i read the Appiah book back in December, so hopefully i'm not forgetting/misrepresenting anything, but the gist of it was:
one of the huge motives behind the TPP was to put more legal/regulatory muscle behind things like copyright protection across international lines.
many lefty folks are critical of this because it discourages free exchange of ideas, gives more power to the state over this sort of thing, some western media is prohibitively expensive to other countries, blah blah
but Appiah argues that restricting exchange based on accusations of cultural appropriation is very similar to the TPP in this way: it says i own this bit of culture and you can't have it except on my terms.
basically Appiah argues the kind of western notion of "owning" ideas is altogether incorrect for cultural diffusion, and (iirc) seems like a kind of colonialist/imperialist model anyway.
he argues that what's often called cultural appropriation could be better described as disrespect—borrowing culture in a way that's specifically meant to piss off the culture you're borrowing from, or just being super-thoughtless about what you're borrowing, is a legitimate harm, but you can describe it more simply and accurately as "disrespect."
(obviously like idk super-lefty tumblrites or something could come back with "sure, but what if i think any borrowing my culture without my permission is disrespectful," but those kinds of arguments aside, i think appiah does an interesting framing of the question.)
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Date: 2019-02-13 02:09 am (UTC)one of the huge motives behind the TPP was to put more legal/regulatory muscle behind things like copyright protection across international lines.
many lefty folks are critical of this because it discourages free exchange of ideas, gives more power to the state over this sort of thing, some western media is prohibitively expensive to other countries, blah blah
but Appiah argues that restricting exchange based on accusations of cultural appropriation is very similar to the TPP in this way: it says i own this bit of culture and you can't have it except on my terms.
basically Appiah argues the kind of western notion of "owning" ideas is altogether incorrect for cultural diffusion, and (iirc) seems like a kind of colonialist/imperialist model anyway.
he argues that what's often called cultural appropriation could be better described as disrespect—borrowing culture in a way that's specifically meant to piss off the culture you're borrowing from, or just being super-thoughtless about what you're borrowing, is a legitimate harm, but you can describe it more simply and accurately as "disrespect."
(obviously like idk super-lefty tumblrites or something could come back with "sure, but what if i think any borrowing my culture without my permission is disrespectful," but those kinds of arguments aside, i think appiah does an interesting framing of the question.)