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Uitgelicht: Lionel Shriver over creativiteit en cultural appropriation
Het moet maar eens afgelopen zijn met cultural appropriation, vindt schrijfster Lionel Shriver. En dan heeft ze het niet over het toe-eigenen van andere, onderdrukte culturen, maar over de term zelf, die volgens haar politieke correctheid afdwingt en auteurs beperkt in hun creativiteit. Heeft ze een punt of stapt ze wel heel makkelijk over de bezwaren van etnische en culturele minderheden heen? Vandaag in Uitgelicht: Shrivers relaas en een greep uit de vele reacties op haar betoog.
‘I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad’, zei de Amerikaanse schrijfster op 8 september in de speech ‘Fiction and Identity Politics’ op het Brisbane Writers Festival in Australië. ‘You’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats.’ Op haar hoofd droeg ze, om haar punt kracht bij te zetten, een sombrero. De complete tekst van haar controversiële toespraak is te lezen op The Guardian.
What stories are “implicitly ours to tell,” and what boundaries around our own lives are we mandated to remain within? I would argue that any story you can make yours is yours to tell, and trying to push the boundaries of the author’s personal experience is part of a fiction writer’s job. (…)
Because the ultimate endpoint of keeping out mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction. Someone like me only permits herself to write from the perspective of a straight white female born in North Carolina, closing on sixty, able-bodied but with bad knees, skint for years but finally able to buy the odd new shirt. All that’s left is memoir.
De toespraak viel niet bij iedereen goed. I walked out of the Brisbane Writers Festival Keynote Address. This is why.
In making light of the need to hold onto any vestige of identity, Shriver completely disregards not only history, but current reality. The reality is that those from marginalised groups, even today, do not get the luxury of defining their own place in a norm that is profoundly white, straight and, often, patriarchal. And in demanding that the right to identity should be given up, Shriver epitomised the kind of attitude that led to the normalisation of imperialist, colonial rule: “I want this, and therefore I shall take it.”
Van de bij het festival aanwezige journalist Suki Kim kreeg Schriver eveneens een veeg uit de pan. In het stuk What Happened in Brisbane zet Kim uiteen wat ze het meest aanstootgevend had gevonden aan het optreden.
It was the sight of a white woman who has had great literary success playing the victim. It was the arrogance with which she declared that being Asian is not an identity; sure, we don’t want to be stereotyped according to race either, but who is Lionel Shriver to tell us that? It was the casualness with which she declared that “any story you can make yours is yours to tell,” and that, “in the end, it’s about what you can get away with.” And it was the smugness with which she put that sombrero on, looking defiant, as though she had just won some childish bet.
Ook Jia Tolentino hekelt de weinig subiele keuze voor het traditionele Mexicaanse hoofddeksel in The New Yorker. In die sombrero - die trouwens evengoed een ‘indianentooi’ had kunnen zijn - komt eigenlijk alles wat problematisch is aan Shrivers betoog bijeen.
It’s one thing to wear a sombrero if you’re Beyoncé; it’s another if you’re a college kid downing tequila. One of the worst ways to wear a sombrero, I think, is to be a white keynote speaker at a literary festival, saying, “I am hopeful that the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ is a passing fad.”
(Flickr cc: 'LA CUCARACHA' by: Lalo Alcaraz - 2002)