The Case for Contamination

Kwame Anthony Appiah writes that he supports cultural expression over cultural preservation:

I am all for festivals of Welsh bards in Llandudno financed by the Welsh arts council. Long live the Ghana National Cultural Centre in Kumasi, where you can go and learn traditional Akan dancing and drumming, especially since its classes are overflowing. Restore the deteriorating film stock of early Hollywood movies; continue the preservation of Old Norse and early Chinese and Ethiopian manuscripts; record, transcribe and analyse the oral narratives of Malay and Masai and Maori. All these are undeniably valuable.
But preserving culture – in the sense of such cultural artefacts – is different from preserving cultures. And the cultural preservationists often pursue the latter, trying to ensure that the Huli of Papua New Guinea (or even Sikhs in Toronto) maintain their ‘authentic’ ways. What makes a cultural expression authentic, though? Are we to stop the importation of baseball caps into Vietnam so that the Zao will continue to wear their colourful red headdresses? Why not ask the Zao? Shouldn’t the choice be theirs?

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  1. thanks much for this.

    Comment by RL — May 27, 2006 @ 2:02 pm

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