Topic of the Week: The discussion around Cultural Appropriation seems to be, lately, very much settled. It seems, thanks to the Trump-scare, Democrats won! And Cultural appropriation, or any other more delicate issue, has no space in radical discussion.
Ever since I first heard about Cultural appropriation, it sounded like there was something missing in the discussion. When I was younger, I remember learning about cultural exchange, and how cultures that were in contact with each other would learn and often adapted some of the customs.
I don't ignore, of course, that, in relation to the white western culture, many of those exchanges were nothing more than ways to subject other cultures, to try to humiliate other people, show power over any thing that was not white and western. That said, I cannot equate this - which I understand as “cultural appropriation” - to the way different people, even within the white western world, learn and assimilate into their own lives different cultural practices. I think, at least, there should space in the anarchist environment for conversation, instead of just shutting down people, as has been the case in some anarchists events and gatherings.
So, how would you define the line between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation? What would justify not discussing about it anymore? What would be an interesting approach to the matter in anarchist events and gatherings?
Comments
to me cultural appropriation
s (not verified) Sun, 07/30/2023 - 18:02
to me cultural appropriation comes from exploitation, for example native cultures on turtle island have been under a continuous eradication attempt for 100s of years, and at many points native cultural practices have been banned and people punished for being a part of those cultures or practicing their culture. for people who still benefit from indigenous genocide and repression now taking parts of that culture for themselves while even if not illegal (sometimes it still is) indigenous people are still maligned and discriminated against for practicing their culture, it makes sense why native people are angry and resist the co-opting of their culture and traditions by their oppressors. even if it might seem silly for people to say “you can’t do this”, there is a power dynamic at play that makes cultural appropriation a problem. there is a difference between one people group taking inspiration from another people groups traditions and material culture and both groups are equal, and people in power taking these things from a people group they are subjugating.
Cultural expropriation should
anon (not verified) Sun, 07/30/2023 - 22:51
Cultural expropriation should only be denounced in earnest when it is the paternalistic embrace of a caricatured and fetishised exoticism. All manifestations of human culture stemming from the human existential experience belong to all humans who are able to contextualise them in a non-fetishistic and non-paternalistic way, as peers and not patrons.
Surely there are cases where
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/31/2023 - 08:25
Surely there are cases where cultural misappropriation arguments hold up but anyone that gets upset about white folks with dreadlocks needs to work on their saviour complex instead of reducing people to stereotypes and repressing a liberation movement they clearly don't understand or respect.
It's beyond me how anyone can be so ignorant to think that people promoting a culture best known for music that is full of messages of racial equality would be opposed to it spreading across any racial divide.
surprisingly sharp comments!
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 07/31/2023 - 12:24
surprisingly sharp comments!
I really enjoyed that article awhile back, posted about the do gooder, liberal nerds who played themselves about tarot cards being stolen from "the gypsies"?
something to do with the montreal bookfair? i don't remember. anyway, another good example of how to become a windmill tilting jackass who won't be able to show their face in the scene a few years later without dying from internalized self cringe. a particularly slow and cruel death!
i agree with anon that the haircut police, sneaking up behind you with their magical, race realist, gatekeeping scissors, is an excruciating example but the tarot cards thing had the added benefit of being completely based in old fashioned, orientalist gibberish which literally flipped the racism to the opposite direction. maybe the first true example of "reverse racism"?!
good clean fun at the expense of the saddest of dorks
Damn dude, stereotyping a bit
Martin Shkreli (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 12:42
In reply to surprisingly sharp comments! by lumpy (not verified)
Damn dude, stereotyping a bit much? Tarot cards doesn't come from the Gypsies or Romani peoples. Seems you and liberal nerds need to go back and look at the brief history of tarot cards. As I understand, you consider yourself a "history buff," so here is a brief history lesson. Tarot cards were invented in Italy by Italians in the 15th century. In the 18th century, French Kabbalahists and other mystics adapted it from the Italians and made it into for fortune telling purposes. Kabbalahism comes out of Judaism. The history and adaption of tarot cards has little to do with Orientalism and Gypsies/Romani.
You and these liberal nerds' belief that tarot cards derived from Gypsies/Romani is an ignorant stereotype. I hope you reevaluate and stop perpetrating the stereotype., and maybe help those liberal nerds reevaluate too.
yeah, i know? you read my
lumpy (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 13:00
In reply to Damn dude, stereotyping a bit by Martin Shkreli (not verified)
yeah, i know? you read my comment exactly backwards
the article i'm talking about was posted here awhile back, went in to great detail about how tarot is made up hippy nonsense from italy
Cultural appropriation tends
Martin Shkreli (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 12:14
Cultural appropriation tends to be similar to intellectual property. It's mostly a concept based around property. The dominate group in an area will co-op the minorities property to benefit themselves. Music is a good example in the US. Most of the of the popular music was created by black folk or jewish. White folk took those styles to enrich themselves whether intentional or not. Rock, metal, country, pop, rap, boy bands ...etc are mostly derived from blues and jazz.
It can be exploitative by co-op'ing the practices and dress of, say, the indigenous peoples in the US, and using them to make a mockery out of indigenous peoples. Then to go further, the dominant culture forces the indigenous people to abide to the dominant groups culture. They used to kidnapped indigenous kids and put them in schools meant for assimilation and forbade them from engaging in their own cultural practices.
The "West" has more or less imposed some of its cultural practices all over the world. In the end, I still feel like cultural appropriation is just another form of intellectual property.
co-op /= co-opt
anon (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 12:37
In reply to Cultural appropriation tends by Martin Shkreli (not verified)
co-op /= co-opt
one is short for cooperative, the other for cooptation
Thanks. My bad. Learned
Martin Shkreli (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 12:44
In reply to co-op /= co-opt by anon (not verified)
Thanks. My bad. Learned something new. ;^)
I think its interesting that
anon (not verified) Tue, 08/01/2023 - 19:27
I think its interesting that when people talk about cultural appropriation, they mostly talk about haircuts and other aesthetic choices. I wonder if its possible to focus this on a more harmful part of this dynamic like McDonalds using hiphop culture to sell poor and racialized people poison food. The US military using cultural signifiers to recruit people. The police using queer talking points to obscure the violence they do.
I wonder if people tend to forego these conversations because those enemies are too large and powerful. Because its easier to yell at some white stoner kid thats behind the times and didnt get the memo.
My personal experience with cultural appropriation has to do with participating in one of the elements of hiphop for over a decade and seeing it be used for all kinds of fuckery by different kinds of opportunists, capitalists, pigs, politicians etc. It sucks and I dont really know what to do about it other than continue participating and making sure that my participation is antagonistic to forces of recuperation.
I think it would be cool if people just decided what was and wasnt ok in their own small communities. If you and your group of friends thinks dreads are ok and the black people in your group genuinely dont have a problem with it, then it should be fine right? Why would anyone outside your group get to tell you how to do things? Maybe at some point youll run into a group with different values and you can figure that out somehow. Seems like just some regular life stuff.
Drawing lines around
anon (not verified) Thu, 08/03/2023 - 14:07
Drawing lines around whiteness, instead of abolishing it, always feels sketchy. Half the time I can't tell if a statement about what white people should or shouldn't do is coming from a liberal or a white nationalist.
I don’t want to be a Marxist but the broken clock is 4:20 allday
Mirasol (not verified) Fri, 08/04/2023 - 20:13
I usually think of cultural appropriation in economic terms, appropriating cultural and commodifying it, example urban outfitters (is this still the relevant company?) stealing [insert name of indigenous people} patterns for clothes. There was that interesting comment about co-op vs co-opt above, if there is a cooperative exchange and sharing of technology, art, language there is a a different kind of relationship to the more obviously violent relations of commodifying culture to benefit a profit model.
I won’t die on a bill about dreads but why are people mad at dirty kids but you’re not mad at all the fashion mullets?
I appreciate the thought out into this post and comment section compared to some others . Abolishing whiteness does seem like the goal I align with and I am against the enclosure of who gets to produce.
Appropriating indigenous
Mirasol (not verified) Fri, 08/04/2023 - 21:24
Appropriating indigenous spiritual forms w/o the intended content is entirely in line with the logic of capitalist colonialism, but do is marking off and contains everything considered sacred as property and this nothing more.-Erica lagalisse
Sacred is a spook Erica, all
anon (not verified) Fri, 08/04/2023 - 23:19
Sacred is a spook Erica, all anarchs know this.
I don't think you got the
ReadingCompreh… (not verified) Sat, 08/05/2023 - 08:48
In reply to Sacred is a spook Erica, all by anon (not verified)
I don't think you got the point with this quote. It says that the sacred is not the spooks but with our relating with spooks, and how capitalism recuperates these forms to enforce its own spook (property) onto these.
Your statement is a nothing
Different Anarch (not verified) Sat, 08/05/2023 - 10:45
In reply to I don't think you got the by ReadingCompreh… (not verified)
Your statement is a nothing statement.
If a spook spooks in the forest and there's no one around to reify it, does it make a sacred?
Everything is spookless without people relating to it, smartypants.
A spook is a SpooK is a sPoOk
anon (not verified) Sat, 08/05/2023 - 14:51
In reply to I don't think you got the by ReadingCompreh… (not verified)
A spook is a SpooK is a sPoOk is a sPOOk is a SpoOK is a spooK, mmmkay!
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
SirEinzige Sat, 08/05/2023 - 16:03
Everybody gains nobody loses. Stop repeating the view of retarded maoist born puritanical leftism.
SoOoooo true, my egregore
TardZigmods (not verified) Mon, 08/07/2023 - 17:01
In reply to THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CULTURAL APPROPRIATION by SirEinzige
SoOoooo true, my egregore brah! This retarded maocucks don't even know how kewl larping as other cultures can be! I WAS A SUICIDAL WHITE RASTAFARIAN THAT READ YUKIO MISHIMA, BECAME A SAMURAI WARRIOR AND CRASHED MY BENTLY INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO WHERE I OPENED A SMALL SOUL FOOD BANANA SUSHI STAND CALLED THE TAO OF BANAJAH! Retard cuck letists can FUCK OFF
The moderators MUST PROTEC SIREINZIGE only he represent their unretarded anarchy! All others are retarded leftist cucks!
BraAaah, yOur eSotEric
anon (not verified) Mon, 08/07/2023 - 17:22
In reply to SoOoooo true, my egregore by TardZigmods (not verified)
BraAaah, yOur eSotEric spOOkinEss wOn't wOrk!
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