The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

i'm just not on board with the phrase "cultural appropriation" -- culture is seldom properly appropriated, since culture isn't a finite commodity.

Exactly. And if your primary concern is that someone is making money and you're not (which is what a lot of these "cultural appropriation" accusations and debates boil down to), well, that's not really about art or culture at all.

Contrariwise, stuff doesn't stop being about art and culture just because someone's getting paid.

Exactly. And if your primary concern is that someone is making money and you're not (which is what a lot of these "cultural appropriation" accusations and debates boil down to), well, that's not really about art or culture at all.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 10:48 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how does this statement even begin to make sense

It's really difficult for me to not look at anti-cultural appropriation arguments like the ones on this thread through a lens that translates them all as "I can't wait for racism to finally be over so I can put on this sweet headdress"

"Let's fight racism but ignore its consequences in the meantime"

It's really difficult for me to not look at anti-cultural appropriation arguments like the ones on this thread through a lens that translates them all as "I can't wait for racism to finally be over so I can put on this sweet headdress"

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Tuesday, November 24, 2015 10:56 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry for your difficulties.

(sorry, just fighting one patronizing red herring w/ another.)

i just think it's kind of an intellectually shallow concept; i'm not running out this weekend to don blackface or whatever.

dont close yourself off from culture, amateurist

some of my favorite stories in history are about cultural transfer. like fish and chips (brought to england by portuguese marranos) is the same thing as tempura (brought to japan by the jesuits)

but for every story like that there's, you know, all those white managers and label heads with songwriting credits on R&B songs

sorry for your difficulties.

you're being a total dick

only just worked out that don blackface is not a controversial performer

goole otm about fish and chips, globalization has been downhill since

Room quietens as people ponder the implications of a waterface defence and what it implies for their position

you're being a total dick

i actually pointed this out myself. but thanks for the constructive criticism-- and for singling me out on a thread that's full of this sort of thing.

only just worked out that don blackface is not a controversial performer

don blackface's career took a nosedive in the 1950s, that's probably why you haven't heard of him.

Blackface isn't cultural appropriation. It has a long history of being a way to caricature black people, and so despite intentions when it appears today it can't help but evoke that history. It is experienced by others as an affront. It's racist in ways that are easy to describe.

A white dude with a traditional maori tattoo, for instance, seems like the kind of thing people would describe as appropriative. It might be offensive, but for different reasons.

there was a black man at my gym last week using the elliptical in front of me who had hebrew letter tattoos on each of his arms. i didn't feel appropriated at all, just amused.

I feel like a lot of these things -- when traditional symbols are lifted out of context -- are tacky and thoughtless and ignorant and I understand the desire to critique them. But the term "cultural appropriation," as a description of a thing that is a priori bad, just leads to chaos.

xp how do you know he wasn't Jewish?

Because he had tattoos, probably

what djp said

I know a Jewish guy with hebrew tattoos. He's pretty secular though.

the yoga thing is just so stupid. do college kids not read this book anymore?

http://www.ananda.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/autobiography_yogi_book.jpg

It is entirely about an Indian Yoga who is charged by his teacher to bring yoga to America. There have been many instances of this, of teachers from India coming to the US explicitly to start western yoga schools.

Furthermore yoga itself is a term for a number of different schools of thought and the yoga typically practiced in the west puts emphasis on the physical benefits of its practice. Yoga is a bad example since it is seen more as a kind of science, esp compared to western religious rituals. If you have the knowledge and know how to practice, anyone can do it. It's portability is written into the practice.

xp oh yeah, I thought there was a tattooing tradition w/some Ethiopian Jews but I guess those are specific kinds of tattoos & not generic bicep tats

i always forget about the jewish prohibition on tattoos! i know a bunch of people who have broken that. so the guy could very well have been jewish.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of secular jews aren't even aware of the prohibition

a more extreme example of jewish appropriation is the black israelite movement which not only borrows judaism but in its most extreme manifestations (such as the Nation of Yahweh) claims that the jews today are not the real jews but imposters. i used to see them preaching in NYC all the time about the white jewish devil imposters (i haven't seen them in a while so i don't know if that kind of thing still goes on). i think the former - identifying as jewish - i don't have a problem with at all (and i kinda love different pseudo-jewish movements). i'm more bothered by the exclusionary nature of the extremists. so it's not even the appropriation that's the problem - it's the appropriation and then denial of my own identity that bothers me.

come on are you seriously bothered by black isrealites mordy

well i was bothered when they yelled at me and called me derogatory names when i walked around wearing a yarmulke

i mean i'm not really bothered atm since i haven't seen or heard from them - they don't have much of a presence in bala cynwyd

there is a difference between crazy people who yell at you sometimes and people who have actually appropriated your identity

society does not accept them as jewish and there's nothing you could do to make society not think you are jewish

that's what i was trying to say - the borrowing of jewish ideas + practices really does not bother me at all. it's only when it becomes a part of an antagonistic denial of identity that it bothers me. and there it's mostly the antagonism (tho trying to talented mr. riply a religion is nagl).

there are a whole bunch of "black jewish" groups -- marvin gaye's dad was a minister in one such congregation. there isn't much that the various churches (or temples) have in common other than claiming jewish identity.

i mean, some are black nationalist, others have tried to petition israel to allow them citizenship, others are really off the deep end.... it's all over the place, much like all the many diverse penetecostal black churches that have all kinds of traditions, identites, etc. in fact i think you could see the "black jew" movement (if it is that) as being a kind of unexpected outgrowth of a certain eccentric strain of black protestantism.

and then there's the rastafarians which sort of fit in there.

anyway.

yes - there are some wonderful black israelite groups that are not extremist at all including one in Dimona. that's where this guy is from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXBRMYT3dWs

also this album which is fantastic:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11481-soul-messages-from-dimona/

good piece here on the theme: http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2015/11/09/all-saints-day/

1) The concepts of appropriation and ownership. This is where moves are being made that are at least potentially reactionary and may in fact lead to the cultural and social confinement or restriction of everyone, including people of color, women, GLBQT people, and so on. In some forms, the argument against appropriation is closely aligned with dangerous kinds of ethnocentrism and ultra-nationalism, with ideas about purity and exclusivity. It can serve as the platform for an attack on the sort of cosmopolitan and pluralistic society that many activists are demanding the right to live within. Appropriation in the wrong institutional hands is a two-edged sword: it might instruct an “appropriator” to stop wearing, using or enacting something that is “not of their culture”, but it might also require someone to wear, use and enact their own “proper culture”.

When I have had students read Frederick Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, which was basically the operator’s manual for British colonial rule in the early 20th Century, one of the uncomfortable realizations many of them come to is that Lugard’s description of the idea of indirect rule sometimes comes close to some forms of more contemporary “politically correct” multiculturalism. Strong concepts of appropriation have often been allied with strong enforcement of stereotypes and boundaries. “Our culture is these customs, these clothing, this food, this social formation, this everyday practice: keep off” has often been quickly reconfigured by dominant powers to be “Fine: then if you want to claim membership in that culture, please constantly demonstrate those customs, clothing, food, social formations and everyday practices–and if you don’t, you’re not allowed to claim membership”.

And then further, “And please don’t demonstrate other customs, clothing, food, social formations and everyday practices: those are for other cultures. Stick to where you belong.” I recall a friend of mine early in our careers who was told on several occasions during her job searches that since she was of South Asian descent, she’d be expected to formally mentor students from South Asia as well as Asian-Americans, neither of which she particularly identified with. I can think of many friends and colleagues who have identified powerfully with a particular group or community but who do not dress as or practice some of what’s commonly associated with that group.

What’s being called appropriation in some of the current activist discourses is how culture works. It’s the engine of cultural history, it’s the driver of human creativity. No culture is a natural, bounded, intrinsic and unchanging thing. A strong prohibition against appropriation is death to every ideal of human community except for a rigidly purified and exclusionary vision of identity and membership.

best argument for cultural appropriation: banh mi

(or hell: noodles!)

I think the particular form of appropriation at issue probably draws from Edward Said's "Orientalism"-- which is to say a form of appropriation that's inextricable from colonialism etc. But I think what gets lost is that Said was going in for something very specific and not just cultural exchange per se.

orientalism precedes colonialism

I studied Orientalism in grad school and tbh I found it pretty unpersuasive. I'd have to open it back up to give exact references but iirc I felt that he drew very broad conclusions from a very small subset of scholars and then extrapolated from them to much larger trends in society - none of which had a very cohesive or coherent thoroughline. nb I know that criticizing Said is blasphemous in the modern academy but I wouldn't be surprised if a poor understanding of culture emerged from that particular text.

oh I think he's criticized a lot actually! not my field though so someone could better say how that text is received these days. was just speculating on the intellectual roots of a certain idea of cultural appropriation.

oh! fair enough. i remember when he died Critical Inquiry did an entire issue on him that bordered of the hagiographic which led me to believe that the academy was pretty infatuated. if there's more critical pushback that's wonderful.

yeah i think there's a distinction (not necc even a subtle one) between cultural exchange, sharing, borrowing, and what's called "appropriation" -- but also agreed that not everyone using the latter term has probably thought that thru v. fully.

i actually also think that the criticism of said is nearly all (with some notable exceptions like aijaz ahmad) within a generally hagiographic narrative -- i.e. he made important contributions _but_.

Btw the jewish prohabition that i didn't know existed/was respected until very recently is Shatnez. especially impressed by the fact that there seem to be conflicting theories on why this came about, and there's no clear correct answer.

FWIW I have been exposed to the various weird Jewish identity denial stuff (including via Nation of Islam, Black Hebrews, afrocentrism and various random people on social media, often, I think, posting from Arab countries where there is a political interest in denying that Ashkenazi Jews are "real" Jews).

I don't think it has much to do with appropriation though, in the sense that we're discussing it.

I was once randomly stopped on the street by a Nation of Islam guy handing out Daily Caller newspapers. He goes "Jewish John!" And I'm like, "Uh, what? Do I know you? My name isn't John." (was not wearing a yarmulke or jewish star or anything like that, fwiw). And he goes "I called you Jewish John, because you're a Johnny-come-lately Jew."

xp when i was in yeshiva there used to be a tailor with expertise in shatnez who would visit all the yeshivas and check the student's suits for shatnez (and remove it if necessary). he also ran a side business in giving people the opportunity to do shiluach ha-ken (chasing away the mother bird). he was like a maven in exotic mitzvot.

yeah i learned about it because my friend went to a tailor who advertised shatnez compliance and was baffled.

it's related to the prohibition against cross-breeding, both of which are considered chokim in jewish law aka laws that are suprarational and we don't know the reason for (by contrast w/ eidot or symbolic laws like Passover, or mishpatim - laws that are rational like no murder).

Superstitious belief in "purity" maybe? That's found in a lot of religions.

the quintessential chok is actually directly related to the laws of purity - it's the ritual sacrifice of the red heiffer to use its ashes to remove impurity from people. the actual verse says "these are the chokim (laws) of the torah" and then goes into the red heifer. i once asked my rosh yeshiva why it says "of the torah" when we're reading the torah and surely we realize these aren't the laws of the new testament of the qur'an and he quoted his father who said that when it says "of the torah" it means that this law teaches us a general rule about the essential nature of the torah. in this case it's that the person who sprinkles the ashes of the red heifer becomes impure, while the person being sprinkled on becomes pure. which teaches us that the holiest thing a person can do is to make themselves impure in order to purify their fellow. i always thought that was a lovely explanation.

that sounds similar to some hindu customs, where the cow is sacred but people butchering cows are tainted by their approximation to death