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Unread 05-16-2022, 03:47 AM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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Hi,

I’m sorry that I’m here so late - both questions that John posts are not ones that I can just speed in and answer. I think slowly (think snail in the middle of a pavement).

Around cultural appropriation I think it’s like many other ethical questions - there are some clear ‘no way’ actions (just like racism and holocaust denial is clearly unacceptable) and on the other side of the continuum there might be people who only used materials/ideas they felt were rooted in their own culture (although that would be very tricky to define because culture are porous) - and there’s also the sense that without cultural porosity we’re all the poorer - and an awful lot of grey area in between. I think it’s about having the critical conversation that is important - and about citing sources, and not shying away from complexity.

I had a lovely student once who was in love with the patterns in Navajo blankets. They’d read books and books about them. They were also really worried about cultural appropriation (much more so than I was at that point in my career) and we talked about it at great length - neither of us really coming up with any easy answers. For the record, their design work didn’t copy or really even look much like a Navajo blanket.

I think in the end we came to a kind of shared thought that because Navajo blankets had been hugely culturally appropriated by Bauhaus etc anyway, they were in a way, doing a bit better than Bauhaus because at least they could point with respect to their sources, and they were able to clearly articulate where their inspiration came from. They had thought about it critically. And they weren’t taking any power or agency away from Navajo culture or living people or (knowingly) marketing their work in a way that would negatively impact- but then the question remains that we didn’t know anyone from that culture to ask. So we didn’t really know.

I don’t think it was resolved. I still have no easy answers. I guess my lodestone is whether the artist can critically justify why they’re doing and why - that kind of 'yes, but', and 'if I', and weighing up the possibilities. And sometimes that might be more possible because of an individual’s belief system (if an artist believes in a collective subconscious then we’re all drawing from the same root value system anyway). And sometimes it might be whether the artist can justify whatever it is they’re doing because of the craft, or their original story - or whether they have sought out feedback from a community they’re appropriating from! I guess for me it’s partly about engaging with the conversation rather than being dogmatic, from either sides of the continuum.

Me? I sit in the murky middle ground, feeling dizzy, loving Doreen Massey’s idea of space as a simultaneous set of possibilities, of stories intersecting. I like Susan’s much less murky idea of the key.

With the sense of structure of writing creating/reflecting the argument/how people think - the context was, for me, trying to explain to John why I’d chosen the ghazal form to write what was probably a semi-confessional poem. I felt the ghazal form gave me a more open structure than, say, a sonnet, or rhyming couplets, which would have been rooted more in my (western) tradition of writing. Partly that’s because I don’t see the past (in that poem - sometimes I do ) as linear, and I see it as full of repeating images - the repeating end words of the ghazal fit with that.

If I’d chosen a sonnet form then I’d have had to bring in a dialectical argument which I didn’t want to do with that poem. But I’m really only just starting to come to these knowledges about form because I’m quite new to it - you’re all already there!

What I think is interesting, though, is you could explore the sonnet (and some, not all, Western forms) as being forms that prop up that systematic way of dialectical thinking (just as I read that the ghazal form can prop up the female as passive/idealised).

So, in terms of the conversation, I think it maybe goes both ways. The poet chooses the form that suits their purpose for the poem. In doing so, depending on the content of the poem, they contribute to a wider narrative that might also reinforce certain ways of looking at the world, beyond and above the particular poem.

Not that it matters, particularly, unless the things they are propping up are at that side of the continuum which is ‘no way’. But it’s what I (personally) like about surrealism and psychogeography and those kinds of practices, because they break things up, often with humour, and open up some of those patterns of thinking by subverting them gently. But equally, even though things like surrealism might have started as symbiotes, living off the popular culture of the time - they have now (arguably) become dominant narratives (with their own structures of thinking and preconceptions which might benefit from breaking up) in their own right.

Apologies if that isn’t clear, by the way, or if it’s a bit one-dimensional. This isn’t something that I’ve had a long time to consider, but I did want to join in with the discussion while I had a spare hour this morning!

Sarah-Jane

Jayne!!! How lovely to see you! I hope you are feeling okay (how miserable to have your typing arm in plaster).
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