Abstract
This paper explores the current commercial and societal anxiety about so-called ‘cultural appropriation’ through a lens offered by recent work by Yascha Mounk and David Swift. I examine the phenomena of how ‘other’ cultures can be appropriated, rendered into the abstract and re-emerge as often ersatz, in this case ‘kitsch’ new cultural movements, contextualised in the strangely resilient consumer culture phenomenon of ‘Tiki’: a made in America tropical imaginary structured around Polynesian, South East Asian and Caribbean signifiers. It asks: ‘if symbolism and experience become commodities, are the cultural, historical and social factors that gave them ‘meaning’ in the first place lost from view?’. It also looks critically at the notion that if the cultures and symbols of ‘others’ become commodified as resources for fashion, music, tourism and other leisure forms does this empty them of meaning and are they ‘appropriated’ in the pejorative sense often used in contemporary discourse.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cultural-appropriation, Transculturation, Kitsch, Consumer-culture
