Wiscon - Cultural Appropriation panel
Wed, May. 31st, 2006 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterModerator: Nisi Shawl
Panelists: Yoon Ha Lee, Gregory Frost, Judith E. Berman, Ekaterina Sedia, Theresa Carter
Ahhh, cultural appropriation, a topic near and dear to my heart.
Alas, the panel left me wanting to spork something, to co-opt![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yhlee's words.
This isn't going to be a report on the panel per se, largely because I took no notes. So it will mostly be me reacting.
It's probably extremely flame-worthy to note this, but 4 out of 6 of the panelists were white. I am noting this not because I think race automatically qualifies or disqualifies someone from talking about cultural appropriation, but because the tone of the panel felt very apologetic yet very entitled with regard to cultural appropriation. I will get into this later.
The panel started by saying that this was a topic discussed at WisCon every year. The agreement on what "bad" cultural appropriation was took place early on, with Berman giving the extreme example of scientists patenting the drug gained from the bark of a tree, the knowledge being gained via native tribes in the area. I don't remember if any "good" examples were given, but everyone basically agreed that the writer should be respectful, should research, etc.
I'm speaking of the panel as an entire entity, which is not proper representation. Shawl largely asked questions, Yoon didn't say that much, I disagreed a great deal with Frost, Sedia and Carter, and I thought Berman had very interesting things to say, had it not been a very late hour at night.
I started having problems when panelists began to talk about respecting the culture and having an appropriate level of reverence when writing about it, coupled with issues of gaining permission from the culture and the issue of renumeration, monetary or otherwise.
1. I agree re: respecting a culture, but I wish the panelists had gone deeper into the issue of when reverence crosses into making excuses for a culture (hello, Japanese scholarship!).
2. I have many issues with the thing about gaining permission, not in the least limited to who has this so-called authority, to the assumption that all people from a minority culture are the same and the assumption that there even is such thing as a monolithic culture.
3. I wish more panelists had thought about the idea that they aren't necessarily even representing a culture, just a very specific facet of a culture.
4. The issue of renumeration is extremely iffy with me, particularly with the touchy power dynamics inherent in that.
I think there was a little too much agreement on the panel, and I wish someone had been there to shake things up a little. Also, because so much of the panel seemed to be on how to make the cultural appropriation you are doing into "good" cultural appropriation and not questioning the underlying assumptions inherent in that and power differentials and all that interesting stuff.
Someone mentioned that you only have to worry about this for living cultures and not for dead cultures, which opens another can of worms entirely. I don't think the other panelists disagreed, but I may have missed it in my fuming. Although, it was limited to the mythology, so... I dunno.
Much of the discussion was also limited to co-opting the mythologies of different cultures, and while I do think that is a form of cultural appropriation, rewriting mythologies for some reason feels very different from writing on different cultures. I think this is because I'm of a mind that mythologies exist to be told and retold. Of course, this is simplifying the entire issue, particularly with the existence of bowlderized fairy tales and etc. But many of the issues I have with cultural appropriation lies in the representation or misrepresentation of different cultures.
While I by no means will say that anything gives a writer permission to write about anything, be it aliens, fantasy, or another culture, I had a very large problem with how quickly the panel agreed to this. There was a sense that the writer only had to get permission or to be respectful, and all issues of cultural appropriation would be solved. One panelist seemed to imply that simply getting the permission from an Egyptian family made it so that all facets of Egyptian culture representated in her book were ok.
Several panelists also mentioned that they felt they didn't have a culture -- in later discussion, Mely mentioned that people always seem to forget that "white American" is a culture, but that it just doesn't seem like one because it's the majority culture in this country. The assumption that "white American" isn't a culture is also problematic to me from a global POV. I think that "white American" is sometimes seen as the majority global culture. This is a very iffy statement on about a gazillion levels, obviously, but the prevalence of American popular culture and the very complicated politics and cultural negotiation involved in said prevalence isn't something that can be disregarded.
I asked the panelists about this, and Carter responded with a comment that American pop culture was like the atomic bomb. The panelists quickly retracted this, and I think Frost commented that they weren't creating American pop culture, esp. compared to Mission Impossible III or something like that. I think that was fairly disingenuous. Maybe no one on the panel is responsible for American pop culture, but that does affect how their work is perceived, just from the (unfair) fact that it is written by an American, or someone perceived to be an American. Panelists brought up examples of Bollywood and the manga/anime boom as ways in which American culture wasn't default, but I still don't agree with them. I still think when you go around the world, the general assumption is that stars from American pop culture (music, movies, etc.) will be known, while the stars from other pop cultures generally will not. I'm not saying that this is anyone's fault, but that it is a factor and that it does influence the lens through which people read things.
Also, I wanted people to talk about what happens when you have many people of another ethnicity/culture writing about an ethnicity/culture to an audience of the writer's own ethnicity/culture. I am not arguing for cultural authenticity, largely because I feel it's a sliding scale and nothing is 100% authentic, but I do have a problem with all views of a single culture in a genre coming from another culture. It starts to feel like colonization and the appropriation of language and story and brings up the always thorny issues of voice and representation. I'd like to note that this doesn't mean a story shouldn't be written, but... I just wish the panelists had thought about it more.
I wanted discussion on exoticization and viewing other cultures as "Other" and how to deal with that in writing. I also wanted discussion on how to critique culture in writing, because I think always adopting reverence toward a culture isn't always the answer. Actually, I think many of these issues apply to historical novels as well, of course, sans the tricky issue of colonization and current power differentials. How do you portray someone from a different culture without necessarily sanctioning a worldview? How do you make a character sympathetic without making them a 21-century American?
Someone in the audience of Native American descent ended up making a long comment on how if people weren't asked to help a minority culture, they shouldn't help or write about it. While I understand the sense of outrage and of a culture being used, I don't think making people stop writing about a culture they aren't a part of is helpful, nor does it assist with getting past the whole cultural appropriation issue.
Someone else in the audience said something about Japanese manga borrowing from American culture all the time and equated that to American fiction borrowing from Japanese culture. I had many issues with this, first and foremost being that it isn't the same because of the past history between the countries and again, power differentials with regard to politics and economics and etc.
Mely said later that she doesn't have issues with Japanese appropriating American culture, but she does have issue with the exoticization of blacks in manga, which I agree with. Ditto with the appropriation of Chinese culture (why, oh why, do all Chinese people have to be dressed in Chung Li style clothing in anime and manga?! Grr!).
I could blather on about this for pages and pages more, because this is a topic near and dear to my heart and one that affects me on a day to day basis. Am I authentic? What culture am I? What does it mean when I read and automatically assume that all the characters are white when I'm Asian? How does this affect me? What about when I focus on Asian representation, or when I make the assumption that "Asian" equates "East Asian" (I am trying very hard to break this habit)? Or when I focus on Asian and don't look at other cultures and ethnicities? Or, what does being enamoured of Japanese culture mean to me personally, how does Japan's history with Taiwan and China affect this, and what should I do?
I don't have any answers, only more questions.
yhlee on this panel
gaudior's past post on cultural appropriation
cofax's thoughts
My old post on cultural appropriation
ETA (5/28/07): Chronological link roundup for the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, sparked by this post and the ones linked above.
Panelists: Yoon Ha Lee, Gregory Frost, Judith E. Berman, Ekaterina Sedia, Theresa Carter
Ahhh, cultural appropriation, a topic near and dear to my heart.
Alas, the panel left me wanting to spork something, to co-opt
yhlee's words.This isn't going to be a report on the panel per se, largely because I took no notes. So it will mostly be me reacting.
It's probably extremely flame-worthy to note this, but 4 out of 6 of the panelists were white. I am noting this not because I think race automatically qualifies or disqualifies someone from talking about cultural appropriation, but because the tone of the panel felt very apologetic yet very entitled with regard to cultural appropriation. I will get into this later.
The panel started by saying that this was a topic discussed at WisCon every year. The agreement on what "bad" cultural appropriation was took place early on, with Berman giving the extreme example of scientists patenting the drug gained from the bark of a tree, the knowledge being gained via native tribes in the area. I don't remember if any "good" examples were given, but everyone basically agreed that the writer should be respectful, should research, etc.
I'm speaking of the panel as an entire entity, which is not proper representation. Shawl largely asked questions, Yoon didn't say that much, I disagreed a great deal with Frost, Sedia and Carter, and I thought Berman had very interesting things to say, had it not been a very late hour at night.
I started having problems when panelists began to talk about respecting the culture and having an appropriate level of reverence when writing about it, coupled with issues of gaining permission from the culture and the issue of renumeration, monetary or otherwise.
1. I agree re: respecting a culture, but I wish the panelists had gone deeper into the issue of when reverence crosses into making excuses for a culture (hello, Japanese scholarship!).
2. I have many issues with the thing about gaining permission, not in the least limited to who has this so-called authority, to the assumption that all people from a minority culture are the same and the assumption that there even is such thing as a monolithic culture.
3. I wish more panelists had thought about the idea that they aren't necessarily even representing a culture, just a very specific facet of a culture.
4. The issue of renumeration is extremely iffy with me, particularly with the touchy power dynamics inherent in that.
I think there was a little too much agreement on the panel, and I wish someone had been there to shake things up a little. Also, because so much of the panel seemed to be on how to make the cultural appropriation you are doing into "good" cultural appropriation and not questioning the underlying assumptions inherent in that and power differentials and all that interesting stuff.
Someone mentioned that you only have to worry about this for living cultures and not for dead cultures, which opens another can of worms entirely. I don't think the other panelists disagreed, but I may have missed it in my fuming. Although, it was limited to the mythology, so... I dunno.
Much of the discussion was also limited to co-opting the mythologies of different cultures, and while I do think that is a form of cultural appropriation, rewriting mythologies for some reason feels very different from writing on different cultures. I think this is because I'm of a mind that mythologies exist to be told and retold. Of course, this is simplifying the entire issue, particularly with the existence of bowlderized fairy tales and etc. But many of the issues I have with cultural appropriation lies in the representation or misrepresentation of different cultures.
While I by no means will say that anything gives a writer permission to write about anything, be it aliens, fantasy, or another culture, I had a very large problem with how quickly the panel agreed to this. There was a sense that the writer only had to get permission or to be respectful, and all issues of cultural appropriation would be solved. One panelist seemed to imply that simply getting the permission from an Egyptian family made it so that all facets of Egyptian culture representated in her book were ok.
Several panelists also mentioned that they felt they didn't have a culture -- in later discussion, Mely mentioned that people always seem to forget that "white American" is a culture, but that it just doesn't seem like one because it's the majority culture in this country. The assumption that "white American" isn't a culture is also problematic to me from a global POV. I think that "white American" is sometimes seen as the majority global culture. This is a very iffy statement on about a gazillion levels, obviously, but the prevalence of American popular culture and the very complicated politics and cultural negotiation involved in said prevalence isn't something that can be disregarded.
I asked the panelists about this, and Carter responded with a comment that American pop culture was like the atomic bomb. The panelists quickly retracted this, and I think Frost commented that they weren't creating American pop culture, esp. compared to Mission Impossible III or something like that. I think that was fairly disingenuous. Maybe no one on the panel is responsible for American pop culture, but that does affect how their work is perceived, just from the (unfair) fact that it is written by an American, or someone perceived to be an American. Panelists brought up examples of Bollywood and the manga/anime boom as ways in which American culture wasn't default, but I still don't agree with them. I still think when you go around the world, the general assumption is that stars from American pop culture (music, movies, etc.) will be known, while the stars from other pop cultures generally will not. I'm not saying that this is anyone's fault, but that it is a factor and that it does influence the lens through which people read things.
Also, I wanted people to talk about what happens when you have many people of another ethnicity/culture writing about an ethnicity/culture to an audience of the writer's own ethnicity/culture. I am not arguing for cultural authenticity, largely because I feel it's a sliding scale and nothing is 100% authentic, but I do have a problem with all views of a single culture in a genre coming from another culture. It starts to feel like colonization and the appropriation of language and story and brings up the always thorny issues of voice and representation. I'd like to note that this doesn't mean a story shouldn't be written, but... I just wish the panelists had thought about it more.
I wanted discussion on exoticization and viewing other cultures as "Other" and how to deal with that in writing. I also wanted discussion on how to critique culture in writing, because I think always adopting reverence toward a culture isn't always the answer. Actually, I think many of these issues apply to historical novels as well, of course, sans the tricky issue of colonization and current power differentials. How do you portray someone from a different culture without necessarily sanctioning a worldview? How do you make a character sympathetic without making them a 21-century American?
Someone in the audience of Native American descent ended up making a long comment on how if people weren't asked to help a minority culture, they shouldn't help or write about it. While I understand the sense of outrage and of a culture being used, I don't think making people stop writing about a culture they aren't a part of is helpful, nor does it assist with getting past the whole cultural appropriation issue.
Someone else in the audience said something about Japanese manga borrowing from American culture all the time and equated that to American fiction borrowing from Japanese culture. I had many issues with this, first and foremost being that it isn't the same because of the past history between the countries and again, power differentials with regard to politics and economics and etc.
Mely said later that she doesn't have issues with Japanese appropriating American culture, but she does have issue with the exoticization of blacks in manga, which I agree with. Ditto with the appropriation of Chinese culture (why, oh why, do all Chinese people have to be dressed in Chung Li style clothing in anime and manga?! Grr!).
I could blather on about this for pages and pages more, because this is a topic near and dear to my heart and one that affects me on a day to day basis. Am I authentic? What culture am I? What does it mean when I read and automatically assume that all the characters are white when I'm Asian? How does this affect me? What about when I focus on Asian representation, or when I make the assumption that "Asian" equates "East Asian" (I am trying very hard to break this habit)? Or when I focus on Asian and don't look at other cultures and ethnicities? Or, what does being enamoured of Japanese culture mean to me personally, how does Japan's history with Taiwan and China affect this, and what should I do?
I don't have any answers, only more questions.
yhlee on this panelgaudior's past post on cultural appropriationcofax's thoughtsMy old post on cultural appropriation
ETA (5/28/07): Chronological link roundup for the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, sparked by this post and the ones linked above.
(no subject)
Wed, May. 31st, 2006 09:20 pm (UTC)I've been copping it a bit since Magic or Madness was published in Australia. In the US it was well-received and there was much rabbitting on about the authenticity of my repres'ion of Australia. I am Australian so natch, right?
Nope. In Australia I've lost count of how many people tell me that Australians don't say x, y or z. Or that I've been out of Australia so long I've lost touch. (Excuse me? I spend a minimum of six months a year there. I've lived anywhere else for more than nine months straight and until I was in my mid-twenties I'd never lived anywhere else! This is part of a strongly held theory that so-called "ex pats" have no clue what's going on back home and thus cannot write about the country they come from. Firstly, I'm not---nor will I ever be---an ex-pat, and secondly, even if I was I call bullshit! I could not go home for ten years and I'd still know Sydney all the way down to my bones.)
This is a long-winded way of agreeing with you. There is no one "correct" view of any one culture. There is no central bureau from which to get permission to write about any particular culture. No matter how "authentic" you try to be someone's going to tell you that you fucked it up. I mean, I'm Australian writing about Australia and I'm being told that.
The whole thing makes my hair stand on end.
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Wed, May. 31st, 2006 09:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Wed, May. 31st, 2006 10:16 pm (UTC)I think right there is where I would've given up on that panel.
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Wed, May. 31st, 2006 10:32 pm (UTC)So many people need to hear this:
You have an accent and you have a culture. Most likely more than one. Everybody does.
Whatsmore there ain't no one that doesn't have "mixed" blood.
/rant
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Wed, May. 31st, 2006 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 01:33 am (UTC)Every time I encounter this, it boggles my mind, and I encounter it all the time, among people who should know better. Among people who do know better, if they stop and think for a minute. Part of the problem, I think, is that people conflate ethnicity with culture (which the panel itself seems to have done), and they think they have no ethnicity because they're white Americans. They're wrong, even if their ancestors did their level best to rid themselves of any trace of ethnicity after coming to America, but let me address culture a bit. I was born into an LDS (Mormon) family. I was raised in the LDS church. I'm still a member, though I have a lot of issues with the prevalent culture of the church. My dad joined the military when I was seven. When I moved out on my own, I experienced culture shock because life is different as a civilian. I married a civilian, who joined the Navy after a few years of marriage, and lemme tell ya, it's been a relief to get back to the culture in which I grew up.
I have cousins who have lived their whole lives in the rural town in which I was born, and only lived for nine months before my parents moved. Ethnically, we come from the same stock, but culturally? What about my adopted cousins, who came to live with my aunts and uncles as babies in that same rural town, growing up without moving away? Ethnically, my family is pretty uniformly of Northern European stock. My cousins are Chinese-American. Culturally, who's closer to my blood cousins, my adopted cousins or myself?
A lot of people in the U. S. tend to refer to themselves by region, religion, where they went to school, sexual orientation, profession, favorite pastime, ethnic heritage, gender, age, marital status. Each of these things involves at least one culture. I would have thought specwriters, of all people, would get that.
As for ethnicity...I don't even know where to start. One advantage of LDS culture, I guess, you learn to value the knowledge of where you came from, even if the place itself is not so nice.
(no subject)
Sat, Jun. 3rd, 2006 06:45 am (UTC)Because several of the people who said that on the panel first listed the list of "German, Irish, Jew, Welsh, Russian, etc." and concluded with "I have no culture." Siiigh, now I wish I took notes because I'm so putting words into people's mouths.
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Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 03:48 am (UTC)Is respect the assumption of neutrality and an attempt to check your White American values at the door? Is is an assumption of deference? Because that doesn't seem to be the answer given the hip-hop communities long standing tradition of mocking suburban white teenagers who listen to hip-hop and a attempt a more "ghetto" manner.
But then the issue of deference gets caught up in so many issues about power and control and history and race. Who gets to say that an appropriation is okay? Who gets to decide who can take the bark from the tree? Is it tribal? Is it local? Is it the state? Is it an individual land owner?
So what is respectful? Is it an assumption of that cultures values? Is it a critical stance towards that culture? But how does one separate that critical stance from ones own biases? Who defines what the culture is?
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come into your journal and ask a bunch of questions.
(no subject)
Sun, Jun. 4th, 2006 06:13 am (UTC)I think the problem with looking at hip-hop communities' mockage of suburban white teenagers isn't simply confined to respect, because it's taking place within the context of a culture in which said suburban white teenagers can adopt a more "ghetto" manner without having to worry as much about being randomly stopped by police or being stereotyped as your standard black gangster. So I guess that's where the issue of respect starts growing and ballooning.
My personal answer to "who gets to say that appropriation is ok" is "no one." Part of this is because I think it makes the answer too easy; if someone says it's ok, does that mean the author doesn't have to worry about it anymore? And as such, is it merely a way to quell the author's guilt? I don't know. But I feel that even if no one gets to say that appropriation is ok, that shouldn't be a reason to not write about it, just like no one necessarily having the right answer on the division of wealth in this country doesn't mean that no one should write about it.
On the contrary, I think that it means even more people should write about it and engage with the problem and maybe their own guilt, if they're feeling it. I don't mean to assume that everyone will feel guilt, but it seems as though most people do?
But again, these are my own personal answers, and I don't want to force them on anyone, since, as I believe, no one gets to say that something is ok.
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Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 11:22 am (UTC)In view of your earlier posts about romances, you might want to check out Kim Wong Keltner's chick lit novel "The Dim Sum of All Things." (There's also a sequel, "Buddha Baby," but I haven't read it yet.) The protagonist, Lindsey Owyang, spends a lot of time dealing with dating-related cultural appropriation issues like white guys who have a thing for Asian women, but don't even have the sense to realize that "konnichiwa, Chinese princess" is not the perfect all-purpose greeting for any attractive woman who appears to fit their preferred ethnic profile. Then there's the guy with the Chinese-character tattoo who keeps following her through Chinatown in San Francisco and trying to pick her up until she finally resorts to telling him that his tattoo actually says something like "I am an idiot" in Chinese. At this the guy storms off, fuming, "That bastard! It was supposed to say 'courage'!" Even if it does, the joke is on him--in reality Lindsey herself has no idea what the characters in the guy's tattoo mean, since she spent most of her after-school Chinese classes goofing off and can barely read a Chinese menu.
(no subject)
Sun, Jun. 4th, 2006 06:34 am (UTC)And thanks for the chick lit rec!
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 03:52 pm (UTC)The Sunday NYTimes Magazine published an excerpt of the book here (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01cosmopolitan.html?ex=1293771600&en=065751ceb5e1741c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), which prompted me to go out, and get the book. It's a good book, but kind of long-winded (but whoever heard of a philosopher who wasn't?).
Personally, as some one born and raised in America, I've come to the conclusion that I'm American. Just because I eat with chopsticks at home, celebrate Chinese New Year, and have random cravings for dim sum, doesn't make me any less American; in fact, my very actions are what makes dim sum, and Chinese New Year "American holidays." To some extent, everyone borrows from everyone else, and borders and lines exist more in our minds then in reality.
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Sun, Jun. 4th, 2006 06:39 am (UTC)I'd sort of argue about dim sum and Chinese New Year being American. I think in some sense they're getting there, but since most of the people I work with don't generally know what it involves and since I don't get any days off for it, I think it's still more Chinese than American. It's not to say that it may not be American some time in the future though.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't think that you're American though! I really don't want it to be taken that way. But just like Christmas in Taiwan is celebrated, but more as an American import that hasn't fully been integrated and accepted in the culture, I think many ethnic holidays are still on the fuzzy edge. Again, this isn't to say that I don't think they should be American or that they don't have the right to be American, but that I'm not sure if that's how they are quite perceived by many people.
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Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 08:40 pm (UTC)would you like an explanation of what happened there, asks the curious outgoing w30 program chair?
I am noting this not because I think race automatically qualifies or disqualifies someone from talking about cultural appropriation,
i agree with you here.
but because the tone of the panel felt very apologetic yet very entitled with regard to cultural appropriation. I will get into this later.
ugh. if that is how you perceived it, i can understand calling for sporks. this is one of the panels that i really meant to go to yet didn't. (that happens to me a lot. perhaps next year i will go to more panels...)
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 08:45 pm (UTC)Yes, I'd love one! Also, hi program chair! Thank you so much for the programming, I loved it, despite having issues with some panels at times. Better having issues and being able to discuss than not discussing at all.
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Posted by4 out of 6 white panelists
Mon, Jun. 12th, 2006 10:41 pm (UTC)Re: 4 out of 6 white panelists
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Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Sun, Jun. 4th, 2006 06:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 1st, 2006 10:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Sun, Jun. 4th, 2006 06:43 am (UTC)My problem is that a) no one has the authority to tell them that they're doing ok and b) even if someone does, they're still appropriating. They may be doing a stellar job of it for some people or a rotten job of it, but it's still there. Right now, I'm starting to see the continued emphasis on permission as being a way to not talk about the historical context involved in appropriation and the very touchy power differentials therein.
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Posted by (Anonymous) - Tue, Jun. 6th, 2006 04:52 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Tue, Jun. 6th, 2006 09:18 am (UTC)I'm friending you in the hopes that you do revisit this topic frequently. Its a discussion which begs temerity and frankness on all sides, but also a willingness to entertain the position that you could be absolutely, completely dead wrong.
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 8th, 2006 05:55 pm (UTC)Egypt
Fri, Jan. 16th, 2009 03:24 pm (UTC)Re: Egypt
Sun, Jan. 18th, 2009 02:29 am (UTC)Also, it's a solution that only affects a very limited number of people and doesn't deal with the larger issues of cultural appropriation when a book is read by many people and contributes to a broader social atmosphere of cultural appropriation. Again, not judging if your book is appropriative or not, as I have not read it, but the issues at hand are larger than a single book or author.
Re: Egypt
Posted bynot really a racefail '09 post*
Sun, Mar. 8th, 2009 06:59 pm (UTC)