Thinking Thoughts

[chasingtides]

So theoretically I'm reading Jorge Luis Borges at the moment, but I still have my Mongolian and Sami research bouncing around my skull and trying to find a monster of the week to put in my lgbtfest entry. My brain's all over the place.

When does something become cultural appropriation? When is something culturally yours to begin with? Where are the lines?

(To note, I have a vague idea of what is culturally "mine." It's a fairly limited group, but I've been told by others that there are things that are culturally mine that I don't think are - and vice versa. I'm also interested in seeing where people think the line is - when are you stealing someone else's culture and when are you drawing on it?)

I suppose this could be in any life aspect - religiously (I know this comes up in the pagan community), in art or writing, in lifestyle (with the stereotypical weeabo coming up). Thoughts?


As an unrelated addendum: It's snowing like anything here. It was 60F yesterday. I'd better not have my classes called off because of snow.

Comments

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

I agree.

Speaking only of Irish culture (cause that's what I'm familiar with), though, there's also a huge difference between an Irish-American who defines Irish-American as "drinks a lot on St. Patrick's Day," and an Irish-American raised in the ex-pat community, who may never have set foot in Ireland, but for whom St. Patrick's Day is a day to go to a specific Irish ex-pat owned pub, have a meal with ex-pats and their kids, and have an ex-pat priest give a homily about being Irish in America and being grateful for that - which is what *I* grew up with and still practice, even though I'm Irish-American and four generations removed.

That's why I don't like, and don't usually use, the term Irish-American... because that term in particular tends to mean "American of Irish descent who may or may not know what that means, nor care," whereas to me, my heritage is a huge part of my life, and an *active* part of my life - I've never in my 27 years *not* celebrated a holiday with my local ex-pat community, and my way of unwinding at uni was to go to the local ceilis. Yet there's no real term for someone who's American by birth, truly identifies with their heritage, *isn't* terribly American by culture (there's more ex-pat culture in me than American culture... I've never celebrated a fourth of July, and my Thanksgiving is spent with ex-pats, eating prawns and scotch eggs and trying to explain to them why the shops are all closed) but doesn't claim (and in fact would not dare to be as presumptuous as to claim) to be Irish-born. I've always felt like I'm in cultural limbo in that respect... I'm not Irish-born, and American traditions often feel alien, but I'm not an acutal ex-pat either, though I have in large part been raised by/with them.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

And then of course, there are those of us who do both. You just described my St. Patrick's Day down to a T (and why I had trouble at college when I was the only person I knew who culturally identified the way I did), though I also do American holidays as well (though, admittedly, often in our own little way and dissimilarly from our friends who are culturally different). There aren't really words for that - I would say that the way we act (re:Irish) is respectful (as in, no one is saying we're from Ireland and no one is drinking green beer), but I agree that Irish-American has other connotations.

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

oh, exactly. I think that's why the term hits me so wrong, as a *term*... because there are a million different ways to be Irish-American, most of which are respectful, but popular culture has sort of stolen that particular term to the point where it's perfectly acceptable to be "Irish for a day", where that phrase means "dye rivers green and drink yourself unconscious"... so when *I* say "Irish-American," or when *you* say "Irish-American," we really mean something by it... but neither of our ideas about it match the popular cultural perception of the term, outside of a heavily Irish Catholic neighborhood.