in the real world space exploration is too costly and complex a game for any organizations other than governments to play, and Verne and Heinlein were optimists with stars in their eyes. Or that's what it seemed like in the seventies when it was pretty much true.
- notarobot123 2y agoIt turns out that commanding the resources extracted through private monopolies isn't so different from deciding how to spend the revenues of taxation.
- ocschwar 2y agoMind you, this is because Verne loathed the British Empire, and his heroes using private means to challenge its authority is meant as a rebuke to his own government for not challenging Britain enough.
- dukeofdoom 2y agoPolitical parties often take credit for social advancements, but if you look closely it was break through technology that made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest as the politicians would have you believe
- tphyahoo2 2y ago[flagged]
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- thrance 2y agoI think it's concerning how a lot of people here seem to take offense at the fact the article underlines the predominantly white and masculine nature of Verne's protagonists. Should an analysis of Verne's work refrain from pointing this out? Because it would be too "woke"? Verne lived during the peak of the French colonial Empire. Whites were a minority in the total population of the Empire, racism was pretty much a state institution used to justify an ad hoc hierarchy of the peoples living in the colonies. Seeing how Verne's archetype of the adventurer was shaped by colonial imagery is relevant to understanding his work. I don't know what more to tell you.
- adrian_b 2y agoWhile that is true, it is not something specific to Verne but it is how everybody was educated at that time. Verne was far more sympathetic towards non-European people that the vast majority of the Europeans of his time and many non-Europeans had very positive roles in his writings, even if their roles were less important than of the main European heroes. There were even a few strong female characters in some of his novels, even if most had male protagonists. Therefore I think that it is stupid to insist on this. Only in the context of describing racism of the entire society of the 19th century it makes sense to give examples from Verne, among many others, to illustrate the way of thinking of that time. Discussing this only in Verne can give the impression that he was worse than others, when in fact he was much better from this point of view. He certainly was not an "apostle of colonization" and even the article recognizes that many of his works are very critical of colonization. The main thing that can be reproached to Verne is that he tended to be much more indulgent about French colonization than about British colonization, under the mistaken assumption that in the French colonies abuses happen much less frequently than in the British colonies (though the British appear to have indeed been the worst, judging after the very small percentages of surviving natives in the British colonies in comparison with the colonies of all other countries). As a child I have read a very large number of the novels of Jules Verne. While there were a few passages where he expressed a naive optimism about the possible benefits of bringing "civilization" to some remote parts of the Earth, those have made very little impression on me. What I have retained because I was impressed by them have been exactly the parts where the European colonization was criticized and where various natives had very positive images. So any article author that describes Jules Verne as an "apostle of colonization" cannot have done due diligence in really reading his works.
- wisty 2y ago[flagged]
- varjag 2y agoIn the books Nemo is obsessed with fighting British colonialism (and broadly all imperialism) due to his family history. Can't say it's something Verne overlooked.
- wrp 2y agoNemo was originally written as a Polish aristocrat. When you consider that, all aspects of his description in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) make sense. By the time Verne wrote The Mysterious Island (1875), his ire had become more directed toward the British rather than the Russian empire, so he changed Nemo to be an Indian prince.
- adrian_b 2y agoThe change about Nemo's origin must have been done before finishing "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas", because already in that there were expressions of his discontent with the British Empire, above any others, I think towards the end of the novel, when he attacked some British war ship (an attack that was used to convince the more reluctant of the prisoners that they must escape from the submarine). That novel has been published in episodes scattered over more than a year, so it would not be unusual if towards its end Verne had a different vision of the story line than when he had started writing it, one year before.
- Keysh 2y agoNemo was indeed originally written as a former Polish rebel against Russian rule, but Verne's publisher objected on the grounds that this might offend Russians[1], and so the published version of Twenty Thousand Leagues had no mention of national origin or ethnicity for Nemo. [1] Both because the Russian market was important for sales of French books -- and government censorship in Russia was a strong possibility -- and because the publisher supported France's ongoing negotiations with Russia for a potential alliance, and worried a book promoting anti-Russian themes might make the negotiations more difficult.
- WillAdams 2y agoTo help put all this in context, a member at the Mobileread forum read these books and commented on them: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=340548 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=340548 (annoyingly, my local libraries only had a few, and I still resent that when I was interested in French in high school that there weren't any original texts available to me) For a discussion of the difficulties of reading this in translation see: https://www.usni.org/press/books/20000-leagues-under-sea https://www.usni.org/press/books/20000-leagues-under-sea --- it would be great if all of these novels could be so treated/updated.
- jhbadger 2y agoThis article seems to blame Verne for colonialism "At the French Société de Géographie, of which Verne was a long-time member, as well as among imperialists across Europe, the Voyages became a casual frame of reference in justification of colonial expansion.", I don't see how this fits with Verne's most famous character, Captain Nemo. While his background was ambiguous in 20,000 Leagues, in The Mysterious Island it is established that he was an Indian who fought against colonialism in the failed 1857 rebellion and sees himself as the champion of the oppressed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Onavo 2y ago> Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen’s clubs, scientific associations, millionaires – not governments. They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries, and interlocutors. So he was writing a story of 19th century trust fund kids and VC funded tech bros..
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]