I have tried to ignore the current mania about cultural
appropriation. It has seemed and still seems to be one stupidity too many. Our politically
correct intellectual and academic cultures are not short of stupidity.
A strict cultural appropriationist believes that the experiences
of his or her culture are uniquely his or hers. Thus, no one else has a right
to adopt them, write about them, or even to fictionalize characters who belong
to them.
Down with white people eating moo goo gai pan and down with
Henry James writing The Portrait of a
Lady.
Those who display great sensitivity about the failures
of their civilizations say that cultural appropriation feels like colonialism
and imperialism, like suppressing indigenous cultures in favor of cultures
that have a better track record.
Your indigenous culture might be a monumental failure. It
might have lost out in the clash of civilizations, lost out to Western
civilization and to Chinese culture. One thing is for damned sure: you do not want anyone else to see it.
If anyone in the latter culture appropriates something from
the former culture, it provokes a crippling feeling of shame—as though one’s
failures are being mocked and derided. Thus, members of the better culture must shut up in order to spare the delicate
sensibilities of those whose cultures have failed, who refuse to recognize
the failures or to reform their culture.
Today, those who reject reform insist that their culture is
theirs and that, by the dogma of multiculturalism, it is as good as anyone else’s.
When you take this argument on its own terms it makes no sense. It smacks of
idiocy. But, this tells us that those who adhere to
it as a dogma are showing us why their own cultures have failed to modernize.
Lionel Shriver recently delivered a speech in Australia
where she attacked the dogma of cultural appropriation.
She began with an anecdote from Bowdoin College. There a
Mexican themed party was shut down for being insensitive. Because students were
wearing sombreros:
The
moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s
what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on
their hats.
In the
latest ethos, which has spun well beyond college campuses in short order, any
tradition, any experience, any costume, any way of doing and saying things,
that is associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is ring-fenced:
look-but-don’t-touch. Those who embrace a vast range of
“identities”—ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories,
classes of economic underprivilege and disability—are now encouraged to be
possessive of their experience and to regard other peoples’ attempts to
participate in their lives and traditions, either actively or imaginatively, as
a form of theft.
It reminds one of a child in a sandbox, exclaiming that his
toys are his and that you cannot play with them—because you are of the wrong
race or ethnic group.
The cultural appropriation crowd rests its argument on the
idea that products of a specific culture belong only to those who are part of
that culture. If you are not Austrian you should not listen to Beethoven,
unless you are granted permission. And if you want to write about a Laotian
tribesman you need to get permission from… some Laotian tribesman.
This smacks of despotism, of a will to turn every cultural
product into propaganda. It also suggests that only those who are indigenous to
a culture have the right to say what anything means.
Shriver offered an example of sophisticated defense of
cultural appropriation. Sophisticated because it was written by a law
professor. If this is true, we should bemoan the fate of the legal professions:
The
author of Who Owns Culture?
Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law
professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as
“Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or
artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include
unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore,
cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.” What strikes me about
that definition is that “without permission” bit. However are we fiction
writers to seek “permission” to use a character from another race or culture,
or to employ the vernacular of a group to which we don’t belong? Do we set up a
stand on the corner and approach passers-by with a clipboard, getting
signatures that grant limited rights to employ an Indonesian character in
Chapter Twelve, the way political volunteers get a candidate on the ballot?
The rank stupidity of the argument jumps off the page.
Shriver took especial umbrage because she is a novelist and novelists create
characters. In many circumstances novelists create characters who do not speak,
act or look like them. Should we cease reading Othello because Shakespeare was not a Moor?
Did William Faulkner have any right to write a character who
was mentally challenged? Shouldn’t that task have been left to those who are mentally
challenged? Not only because they own their own experiences but because they
alone can render it accurately.
Fiction does not render real experience. It renders fictional experience. It creates a fictional world. That is why it is called fiction. It is not written to serve a political purpose. If it were, it would not be called fiction. It may bear certain resemblances to reality, but it has never been judged by its ability to show what really is.
Shriver writes fiction, so she honed in on the fact that
cultural appropriation would put novelists out of business:
Because
who is the appropriator par excellence, really? Who assumes other people’s
voices, accents, patois, and distinctive idioms? Who literally puts words into
the mouths of people different from themselves? Who dares to get inside the
very heads of strangers, who has the chutzpa to project thoughts and feelings
into the minds of others, who steals their very souls? Who is a professional
kidnapper? Who swipes every sight, smell, sensation, or overheard conversation
like a kid in a candy store, and sometimes take notes the better to purloin whole worlds? Who is the
premier pickpocket of the arts? The fiction writer, that’s who.
Thus in
the world of identity politics, fiction writers better be careful. If we do
choose to import representatives of protected groups, special rules apply. If a
character happens to be black, they have to be treated with kid gloves, and
never be placed in scenes that, taken out of context, might seem disrespectful.
But that’s no way to write. The burden is too great, the self-examination
paralyzing. The natural result of that kind of criticism in the Post is that next time I don’t
use any black
characters, lest they do or say anything that is short of perfectly admirable
and lovely.
As it happened, a member of Shriver’s audience, one Yassmin Abdel-magied took the occasion to
throw a public tantrum and to march out of the address in protest. Her shame,
we might say, was too much to bear.
To her, Shriver was celebrating:
… the unfettered exploitation of the
experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.
She adds that the world’s oppressed have no access to the
media. The point is nigh unto idiotic in a world where everyone has access to
the media. If you are a Nigerian novelist you might well find a publisher in
Lagos. If not, you have access to Amazon which will publish your book. If you
have an opinion you can instantly post it on Facebook or Twitter.
Abdel-mageid presents her position:
It’s
not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the
actual Nigerian woman can’t get published or reviewed to begin with. It’s not
always OK if a straight white woman writes the story of a queer Indigenous man,
because when was the last time you heard a queer Indigenous man tell his own
story? How is it that said straight white woman will profit from an experience
that is not hers, and thosewith the
actual experience never be provided the opportunity? It’s not always OK for a
person with the privilege of education and wealth to write the story of a young
Indigenous man, filtering the experience of the latter through their own skewed
and biased lens, telling a story that likely reinforces an existing narrative
which only serves to entrench a disadvantage they need never experience.
You see, it’s not just about appropriation. It’s about
colonialism and imperialism, these being the twin devils that are often blamed
for the fact that certain cultures have systematically refused to modernize.
She continues:
But
there is a bigger and broader issue, one that, for me, is more emotive.Cultural
appropriation is a “thing”, because of our histories. The history of
colonisation, where everything was taken from a people, the world over. Land,
wealth, dignity … and now identity is to be taken as well?
It’s those white devils, of course. But, let’s not forget that
Asian devils are advancing swiftly in the clash of civilizations. What will
this do to the effort to guilt-trip white people:
The
reality is that those from marginalised groups, even today, do not get the
luxury of defining their own place in a norm that is profoundly white, straight
and, often, patriarchal. And in demanding that the right to identity should be
given up, Shriver epitomised the kind of attitude that led to the normalisation
of imperialist, colonial rule: “I want this, and therefore I shall take it.”
Writing in Acculturated, Amy Anderson comes back at Yassmin.
She asks why Yassmin does not speak
about the way women are treated in Islamic cultures. Does she really believe
that the systematic brutalization of women in those cultures derives from
imperialism and colonialism?
Anderson writes:
Well
Yassmin, now that you mention it, perhaps it would be helpful to take a look
around at the “place” of women living in some Muslim societies today. As Kay
Hymowitz has observed:
In the United Arab Emirates, husbands have the
right to beat their wives in order to discipline them— ‘provided that the
beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body,’ in the
words of Gulf News. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive, or show their
faces or talk with male non-relatives in public.
Like it or not, the truth is that Westerners do not want your culture. They do not really want to have anything to do with it. Why would they want to appropriate honor killing and wife beating and female genital mutilation? And let's not forget, when Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote about her experience as a Muslim woman in Somalia, the champions of cultural appropriation tried to have her killed.
So, before accusing white Westerners of appropriating your
culture, take ownership of it yourself.
12 comments:
"[T]he world’s oppressed have no access to the media."
Nor should they. It's cultural appropriation.
And I want my printing press, modulated electromagnetic waves, transistors, printed circuits, and computers back.
Feel free to keep your queer indigenous men stories, toasted grasshoppers, burkas, and betel nuts with my blessing, and we'll call it a Fair Trade.
The lefties MUST complain about something, and the more meaningless and ridiculous it seems, the better they like it. Question: If i eat moo goo gai pan, or pizza, or wienerschnitzel, or lutefisk or krumkake, is it cultural appropriation if I eat them in the lands they came from, or only if I eat them in the US? What about cellphones in Africa? What about Guernsey cows, or Jerseys? Only there, not here? Spaghetti? Lasagna? Idjits! We are surrounded by Idjits.
"...defines cultural appropriation as “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission." If they brought it here, they must be willing to share it.
"That is why it is called fiction. It is not written to serve a political purpose." Some of it is, and then it's usually not very good.
"It’s not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman..."; so sometimes it IS.
" As Kay Hymowitz has observed:" OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOes!!!1111!
A Jew is commenting on ARABS!!!!1111!!!!! The HORROR! The horror... OK, for real now, the reason why feminists ignore women in Muslim countries is that multi-culti outranks feminism in/on the Left. Why are not the feminists protesting the Left for this? Because they're on the Left, and they're good little lefties.
Sensitivity = Capitulation
"Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”
Well, I guess St. Patrick's Day is off next year's calendar. Fairies and all...
I think this is a plot by the Left to soften us up for the creation of the government Department of Approval for Cultural Appropriate, which will allow people to buy a license for a specific number of defined Acts of Appropriate, for a sliding fee of course -- you can appropriate anything created by Dead White Males for free-- and prosecute (jail) unlicensed activities.
Revenooers by any other name....
Oh, and don't forget that everyone will have to undergo mandatory DNA analysis so they can get their Identity Papers showing the degree to which they can make use of any culture indicated in their heritage, but only up to the percentage of the whole of their genetic package.
It seems to me we've seen that done before, just not with such scientific precision...
Given the fact that a significant number of Americans are of mixed race and cultural backgrounds it seems to me this is the ultimate in futility and a failure to think through the permutations involve. One only needs to look at the DNA tests to ascertain that many people have a hard time answering whether they are black, white, native America, et al. These categories really have little value because we truly are a "melting pot." In fact the attempt by the government to categorize us is, in my estimation, the arrogance of power and control. It fails to recognize how much variation there is in each of us.
I have so many cultural backgrounds that I have no use for people who try to stereotype. I would suggest that I am not by myself.
This is an anethema to the very foundation of this country.
Like I have stated before academe is where bad ideas and true stupidity go to live. Only the supposed educated can twist themselves into these machinations and justifications. This is why I have never considered education more than a tool which one can use to build or to destroy. Education has little to do with intelligence as this person proves beyond any doubt.
I am an American is all anyone needs to know about my culture.
IAC reminds me: If I like square dancing, does that make me a Square? Where are Squares from, and exactly what IS their culture? And would it not be a macroaggression to dislike or disapprove of Squares?
Love you, Sam...
Sam, you're probably okay so long as you don't try to put a Square peg in a Round hole.
https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-infantilizing-of-the-academy/
Connection
IAC.....Aw, shucks.
AF., if the hole is bigger than the diagonal of the square, it CAN work out.
Sombreros at a party seems more like good-hearted mockery and parody than 'appropriation'.
It'd be like a bunch of fratboys wearing jungle loins or yarmulkas to mock another culture.
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