In all of this worry about authenticity, authority and authorial/appropriated identities, there is one identity that regularly gets forgotten: that of the reader
Are these judges…genuinely concerned about cultural appropriation? Or are they actually concerned about the accusations of cultural appropriation that are likely to result (via social media) if they award and publish a story that turns out to be written by someone who doesn’t identify clearly and directly with their subject matter?
Left will flip back to Right again, just as easily. And then? This is what will remain: a bigger, more desperate—more exploitable—underclass, and a porked-up police state.
It’s not the ‘unclaimed’ who line the graves of the world’s potter’s fields: known or unknown, named or unnamed, you can be sure there is one thing they share in common—they’re paupers, all.
It is odd that digital images born from a distant satellite should move me so deeply, while this—the sheer loveliness of ordinary faces—leaves me feeling nothing much at all.
