Can You Steal a Culture?
Making sense of cultural appropriation
- Examples discussed: Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha,” a musician interpreting medieval music, a Marvel editor posing as a Japanese writer, Carlos Castaneda’s fictional anthropological work, and Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”
- Cultural appropriation is seen as more problematic when cultural elements from a less powerful group are taken by a more powerful one.
- A paper by Lenard and Balint is used to provide a structured definition of cultural appropriation. This definition includes four conditions: taking, value, knowledge or culpable ignorance, and contested context.
- Cultural appropriation covers a spectrum ranging from clearly impermissible to probably unproblematic, depending on various factors such as the intent behind the taking, the significance of the cultural element within its original context, and the effects of the appropriation on the originating culture.
For a long time, we have been watching the public discussion on cultural appropriation, and I know that many writers and philosophers, even guests we have interviewed here on Daily Philosophy, have been reluctant to discuss the topic in public. All the more it is necessary, in my opinion, that we philosophers try to bring some light into this discussion, and that we contribute whatever we can towards clarifying the issues involved.
I started being aware of questions related to cultural appropriation while I was discussing Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha. You can find this article on the Daily Philosophy Substack.
Hesse’s India that never was
Hermann Hesse located his story of growth and enlightenment in a fictional (one might say “kitsch”) India at the time of Buddha’s life. The focus of the story is always on the protagonist and his inner development, and Hesse is clearly not trying to give us a faithful image of ancient India and the lives of its people. Essentially, the country is a mere backdrop, a scenery that is adapted and tailored to the needs of the story and its protagonists. The book as a whole has a fairy-tale structure and cast. There is the usual “courtesan with a heart of gold,” the “sidekick” and the “wise mentor,” who accompany the hero on his journey. There are obstacles to overcome, love to be won, a friendship that never ends, temptations that the hero manages to conquer, a “dark night of the soul” in which the hero almost kills himself – and the final moment of enlightenment that justifies the hero’s journey and brings balance and justice back to the universe.
Yes, all those are tropes seen thousands of times in literature, and particularly in the Bildungsroman genre, of which Siddhartha is a prime example. Still, this is a great book. It is thoughtful, tender, insightful, emotionally honest and gripping – written in an almost hypnotic language that ultimately transforms readers and makes them experience Siddhartha’s journey as if it was their own.
Still, though, some unease remains: Siddhartha, for all its good qualities, lacks a particular kind of authenticity. It is a book playing on a stage, in front of a painted background whose huts, dusty roads and ox-carts are strategically placed to suggest “India.” Not the real India, but the India of a romantic’s imagination.
This was certainly not a colonial India. Unlike Kipling’s or Conrad’s places, Hesse’s India is not ruled by white men. It is a place that follows its own, original rituals, that defines itself out of its own beliefs and traditions. Still, it is a place imagined, not a real country. Like Lord Byron’s revolutionary Greece, or Novalis’ temple at Sais, Hesse’s India is a romantic vision. And, moreover, it is a place where its hero, Siddhartha, undergoes his transformation – a change that is too similar to many others in German and European literature to be believably Indian.
One might argue that some personality changes in the growing, seeking youth are universal – that Siddhartha’s journey is, in its psychological and developmental aspects, true and authentic, no matter whether it may take place within an Indian, Italian or Icelandic environment. But if this was the case, then why would Hesse not have located the story in Germany or Switzerland, instead of India? And neither is this plausible. Surely the son of a Brahmin will have a different view of the world than the son of a Viking warlord or that of an Italian olive-farmer? After all, the “Indian” aspects of the tale are essential to it: Siddhartha’s Hindu upbringing, his stay with the Samanas in the wilderness, his affair with beautiful Kamala, his meeting with the Buddha, his enlightenment by the river at the end of the book. None of that could have taken place anywhere else but in India, some form of India, a place that shares at least a few common historical and cultural elements with the India of factual history.
Five cases
So this is the troubling question: Surely Hesse here does something that might today be seen as cultural appropriation: the donning of an Indian costume for his tale, a kind of “Indian-face” that picks the most recognisable features out of the complex reality of the country, mythologises them, and uses them to present a fictional, simplified, and essentially Europeanised story of growing-up. But is Hesse actually doing anything wrong?
To see things more clearly, perhaps it will be helpful to look at four more cases of possible cultural appropriation:
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Here on Daily Philosophy we had an interview a while ago with a British philosopher and musician who interprets the music of Hildegard von Bingen in his own, unique style. Would someone re-interpreting medieval music today be guilty of cultural appropriation?
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In 2017, Marvel’s editor-in-chief apologized for writing Marvel comic books in 2005 and 2006 while pretending to be a Japanese man named Akira Yoshida. His deception was quite elaborate. In interviews, he presented a fake biography as a Japanese man: “He claimed to have grown up in Japan and learned English through American comics, TV and movies.” (op.cit.) He got contracts for book publications in this disguise that he wouldn’t otherwise have received, and he was accused of depriving actual Japanese people of the opportunity to publish such books.
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In 1968, Carlos Castaneda, a pretend anthropologist, published a book of fictional interviews with a sorcerer named Don Juan, a member of the Yaqui tribe in Mexico. Castaneda’s book fit perfectly into the spiritual hunger of that time, and made him a fortune. He was also awarded Bachelor’s and doctoral degrees based on this book and its sequels. Today, the books are generally believed to be fictional and researchers with a knowledge of Yaqui culture note that “Don Juan” does not seem to be knowledgeable about the details of his own culture.
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Finally, in 1974, Robert Pirsig published Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that describes a fictional motorcycle journey of a father and son through the United States. The book discusses, among many other philosophical topics, Zen Buddhist questions.
Initial observations
When we look at these examples, we can immediately notice a few points that seem relevant to the moral question of appropriation:
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The Marvel editor’s case is not only a case of an dishonestly assumed identity, but also a case of commercial exploitation of this identity for private gain. The same is true of Castaneda’s work: what feels wrong about it is the starkly commercial character of inventing Don Juan and its ruthless exploitation by the author.
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There is an interesting asymmetry in our feelings about cultural appropriation. If Westerners adopt Chinese names, they are in danger of being accused of doing something improper. But nobody complains when almost every Chinese nowadays adopts a Western name, Western manners, Western food and so on. So there is an issue of power imbalance at play here: cultural appropriation is considered particularly problematic if cultural elements from a less powerful culture are adopted by a more powerful culture.
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Still, we might also think of cases where cultural appropriation has been beneficial to small communities. A famous, bestselling author might write a book from the perspective of a little-known tribe and present their story and their problems to an audience that the members of the tribe itself could never reach. Although this too would today be considered as an instance “white-saviour syndrome,” one would have to admit that the little known culture might actually derive substantial benefit from such a scenario.
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While Hermann Hesse discusses Buddhism within his imagined, fake India, Robert Pirsig and many others managed to discuss similar topics without the painted, romanticised backdrop. One can certainly discuss Buddhist awakening as part of an authentic, Western life-experience. The more interesting question is whether Buddhism itself can be morally adopted by Westerners; or is a Western Buddhist already someone who appropriates Asian culture? This is not so far-fetched as it may seem. In December 2022, the Guardian reported of a heated discussion on whether Westerners can morally be Yoga teachers.
Bring in the light
Thankfully, philosophers have already come to the rescue, and there are some really good papers out there discussing the philosophical ethics of cultural appropriation. One that I found the most interesting is by Patti Tamara Lenard and Peter Balint, What is (the wrong of) cultural appropriation?, published in Ethinicities in 2020.
The paper is very readable and very interesting, citing lots of cases that span a wide spectrum of moral quality, from clearly impermissible to probably unproblematic. I won’t quote much from the paper, because it’s 22 pages long, but the authors helpfully summarise their main findings a few times throughout the paper:
Cultural appropriation can be defined as the taking of a valuable, yet reusable or non-exhaustible aspect, of another individual’s culture (usually a symbol or a practice), for one’s own use, where the taker knows what she is doing (or reasonably should know), and where the context of this taking is contested. In other words, in order for an act to be cultural appropriation, it must meet four conditions: (1) a taking condition, (2) a value condition, (3) a knowledge, or culpable ignorance condition, and (4) a contested context condition. (p.338)
To unpack this a bit: The authors describe cultural appropriation as having a number of properties.
First, it has to be an act of taking something from another culture. What is taken is immaterial, reusable and non-exhaustible. This is meant to exclude cases like the theft of the Parthenon marbles from Greece by the 7th Earl of Elgin, now hosted at the British Museum, since theft is already well-understood and covered by both moral rules and state laws. What is taken in cases of cultural appropriation is some immaterial, intangible cultural expression: an image, a thought, a belief, a story, a way of dressing, a ritual. The taker does not deprive the original owner of that cultural thing from using it; that is not the point.
Second, there must be a value to the thing being taken, and this value must be claimed by someone. A majority of members of some culture must accept the appropriated practice as central to their culture.
Third, appropriation must happen in the knowledge that it is wrong. One cannot be accused of cultural appropriation if one could not have known or assumed that the taking of some bit of cultural content was morally wrong or contested. This condition cannot cover cases where someone should reasonably be expected to have known the wrong of one’s actions (for example, when copying and selling these copies a spiritually valuable artefact of another culture today). But it would cover cases where someone could not reasonably be expected to see the problem clearly – say, a child taking part in a game that includes tropes that devalue or could offend members of another culture.
Finally, it is important that there is what the authors call a “contested context.” They write:
A sufficient and meaningful degree of contestation matters. By contestation, we mean that there are members of the culture (and in some cases, their allies) from whom a practice or symbol is appropriated who dispute the appropriation of a practice. Contestation is meaningful if it is sustained over time, by multiple members of the culture from whom the symbol or practice is being appropriated, and if culturally specific justifications or explanations are at the heart of the dispute.
This condition is meant to exclude cases where, for example, the members of the culture whose content is taken away, are themselves interested in spreading this same content. Christian missionaries are an example. One would not accuse the converted of cultural appropriation of Christian content, because the Christians, as the original owners of that cultural content, agree to the dissemination of that content. Also, for example, “a single tweet does not amount to meaningful contestation, nor does a ‘twitter storm.’” What is needed is a more sustained, larger-scale reaction to the taking of the cultural content.
This is also the reason why the authors believe that one cannot appropriate from an ancient or extinct civilisation. When today we go to a party dressed as Roman senators in togas, nothing morally questionable is happening. No Romans are left to contest our use of their cultural content.
The question of contestation is very closely linked to the issue of consent. If the owner of the cultural practice agrees to its use by another culture, then we have no case of appropriation. But the question then becomes: Who has the power to give such consent? Who can determine whether Hindus are collectively to be assumed to have given consent to Westerners teaching Yoga classes? Who can give a verdict on whether black people have agreed to the use of originally black music styles by white musicians? Whole cultures rarely have official representation organs that can issue such verdicts.
Amplifiers
In addition to these points, the authors also include two more issues, but not as defining characteristics of cultural appropriation. Rather, they see (1) inequality of power and (2) profit-making as “amplifiers” of the moral quality of the act of appropriation.
So, making money off a “borrowed” cultural product does not in itself constitute appropriation. But if the borrowing has already been determined to be morally problematic because of the other criteria mentioned earlier, then any profit one makes through that appropriation will amplify the moral wrongness. And the same is true of power imbalances. A member of a colonial power taking and using a cultural practice of the colonised is not itself enough to constitute appropriation (think, for example, of a white colonial writer describing life in the colonised country). But if we already have a valuable and contested cultural content being used in ways that, say, harm its original owners, then the power imbalance will amplify the wrong done.
Conclusions
What I find particularly appealing about the Lenard/Balint paper is that the authors don’t go for binary distinctions. Cultural appropriation is seldom a matter of yes or no. Instead, it is a matter of degree. The value of a cultural practice is a matter of degree, as is the strength of its contestation. Inequality of power is a matter of degree, as is profit-making. And if, for example, the profit made is returned to the community that owns the cultural content, or if that community benefits in other ways from the appropriation, then the appropriation might not necessarily be morally wrong.
So let’s have a closing look at our five cases.
A musician interpreting the music of Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval mystic, is not guilty. No one contests this use. Hildegard and the medieval mystics are extinct and, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, have no effective claim to any cultural content. Therefore, re-imagining or performing Hildegard’s music is not a case of cultural appropriation. It might be different if existing Catholic believers or institutions objected to the use of Hildegard’s visions for entertainment purposes. Then we would have to determine whether we can assume that modern Catholics can claim to “own” Hildegard’s writings in any real sense. But since right now no one contests this use of her work, there is no issue regarding Paul Lodge’s work.
Marvel’s editor-in-chief pretending to be a Japanese author is problematic, according to this account, because he is using a culture that is not his in order to displace genuine members of that culture from the market and to earn money with a deceptive product. The “Japanese-ness” of the author is a crucial part of the perceived authenticity of the Japanese comic books that he published under his assumed name. Let’s look again at the conditions for appropriation:
(1) a taking condition, (2) a value condition, (3) a knowledge, or culpable ignorance condition, and (4) a contested context condition.
The taking condition is fulfilled. The taken thing is valuable (book contracts, a career opportunity). He did this fully knowing about its wrongness, which is why he lied in interviews about his fake Japanese background. But the question is, is Japanese-ness a contested feature? Would the Japanese, as a nation, or as a majority, object to this use of their cultural identity by a Westerner? I am not sure. Of course, those few who lost book contracts because of this person’s deception will not agree to his appropriation. But the authors explicitly say that an occasional disagreement is not effective contestation. The contesting needs to be done by a majority and to be sustained over time. Would most Japanese care whether this person used a fake Japanese identity? After all, his books were sufficiently convincing as Japanese cultural products and they were published and read as such.
This case can be important because of other, similar cases that involve a “benevolent appropriator.” For example, in Hesse’s Glass Bead Game there is a hermit who puts great effort into preserving Chinese culture in Castalia. But the man is a Westerner. Despite that, he speaks perfect Chinese, is perfectly educated in Chinese culture, rituals and arts, and uses his knowledge to respectfully preserve and promote this culture. Is he doing anything wrong?
I have personally known more than one person of this kind. There is a whole group of Western lovers of Chinese culture who will not only learn Chinese but also adopt Chinese lifestyles and customs, and also a Chinese name. I have one myself, and it is written into my official Hong Kong ID card, although I was not born with it. Am I appropriating anything in a morally questionable way? I don’t think so. For one, it does not seem that anyone would contest my use of a Chinese name. As opposed to the Marvel editor, my use of a Chinese name is not deceptive. It is used in the open, alongside my Western name. My students can see both names printed on my office door. If anything, they see it as a funny thing to do for a Westerner, similar to them taking on Western names.
What about Castaneda’s Don Juan? Here, the author did take a very valuable piece of cultural content, even if the actual content was largely made up: the value consisted in presenting the content as authentically tribal, which gave it the air of true Shaman wisdom and enabled the author to make excessive profit from it. He surely knew better, too. But was his taking of the cultural content contested? This is a difficult question. I don’t know the precise history of the case, but let’s assume that the Yaqui did not, for a long time, realise how Castaneda had misused their name and traditions in his book. Does the contesting have to be actual, or can we argue that an appropriation already takes place when a community could be expected to contest the use of their content, even if they did not do so at a particular time because they were not aware of the appropriation? And who is going to determine that? Certainly, the profit-making nature of the book’s publication acts as an amplifier of any moral wrong in this case.
Finally, Pirsig’s tale of Zen and quality in modern USA does take something of value, does so knowingly, but there is no contested context in this case. Buddhism and Zen tradition are today global phenomena, and no particular population can claim to “own” the cultural content. And even if some group did, we can assume that they would be happy to see their thoughts adapted and developed in a different cultural context. Buddhist teachers have, for a long time, taught Westerners – D.T. Suzuki and Thich Nhat Hanh or the 14th Dalai Lama are only three of the most prominent names in a long procession of Buddhist teachers who specifically brought Buddhism to the West. So, again, there does not seem to be a case of wrongful appropriation here.
And Hermann Hesse? What about Siddhartha? Hesse takes something valuable, the traditions and thoughts of Hindu culture and creates a work of art that he sells commercially. But very likely Hesse wouldn’t have assumed that Hindu culture’s owners might contest his use of their culture. He would have seen his work as a respectful homage to Hinduism and Buddhism, rather than as theft of cultural content. His work, he would say, was intended to promote Buddhist values in the West, to promote the Indian version of enlightenment as a counterweight to the wars taking place in Europe and world-wide at that time. Therefore, we cannot assume that he knowingly appropriated Indian culture. Even if today his use of it was contested, he could claim that, in his time, the possibility of such a contestation was not obvious to him. And, I don’t see that there is much contestation of his work taking place today, anyway.
So that was it. What do you think? Tell me in the comments!
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