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Today I was thinking about cultural borrowings. I've made a little list. My life is Gilbert and Sullivanish enough to require many little lists. Except my lists are more like essays.
It seems to me that there are many possible types of cultural borrowings and that they shouldn't be lumped in together. We all weave our lives into the lives of others and we live cultural borrowings without even thinking about it most of the time.
Some very PC people suggest we ought to write without using cultural borrowings at all. Writing without cultural borrowings at all entails writing without facets of our own culture that have been adopted from elsewhere. We borrow. We borrow all the time and on various levels. It's not just what writing's about, it's what life's about. Every time we copy a good phrase or ask for a recipe, we're practising cultural borrowing.
What types of cultural borrowing do writers do, though?
Firstly, we write using cultural loans that aren't really cultural loans any more. When a writer uses something that is part of their background but comes originally from somewhere else, they're really writing their own culture. This is not universal. It all depends on the level of the borrowing and how integrated it has been into the author's background. If I wrote a Dreamtime story and used material I have integrated into my Jewish Australian understanding of the world then that's OK. It's not the Dreamtime of any indigenous group. In fact, given my knowledge and my mostly-Newtonian world view, it's a much lesser thing. And that's one good reason to write carefully about stuff that has been borrowed too recently. It's superficial in one's own culture. And it often reads as superficial. Unrecognised but diluted borrowings can lead to bad writing. We write most effectively about stuff we understand deeply. And we write best with an inner honesty about what we understand.
Over time, diluted borrowings grow their own identities and become complex and we hardly even know we've borrowed things. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg made a legal ruling in (I think) the eleventh century, applicable only to Ashkenazi Jews. Monogamy is now a part of the cultural toolbox of Jewish writers and has the depth and the agony and the bad jokes to prove it.
A form of presenting cultural borrowing in fiction is when the author writes as an outsider talking about insiders. The point of view character or the narrator is an alien observer. I love this sort of approach. It's honest about the alienness of the culture of others. It admits fallibility. And it can create some very powerful writing. Ursula le Guin takes this further than most and *tells* us that her narratives are anthropological. This means we're even given the politics of the particular outsider viewpoint. This turns the limits of the writer's knowledge of a culture into a narrative strength. The reader is tempted to turn the page to find out more about a culture and its practises as well as about people and their lives.
What I don't like is when the writer uses another culture as if they are an insider. Some authors get this right. Most authors get this really rather wrong. An outsider writing as an insider can be purely offensive to readers who *are* insiders of the culture if the writer gets it wrong.
Then there are outsiders ignoring cultural contexts entirely. Japanese anime can sometimes have a very specific approach to cultural borrowing, for instance. It can lead to splendidly creative results, and also to appalling levels of misunderstanding. Cultural motifs and even religious elements are used as springboards to explore wildly. For instance, take a thirteenth century Jewish mystical construct. Add a bit of Christian apocalytic theory and perhaps a touch of modern pagan esoteric belief. Interpret it literally. Place it in a purely Japanese context and add lots of violence. First person to guess what I'm describing gets a virtual chocolate. (And yes, I still like it, sorry Tess.)
How offensive is it to take the externals and dump cultural contexts? I suspect there's no simple answer to that question, just as there's no simple answer to who should ask permission for what kind of borrowing. I would say it depends very much on the work in question. The closer a writer gets to presenting something as what insiders in a culture think and do, however, the more courtesy and respect become essential. And the clearer we all are on what our own cultures are and what belongs to us and why and where we got it from, the fewer toes will be stepped on.
I can't see a situation where no toes will ever be stepped on. Even with the deepest respect and thought, writers will muck up.
The thing about fiction, though, is it's not a series of manuals for cultural sensitivity training. We need to understand cultures and respect and do all things wonderful, but doing all things wonderful includes telling stories. It's what writers do.
Telling stories differs from culture to culture. All we can do is write and learn and learn and write. Be honest. Be respectful. Apologise if there's a real transgression. And don't be mean. Don't assume that another culture is simpler than our own just because it has a different technology or language or religion. Oh, and don't assume that people are stupid, just because they use a different technology or language or religion. They may well be stupid, but that's them as individuals, not their culture.
Which brings me to one last category. An unhappy one: writers who use cultural stereotypes to fully create characters. Not stereotypes as a starting point leading into complex and real figures. As the characters. Characters are people to readers, so this is the path of racism. If characters don't develop and grow past the stereotype then the likelihood is that the writer has delivered a rounding insult to the culture that is haunted by that stereotype. It also tends to be bad writing. Cardboard characterisation.
I ought to add a coda. This is just me rambling, to sort it out a bit. I rather suspect I have a whole lot more thinking to do.
It seems to me that there are many possible types of cultural borrowings and that they shouldn't be lumped in together. We all weave our lives into the lives of others and we live cultural borrowings without even thinking about it most of the time.
Some very PC people suggest we ought to write without using cultural borrowings at all. Writing without cultural borrowings at all entails writing without facets of our own culture that have been adopted from elsewhere. We borrow. We borrow all the time and on various levels. It's not just what writing's about, it's what life's about. Every time we copy a good phrase or ask for a recipe, we're practising cultural borrowing.
What types of cultural borrowing do writers do, though?
Firstly, we write using cultural loans that aren't really cultural loans any more. When a writer uses something that is part of their background but comes originally from somewhere else, they're really writing their own culture. This is not universal. It all depends on the level of the borrowing and how integrated it has been into the author's background. If I wrote a Dreamtime story and used material I have integrated into my Jewish Australian understanding of the world then that's OK. It's not the Dreamtime of any indigenous group. In fact, given my knowledge and my mostly-Newtonian world view, it's a much lesser thing. And that's one good reason to write carefully about stuff that has been borrowed too recently. It's superficial in one's own culture. And it often reads as superficial. Unrecognised but diluted borrowings can lead to bad writing. We write most effectively about stuff we understand deeply. And we write best with an inner honesty about what we understand.
Over time, diluted borrowings grow their own identities and become complex and we hardly even know we've borrowed things. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg made a legal ruling in (I think) the eleventh century, applicable only to Ashkenazi Jews. Monogamy is now a part of the cultural toolbox of Jewish writers and has the depth and the agony and the bad jokes to prove it.
A form of presenting cultural borrowing in fiction is when the author writes as an outsider talking about insiders. The point of view character or the narrator is an alien observer. I love this sort of approach. It's honest about the alienness of the culture of others. It admits fallibility. And it can create some very powerful writing. Ursula le Guin takes this further than most and *tells* us that her narratives are anthropological. This means we're even given the politics of the particular outsider viewpoint. This turns the limits of the writer's knowledge of a culture into a narrative strength. The reader is tempted to turn the page to find out more about a culture and its practises as well as about people and their lives.
What I don't like is when the writer uses another culture as if they are an insider. Some authors get this right. Most authors get this really rather wrong. An outsider writing as an insider can be purely offensive to readers who *are* insiders of the culture if the writer gets it wrong.
Then there are outsiders ignoring cultural contexts entirely. Japanese anime can sometimes have a very specific approach to cultural borrowing, for instance. It can lead to splendidly creative results, and also to appalling levels of misunderstanding. Cultural motifs and even religious elements are used as springboards to explore wildly. For instance, take a thirteenth century Jewish mystical construct. Add a bit of Christian apocalytic theory and perhaps a touch of modern pagan esoteric belief. Interpret it literally. Place it in a purely Japanese context and add lots of violence. First person to guess what I'm describing gets a virtual chocolate. (And yes, I still like it, sorry Tess.)
How offensive is it to take the externals and dump cultural contexts? I suspect there's no simple answer to that question, just as there's no simple answer to who should ask permission for what kind of borrowing. I would say it depends very much on the work in question. The closer a writer gets to presenting something as what insiders in a culture think and do, however, the more courtesy and respect become essential. And the clearer we all are on what our own cultures are and what belongs to us and why and where we got it from, the fewer toes will be stepped on.
I can't see a situation where no toes will ever be stepped on. Even with the deepest respect and thought, writers will muck up.
The thing about fiction, though, is it's not a series of manuals for cultural sensitivity training. We need to understand cultures and respect and do all things wonderful, but doing all things wonderful includes telling stories. It's what writers do.
Telling stories differs from culture to culture. All we can do is write and learn and learn and write. Be honest. Be respectful. Apologise if there's a real transgression. And don't be mean. Don't assume that another culture is simpler than our own just because it has a different technology or language or religion. Oh, and don't assume that people are stupid, just because they use a different technology or language or religion. They may well be stupid, but that's them as individuals, not their culture.
Which brings me to one last category. An unhappy one: writers who use cultural stereotypes to fully create characters. Not stereotypes as a starting point leading into complex and real figures. As the characters. Characters are people to readers, so this is the path of racism. If characters don't develop and grow past the stereotype then the likelihood is that the writer has delivered a rounding insult to the culture that is haunted by that stereotype. It also tends to be bad writing. Cardboard characterisation.
I ought to add a coda. This is just me rambling, to sort it out a bit. I rather suspect I have a whole lot more thinking to do.