My take on the Cultural Appropriation hoohah

[davidlevine]

There's been a lot of noise recently in the writerly lobe of the left blogosphere about the question of "cultural appropriation." I missed the Wiscon panel where the recent dust-up started, and I've read only bits and snippets of the ongoing discussion.

The issue came up in the comments thread of a friendslocked post by another writer. In that thread I confessed that I had no idea whatsoever what, exactly, cultural appropriation is and how to avoid it. littlebutfierce pointed me to a couple of specific posts that helped me get my head around the issue, what I feel about it, and why people get so wrapped around the axle about it.

From andweshallmarch I got the idea that cultural appropriation consists of presenting yourself as a member of a culture not your own (which I think everyone would agree is both heinous and rare) and that every majority writer should make the attempt to put themselves in another's shoes -- to write sympathetically about cultures not their own. This I can totally relate to.

From clairelight, on the other hand, I got the idea that only writers with talent, skill, and Responsibility should even attempt writing about other cultures. This I have some trouble with, because a) this doesn't really provide guidance to anyone, because all writers believe they have talent, skill, and Responsibility; and b) this doesn't allow beginning writers to learn-by-doing.

I suppose I could buy into clairelight's concept if I assumed that beginning writers would be allowed to try writing about other cultures as long as editors and critiquers acted as a filter to prevent less-than-sensitive works from being published. But we all know that tastes vary; people argue with Gordon Van Gelder's and Sheila Williams's selections all the time. So who gets to say "you, you have Talent, you may write about other cultures; but you, you have no Talent, you may only write about your own culture"?

I think the bottom line in this, as in so many things in writing, is: the rules are the rules, but you can get away with anything if you can somehow (e.g. through skillful writing) convince the reader to accept it. Problems arise when people think they are good enough writers to break the rule "thou shalt not pretend intimate knowledge of a culture not your own" but they are wrong, and unfortunately the definition of "good enough" is determined by each individual reader.

That's why there's argument about what cultural appropriation is and how to avoid it. A sensitive and skillful portrayal of a culture other than the writer's is diversity and is good; an insensitive and ham-handed portrayal of a culture other than the writer's is cultural appropriation and is bad. But the difference between these is the difference between well-written and not-so-well-written. Many stories fall into the huge gray area between the extremes, where individual taste dominates and it can be difficult even to articulate the reasons a story works or doesn't work. But because this issue is so important, each reader's opinion on a story or a class of stories is elevated in significance, and disagreements on whether a story is successful or not turn into larger arguments over whether what the story was trying to do was appropriate or not.

For myself, I think that I will continue to do as I have done: to write about people, from whatever culture, and to imbue them with humanity to the best of my ability.

Comments

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

What I get from this is that you want to write well, and you want to represent other cultures appropriately and respectfully. For you, these all come together in the act of writing. Not for me. I think sensitive and skillful are independent qualities. A work of art can be brilliant and masterfully executed even if it is morally reprehensible. And there sure are plenty of examples of sensitive well-intentioned people who lack the talent or skill to express their thoughts well.

I sat through much of a paper presentation that accused a highly acclaimed writer of cultural appropriation, because her fictional culture set on another planet seemed to be like a particular earthly culture, but she didn't get all the details right. In other words, she was accused of writing a false and misleading history of the earthly culture, even though she never claimed to be writing any representation of that culture, the culture was never named, and the book was marketed as science fiction. What I got from this is that not all academics are fully willing to accept the concepts of fiction, or metaphor.

This is a complex and subtle issue. Where do we draw the line between cultural exploration and exploitation? How do you put yourself in another's shoes without taking them?

The rest of the world has borrowed heavily from American culture, everything from jazz to backwards baseball caps. Yet Americans are generally quite happy about this -- it is the cultures that are doing the borrowing that feel their own traditions are threatened. Taking from another culture is not by itself appropriation -- I think it has nothing to do with the act of taking and everything to do with the power relationships between the cultures. We appropriated the indians' technology, and we appropriated their lands, and we imposed our diseases and our culture on them. When the main thing you have left is your history and your stories, having your stories taken from you is a big deal.

[davidlevine]

sensitive and skillful are independent qualities ... This is a complex and subtle issue.

I'm in total agreement on both those points. When I say "sensitive and skillful" I mean "both sensitive and skillful." Failure in either part causes the whole to fail.

The rest of the world has borrowed heavily from American culture

One concept that's been brought up a lot in the larger discussion on this issue is that when minorities adopt from the majority it's "adapting," while when the majority adopts from the minority it's "appropriation." Minority cultures almost always pick up aspects of the majority culture... in fact, often they work hard to avoid such assimilation, so as to maintain a unique identity. On the other hand, if the majority culture picks up aspects of the minority, that also diminishes the minority's unique identity. Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it's bad for the pitcher.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Some really interesting examples of this are in Australian Aboriginal art.

I didn't buy the Aboriginal-style made-in-America-by-the-usual-fans t-shirts and stuff for the '99 Worldcon. Art is one of the few good sources of income the Aborigines have, the styles they create are obviously uniquely theirs, and they deserve respect. I made sure that all the Aboriginal-style art I bought was certified.

At the same time, some of the most powerful and just plain excellent art I've seen is from modern Aboriginal artists using western styles. They weren't being assimilated. They were appropriating, defiantly, arrogantly, and with great sensitivity and skill.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Maybe the academic did indeed just not get the concept of fiction. Or maybe the fictional culture resembles the earthly one closely enough that a denial of their resemblance would be disingenuous. You don't identify the case so it's hard to tell. But, to take a similar one, the Kesh are certainly not literally Amerinds. Yet they resemble them closely enough that Le Guin used utmost caution in drawing them. Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - the critical principle this academic is acting on is indeed fair.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think I was being overly kind -- to the academic. It was a rambling presentation, with lots of unsubstantiated claims, poor use of sources, and no clear organizing principles. I saw it with an ever deepening sense of horror that it might actually get to a point, because the point, if it did have one, seemed to be deeply insulting to the author of the work in question, who was sitting towards the back of the audience.