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.

[kaberett]

(Useful, thank you! Bouncing off you here...)

The Presger as a species (and other alien species) are given barely any thought, and I think have not (yet!) been discussed as individuals rather than aggregate, so have not been pronouned. Non-human species are the most obvious category for "barbarians", but are mostly treated with wary respect at least by PoV characters. Ships are perhaps viewed as slaves, but using a different pronoun class for that seems like an interesting choice (and is not consistent with what Latin texts I've read); and especially is strange because we know that ships can have authority and the Radch is ruled by an AI, Anaander Mianaai. Interestingly, non-Radch people typically gender Anaander Mianaai, and AM gets standard Radchaai pronouns (instead of "it") despite being an AI. The exception that proves the rule...?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[kaberett]

As noted below, I have realised that Anaander Mianaai gets normal pronouns in Radchaai and gendered pronouns from non-Radch humans despite being an AI. Exceptionalism, or something Yet More Complex...?

(Also some discussion below of how non-human species fit in!)

[kaberett]

More conversation about how Anaander Mianaai and non-human species fit in elsewhere in comments!

[sfred]

:-) Yes, I just came back and looked.

[jack]

I remember it being fuzzy where AM came from. From the dyson sphere, but I'm not sure if it was full of humans or super-humans or AIs or post-human AIs or what. I assumed AM was originally a specific human and all their identical clones were of that original body, so people who gender them, use the gender of their bodies. But I'm not sure if there's any support in the book for that.

Good observation about the pronouns not applying to ships, I'd not thought about that at all. In a lot of sci-fi, there's an additional reason people may use "it" for AIs, if they're nongendered, but that doesn't apply in the Radch. I guess, they don't treat ships as people, but they do treat AM as a person.

[kaberett]

We're not told anything about stuff inside the Radch (strict sense), at least not yet. We're told that all of Anaander Mianaai's bodies are genetically identical (though it's not specified whether this includes chromosomes); we're told that gender markers as a thing don't exist in the Radch, and that Breq makes an effort to match the gendering of AM that her interlocutor uses. AM is "she" and "my lord" in Radchaai, consistent with calling officers "sir" etc.

Because humans are treated as mortal and AM clearly isn't (3000 years old! - and we know Justice of Toren is 2000 years old), and if the tech existed to turn humans into the kind of AI that Justice of Toren clearly is (or if it wasn't wildly taboo) I'd assumed AI originated as one of the earliest AIs; I'd expect that to at least be discussed - humans have access to the necessary tech to transfer AI consciousness into ancillaries, so one would've thought that if human-->human transference were possible there would at least be a great deal of suppression of it, particularly among the hideously rich.

(And I am now thinking of Jessie Hajicek's The God Eaters, which involves gods consuming other gods to gain power & domain...)

[legionseagle]

If we move into the Byzantine period rather than Classical Rome we've got the eunuch civil servants paralleling the role of the ships (don't have families of their own, primary loyalty to the Emperor above all). Also, "barbarians" are simply "outside the Empire" and not necessarily unworthy of respect as a result (see the Parthians, for example)

[jack]

One of the things I was a little bit unsatisfied by in AJ was that there were some things which I thought would be common knowledge, which were never quite brought up. Some of these I imagine will be in a sequel, but it still felt like I was missing something. Both "was an AI" and "was originally human" feel like most people would know SOMETHING about that, if only vague speculation, or common sense is-that-possible, but I don't remember anything.

Oh, God Eaters sounds fascinating, I want to read that.

[davidgillon]

I'd been reading AM as a multiple intelligence rather than an AI, isn't there something about them starting as a governor than making the jump to emperor in some undefined manner? Plus if they were an AI the whole non-citizen thing would work against them.

[kaberett]

All of Jesse's stuff is available for free online and I adore it! Want me to dig out a link? (Though also I advocate chucking him a couple of quid if you can - he's not exactly rolling in it.)

ETA here's The God Eaters and some of the overview incl a link to his webcomic, Metanoia, which I loved; pretty much of everything is up at gomichan.

Also, sparked by the "was originally human" thing, STRONGLY recommend Benjanun Sriduangkaew's Hegemony verse (if you haven't already read, and even if you have! She was a John W Campbell nominee this year and is eligible again next year, and I really want her to get it...)

[kaberett]

Ooooh. Yes, excellent parallel, thank you. And that also has the obvious gender parallel... *chinhand*

[kaberett]

Hmm, whereas I read them as AI at least in part because of the explicit parallels between AM's decision-making and Justice-of-Toren versus One-Esk's decision-making. Excellent point about the noncitizenship thing, though to some extent it seems like AM considers that... relevant? I mean, obviously she's immensely powerful, but her attitude of intense loyalty to the core of the Radch and the devotion to the religion seems... almost labrador-ish to me?

But then of course there's the complexity that AM clearly has emotions, but didn't originally design ship AIs to have emotions, and stuck those in later...

I don't recall the thing about governorship, but am currently ~1/3rd of the way through a reread and will keep an eye out. (I GET MORE OUT OF IT EVERY TIME, FOR SRS.)

[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]

Recognising Seivarden: she's naked and JoT spent, what, 20 years monitoring her every move? I think the point about gender signalling varying wildly between cultures is an important one (as is the fact that Radchaai tech is advanced enough that body configurations are neither here nor there when it comes to reproduction). I think it's very much "gender as cultural construct on which there is no consensus"?

Breq is clearly able to distinguish between humans based on other features and clearly able to learn rapidly - I suspect it's less "doesn't exist" and more "is thoroughly ingrained in considering this irrelevant, has never understood why anyone considers it relevant, and is sufficiently widely travelled that differences in marking are overwhelming." Human children make a very big deal about learning to distinguish between boys and girls (binarist, I know, bear with me) during early development; it's something that we learn from societal consensus (hence knowing that the gender binary is actually fractal) rather than being something that's necessarily inherent?

ETA content notes cissexism, biological essentialism. I realise I didn't say explicitly - I think it's also relevant that Breq clearly doesn't think body configuration necessarily has any bearing on gender (which is correct! it doesn't!) -- I'm much happier with her being all "wtf even is this how are you supposed to intuit it" (which IMO is the correct attitude to take) than I would've been with (as someone has literally said to me) "you can tell if someone's a woman because tits".

[jack]

Squee! Thank you.

[davidgillon]

Interesting parallel with Byzantium and the eunuchs, ISTR Narses was both a eunuch and commander in the field at times, though the parallel that draws me is the Ottoman Court and the Jannisaries (there are earlier slave soldier parallels in Islam with the Ghulams IIRC, but I don't know too much about their background). OTOH it seems clear AL was drawing on Roman Auxiliaries for the Ancilliaries.

[jack]

Oh yes, this was the other thing your post made me remember. It seemed (not certain?) that the ships had a central (non-organic?) brain in the ship, plus ancilliaries, whereas AM was distributed with (probably?) no central brain.

I wasn't sure if JoT's increasing self-determination as Breq was solely due to increasingly escaping programmed safeguards AM put in the main brain, or if there was a suggestion that organic brains were inherently more people-y, and Breq was more like "JoT Esk One brain, with JoT memories". I don't like that interpretation as much, because it's less interesting distributed-consciousness-wise, but it's somewhat straightforward and common in other SF.

[jack]

Ooh, yes, that makes so much sense... I had wondered how Breq was not able to follow simple clothing cues that would get it right MOST of the time, especially if they're trying to avoid drawing attention. But if they're in the habit of never assuming an appropriate form of address, it makes sense how it's impossible to go back -- like being invited to address people of different nationalities by different pronouns, and saying "how can I tell", and people say "just look" and saying "I CAN'T DO THAT!"

Although now I say that, I remember Breq didn't keep using a best-approximation to a neutral pronoun, but had to guess and guessed wrong. That undermines what I just said. But maybe your version is still my head-canon.

[sfred]

I liked that vagueness: the feel of the setup without the exposition. I do hope we learn more in future books, though.

[davidgillon]

Very good point WRT gender vs body. Combine that with the idea that thinking about gender is alien to Breq and Radchaai in general and it may be the case that the entire society has lost (/abandoned?) the entire concept of gender.

[sfred]

I'm pretty sure it's Breq/JoT-as-narrator who says at one point that there's a sea of things other cultures would consider gender markers (body shapes, clothing, jewellery, makeup, hair arrangements). Among Radchaai these are configured in so many different combinations that the decoding other cultures would do wouldn't work anyway (although obviously in the book, other cultures go on body shape). That makes (even more) sense to me of how much Breq struggles with remembering which cues are supposed to be relevant elsewhere.