I wonder whether also looking at moments of transmission does something to solve part of the problem of what we do with historical works of art, right? In that you and I know that we are often caught in an enigma between trying to discern authorial purpose. What did the creator of this work mean on the one hand? And on the other hand, throwing it widely, wildly open to kind of reader reception is a different matter. So I wonder whether, you know, choosing moments of transition was a kind of halfway house in some way.
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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