Politics of pronouns in the Imperial Radch

[kaberett]

(Not sure what's going on here? The answer is Ancillary Justice.)

We're told that Radchaai does not bother with gendered pronouns. It seems to me that the default pronoun used means gender-irrelevant (rather than gender-unknown or gender-specific, which seem to me to be a useful way of considering pronouns of gendered beings). We're told that Strigan's society uses gender-known pronouns even though it professes to consider gender irrelevant.

And yet: the Radchaai frequently refer to ships as "it" (I note that the standard English pronoun used to refer to vessels is the same as the way in which the Radchaai default pronoun is rendered). It's clearly not as simple as in/animate - ships have emotions, ships have personality and identity, ships are sentient, ships have ancillaries. Except that this is done in a literally dehumanising way - ships are explicitly not Radchaai, not citizens, and therefore not considered human; characters who are uninterested in or unsympathetic toward ships are far more likely to refer to them as "it", whereas characters who like ships seem to mostly not pronoun them; non-Radchaai humans are generally called the standard pronoun for Radchaai, despite being considered by at least some in the society to have sub-human status - and so I am left picking away at what distinction it is the Radch is making here...

Thoughts very much appreciated!

Comments

[skygiants]

I don't know that I have much to add, but this is fascinating -- it definitely seems to imply at least three levels of distinction for Radchaai, i.e. person, noncitizen/sub-person, and thing.

[forestofglory]

Nothing useful to add, but really interesting observation that I will keep in mind for my next re-read.

[sfred]

Ooh, I hadn't noticed that. Interesting.

[legionseagle]

I was very struck by the parallels when I read AJ between the Radchaai and the Roman Empire, and they definitely divided society into citizens, non-citizens (including freemen), slaves and barbarians.

[davidgillon]

I'd note that (within the first two or three pages) we find out that Breq/One Esk Nineteen is able to recognise Seivarden from the line of their hip and arm, despite not having seen them in a thousand years, but regularly struggles to correctly gender non-Radchaai humans. This suggests that there is something more complex going on with either Radchaai concepts of gender, gender roles on Nilt and elsewhere, or actual gender.

Breq actually tells us that Radchaai language doesn't mark gender and I wonder if that is at the root of Breq's problems, was the neural circuitry for processing gender never part of Justice of Toren/One Esk Nineteen/Breq's makeup, and therefore something they've had to assemble rules of thumb to interpret. I need to remind myself what Chomsky (IIRC) says about language structuring the way we think.

[kaberett]

And the Radch had used ancillaries long before Anaander Mianaai had made herself into what she was.

[elialshadowpine]

Just as a note, I haven't read AJ yet but it's on my list... is it okay if I come back to this post to squee/discuss when I've finished it? (This may possibly be a month or two, my TBR is RIDIC.)