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I have better things to do with my time than contend with with writers wilfully misinterpreting/projecting a range of assumptions on an innocuous, voluntary question aimed at discouraging black-facing in blind submission competitions. However, (thread) https://andrewhutchinson.com.au/2020/11/08/on-modern-considerations-in-judging-literary-merit/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Our recent approach to the easily exploited structure of blind judging has clearly struck a nerve. I wanted dialogue and discussion. I did not want to be accused of cowardice. No one who as actually met me or is familiar with my work thinks I’m scared of unfounded accusations.
I didn’t try to introduce accountability and self-reflection to a decidedly unaccountable structure because I’m scared of someone accusing Overland of awarding cultural appropriation. Quite the opposite.
If writers who’ve lived without oppression or marginalisation want to make stories out of the suffering of others and feel entitled to do so, but balk at the suggestion of owning that process, of admitting that they are writing an experience that is not theirs in a process that -
can only ever judge by the honesty of the voice presented by a work, they’re not actually interested in the right to imagination. This is not a battle for freedom of expression, for the inherent appropriation of all fiction. This is an argument for the right to exploit.
I don’t understand why a voluntary question that we made no fanfare about, asking writers to reflect honestly on whose story they are telling with no actual consequence to them, has caused so much concern in (so far only white) writers.
Maybe writers don’t trust us? Maybe they think we have a secret ledger, and we’ll use this information to only champion the kinds of stories we think are righteous and ethical? Maybe they think there will be consequences for appropriation?
By asking entrants (in both poetry and fiction and only for a blind-judged prize) to reflect on who is telling whose story, we are in NO WAY trying to say we will only award works that stay in one’s cultural lane. We are simply working towards a structure of accountability.
It’s not the point of this process, but I do want to remind everyone: Bla(c)k and brown and queer and disabled folk don’t get to leave their identities at the door of imaginative possibility. They never have.
Blind judging does not place a sensitive text in a vacuum. Judges are expected to judge in a vacuum and that isn’t appropriate for all works. Objective quality doesn’t exist so we cannot create conditions to determine it. I didn’t make this call because I’m scared of criticism.
I made this call because I am tired of endlessly watching incredibly talented marginalised writers lose out in conditions that claim to protect them, while really just enabling more exploitation.
Perhaps I need to emphasise this again: we have had literally so many instances of non-Aboriginal people using slang, Aboriginal languages, specific cultural knowledges, experiences and traumas to try to gain attention in a blind judged prize.
In the year of 2020 in which there is literally a prize to award non-Aboriginal people to write about our suffering, I was sick of the black-face and tried to encourage a process of self-reflection and accountability. https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2019/10/16/141222/lawyer-stewart-levitt-launches-20000-poetry-prize/
Do you think I like putting our judges through this process? So you think I like asking people I trust and admire to make the call on whether they can be confident in the morality behind every piece they receive?
Perhaps this comes down to the fundamental difference in whether you believe cultural appropriation is a bad thing or not, whether you think it can be harmful. Perhaps that’s a broader debate for fiction, perhaps it’s a question for our individual judges in individual prizes.
As an editor, it’s my job to give judges the information they need to make decisions. Maybe they won’t ask for that information, maybe they will and it won’t influence their choice. I don’t stack panels one way or the other. I do my job. I get them what they need to make a call.
Asking for writers to admit when a story has been informed by experience or by imagination is not censorship. In the history of Australian race-faking and cultural appropriation it’s a reasonable caution.
I repeat, again: any responses to this VOLUNTARY question will only be shared with judges if they come to me or @jonathandunk and say, “we aren’t sure about this piece and think information about the author’s proximity to the topic might help our decision.”
Accusing us of cowardice, of setting this question up to better diversity our shortlists misunderstands our intention. It also reinforces this vague notion of a quick-to-cancel public readership that I’m apparently not a part of? Again, no one who has met me thinks this.
In this instance, however, it doesn’t matter what I think about cultural appropriation. I’m not judging these prizes. I won’t make the call. As an editor I know it’s important to create the best process I can and allow the experts to make decisions.
This article has wilfully misrepresented what we have asked entrants to consider. We are not asking writers to declare if they are a part of a minority community when they submit fiction to our journal.
The actual question we asked, about whether you are a part of the community your submission is representing, is only for blind-judged submissions in two current prizes. We don’t brand our submissions marginalised or not. We’re not sicophants, we’re editors.
What upsets me about the responses so far is that this is a topic that always moves into polarising and unhelpful polemics. It’s not a topic I like going over at every writers festival when I’m inevitably asked to give permission for outsiders to write about my culture.
Please, if you want to weigh in on the ethics and procedures of blind judging, do so sensitively and without engaging cultural conservatives to write the now inevitable Quadrant or whatever else other alt-right shame rag think piece on how we’re destroying Australian literature.
When you essentialise and misrepresent this kind of debate, idiots walk away thinking we’ve just announced a new policy to never publish anyone I don’t personally like ever again. We commissioned an essay to talk about this topic. Read it when it’s available, let’s all talk then.
