A little more on cultural appropriation

[witchsistah]

I'm posting this here and nowhere else because this was the only pagan space I've seen this topic taken seriously and actually discussed and not dismissed out of hand. Anyone can TRY to post this elsewhere if they want. Good luck with that.http://www.

Comments

[beanrua]

I have a bone to pick with this

[uncledark]

I think the positive lesson to sift out of all of this is that respect for the culture from which one is borrowing, and honesty about one's sources and relationships with those sources, is key in diferentiating between cultural borrowing and cultural appropriation.

I worship Dionysos. I do research in ancient Greek sources about him, his myths, and the way the ancient Greeks related to him. I use this material in my worship.

However, I don't claim to be Greek (ancient or modern), nor do I claim that my practices are the same (or even usefully representative) of ancient Greek religion.

This is different than what Lynn Andrews and her ilk do, which is to do some research in a culture not their own, then turn around and claim that their work is the real thing, and deny/attack any critics.

To borrow respectfully is to be willing to be called on one's mistakes.

[beanrua]

I agree with you. I think we would be considered the "middle" in this debate. There are numbers of people (I recall one Gaelic spiritual group, which I will not name) who are very against any appropriation of belief, symbolism, methodologies, etc. out of the culture and language that they are practiced in. There are purists who maintain understanding of these things cannot possibly be achieved without being fluent in the language, and I found it to be a powerful (but flawed, IMHO) argument. There is also the politically based postion that appropriation for a culture under siege is to further work to erode the culture into extinction. This is the position I saw in play here, mainly because of the title of the post "A little more on cultural appropriation."

[luwana]

There are purists who maintain understanding of these things cannot possibly be achieved without being fluent in the language, and I found it to be a powerful (but flawed, IMHO) argument.

Compared to the African Kemetics, that seems almost liberal x_X

(I've seen 'purist' Kemetic groups maintain that anyone not descended from African stock cannot have a relationship with the Kemetic Gods, claiming it's impossible)

[uncledark]

There is also the politically based postion that appropriation for a culture under siege is to further work to erode the culture into extinction.

I think that's a true proposition, and an important one, with one change. I'd re-write it, "Appropriation from a culture under siege has the effect (however unintended) of further eroding the culture into extinction."

[beanrua]

I would absolutely agree with that. Thank you for re-crafting that idea...

[moon_ferret]

Didn't get on with the CRs, huh?

And how did you come to the idea that this was a politically based position by the title? I am a little confused.

[beanrua]

I found some of the CRs more interested in what other people were doing and how they were doing it more than what was going on at their own hearths. That's what I had a problem with.

I refer to it as political because the oppression is usually applied by groups of power: churches or governments that have the power to oppress a people. Perhaps it is better put as "socio-political." I make the distinction here from religious or spiritually based arguement...

[smarriveurr]

Using this specific article as fodder for the argument that eclectic appropriation of any religious/spiritual tradition outside of its place within a culture and that culture's language is stealing and is always wrong is, in my opinion, unfairly loading the argument.

How about using it as fodder for the argument that the disrespectful appropriation of the markers of a living, oppressed/marginalized culture for the sole purpose of profit and the edification of a dominant culture is wrong? Because that's more like the argument that cultural appropriation opponents make here every time the topic comes up, while yours is more like the dismissive straw man other people try to build of them.

[beanrua]

I absolutely agree with you there...it IS proper fodder for that arguement, and really, I think most people here would indeed nod towards the fact that profit of this nature is dead wrong. I'm certainly not dismissive of the problem.

My issue is that there never seems to be a conversation about cultural appropriation without the extremes. I hardly ever see conversations about other cultures besides neo-pagans that have and do absorb other cultural markers into their own. What does respectful appropriation look like? Can understanding be had without full immersion in the culture/language? This is an important debate to be had, but it never seems to be able to come to fruition without articles like this being introduced. This is wrong; can we get past that to the REST of the debate?

[smarriveurr]

There's never an online discussion of any kind without the extremes, though. That's the nature of the beast. If you're looking for discussions about how cultural appropriation operates on the non-pagan scale, though, you'd have to look for a community that discusses issues of race and culture, rather than a pagan discussion community.

Likewise, seems to me that the answers to your questions are pretty much specific to the context. Each act has to be considered in its own right, and for its own history. There's no general answer beyond the obvious ones, so moving past the obvious ones pretty much requires concrete examples - and people tend to use "what I do" as a concrete example, which in turn makes any discussion of that example a touchy, defensive thing.

The sad fact is that there are few if any public examples of good cultural immersion. They're drowned out by examples of doing it wrong - which people somehow still feel the need to defend. Part of it is humility - the more humbly you enter into learning about a culture, the

[beanrua]

I can absolutely see your points regarding public examples of "good" cultural immersion *and* issues of privilege. Perhaps it is true that the conversation cannot be held without involving ourselves in the extremes of what is obviously profiteering

[smarriveurr]

This feels uncomfortably like thread necromancy, given the age of the discussion, but the reply notification managed to get buried in my inbox until I went to do some housekeeping recently, and I hate when people drop out of a conversation to avoid dealing with a reasoned argument. I want to make sure you know that yours is exactly that, and I wanted to dispell the impression of dodging it.

At this point, we're probably both too far out of the mindset of the original discussion (I know I am), but I felt that I should at the least acknowledge that your points here are solid, and the questions are certainly worthy of discussion. They're good, hard questions, so they have no easy answers, and I'm not sure whether the debates could be saved from inevitable derailing, but it's something I'd personally like to see discussed by those with better sense than myself.