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

[dthon.livejournal.com]

Nice post. While there is definitely truth to the old addage of "write what you know", but sometimes you just have to do the research, take the chance, and dive into a character grew up half a world away from you.

'Imbue with humanity' is just about right; it's really the best we can do as creatives, without falling into the whirlpool suck of PC-dom.

-Dthon

[bridget-coila.livejournal.com]

I liked this post a lot...thank you...

this is something I have been thinking about a bit over the last couple of years, since I tend to do a lot of nonfiction reading and often come up with ideas that involve characters and/or cultures not my own.

I like the idea of focusing on the "writing about people" aspect of it...the humanity of the characters is often the part of a story that really holds the most intrest, after all...

one thing I've found helpful as a beginning writer is to try and pass questions or drafts through people who *do* know a culture I'm trying to convey. They can often add insights to things that I wouldnt have thought of on my own.

B

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Was there a definition of "culture"?

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)

Such as a man writing as a woman or a woman writing as a man? If you don't think men and women have different cultures, well, goes to definition. I think there is culture within the overall culture. Having moved from norther New York to East Tennessee, there was a big change in culture.

How about an SF writer writing as someone from an alien culture? Can't say that is their own.

How about through time? If someone writes a romance set several hundred years ago, you can't claim that as their culture.

Is "cultural appropriation" limited to fiction? What about non-fiction written about past times, such as the Roman Empire?

It's pretty subjective. Ultimately, it's the work that stands. If it's well done, no one will point and whine. If it's poorly done, then people complain. If it becomes real popular, they will say they had the idea first and sue.

[hank.livejournal.com]

The story I love to point out is that of Ward Churchill, who has made a career out of being more Indian than thou, turns out isn't of native American ancestry. And Iron Eyes Cody, who symbolized native Americans for years in movies and on tv and was famous for insisting that their traditions be honored and respected, turned out to be of Sicilian parents.

As a cross-breed, I'm more sensitive than most on this issue. I learned Choctaw before I learned English and I practice its religion, but I am only 1/4 Choctaw, grew up in various suburbs (the great cultural leveller), and pass for white. So, am I Choctaw? Highly politicized Indians (like Ward Churchill) would say no. One AIM activist famously said that no Indian that grew up off a reservation was "really" Indian.

What about the case of a skillful writer who convinces people of things that are not true? A friend of mine from Texas of Apache lineage used to get apoplectic when anyone mentioned "Hanta Yo." And if you want a major rant, get me started on Orson Scott Card's Alvin the Maker novels, with his casual appropriattion of the history and life of Tecumseh to serve his own beliefs and ends.

In a similar vein to "cultural appropriation," what of the folks who think no male writer can ever honestly write about the interior life of a woman, or vice versa? Okay, Dickens only saw women from the outside, but was that also true of Tolstoy with Anna Karenina? (And note that I use two writers from the 19th century, as it is safer than going after any modern writers.)

I don't have any good answers, David, but I try to make up for it by coming up with interesting questions.

[davidlevine]

Please note the use of italics in my original: "Presenting yourself as a member of a culture not your own." This is distinct from "Writing a story in which the main/viewpoint character is a member of a culture other than your own." What I was talking about in that sentence was cases where, for example, a European American author writes about the Asian American experience and falsely claims in their author bio to be Asian American. This is, fundamentally, a form of fraud, and (as I said above) is both heinous and rare.

Is writing under a pen name with a different gender (independent of the gender of the characters) an example of such fraud? Possibly, though it's widely accepted, especially in certain genres (such as men writing Romance) and the issue of men-writing-as-women and vice versa is a whole 'nother kettle of fish from cultural appropriation (though many of the same fins and scales can be found in both kettles).

[davidlevine]

This points up a detail I hadn't considered: although it's generally considered a bad thing to present yourself as a member of a culture not your own, there are often open questions as to whether or not a person really is a member of a given culture. Another gray area, another point of argument. (One specific case here is whether men and women are really members of each other's culture.)

When writers, even skillful writers, say things that aren't true, they will fail to please every reader (specifically they fail to please those who know the true story). The same arguments will ensue as between readers who are and are not pleased by a work because of the quality of the research and writing -- only more intense. And, as above, there may be arguments between members of a culture over whether or not a particular thing about that culture is "true."

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

My problem? Lazy _mis_appropriation.

As a person of Gaelic descent (among other things), who has done some research on cultural and spiritual traditions, and who is learning a Gaelic language, (Irish Gaelic), I get really, really really annoyed and okay furious when folks strip mine my culture for their stories, with no regard to context and no attempt at genuine understanding. Or when they outright make shit up.

Sadly, especially with regard to Gaelic culture, a lot I mean a lot of folks do this. And it drives me nuts.

[djonn]

As might be imagined given some of the stories I've written and sold (for the gallery, see particularly "Dances With Coyotes", in Fantastic Companions), this is a subject of distinct interest to me.

I am not ethnically Indian (i.e. Native American); I write the stories I do because I think the folklore on which I'm drawing, and from which I'm extrapolating, is fascinating and deserves to be kept alive. I simply try to treat the relevant material with respect, and to be as accurate as I can in presenting the source mythology. So far, I've had no complaints....

Part of the specific difficulty with Indian/Native American folklore is that it can be very tricky to separate genuine traditions from the body of New Age pseudo-Indian lore that sprung up toward the end of the Hippie Era. Another problem, at least in some regions, is that much knowledge was flat-out lost when particular cultures or tribal groups went nearly or entirely extinct from "white man's diseases" after contact was made -- and material collected too long after contact has sometimes been colored, sometimes in very peculiar ways, by the interactions between natives and white missionaries.

There are definitely areas of these stories where I'm inventing things as I go along. But I do that because (a) the available source material is often fragmented and incomplete, and (b) my stories are set mostly in the here and now, and I have to guess at how the mythic elements might interact with today's world. As long as I'm up front about what I'm doing, I don't think that's inappropriate. There's a rich body of source material here, and I hope to be exploring it for some time to come.

[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]

What about James Tiptree, Jr.?

[calimac.livejournal.com]

There was a big long discussion of this at the 1989 WFC which I wrote up at the time and hence vaguely remember. The tricky part was that different cultures have different rules on what counts as appropriation.

Most cultures wouldn't mind what you say orally, but are sensitive to what gets written down. But Australian native peoples believe the real story is the oral one. You can write down anything you want, but don't dare try to tell some loremaster's story: he holds what amounts to copyright on it.

And while most cultures allow members of that culture to play around with their traditions but bristle when outsiders butt in, Muslims don't care what outsiders do - they're all infidels anyway - but believers can get in big trouble if they don't watch their step, as Salman Rushdie could tell you.

[davidlevine]

In the same way that the majority "appropriates" from the minority culture but the minority "adopts" from or "assimilates" into the majority culture, a woman writing as a man is a different problem from a man writing as a woman. I'd claim that for a woman to use a male pen name is an adaptation to the dominant culture rather than a case of cultural appropriation.

[davidlevine]

Thanks for contributing that. I hadn't known about those differences.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I asked because you'd written of "writing under a pen name as a different gender" independent of what that gender was, and distinguished "men writing as women and vice versa" as a set from other kettles of fish, not from each other.

Let's just say your response above contains so many implications I don't accept that we'd best drop the subject.

[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.

[davidlevine]

All right.

[deedop.livejournal.com]

To further complicate things, sometimes cultural leaders will change the rules midstream:

Back mid-20th century, when certain B.C. area tribes performed a ritual called the "Winter Dance" that involved fasting, vision questing, and (obviously) dancing, the tribal leaders allowed outsiders to watch and record & write about the events and anthropologists did just that.

Now, the next tribal generation has decided that this was not okay and that Winter Dances are off-limits. So, the anthropologists who were previously welcome now have research that they may never use or release to the public again, and any fiction writer using this older research would most likely get into big trouble.