Why?: I hate the term Truth

Yesterday we were talking about how theory really answer the question "Why?". This morning I was having a conversation with some colleagues about how I'm not really comfortable with Truth because of the ways that it is often used to "other" that we don't identify with. We use Truth to mask Ideology. This led me to my rant about the misuse of the word mythology*, but also got me thinking this afternoon about the ways in which Truth is constructed or deconstructed in various texts and the subtle differences that are used to classify ideas and texts.

After admitting that I spent the better part of three days with Peter Dickinson after only reading one of his novels, I mentioned last month that I was going to read some more of his novels. The first one that came in the mail was Bone From a Dry Sea. The text does some interesting things in terms of time. Geographically readers never leave the same small piece of what is now Africa, yet they move several million years in time. Li (a derivative of Lilith) and Vinny (short for Lavinia) are parallel characters in many ways, but their worlds are constructed in very different ways. In essence both girls construct a world based on their understandings of the world around them and their experience, even though those experiences are often shared in some way. Not surprisingly, Li whose culture has only developed a very basic system of "words" bases her reality on physical objects and Vinny constructs here view of evolution based on a book that she read about sea-apes.

What I found most interesting about this book is the way in which Dickinson, doesn't label Li view as "primitive," a move that would be quite tempting. He admits in a parenthetical insertion early on that simply naming the character and allowing them to think in "words" is not fair to such a culture, but for the sake of telling a coherent story he must impose his experiences on them in this way. I really like that move because of the ways he recognizes his own ideologies in a concept that I would venture most people would label as truth. Had Dickinson not done this, the folklorist in me would have thrown a temper tantrum and probably put the book down. As person in a highly literate culture (not to mention a person who lives in the highly literate quadrant of that highly literate culture) we cannot really conceptualize what it is like to be illiterate, let alone have a spoken language of only a handful of words/sounds.

More than Dickinson's attention to this fact, I'm curious how one would classify this text. Science fiction often answers the why/how question, but this book contains very little actual science. It takes a theory which Dickinson names in the text and credits in the afterword and explores what that might look like. Amazon currently classifies it as both science fiction and fantasy--a move I see as more marketing based than actual critical analysis. Still, I find it interesting that in conversation some people are so quick to draw the line between science and mythology when they are so intertwined in many places. Li conceptions of why her tribe behaves in specific ways are attributed to a mythos that is later reinterpreted through science.

This is why I have an issue with Truth. I need categories that allow for fuzziness and messiness because I'm not sure I'm ready to believe anyone who claims to have "defined" either. I mentioned in class today that conversations which ask people to define "Truth" make me nervous. I was nervous when I first started reading Dickinson's book. It could have quickly "othered" a Truth by labeling it false which happens a lot in academic discussions. I'm glad it didn't, but I'm still curious "why" we feel the need to constantly define things in this way.

*Mythology doesn't does not mean false. Stop using it in this way. The term actually means a narrative that explains a phenomena (such as the origin of something) which contain supernatural elements and is believed to be true by the culture which tells it. By true I mean, the supernatural is not questioned. The Biblical creation story in Genesis is a myth for example.