Dry goods
A writer named Suki Kim also wrote about her reactions to Lionel Shriver’s talk. She at least had the decency to hear the talk first. The most striking thing about her piece, to me, is her definition of cultural appropriation.
Shriver—a thin middle-aged woman with spectacles and brown hair—began her speech by describing herself as a “renowned iconoclast.” She declared that she would not, in fact, be exploring the theme of “community and belonging,” but would instead discuss the issue of “fiction and identity politics.” In a diatribe that has since become notorious, she proceeded to enumerate the various ways in which cultural appropriation—the idea that white artists and communities have stolen elements of minority cultures in ways that are oppressive—was harmful to people everywhere.
Cultural appropriation is the idea that white artists and communities have stolen elements of minority cultures in ways that are oppressive.
Stolen.
Here’s the thing: it’s not possible to steal elements of a culture except in the case of actual physical artifacts, like the Elgin Marbles. There certainly has been plenty of that kind of stealing, but Shriver was definitely not saying that invaders and imperialists should help themselves to other people’s statues and paintings without leave or payment. The kind of accusations of cultural appropriation she was talking about have to do with intangibles, and you can’t steal those. You can’t steal them, and you shouldn’t try to keep other people from sharing in them. You should credit them, certainly; you shouldn’t pretend they’re your invention when they’re not; but you should admire them, take an interest in them, tell others about them.
Updating to add for the benefit of Silentbob who missed the point: You can’t steal intangibles because they don’t go away when you share in them. You can do other kinds of things to intangibles – like degrade them, make them less valuable, make fun of them, spoil them for others, take the shine of them – but you can’t steal them. If I copy a dance or a way of cooking from India or Peru, the dance and way of cooking are still there.
Unless, of course, the culture is feminism and you are a transgender mother. In that case you should shut the fuck up and stop appropriating womanhood.
You certainly shouldn’t claim to know more about a minority culture than the minority themselves, right Silent Bob?
And you shouldn’t privilege your identification with that minority culture over the minority’s identification either. You should probably be extremely respectful and listen to what they say about their identity, and you certainly shouldn’t call them oppressive bigots who should die in fires if they don’t accept your identification 100% exactly as you claim.
I said, right in the post: You should credit them, certainly; you shouldn’t pretend they’re your invention when they’re not.
I said that.
Also, feminism is not “a culture.” It’s a political movement and analysis.
Also, I never said the transgender mother should shut the fuck up.
Other than that…
But I didn’t spell out the distinction I was making, because I’d made it before when writing about this, plus it’s kind of obvious. But fine: I’ll add it to the post for the benefit of not so silent bob.
“not so silent bob”
*chuckle*
More interestingly, though, what about the notion of intellectual property? If ideas can be considered a form of property, then they can be stolen, right? Aren’t cultural practices just the expression of ideas, and therefore a form of property which can be subject to theft?
That’s why I said “You should credit them, certainly; you shouldn’t pretend they’re your invention when they’re not.” I don’t think ideas should be copyrighted or patented. I think the whole point of them is sharing. And I’m repulsed and horrified by the way the King children are treating MLK’s ideas as a cash cow.
There are some exceptions, I guess, such as academic work. And there are fuzzy boundaries – how much is sharing and how much is lifting. But basically – I think ideas should be shared, with due credit.
I think maybe there are problems when people who are not from a minority group profit from a replica of an artifact which is distinctive of a minority group’s culture, like the cheap boomerangs made in China and sold to tourists here in Australia. I guess many sombreros on the market would fall into this category too. These practices don’t steal from Aboriginals and Mexicans in the sense that Aboriginals and Mexicans lose some of the amount of boomerangs and sombreros they had before, but it does seem plausible to think that this could be intellectual property theft in the usual sense, except applicable to a group or culture instead of a particular individual. But if you’re a writer (or an artist) like Shriver, you’re not attempting to construct a replica, but a representation of your own beliefs or imagination as part of an original work. And if you’re an individual who is gaining enjoyment or utility from cultural artifacts like boomerangs or sombreros (or dreadlocks), then I think that’s ok because you’re not intending yourself as a replica in order to profit, but you should think about who you buy these items from. As for practices and skills like yoga or playing an instrument, I don’t think it makes sense to think of these “replicas”, and agree that they can be shared, and should be shared if they are worth sharing.
IANAL. Intellectual Property (IP) has a specific technical meaning, that varies slightly from one jurisdiction to another, which is quite distinct from the very general cultural way it is often interpreted. In general, IP has monetisable value. In other words you use that knowledge to generate income either directly or indirectly. So, writings, calculations or original thinking on which you can base income generating activity – all IP. Simply being a particular sex, colour, ethnicity, religion or identification of some sort – not so much. Admittedly there is a fuzzy area if you have a culture with a very niche and unusual art/music/dance etc from which your tribe/ethnic group can derive income through creation and sale of said, or via tourist type performance for fee.
But yeah, everything else is lifting or interpretation of something that doesn’t actually belong to anyone. Tread carefully for reasons I outlined a few days ago, but in general I think human culture is greatly improved by sharing and (re)interpretation.
Like Rob, IANAL, but I do follow this because I am a writer. I think ideas are sort of in an iffy gray area. The courts didn’t agree to the idea that ideas are property in the case where Dan Brown was sued over The DaVinci Code – ideas are out there, and you can use them, make them your own to create your own “stuff” from them. At least, that’s how I understood it, but there are almost certainly some places in which ideas can’t be lifted.
The term “intellectual property” is almost exclusively used by corporations – and especially universities – to claim (financial) credit for whatever clever things their employees did, whether on or off the clock.
I’m not bitter, you can tell that, right? No words I’ve crafted into grant proposals or papers have made it into patent applications without me ever being credited or notified. Like I said, I’m clearly not bitter.
Anyway, just being who you are isn’t IP. As a person of Yorkshire descent I’d love to erase Last of the Summer Wine from the public record. To be fair: less because it is a clear candidate for cultural appropriation than because it is shit, but either way, my profoundly held beliefs in my Yorkshire heritage somehow demand that television production companies shouldn’t depict our time-honored cherished and – dare I say it, sacred – habits of being a bit thrifty and sending elderly people down steep hills in baths unless our fictional yorkshire elders agree.
Note to Americans and other improbable people: Last of the Summer Wine is a terrible yet bewilderingly immortal show on British TV about old men in the Yorkshire dales who inevitably end up going down steep hills in baths for no reason anyone has ever been able to determine.
Wensleydale cheese, though. That’s a different matter. That is clearly intellectual property: someone worked out a way to make something great and ought to be able to make modest amounts of money out of it.
And just in case I haven’t been obnoxiously Yorkshire enough: It’s WEN*S*LEYDALE, not WEN*Z*LEYDALE.
But anyway, IP is about lawyers fighting over whether printer companies should force us to use their ink instead of anyone elses, not about whether people can use terrible accents in audiobooks.
Cheese Gromet?
I read the entirety of Shriver’s talk, and there is one part that I find so damned troubling: when she says certain attributes of a person are not an identity. The primary example with which I am familiar is this: “being deaf is not an identity”. Cutting her a great deal of slack, I would say, “Okay…sort of.” Let’s look at the U.S.: there is a Deaf culture with its own language, cultural rules, etc., that has been subject to actual violent oppression. While being Deaf does not make up the *totality* of a person’s identity, Shriver is entirely wrong to claim, categorically it seems to me, that it is not *an* identity.
clamboy, I find that an interesting example as it touches upon the profession I work in. While I have excellent hearing I do know many people who are very badly hearing impaired. Here in NZ there are certainly deaf people (generally those born deaf) who I would describe as have a sub-culture. However, I wouldn’t from observation rank it as being any different to the many many sub-cultures that arise based around say hip hop, punk, grunge, skate boarding etc etc.
the main difference being that the deaf person can’t change their mind after 10 years and adopt a new set of ears, likes and dislikes.
I think I’d still on balance describe being deaf as an experience rather than an identity. For those (the vast majority) who become deaf through occupational or recreational noise exposure, being deaf is just pain in the butt they adapt to with varying degrees of success. No-one can identify you as deaf until they interact with you, unlike being obviously of a different race or a women.
I’m wondering what possible purpose this description could possibly have; all I’m coming up with is that this is intended to paint Shriver as some unlikeable spinster stereotype. It’s so petty that I’m wondering if I’m being overly suspicious, but I can’t come up with any practical reason for that little aside.
It’s quite striking isn’t it Holms. Very similar to the description used by Clarke “cedar-blonde hair scraped back into a severe bun; stern blonde face; blonde neck disappearing into a pale yellow top”. Quite apart from the fact these people fancy themselves as writers and probably feel obliged to paint a verbal picture, I think they have been at pains to present her as unsympathetically as possible as part of the oppressor class, and therefore able to be dismissed off hand. Except of course she’s a women, which means she probably has at least some experience with marginalisation, coercion, being dismissed etc.
Rob at 16 – when I use the capital-D term “Deaf” (in the U.S.), I am referring to those whose primary language is American Sign Language (ASL), and whose cultural identity is that of the American Deaf culture. Physical perception of sound is not part of that cultural distinction, and indeed I have known numerous people whose perception of spoken language is fully adequate yet who identify more as Deaf – this due to their upbringing, primarily. So, being Deaf is a learned cultural identity, not an “experience.” This is part of why I object to Shriver’s blanket pronunciations such as “being deaf is not an identity.” She is simply wrong, as I said above.
Ophelia already pointed out that “Feminism” is not a culture. I’ll add: neither is womanhood.
Also, those two things–feminism and womanhood–are not identical.
(Now I’m wondering if “femininity”–the performance–can be considered a culture. I guess I’ll leave that to anthropologists to determine. In any case, I’m fine with transgender people, or anyone else, “appropriating” femininity and masculinity. Appropriate away, whoever wants to!)
@clamboy, I think she was challenging the notion of “identity” itself, as used by those who embrace identity politics. These mostly accidental facts about ourselves that people claim as “identities” may have helped shape us, but they’re not the whole of who we are. As Shriver said about the book that failed because its characters were Chinese, but “that’s all they were. It wasn’t enough.”
In other words (I think she’s saying), there’s more to human beings than that, and identity politics tends to reduce people to no more than the sum of their group memberships.
clamboy, I get what you’re saying – I really do. What I’m exploring is whether that learnt/adopted identity is sufficiently strong compared to other cultural identities to warrant being an Identity rather than identity so to speak. I’m conscious that we may end up interpreting the same words differently, being from different cultures. For instance, in America being Irish, as in ‘American Irish’ seems to be an identity in and of itself. Almost on a par with being Irish. Whereas from the distance of New Zealand being American Irish just makes you an American of Irish descent who takes St Patrick’s day off, enjoys aspects of Irish culture, is automatically suspicious of the English and has a line right to the top of most Eastern sea board police departments. In Ireland, being American Irish (my Irish colleague tells me) makes you either a try-hard numpty or a useful source of funds for the IRA, depending on local outlook.
Being Black, Women, Syrian etc are obvious identities that you can’t opt out of even if you try. People will treat the whole class of people like you in a certain way because of that, whether you personally identify that way or not.
I appreciate that this example may be poor or even wrong headed in some way, but do you get some inkling of what I’m on about? A person can be both Black and deaf and identify with both cultural identities. Failing a miracle or being able to afford a cochlear implant they’ll be deaf for life, but they can choose to no longer identify with deaf culture. They’ll still be black, even if they move to the Hamptons and eat whatever the hell rich white people in the Hamptons eat. I’m not jacqing off here, I’m seriously interested in just how tightly an identity can be defined and whether it can be represented simply by choice or ephemera and if so under what circumstances.
I support Shriver’s talk overall, but like clamboy, I stumbled on Shriver’s claim that
Rob proposed in #16 above,
That proposal sets up a distinction between people born and raised hearing then deafened by exposure — as a pain in the butt experience — versus people born and raised deaf from birth — analogous to being born and raised female, with a lifetime of experience of people interacting with them and identifying them as deaf, creating an identity. I see the protest Deaf President Now as legitimate and analogous to feminists wanting representation from people born and raised female.
Is Shriver playing the victim? Or is she opening up discussion? Are writers only allowed to write from their own cultural viewpoint? Huh?
Ursula Le Guin was accused of appropriation when she wrote “Always Coming Home” because of its’ similarity to Native American culture. Le Guin has always written her stories from the viewpoint of black/brown skinned people. She has written stories where characters’ cultures are based on pueblo and Masuo cultures. She is a great example of Not Appropriating.
It’s possible for Australian writers to steal Indigenous Australians’ cultural stories: because a lot of them are secret, supposed to be accessible only to community members through elder members.
Patricia Wrightson is a very famous and well-loved author of YA and children’s books whose writing featuring Indigenous people and creatures from Indigenous Australian mythology fell out of favour because of the issue of appropriation.
I loved her books and still own most of them. As a white Australian I was delighted to learn about Australian mythology. Well, the problem was, maybe I shouldn’t have. People who defend Wrightson say she wrote about creatures and mythology that were permissible for her to discuss and changing elements was within her rights as an author; critics say she didn’t have permission and her writing was a misrepresentation to boot.
Reading her books lead me to develop a much better understanding of and respect for Indigenous Australians’ culture. If I hadn’t read those books, and been inspired to continue educating myself, I might be the kind of person who thinks Pauline Hanson has a point. (Perhaps not. You have to be pretty far gone for that.) That’s really difficult to reconcile with the thought giving me that knowledge was a violation.
One kind of tangential point – “intellectual property” is not a technical term at all. It’s a decidedly non-technical word that obscures the difference between loosely-related but rather quite distinct areas of law, including Copyright, Trademarks, Patents, Trade Secrets, and a few others.
For a better description, and more reasons to think more clearly about what you actually mean when you were going to say “intellectual property”, see RMS’s essay Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage.
That is true and it is amazing how little anyone has noticed.
On a different but related note:
I’m a big fan of the Earthsea books. I have owned three or four different copies of each, some paper, some digital. The covers of all depict Ged as not just white, but even whiter than me (I’m pretty much translucent). The various terrible and often bizarre screen adaptations of the story also all depict Ged as white.
There is a sort of appropriation going on here, too. It’s rare to find a fantasy land populated by people who are – for the most part – not white. There are white people in the stories but the default is non-white. But there is no way you’d know that from the adaptations or – as I’ve said – even the fucking book covers.
@Karellen:
Exactly so and not at all tangential. The term is a stick, not a carrot. It’s not and never has been about creators getting what they deserve, it’s about moguls getting what they don’t deserve.
It’s also a term that has helped several bad things to happen. For example, if your printer refuses to use ink not supplied by its manufacturer, you’ll find IP as the justification. If you buy a book or a piece of music or video and then later find that you don’t own it after all and can’t watch it the way you want it, that specter of IP will be found lurking in the small print.
Rob @14:
A rare example in the various media of a (fake) Yorkshire accent not being a marker for stupidity. Wallace is a bit dim, yes, but only as a foil for his much smarter dog. Clegg was the only vaguely acceptable character in Last of the summer wine. I can live with that. But Yorkshire and other northern accents are almost universally used in media to depict simplicity or stupidity. Pick an audiobook at random, for example: if there’s a stupid, bombastic or stupidly bombastic character, there will also be a poorly-performed yorkshire or geordie accent. The brilliant hero will not be a northerner.
Pisses me off.
Interesting fact: my friend Claire has written an actual book about this question of Deaf identity (as well as about other things).
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/bookpage/PWSbookpage.html
The idea of “cultural appropriation” seems part and parcel of a strong tendency among many on the left to see world as a zero-sum game.
Rich countries are rich only because they plundered the poor ones, the success of any given white male comes only at the expense of other groups, etc.
And if a white anglo author uses aspects of some other culture, it must have been at the expense of that culture.
Apparently value is never created, it can only be inherited or stolen…
Holms @ 17 and Rob @ 18 –
Yes. That stuck out for me too. I almost said something about it, but decided it wasn’t quite obvious enough to object to without sounding too much like Shriver’s angrier critics. But yes, and I’m glad you did say about it. It’s subtle but all the more annoying for being subtle (because if it’s subtle you’re more likely to get away with it, because people decide not to challenge it for the reasons I didn’t). But yes. Omigod she’s thin and middle-aged, the horror.
Damn, I’ve been saying Wensleydale wrong all this time. I did think it was a hard s.
It’s one of my absolute favorite cheeses, possibly the favorite.
The only thing that could possibly be as bad is for a woman to be fat and middle-aged. Again, the horror.
After all, our bodies are there for the viewing pleasure of young males, right?
And you know what’s sad? All women are one or the other. There is no just right – there’s only wrong one way or another.
Lady Mondegreen at 21 – Thank you, I was just having a self-criticism session while eating breakfast. I think perhaps I dismissed Shriver’s words too hastily. In the context of writing fiction, making a character deaf, or Chinese, or whatever else, does not establish them as a person with a full identity. If that is what Shriver was getting at, then I do a big ol’ mea culpa.
Ophelia @34: most properly eaten with fruit cake. But named after the place, of course. S not Z.
Oh I knew it was named after the place. I’ve been pronouncing both wrong all this time.
(Fruit cake??? Hate the stuff. Love the cheese, will have to eat it improperly.)
I dislike fruit cake too. Dried fruit is awful. I will continue to eat the cheese improperly also.
Ah good. We’ll be eating-Wensleydale-improperly buddies then. I’m glad there’s no rift.
Funny, we have a cheese mongers close to work – run by a Yorkshireman – Wensleydale is wonderful cheese, which he always tries to get me to have with an eccles cake. I hate the things. I suspect more people enjoy the cheese by itself than with little lumps of sweet tar.
On the S vs Z. Having a NZ accent my ‘e’ tends to be very short and compressed, which makes the ‘s’ turn into a ‘z’ by default. When I play back the ‘mongers pronunciation in my head the ‘e’ is longer and the ‘s’ quite soft. At risk of being accused of mimicry I’ll make an effort.
I assume buying Wensleydale from a Yorkshireman means I have permission and am not appropriating anything?
:D
Been eating Wensleydale even since Wallace and Gromit. Lucky to have a store nearby that stocks the stuff more or less regularly, And at a good price. But the owner-manager is Greek. Don’t you dare tell him about appropriation!
Ophelia, latsot, I identify as a fruit cake-lover.
I am therefore authorized to tell you both to SHUT UP.
I am half-tempted to define ‘identity’ as something important enough to someone about themselves to get touchy about it. I’m also more than a bit tempted to suggest that a fine starting point for dealing with identity issues is politeness: don’t poke people where they are touchy without compelling need to.
Yes, complications show up fast – if someone’s leaving their sensitive spots way out there where they’re bound to get poked, being so polite that that does not happen may be more politeness than ought to be demanded of you. And if you’re cutting people slack about their touchy points out of other people’s hide… again, politeness, sheer simple decency, isn’t going to come down on the side of the excessively offendable.
A problem with defining identity in terms of categories you can’t choose to opt out of is that some such categories are one’s you shouldn’t have to. I’m bisexual. I can pass for straight whenever I care to; certainly having an opposite sex spouse helps there. I’m well aware of the privilege I get out of that – and I’m also, thank you, pissed off that it could be an issue. Clearly my sexual identity doesn’t in practice give me the load of troubles other varieties of non-cis/het people get – but chucking it out of the identity circle entirely would, in this context, be too much like supposing it’s no problem at all. We can do better than that, and should.
@Jeff Engel
I hear you. Another example: mixed race people who could choose to pass but don’t. Claiming identity is an active choice rather than an accident of birth.
Thank you Karellen, very useful.
Intellectual property is intended as a method to incentivize creativity. People cannot write or invent for a living if they can’t earn a living out of the result. It would be impossible to fund movies if anyone could do anything with them once they were out there. Even cinemas could show them without paying. Copyrights eventually expire. Anything that is still well-known by the time they do is probably a part of the culture and it’s only right that it should be in the public domain. Because culture is not something that should be owned.
A major criticism of intellectual property is that it often lasts too long. The author’s lifetime plus 70 years is the rule for UK books. The point has been made (I forget by whom) that copyright is intended to provide the creator with a living, not their great-grandchildren.
Culture covers pretty most aspects of life. It covers mainstream and sub-cultures, although those who promote cultural rights tend to be dismissive of the latter. It is not owned and should not be owned. That doesn’t mean any use is above criticism.
As a British person, I sometimes find American portrayals of Britain annoying. They often don’t ring true or are very stereotyped. I was irritated when King Arthur and co. were portrayed as kids at an American-style High school in a Shrek movie. Lots of people disliked it when Robin Hood was played by an American with an American accent in Prince of Thieves. Also the movie seems to suggest that it is possible to walk from Dover to Nottinghamshire via Hadrian’s wall in a few hours. But no-one owns these stories. They have been told over and over again for centuries. I can’t see that it would be better if some special government body had to give permission for all uses of British legends or cultures.
Incidentally, I love the portrayals of Britain in anime. Elite Church of England vampire-hunting organisations, the British Library trying to take over the world. That’s the kind of cultural appropriation I want to see.
Myrhinne:
The concept of intellectual property has nothing to do with creators, that’s the problem. Copyright is a very poor fit to what we think of as intellectual property as you rightly say. I don’t know who you’re thinking of as an advocate against extending copyright periods, but it might be Cory Doctorow. He’s an author himself and doesn’t think that publishing companies (rather than grandchildren, but same principle) ought necessarily to benefit from something someone else wrote ages ago.
Doctorow is an author who tries very hard to be ethical while still earning a living by writing books. Good books; dystopia judged about right with the voice of the people who ought to know.
But back to intellectual property. You seriously almost *never* see that term used in the wild outside contracts insisting that whatever cool things the contracted person does are not their property at all, but the property of the institution issuing the contract. That isn’t about incentivising creativity, it’s the exact opposite.
Copyright and patents are among the tools creators can use to make money from their creations. They are very broken indeed, especially in America. The concepts and practices are so easily exploitable by people who aren’t the creators as to be virtually meaningless in practice.
I don’t mean to be bleak. People will never stop being creative. But it’s absolute bullshit that the dubious concept of ‘intellectual property’ is something that incentivises creativity. It was probably the intention at some point, but it is nowhere close to reality.
The system may be very flawed but anyone employed to create in such circumstances is being paid a wage to work on whatever it is they are working on. The company is getting stuff created. The position of writers who have to create a work from scratch and then try to get someone to publish it is hardly ideal either. Anyone who sells a lot of books then gets a movie deal has done well out of the system but most books are not well marketed by publishers. I bet many people give up because they need a paid job and just don’t have the time outside of that for such a big commitment.
I’m not saying that there’s no room for improvement in the system but intellectual property does finance the process of getting things made.
Years ago, I read a book by Lawrence Lessig on intellectual property. It was in that but I think it was quoting someone else.
Larry Lessig is very, very smart on this issue. I disagree with him occasionally but he tends to have a way better big picture – and way forward – than I do.
Everything Is A Remix tells a history of IP starting at 26:00. Copyrights and patents were originally intended to give creators some time to use their creations with protection against copies, but then IP became a thing in itself that could be bought and sold as capital in capitalism. For example, Forbes tells this story
Soon after that, in 1985, Michael Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Lennon/McCartney song catalog for $41.5 million. Since then, every time McCartney plays a classic like “Hey Jude” in concert, McCartney pays royalties to use the song.
Wow that’s gruesome.
It seems to me that two issues are being conflated in this discussion. The right of an author to benefit from their work (and all the allied trades who print, publish and sell it)and the right of the creator to an unfettered imagination. Whatever happened to ideas of common humanity? Certainly not a case of ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’. Surely, it!s a skip, hop and a jump to outlawing the discussion of unacceptable philosophical and political ideas.