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Cultural appropriation: Difference between revisions
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The inappropriate, [[problematic]] or unacknowledged adoption of elements of one culture by members of another. Some see it, we are told as an exploitative form of “cultural ''colonialism''”. | The inappropriate, [[problematic]] or unacknowledged adoption of elements of one culture by members of another. Some see it, we are told as an exploitative form of “cultural ''colonialism''”. | ||
In the neuroticist’s | In the neuroticist’s unending quest to find things to be upset about, the wilder-eyed of our number have taken up [[intellectual property]], a cultural concept squarely rooted in the western intellectual tradition — yes, ''that'' western intellectual tradition: the one that colonised the planet and ruined the natural world — misunderstood and then misapplied it to cultural and linguistic situations in a way that makes no sense at all to anyone but — well, those paragons of the western intellectual tradition: the [[libtard]]<nowiki/>s. | ||
For “cultural appropriation” ''itself'' is a brazen act of cultural appropriation, from the very western oppressors against whom the charge is usually levelled. It is even more ironic that ''this'', of all western intellectual traditions, is the one to which [[critical theory|critical theorists]] should hitch their wagon, since it was with the very idea of “property rights” that colonialists subjugated their foreign dominions in the first place. | |||
The idea that cultural practices are the sorts of things that can be stolen ''is itself an artefact of colonial exploitation''. | The idea that cultural practices are the sorts of things that can be stolen ''is itself an artefact of colonial exploitation''. | ||
''There is no monopoly on good ideas.'' | |||
Well, there wasn’t, until some capitalists invented a way of asserting monopoly rights over good ideas and — ironically — ''forgot to copyright it''.<ref>I know, I know, patent, not copyright: but patents only last for 15 years, and are really expensive to obtain, so we think a resourcefully unscrupulous colonialist would have contrived to copyright it instead.</ref> | |||
===It’s all about the memes, stupid=== | ===It’s all about the memes, stupid=== | ||
Now even if you are minded to hoover up all the righteous, post-colonial angst — it seems to be the vogue right now — this preposterous idea is ''still'' a duffer, for it presumes that members of a culture own, or have some kind of moral right to control, their culture. This is to get things precisely backwards: we do not own our culture; our culture owns ''us''. ''It'' will decide where it spreads. We are but vessels. | Now, even if you are minded to hoover up all the righteous, post-colonial angst — it seems to be the vogue right now — this preposterous idea is ''still'' a duffer, for it presumes that members of a culture own, or have some kind of moral right to control, their culture. This is to get things precisely backwards: we do not own our culture; our culture owns ''us''. ''It'' will decide where it spreads. We are but vessels. | ||
In the same way one can say it was not humans who domesticated wheat but vice versa,<ref>{{author|Yuval Noah Harari}}, {{Br|Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind}}, (2011).</ref> we should regard useful cultural artefacts as units of [[meme|memetic]] transmission, replicating themselves wherever they can find a suitable host. ''We'' are those hosts. (It is a pity the internet, er, ''appropriated'' {{author|Richard Dawkins}}’ coinage the “[[meme]]”, for it captures this idea perfectly.) | In the same way one can say it was not humans who domesticated wheat but vice versa,<ref>{{author|Yuval Noah Harari}}, {{Br|Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind}}, (2011).</ref> we should regard useful cultural artefacts as units of [[meme|memetic]] transmission, replicating themselves wherever they can find a suitable host. ''We'' are those hosts. (It is a pity the internet, er, ''appropriated'' {{author|Richard Dawkins}}’ coinage the “[[meme]]”, for it captures this idea perfectly.) | ||