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point out in their essay that cultural appropriation is largely preconditioned
by politics, history and power games of all sorts. Under such conditions, this
term is going through a constant process of redefinition and readjustment in
a process that Ziff and Rao refer to as "moral algebra." In this instance, we
are referring to the morals of the writer, which is in itself a very questionable
way of conducting literary research. In his crucial work The World as Will
and Idea, A. Schopenhauer explains that “we should not require a moral
philosopher to be exceptionally moral.” And indeed, this claim is correct, if
nothing else, from the sheer practical point of view of the creation of cultural
material. So, why should we assume a moral parallel between writers of fiction
and their work? It is only stories, after all, good or bad stories.
Basic questions behind cultural appropriation (such as taking, cultural
practices, belonging, morality, etc.) remain far out of the reach of the theory
of literature in the narrow sense. If a certain text contains elements that are
openly offensive to one cultural group, and is classified as hate speech (or rather
hate writing) by the informed majority belonging to all cultural groups, then
that text is automatically discredited as either bad literature or not literature
at all. If authors of certain texts appropriate elements of other cultures, and
the resulting text might be seen as offensive to only one cultural group, then
this can produce two results: bad or good literature, with very little space
left for ethical or moral considerations. This simply means that the theory
of literature already possesses innate mechanisms which determine what
should be practiced and what should be avoided in the production of literary
texts of quality and integrity. Artistic freedom, poetic license, the freedom of
creation, on the other hand, have to be preserved at any cost.
Furthermore, even if the study of Ethics could provide a precise definition
of cultural appropriation, I have my doubts about the restrictive application
of that definition within the theory of art. In the words of James O. Young,
“cultural appropriation is important to the flourishing of the arts in the
contemporary world”! Every work of art is basically the re-interpretation
of something, be it physical or emotional reality or other art, making the re¬
interpretation in the artssynonymous with cultural appropriation in the arts.
As far as literature is concerned, this can be clearly seen in the adaptation of
literary works (re-interpretation being the basis for every adaptation). Pascal
Nicklas and Oliver Lindner note in their introductory essay to Adaptation
and Cultural Appropriation: Literature, Film and the Arts that Julie Sanders
sees adaptation and cultural appropriation as “siblings, if not non-identical
13 Ziff — Rao (eds.), Borrowed, 5.
14 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, London, Everyman, 1997, xviii.
55 James O. Young, Cultural Appropriation and the Arts, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 28.
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