Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "race"

As someone who was formed by several different cultural traditions and languages, I am very aware of the different ways in which concepts such as "story" and "writing" are framed. For instance, in English one can say “You stole my story!” in order to mean “You stole my life experience”—an absurd claim, since stealing anyone’s life experience would be equivalent to stealing one's body and mind. It used to be that “You stole my story” could only mean “you stole my (published) story”—that is, the word “story” meant an artifact made of words, images, musical notes, etc. The American culture ended up conflating both meanings of “story” (artifact AND experience) and then, in good American tradition, it exported them to the rest of the world.

To begin with, this conflation can only happen in a very materialist culture: if my life experience is transferable, it means that anyone can “use” it, and I can “sell” it—again, a very specific American idea, which started, very likely, in the movie industry where I could “sell” my life “story,” and which by now has been instilled in both readers and writers by the publishing industry. Because of this vision, other concepts that have nothing to do with literature and are specific to American culture are being added to this already-perverted idea of “story.” All these other concepts are time- and space-specific, that is, they happen to reflect the (American) society’s preoccupations at present. Take race, for instance. It is very obvious that the current racial tensions are being abusively transferred onto the topic of "story"--by "abusively" I mean that these are completely different issues, but they have become intermingled for many Anglophone writers. Why? For the simple reason that today in America race relations are on everyone’s mind.

Here, I would ask my fellow American writers to step back for a second and try to imagine being a writer in, say, the Czech Republic, or Japan, or Iceland. All these countries have great literary traditions: the Czechs have given us the greatest modern writer, Kafka; Japan has not only an extremely sophisticated contemporary literature; it has given us the first world novel; and Iceland is probably the country with the highest percentage of readers in the world. None of these countries has a serious reason (at least so far--this may change in the future) to be concerned with race relation But when American writers reframe the discussion about literature in way that makes race and “cultural appropriation” part of its definition, that is, when they redefine what a story is by making the claim that a story “belongs” to the raw material that may have inspired it, that claim affects not only American writers; it affects also Japanese, Icelandic and Czech writers. It affects them because we live in a global world, and publishing industries influence each other—though the influence comes in most cases from the American publishing industry to the rest of the world, and not the other way around.

In a world of pre-packaged things, the way we write about anything is, by necessity, genre-specific. Journalism is by essence of its time, and even when it claims to be neutral it still tries in some way to deal with (ie, “fix”) the reality it talks about. Journalism is always second-degree writing (it’s ABOUT something). By contrast, fiction is not of its time. The better it is, the more it transgresses its own space and time. And unlike what many writers seem to believe, fiction is not necessarily about “something.” Like “Seinfeld” (a work of TV fiction), it can be about nothing, yet still be (good) fiction. Fiction re-creates the world, and in this sense it is always first-degree writing. Which brings me—again—to the concept of story in contemporary American culture, as both artifact AND life experience. According to this concept, a story must necessarily be “about something.” When writers accuse each other of “cultural appropriation,” their implicit vision of a story is that of an “about-something:” as such, a story has different “ends” or “goals” than a story based on a vision of literature as re-creation of the world. When you “appropriate,” you use things; when you (re)create, you reshape every single thing.

The fact is that what (we think) a story should do changes each time we reframe the question. For example, Roxana Robinson asks, “To whom does a story belong?”—which has the merit of bringing back the discussion on the terrain of literature. This is a question that has been asked in different ways by writers and literary critics in the past. I will give only one name: Umberto Eco, whose concept of “opera aperta” (open work) means that works of art do not hold a single, enclosed meaning, but rather, as many meanings as readers. What Eco and many other 20th century critics argue is that meaning in art/literature is given both by the reader and the writer, which means that the work belongs (in different ways) to anyone who reads/sees/hears it. My answer is different from both that of Roxana Robinson (it belongs to the writer) and that of certain activists preoccupied with race relations (it belongs to the one who has lived it): it belongs to no one and everyone. By its very essence, a story doesn’t belong. (By the way, “be-long” is a very beautiful word in the English language). People may belong and dwell, stories pass, and the more a story moves through time toward us the greater it is. If it weren’t great, it would belong only to its time and its contemporaries.

One reason many writers of color hate "cultural appropriation" (and these words should be put in quotes because they represent a way of framing literature that is--again--specific to contemporary Anglophone cultures, and therefore, is not universal) is because of "exploitation"--but "exploitation" is invoked--and for good reason--only when a book or its author becomes famous. In other words: exploitation only exists if the publishing industry has framed the discussion already by deciding that it wants certain "stories" on the market." Let’s face it, no one would want to "appropriate" anyone's story if they weren't rewarded for it (and as writers, we all know that being "rewarded" means being published and being paid attention to). So, these days when people yell at each other and accuse each other of "appropriating" one's story it usually means that the thing they care least about is literature. What they really mean is that they are upset because they aren't getting published, or they are upset for the current racial situation in American society. These are two legitimate reasons for being upset, but again, they are entirely different, and they require different approaches. It seems to me that what we need to change is the REALITY in which we live, not the way we frame art/literature. Reality is always time-space specific—our vision of art should go beyond our limited reality. Storytelling is universal, and by attempting to change its concept, American writers are assuming that their (racial) experience is universal—when, in fact, it’s not. The fact is that no one can really appropriate "one's story"--if you "appropriate" it it is no longer the same story. It becomes a different story. I could give many examples of "cultural appropriation" no one gives a damn about. For instance: I grew up in Eastern Europe under communism. Whenever I read an American novel set in Eastern Europe it sounds very phony to me--clearly a cultural appropriation done by someone who cannot really understand life in such a different world. Yet, no one would ever think to blame these authors for cultural appropriation, even though this is exactly what they did. Which means, again, that "exploitation" and "cultural appropriation" have such weight in the current debate only because of the current racial tensions. In fact, “exploitation” of one’s cultural/racial/ethnic identity can only occur, paradoxically, if the people/identity being exploited are enjoying a certain recognition or if their status has changed in a way that could—at least in theory—make the appropriation of this identity beneficial to other groups of people. Logically, if some “white” writers choose to “exploit” the experiences or “stories” of people of other races, doesn’t this mean that there is something to be “gained” by this choice? And if there is something to be gained by impersonating life experiences of people of color, or other minorities, doesn’t this mean that, at least as far as the publishing industry is concerned, the stories of “white people” may have become less “hot” than the stories of non-whites? Personally, I have no idea what the publishing industry favors these days, as the publishing industry and I are not the best of friends. I am simply using logic here: why would anyone want to “exploit” or “appropriate” anyone’s identity/story unless the society rewarded them for it? In fact, this discussion reminds me of a debate years ago when James Frey wrote a very successful “memoir” about having been a drug-addict—which turned out to be fiction. I never read more than two or three lines in that novel, and I don’t know if Frey is black or white, or if race has any place in the book, but I do know that the book’s success was due to the fact that this was one of those so-called “stories of redemption” in which someone with a criminal past is redeemed because they become successful (ie, write a book). There you have it: a story of victimhood and success: the ur-arch of American ideology that all mainstream American publishers want. Or, here is another story of “exploitation:” about ten years ago a man who wrote a “memoir” about being in a Nazi concentration camp, which proved to be fake. Predictably, the discovery resulted in a scandal, though no one talked, as far as I remember, about cultural appropriation. And then, what kind of “appropriation”? If the man was Jewish but not a Holocaust survivor, he “used” the experience of other members of his community, but claimed it was his. If he wasn’t even Jewish, he also “used” the cultural identity of another group. Both the Frey story and that of the fake Holocaust memoir are relevant for our discussion, yet in the current debate references are being made only to African-Americans and Latinos—which, again, proves that the concern is less about literature and more about American’s present—a different topic altogether.

Current racial tensions are very real and they need to be dealt with--they need to be dealt with in real life, not by reframing the whole concept of literature. If one reframes the whole concept of literature because of racial problems specific to American society one assumes that all societies have the same problems--which is false. In fact, I would say that this act of reframing is imperialist in essence insofar as it attempts to convince the rest of us that it is universal (ie, this is what a "story" should be). As in the past, the consequence of the globalization (ie. “universal-ization”) of the current debate in American culture will be: publishers, writers and agents around the world will start reframing their intentions, and as a result, talented writers will be even more marginalized than before because from now on they can always be accused of cultural appropriation. But how do you define “cultural appropriation” in a global world in which many writers live in more than one country in their lifetime? How about writers—like me—who had to “appropriate” even the language in which they write because they are immigrants from a non-Anglophone country? Or who had to appropriate several languages—I write in two languages that are not my native tongue—and cultures? Writers—like me—who are by their very existence—a monument to cultural appropriation? I’m afraid that most American writers would never address the questions above because American writers (whatever their color) tend to imagine (yes, it needs repeating) that their experience is universal, and since they never immigrate (in the rare instances they do it’s called “ex-patriation,” a difference in lexicology that underlines the difference in framework) and, most importantly, NEVER CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE, theses questions are (for them) non-existent. Yet they are essential to the rest of the world. For the rest of the world a writer is no longer a representative of a nation or even a language, never mind an ethnic or racial group. It used to be that Dante= Italy=Italian language; Shakespeare=England= English language. But the world has changed: today, Yoko Tawada can equal both Japan and Germany; or, Aleksandar Hemon both Bosnia and the United States. This is evident to the entire world—except the United States. While on the rest of the planet, the vision of literature has progressed from a local space (that of the nation) to a global one (that of the entire world), in the United States the reverse has been happening: now it is considered unacceptable to take on other identities than that of your own ethnic/racial group. This phenomenon, which is framed as "progressive," is, in fact, part of the same tribalism that has taken over American society.

In 19th century France Flaubert was writing stories like “Madame Bovary” and not “The Scarlet Letter” not because (he thought that) it was morally wrong for a Frenchman to write an American story, but because it would have been ridiculous for him to write about something with which he had no experience whatsoever (the American people and their culture). In other words: writers have the freedom (of imagination) to identify with whomever they want, but their imagination has limits—and these limits are simply human. The truth is that no human being can really, fully understand another human being: it is an existential impossibility. But this impossibility doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. How and, just as importantly, why we do it would then be the question. Kafka wrote America not because it was a “hot” topic in Czechia during his lifetime, but because he wanted to say something essential about the world and times in which he lived. Of course, an American may find his representation of America unrealistic, or may even think that the act of representation itself is equivalent to a cultural appropriation. To which Kafka could retort that his America has nothing to do with the Americans’ America, in which case, what exactly is being appropriated?