I actually think appropriation is a nonissue. Or, it's a shadow issue.
...I need to lay down some background to make this make sense. I was raised in a lesbian separatist community. As a direct result, I tend to find that othering--whether one is othering one's self, or somebody else--is counterproductive. Separatism is all about Men As Other. There is a category of fiction (Heart of Darkness, anyone?) that is about non-white as Other. There is a buttload of work out there in which women or queers or non-Christians are the Other.
You know what?
I think all this fucking Othering is counterproductive. I'm all for sitting down and talking and finding out what we have in common, rather than exoticising the ways in which we are different.
Which is not to say that we aren't different, or that unique cultures should be assimilated into the dominant paradigm. Because cultural imperialism is, well, cultural imperialism.
What I'm saying is that an honest attempt to undertand and connect with each other as human beings and individuals is a hell of a lot more productive than most of the other options. What I'm saying is that I have friends and acquaintances and ex-lovers and potential lovers who are Korean and Chinese and Japanese and Creole and West Indian and African-American and of the American First Peoples and Peruvian and....
...and when I read, I do not differentiate between stories of Anansi and stories of Thor. They are all part of my mythology as a human being, and it does not matter in terms of that myth that I am a blue-eyed gringo.
...and you will get me to stop putting those people into my books when you break my keyboard and take my fingers away.
Because my books would be lies without them.
...and if that seems like appropriation, then I will live with the label. Because I am the color I am by an accident of birth. And as for the rest, I can only quote Yevtushenko.
I am each old man here shot dead. I am every child here shot dead. (http://boppin.com/poets/yy_babiyar.htm)
I can't help being white. I can't help what people who happen to share my accident of melanin did, or do.
But I don't have to identify with them, or justify them, or agree with them.
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Fri, Jun. 2nd, 2006 03:41 am (UTC)...I need to lay down some background to make this make sense. I was raised in a lesbian separatist community. As a direct result, I tend to find that othering--whether one is othering one's self, or somebody else--is counterproductive. Separatism is all about Men As Other. There is a category of fiction (Heart of Darkness, anyone?) that is about non-white as Other. There is a buttload of work out there in which women or queers or non-Christians are the Other.
You know what?
I think all this fucking Othering is counterproductive. I'm all for sitting down and talking and finding out what we have in common, rather than exoticising the ways in which we are different.
Which is not to say that we aren't different, or that unique cultures should be assimilated into the dominant paradigm. Because cultural imperialism is, well, cultural imperialism.
What I'm saying is that an honest attempt to undertand and connect with each other as human beings and individuals is a hell of a lot more productive than most of the other options. What I'm saying is that I have friends and acquaintances and ex-lovers and potential lovers who are Korean and Chinese and Japanese and Creole and West Indian and African-American and of the American First Peoples and Peruvian and....
...and when I read, I do not differentiate between stories of Anansi and stories of Thor. They are all part of my mythology as a human being, and it does not matter in terms of that myth that I am a blue-eyed gringo.
...and you will get me to stop putting those people into my books when you break my keyboard and take my fingers away.
Because my books would be lies without them.
...and if that seems like appropriation, then I will live with the label. Because I am the color I am by an accident of birth. And as for the rest, I can only quote Yevtushenko.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead. (http://boppin.com/poets/yy_babiyar.htm)
I can't help being white. I can't help what people who happen to share my accident of melanin did, or do.
But I don't have to identify with them, or justify them, or agree with them.