There are lots of moments of cultural violence that are in fact, or someone using something that I think are bad or rife with violence and exploitation. And so there's a difficulties here. It's quite difficult to say who can lay claim legitimate claim to ownership of this object. In most cases, I find that there are actually better alternatives. But where again, you want to create a culture of engagement and of knowledge rather than shallow and superficial one.
In an age where the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation seems ever more blurred, can anyone actually own a culture? In this conversation acclaimed author and public intellectual Martin Puchner explains that the history of mankind has always been a story of borrowing from one another and that this is something to be celebrated, not lamented. The idea of ownership implicit in debates about cultural appropriation, he argues, presents an insular tale about how culture evolves — flattening out the complicated textures of human history and, in the end, what truly makes us us. Our host for this discussion is Edward Wilson Lee, fellow and lecturer at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.
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