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So, before we leap into the more unknown fields of colonial guilt and historical accountability, perhaps we can get back to the topic?
To me, this question of cultural appropriation is answered least comprehensively by arguments about what kinds of hair are 'made' for dreadlocks. To start with, to divide hair into objective categories of black and white ignores the fact that 'race' (and hair type as 'evidence' of race) is actually almost entirely culturally constructed. Once you start arguing on that basis you've already accepted race as an objective reality. And you've already accepted that cultural appropriation is a bad thing. Which is also not particularly helpful -- since acts of cultural appropriation, copying, plagiarism, etc ae going on all the time and by all kinds of people, enmeshed in all kinds of colonial and anti-colonial dynamics.
I share Legba's suspicion of 'white folks' with dreadlocks, who also appropriate what they see as 'hip' Jamaican patois, and who see their dreadlocks as a visible symbol of their alternative lifestyle. But what's most problematic is not the borrowing of difference, per se, but that that visible symbol of difference is commodified and reproduced: the incredible branding of 'dread wax' and all the haircare websites telling people how to make the best dreadlocks.
Here's an interesting anarchist perspective on cultural appropriation here which I'll quote below. It steps past categorising cultural appropriation of something like dreadlocks by anyone as colonising, also stepping past the somewhat tricky question of what kinds of hair dread up "naturally", to ask a more important question about commodification.
All culture is plagiarism.
Within radical circles these days, there is much talk about "cultural appropriation". Unfortunately, much of this discussion takes the form of moral debates about whether ifs okay for those of European heritage to wear dreadlocks, perform hip-hop, etc. This is just another example of political correctitude calling us to further renunciations. Rather than continuing these rounds of self-flagellation, I think that it is much more useful to examine the nature of culture and how it has been affected by capital and to consider possible directions for an anarchist response.
First of all, healthy, living cultures are not objects, set in stone once and for all, defined and confined within the prison of national or ethnic borders. Rather, cultures are relationships, not only among the people of the culture, but also with other cultures and people. This means that living cultures are fluid, perpetually changing, taking in and giving out new forms and method of being, becoming and creating. Cultural life depends upon this ongoing process of mutual appropriation. Without it any culture will die, and this is what transforms it into an object.
Capitalism has no culture of its own, precisely because culture requires fluidity and living relationships. When capital appropriates cultures, it destroys them as living entities because it can offer nothing living in return (nor is it interested in doing so). In fact it interacts with the cultures it encounters in the same way as it interacts with every individual life within capitalist society: it reifies, commodifies, fragments, atomizes and homogenizes them. Let's look at this process. Say, for example, that capital encounters the cultures of Morocco. Immediately an assessment of the potentials of production for profit must be made. So an abstract concept of Moroccan culture must be outlined - Moroccan music, Moroccan art, Moroccan fashion, and so on must be defined. The culture must be separated from the entire cultural flow of northern Africa, the Mediterranean, Arabic, Berber and Tuareg migrations and interactions, etc. This fragmentation allows the culture to be reified, made into a set thing rather than a flow of relationships. It also makes it possible for capital to further fragment the culture itself, separating music, for example, from its daily life context. With this separation comes commodification: the music is put on a CD and offered for sale around the world. And here we see the kind of homogenization capitalism imposes. Every kind of music now appears on identical little shiny discs in nearly identical plastic packaging with a price tag. It has all become a product for sale. This transformation of all culture into products for sale reinforces atomization because it is no longer necessary for us to come together and relate in order to create what we love and desire. Instead we can simply buy its reified form at the shop, limiting our human interactions to the exchange of money for goods. Those who make the music become laborers producing a cultural commodity, selling their creativity where it is not simply stolen. |
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