If You Beat a Dead Horse in the Forest, No One Can Hear You Scream
I don't know how I missed this when it was originally posted over at BGF Central, but you definitely need to read it if you had any interest in the discussion we had here and my rant here.
First question: when is it cultural appropriation? I take the view of intention, much as I do for a lot of things. I wrote a story called "PRAVI" (which you can read in my collection, plug, plug, which you can order here, plug, plug--see, I'm getting better at self-promotion) which arose from the question of whether morality is dependent on the actor or the acted upon. In western culture and religion, we generally say it's the acted upon: what you do to your TV is different from what you do to your dog which is different from what you do to your child which is different from what you do to an adult stranger. Seems logical until you realize that it gets us to things like devout Christians, people who were genuinely trying to be good people, keeping slaves ("they're not the same as us, they're more like animals, they need us to control them this way")--all it takes to change the moral equation is to believe that the acted-upon is Not Like Us. And there were certainly slaveholders who sincerely believed that; it was accepted knowledge in their circles. These good Christians weren't the ones beating their slaves mercilessly, but they were nonetheless keeping them as slaves, stealing their autonomy, forcing them to labor, and running their lives. Because they weren't quite people, really, in their view.
The equation shifted and blacks officially became human. Because they weren't before, right? Otherwise there couldn't have been good people holding slaves.
What does that have to do with cultural appropriation? Again, it's in the actor, not the acted-upon. If a writer comes at something from a different cultural tradition and draws from it much as s/he might for any other piece of information, history, myth, background, story, hey, go for it. (If you do it well, so much the better. But we all have the inalienable right to suck at our craft, and just like our Miranda rights, we would prefer not to be in a position to invoke that right, but sometimes shit happens.) When the use is for the purpose of deception, or to condescend to that other culture--that becomes appropriation, and is, shall we say, inappropriate.
BGF asks about Nasdijj and Asa Carter versus Equiano the African. What Equiano did was okay in my book. Is, as she asked, the answer based on their races? Nope, based on their intent. The first two were using someone else's culture for their own baser motives; the latter was using someone else's experience because it was an effective way to make a point he felt strongly about. Equiano was trying to move the reader; Nasdijj and Carter were trying to con the reader.
As BGF points out, though, most of us don't even make the effort. We stick to our own little world and don't make the effort to get into the skins of anyone not like ourselves. While we're busy marching for our right to use the myths of another culture, we're at the same time as a culture producing literature that might as well not bother, because most of it looks like our minds have not strayed beyond our own four walls. We can imagine a tentacled alien . . . but can we comprehend a person in the here and now who is, by virtue of color, sexuality, gender, religion, whatever, very unlike ourselves? The tentacled alien is a lot easier, because you can't get it wrong.
And it's not all on the writer; it's on the reader, too. Check out What Sells. Majority-culture readers as a group are more comfortable with things that don't challenge or threaten fundamental assumptions about race or sex. Like the slaveholders of the 19th century, they don't really want to know that people Not Like Them might really be more like them than they realized, because that would change their whole worlds.
But as in the 19th century, change is just what's needed.
(Oh, the title of this post--what the f? you ask. I dunno. I just felt the urge. Got your attention, though, didn't it?)
First question: when is it cultural appropriation? I take the view of intention, much as I do for a lot of things. I wrote a story called "PRAVI" (which you can read in my collection, plug, plug, which you can order here, plug, plug--see, I'm getting better at self-promotion) which arose from the question of whether morality is dependent on the actor or the acted upon. In western culture and religion, we generally say it's the acted upon: what you do to your TV is different from what you do to your dog which is different from what you do to your child which is different from what you do to an adult stranger. Seems logical until you realize that it gets us to things like devout Christians, people who were genuinely trying to be good people, keeping slaves ("they're not the same as us, they're more like animals, they need us to control them this way")--all it takes to change the moral equation is to believe that the acted-upon is Not Like Us. And there were certainly slaveholders who sincerely believed that; it was accepted knowledge in their circles. These good Christians weren't the ones beating their slaves mercilessly, but they were nonetheless keeping them as slaves, stealing their autonomy, forcing them to labor, and running their lives. Because they weren't quite people, really, in their view.
The equation shifted and blacks officially became human. Because they weren't before, right? Otherwise there couldn't have been good people holding slaves.
What does that have to do with cultural appropriation? Again, it's in the actor, not the acted-upon. If a writer comes at something from a different cultural tradition and draws from it much as s/he might for any other piece of information, history, myth, background, story, hey, go for it. (If you do it well, so much the better. But we all have the inalienable right to suck at our craft, and just like our Miranda rights, we would prefer not to be in a position to invoke that right, but sometimes shit happens.) When the use is for the purpose of deception, or to condescend to that other culture--that becomes appropriation, and is, shall we say, inappropriate.
BGF asks about Nasdijj and Asa Carter versus Equiano the African. What Equiano did was okay in my book. Is, as she asked, the answer based on their races? Nope, based on their intent. The first two were using someone else's culture for their own baser motives; the latter was using someone else's experience because it was an effective way to make a point he felt strongly about. Equiano was trying to move the reader; Nasdijj and Carter were trying to con the reader.
As BGF points out, though, most of us don't even make the effort. We stick to our own little world and don't make the effort to get into the skins of anyone not like ourselves. While we're busy marching for our right to use the myths of another culture, we're at the same time as a culture producing literature that might as well not bother, because most of it looks like our minds have not strayed beyond our own four walls. We can imagine a tentacled alien . . . but can we comprehend a person in the here and now who is, by virtue of color, sexuality, gender, religion, whatever, very unlike ourselves? The tentacled alien is a lot easier, because you can't get it wrong.
And it's not all on the writer; it's on the reader, too. Check out What Sells. Majority-culture readers as a group are more comfortable with things that don't challenge or threaten fundamental assumptions about race or sex. Like the slaveholders of the 19th century, they don't really want to know that people Not Like Them might really be more like them than they realized, because that would change their whole worlds.
But as in the 19th century, change is just what's needed.
(Oh, the title of this post--what the f? you ask. I dunno. I just felt the urge. Got your attention, though, didn't it?)
posted by Maines at 10:37 AM
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