Cultural Appropriation: Symptom or Diagnosis?

In Fashion and Cultural Studies, Susan Kaiser asks if cultural appropriation can be seen as “a somewhat innocent or even respectful process of aesthetic influence or inspiration, with the appropriate degree of credit or profit attributed to the other culture in question” and “a matter of cultural ‘borrowing’” (2012, p. 48). Cultural appropriation, in other words, can be seen as an inevitable outcome of transnational global capitalism, where the demand for increased speed and flexibility of production and the constant movement of people, capital and commodities across and beyond national borders defy the notions of identity, tradition, heritage and ownership. Kaiser’s useful suggestion points us towards a problem inherent in most media and academic criticisms of cultural appropriation, namely, the assumption that culture is something that can be owned by a specific people in a specific time and place and, as such, it should not be appropriated, but rather be appreciated through serious, sincere study, empathy and contemplation. In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said warns us against the possible consequences of assuming such a radical, irreducible difference and distance between different cultures: “In our wish to make ourselves heard, we tend very often to forget that the world is a crowded place, and that if everyone were to insist on the radical purity or priority of one’s own voice, all we would have would be the awful din of unending strife, and a bloody political mess” (1994, p. xxi). Incorporating Kaiser’s stress on “flexibility” and Said’s emphasis on “overlapping territories, intertwined histories”, this paper will analyse the discursive explosion, in contemporary fashion media, around the subject of cultural appropriation. More specifically, this paper will discuss whether and how such discursive explosion can be seen as a diagnosis of new forms of racial capitalism, white supremacy and cultural imperialism in the twenty first century. Media critiques of cultural appropriation, however, can also be viewed as symptomatic of an emotional capitalism (Illouz, 2007) whereby the radicalism of cultural activity is reduced to an increasingly emotional language of postcolonial and national sensitivities at the expense of issues of labour, production, and the global political economy.

Delice contributed this invited, keynote lecture at "Fashion, Race and Cultural Appropriation: a conference at CSM" on 10 June 2017.