On Criticism By Writers

Of Elizabeth "Eat, Pray, Love" Gilbert.

Reaction among our global intelligentsia to Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert’s correct decision to delay publication of a book set in an occupied part of Ruschia tells and shows us a lot.

No matter which side writers take - criticising Ms Gilbert for (as they see it) self-cancelling because of Ukrainians who don't matter OR praising Ms Gilbert for Reading The Room - this situation demonstrates the outworking of Ukraine-Awareness since Feb 24th 2022 still has a ways to go.

We've watched how, in many spheres, Ukraine-Awareness has grown in academia, geopolitics, popular culture, sport,...

Each of these sectors in our culture mainstreams awareness now that not only does Ukraine exist (and that it has always existed despite our Russian-Disinfolklore-induced blindness to Ukraine). But also of how central Ukraine has always been in our culture, despite being masked by an outdated colonial gaze that only saw Russia.

We see now in the light of Ms Gilbert's decision the same processes play out in literary culture, as we have in other domains since the launch of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

I suppose that, in writers, we might have expected a better and quicker assimilation to this new reality, than we've seen, say, in sport (note the insensitivity of @Olympics and @Wimbledon to genocide in Europe at the hands of Ruschism).

Yet, many who criticise Ms. Gilbert for "self-cancelling" seem to think literature/culture can be read in isolation from geopolitics.

An impossible position, for any credible person of letters to maintain.

I've set out elsewhere (https://twitter.com/decodingtrolls/status/1668581156797677568?s=46&t=81-juj3KRrQ3LkTprqjbAg) how Russian Culture includes promoting genocide as an inherent part of its DNA.

Russian literature is modelled in the minds of those today who are prosecuting the worst genocide in Europe since the German Nazis.

Russian literature and art (which is promoted by the Ruschist Nazi state) cannot be segregated from the genocidal Ruschism it also promotes.

To fall for the troll that Russian art can be appreciated in isolation from the multiple genocides it has fed, and continues to inspire, is unbecoming of artists.

Ukraine helps us understand this (cf @yermolenko_v).

Some even complain that since (they presume wrongly) Ukraine's market for literature is so small, Ms Gilbert should ignore the problem of accidentally promoting Muscovy's colonialism and genocide in occupied Yakutia/Sakha Republic/Siberia.

Mesmerisingly bizarre to hear supposed fiction fans/creators like @natlyjune reduce the value of fiction to the status of whether or not a nation state like Ukraine is of market value to publishers. What an insult to literature and 42m Ukrainians.

It would be good to hear @JoyceCarolOates on this specific issue.

What's really surprising about writers/critics who one appreciated until yesterday is that their world views are so conventional.

Their mental models have not expanded as many of ours have since Feb 24th 2022.

We've watched in real time while, say, the German president has suddenly realised Ukraine exists and "Russia" has nothing apart from a Potemkin mythos.

Now we discover many writers upon whom we've depended for communicating new ways of seeing the world are still stuck in a pre-24th Feb 2022 reality.

And some (particularly those who criticise Ms Gilbert's brave decision) are resisting entering Our New World order in which Ukraine is deserving of the same parity of esteem as other great European nation states.

Even the language these anti-Ukraine/pro-Russia recividists write in -English- (a Germanic language) developed initially in Ancient Ukraine.

Yet, they're still stuck in a provincial, Russia-promoted Colonial viewpoint where Ukrainians either don't exist or if they do exist, they don't matter "because, anyway, how many Ukrainians read or buy books."

Reducing the value of human beings and their state to whether or not they constitute a commercial market in the global marketplace of ideas would be expected of bankers, but not, until yesterday, of writers and credible critics.