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Mar. 28th, 2009
Cultural exploration/blending
Mar. 28th, 2009 10:00 amMy post about assimilation and appropriation generated a lot of insightful comments from you guys! Thanks! What's interesting was that many of you jumped immediately to the gap in my argument, the "Then what" that I had purposely left unspoken because I wasn't very certain myself. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
satyreyes asked whether he could legitimately learn and perform flamenco. conejita thinks that blending is awesome. I really like how bakeneko put it:
It's something I think about a lot. After all, I do have an interest in Japanese, European, American, and Islamic cultures (via history and art history), and I'd like to continue exploring these and other cultures in ways that aren't appropriation. Likewise, my experiences in China and America makes me want to blend these cultures and to better teach one side about the other. And in responding to all of your comments, I think I have a better understanding now. So below is an improved version of what I wrote in response tobakeneko.
On exploring other cultures:
I think it comes down to properly contextualizing your every encounter with the culture. For example, the difference between the anime otaku who think that all of Japan loves anime and ends all of their sentences with "desu", and the anime otaku who realize the specific role anime plays in Japanese culture, that Naruto *isn't* the most popular anime in Japan, etc. To be able to distinguish between what the encounter truly taught you about a specific culture, instead of extrapolating an entire culture from this. Thus, the difference between a professor in Japanese studies, or a JET teacher saying "Japan is weird" and being able to back that up with evidence from many aspects of society, and some 15-yr-old saying "Japan is weird" just because he saw a 5 minute clip of a variety show. Or because he hated sushi.
By properly contextualizing your cultural encounter within the culture that you're encountering, you avoid appropriation. You're not *taking* an element out of the culture and making strange assumptions with it. You're *putting* yourself into the culture. Learn flamenco in the context of its Andalusian roots, and the merengue in the context of its Dominican Republic roots. (Start with the realization that flamenco is not considered a "Latin" dance). When buying a shirt with a foreign symbol on it, first make sure you know what it means, and what language it's from, and that placing it on a shirt is appropriate, and that it's the right language to use. (Why do you want "die" or "peace" on your shirt in Chinese? Versus, say, Arabic? Or Russian? Or Spanish? Or just plain English?) This is why I have little problem with SCA folks playing dress-up, and more problem with the Halloween "native american" outfits.
And in terms of blending cultures (vs. exploring/understanding), I think it's related to the difference between specific homage and generalized plagarism. When you're paying homage, you're expressing a respect and understanding to the source. When you're plagarising, you take others' work as your own, with active disregard for the ownership of the original. I've also added the modifiers of "specific" to homage and "generalized" to plagarism to connect it to my earlier point about contextualizing cultural elements. If you are paying homage to a cultural element and showing the depth of your understanding, it would necessarily be specific ("I drew influences from the Huangmei style folk opera prevalent in South-Central China"). If you are taking a cultural element with disregard for its origins and ownership, it would necessarily be general ("I put in some Chinese sounds"). For example, I felt a lot better about Avatar when I found out that they put specific effort into researching and choosing martial arts styles appropriate to each of the 4 (acknowledged non-Chinese) elements. Versus, say, the cosmetic inclusion of "Chinese" into Serenity.
satyreyes asked whether he could legitimately learn and perform flamenco. conejita thinks that blending is awesome. I really like how bakeneko put it:It seems to me that the things appropriation and assimilation have in common is they're ways to deal with cultural mixing and overlap that are unequal or unhealthy, in a lot of ways. These kind of processes deserve to be criticized. But this kind of critique gets accused by certain sectors as a requirement that things be "PC." I think that's unfairly dismissive, but I think part of that dismissiveness comes from the fact that it's often delivered as critique without solutions. People sometimes feel that they're being told lots of things they shouldn't do, without a lot of direction toward what they should. Maybe that's not justified, but it happens.
So, my question is, is there a positive inverse to this? Are there ways that people can explore or participate in cultures that aren't their own in some biological sense, or blend cultures, without being either assimilative or appropriative?
It's something I think about a lot. After all, I do have an interest in Japanese, European, American, and Islamic cultures (via history and art history), and I'd like to continue exploring these and other cultures in ways that aren't appropriation. Likewise, my experiences in China and America makes me want to blend these cultures and to better teach one side about the other. And in responding to all of your comments, I think I have a better understanding now. So below is an improved version of what I wrote in response to
bakeneko.On exploring other cultures:
I think it comes down to properly contextualizing your every encounter with the culture. For example, the difference between the anime otaku who think that all of Japan loves anime and ends all of their sentences with "desu", and the anime otaku who realize the specific role anime plays in Japanese culture, that Naruto *isn't* the most popular anime in Japan, etc. To be able to distinguish between what the encounter truly taught you about a specific culture, instead of extrapolating an entire culture from this. Thus, the difference between a professor in Japanese studies, or a JET teacher saying "Japan is weird" and being able to back that up with evidence from many aspects of society, and some 15-yr-old saying "Japan is weird" just because he saw a 5 minute clip of a variety show. Or because he hated sushi.
By properly contextualizing your cultural encounter within the culture that you're encountering, you avoid appropriation. You're not *taking* an element out of the culture and making strange assumptions with it. You're *putting* yourself into the culture. Learn flamenco in the context of its Andalusian roots, and the merengue in the context of its Dominican Republic roots. (Start with the realization that flamenco is not considered a "Latin" dance). When buying a shirt with a foreign symbol on it, first make sure you know what it means, and what language it's from, and that placing it on a shirt is appropriate, and that it's the right language to use. (Why do you want "die" or "peace" on your shirt in Chinese? Versus, say, Arabic? Or Russian? Or Spanish? Or just plain English?) This is why I have little problem with SCA folks playing dress-up, and more problem with the Halloween "native american" outfits.
And in terms of blending cultures (vs. exploring/understanding), I think it's related to the difference between specific homage and generalized plagarism. When you're paying homage, you're expressing a respect and understanding to the source. When you're plagarising, you take others' work as your own, with active disregard for the ownership of the original. I've also added the modifiers of "specific" to homage and "generalized" to plagarism to connect it to my earlier point about contextualizing cultural elements. If you are paying homage to a cultural element and showing the depth of your understanding, it would necessarily be specific ("I drew influences from the Huangmei style folk opera prevalent in South-Central China"). If you are taking a cultural element with disregard for its origins and ownership, it would necessarily be general ("I put in some Chinese sounds"). For example, I felt a lot better about Avatar when I found out that they put specific effort into researching and choosing martial arts styles appropriate to each of the 4 (acknowledged non-Chinese) elements. Versus, say, the cosmetic inclusion of "Chinese" into Serenity.