Race and Racisms in Tolkien Studies
The Northeast Popular and American Culture Association (NEPCA) Virtual Conference
The annual NEPCA virtual conference was scheduled for Thursday, October 12-Saturday, October 14, 2023. Two paper sessions on race and racisms in Tolkien studies were accepted in the “Race and Ethnicity” area. The overview and information on the presentations is below. I hope that some, at least, will be submitted to the Journal of Tolkien Research for publication (JTR has a special category of “conference papers” that are published as well as peer-reviewed essays and editor-reviewed essays.
Race and Racisms in Tolkien Studies
Overview:
The recent online backlash against the Amazon Rings of Power casting actors of color is just the most recent event to foreground debates about race and racism in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. In 2003, online critics analyzing racist imagery in Peter Jackson's live-action adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and attributing it to Tolkien's work led to scholars defending Tolkien and his work on the grounds of his medieval sources; on statements in letters condemning Nazi ideology and appropriation of Germanic mythology; and on themes in his fiction (the cooperation of the Fellowship, the friendship between Gimli and Legolas, and the marriages between Human men and Elven women). The resulting debate tended toward a binary pattern of competing claims that Tolkien/his work was or was not racist and a perceived stalemate (Reid, "Race and Tolkien: A Bibliographic Essay," Tolkien and Alterity, eds. Vaccaro and Kisor). The six presentations, grouped in two paper sessions below, start to move the state of the scholarship beyond that binary.
In The Problem of Evil Others: Tolkien's Orcs and Swarthy Men, Robert Tally considers the earliest iteration of Tolkien's Orcs, the goblins, and the ways in which their characterization differs from Tolkien's later work. Sara Brown draws upon theories of abjection to explore how Tolkien's work reflects anxieties of the 20th century. Mariana Rios Maldonado analyzes the extent to which Tolkien's work replicates systemic racism while challenging and reimagining Otherness and race through the focal Hobbit characters.
In Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern Scholarship on Racisms, Clare Moore argues that Tolkien scholars must draw on the most recent scholarship on race and the Middle Ages showing how "race" was constructed on religious membership which challenges earlier claims that the hierarchies Tolkien created for his imagined world are spiritual rather than racist. Helen Young draws on archival research to document the extent to which the British fascist movement used Tolkien's work in their publications from 1960-2000 in order to legitimize their extremist ideas. Robin Anne Reid argues that Tolkien studies as a field must engage with scholarship about the history and current efforts of fascist movements; the white supremacist attempts to use Tolkien's work; the contemporary work on the origin of contemporary racisms in the Middle Ages; and current sociological scholarship on systemic racisms.
Abstracts: The Problem of Evil Others: Tolkien's Orcs and Swarthy Men
Robert Tally: "Great Goblins: The Representation of the Orc in The Hobbit"
As he put it in a famous letter, the anachronistic Bilbo Baggins notoriously "intruded" upon Tolkien's legendarium, with its epic tales of the Noldor, Morgoth, and the War of the Jewels. But by securing many of that world's evocative images in print, The Hobbit established something like a "canon" for fans and scholars of his work, which in turn required him to incorporate these elements into his broader vision. For readers, The Hobbit is where Tolkien's orcs—here called "goblins"—first appear, and their character in this novel helps us to understand their role in the larger geopolitical history of Middle-earth. Upon the first encounter with the goblins of the Misty Mountains, the reader finds an entire society, one familiar with Thorin Oakenshield and with the vast history of Middle-earth. This is already a far-cry from the idea of orcs as monsters in the service of "evil powers," as it is clear that there is a goblin "civilization." Later, we find reference to "the cities, colonies, and strongholds" of the goblins, including the "capital" city of Gundabad. Bolg, the goblin leader of the orc armies, is named as the son of Azog, whom Dain had slain at Moria years earlier. The reference to families and communities unmistakably identifies orcs as "people," enemies perhaps, but not monstrous ones. In this talk, I look at the way "goblins" are presented in The Hobbit, particularly as it sets up our understanding of orcs in the rest of Tolkien's writings.
Sara Brown: "'Fruit of the Poison Vine': Defining and Delimiting Tolkien's Orcs"
Fantasy author N.K. Jemisin has commented that "Orcs are fruit of the poison vine that is human fear of 'the Other'." Indeed, we would have every reason to fear Tolkien's Orcs and their difference. Every way in which they are presented, including the etymology of their species name, the fear and horror they evoke, even the food that they consume, denotes their alterity. Their skin colour, their language, and their behaviour all encourage a reading that is rooted in racialism and essentialism; embedded stereotypes invite a conclusion that this species possesses a definable set of attributes essential to its identity, and that these attributes are both monstrous and racially signposted. Although Tolkien struggled in later life with the origins of the Orcs, and the question of whether he could reconcile his beliefs with the concept of an irredeemable species, he does not seem to have given the same consideration to their depiction as racial stereotypes. Although it could be argued (and has been) that racial difference does not imply evil to Tolkien, it is useful to consider the ways in which the Orcs emerge from social and cultural anxieties of the twentieth century. Reading the Orcs through theorists such as Robert Tally, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Julia Kristeva, this paper examines their difference and their abjection, exploring whether there is anything redeemable or indicative of individuality about this species, or whether, as China Miéville declares, "to be an Orc is to be definitionally a shit."
Mariana Rios Maldonado: "Problematic Ethics: Orcs and Swarthy Men as the Evil Other in Tolkien's Middle-earth Narratives"
In his essay "Magical Narratives" (1981), Frederic Jameson posits that fantastic and fantasy literature, as successors of what Northrop Frye categorised as "romance", depict the problematic ethics of the Primary World. For Jameson, ethics may serve oppressive ideological structures that marginalise groups as Other or evil according to class, gender, or racial differences. My paper uses Jameson's observations as a point of departure to consider the interconnectedness between ethics, Otherness, and race in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth narratives. I specifically address the identification of orcs and swarthy men as evil Others within Tolkien's worldbuilding project. Scholars like Dimitra Fimi and Helen Young have documented how the construction of these beings within Middle-earth's cosmogony as well as the intradiegetic attitudes held towards them are infused by real-world racial ideologies and racialist viewpoints. I therefore contend that the portrayal of these beings in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion as well as their interpretation may both confirm Jameson's hypotheses and simultaneously contest them. Consequently, my paper not only details how Tolkien's literary production and Secondary World reproduce systemic racism, but how they also offer moments and loci of resistance to hegemonic hierarchies and supremacist beliefs. I argue that this is achieved through the encounter with the Other as experienced by hobbits as the texts' focalisers or the reader who encounters these narratives and their characters as an Other. My paper thus gestures to how the relationship between ethics, Otherness, and race may be critically reimagined within Tolkien's oeuvre.
Abstracts: Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern Scholarship on Racisms in Tolkien’s Legendarium
Clare Moore: "The Sundering of the Elves and Tolkien's Spiritual Construction of Race in the First Age"
In her landmark work The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, medievalist Geraldine Heng describes how medieval societies constructed race primarily along social categories other than skin color. The majority of Heng's book details how medieval Christian communities constructed race along religious lines, particularly as it relates to the Jewish race, and how the actions of the state reinforced this construction through official public and collective action. Applied to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Heng's research provides a framework understanding how Tolkien constructs elven races in the First Age of Middle-earth. While all one "species," the elven population of Middle-earth undergoes several divisions, called "sunderings" in Tolkien's texts, that result in multiple distinct people groups. These different groups, while at times classified by their leader or geography, are primarily defined in spiritual terms: by their distance from the light of the Trees of Valinor. Once this division is made, it is reinforced by official decrees and social actions leveled at particular groups as a whole, solidifying these divisions into racial constructions. Heng's work, then, illuminates how spirituality constructs race in Tolkien's fantasy when the issue of race in The Silmarillion and Tolkien's other fiction is often dismissed entirely and explained away as "only" spiritual difference.
Helen Young: "British Far-Right Uses of Tolkien c. 1980-2000"
In recent year far-Right extremist (FRE) uses of popular culture, particularly videogaming and games spaces, for recruitment, spreading ideology, communication and organising has raised alarms for law enforcement, technology companies and researchers alike. Much of the resulting focus has been on digital spaces, such as the gaming platform Steam, but the far Right, including its violent extremist elements, has a long history of engagement with and exploitation of popular culture that reaches back beyond the digital era. Far-Right engagements with Tolkien in this period are known--the Italian 'Camp Hobbit' is a salient example--but have not been substantially researched, leaving a significant gap in knowledge of the roots of contemporary 'culture wars' engagements. This paper explores the various ways in which the British Far-Right, including openly fascist organisations, used include 'Tolkien and his writings in their magazines and pamphlets from c.1960 to 2000. Examples, from 'Tolkien-inspired' poetry and movie reviews, were principally located through exploratory research conducted in the Searchlight Archive at the University of Northampton, UK. The paper argues that such references function to legitimate radical and extremist constructions of race as directly connected to cultural identity and expression in ways that resonate with the ways race functions in the imagined world of Middle-earth.
Robin Anne Reid: "The Perennial Problem of Racisms in Tolkien Studies: A Bibliographic and Lexicographical Rant"
In June 2016, I submitted "Race in Tolkien Studies: A Bibliographic Essay" which analyzed scholarship on the topic published between 2003 and 2015 to Tolkien And Alterity (2017). I believed that, despite opposition between scholars whose work was dedicated to defending Tolkien (and his work) from what many insisted were "charges of racism" (as if the scholars analyzing the racisms in Tolkien's work were a state apparatus), change was possible. In July 2023, having seen the rise in hate crimes and a growing number of fascist state legislatures evoking racist stereotypes against critical race theory, I am more convinced than ever that Tolkien scholars must confront the problem of racisms that structure our field. In this bibliographical and lexicographical rant, I argue that Tolkien scholars must engage with scholarship that is not directly about Tolkien's legendarium, or even the adaptations and transformative works, in order to confront racisms. My selected bibliography includes but is not limited to: studies of current fascist movements; histories of past fascist movements; contemporary medieval scholarship on how Far-Right Extremists (FRE) appropriate medieval mythologies and images for political purposes; work by medievalists of color who have been working on what Geraldine Heng calls "the invention of race" in the Middle Ages for years; and contemporary sociological and critical race theories. I also include an analysis of the OED entries on "race" and "racism" in the context of how Tolkien scholarship too often accepts that "race" exists while "racism" does not.