Audre Lorde could not have predicted the phenomenon of
Twitter, Tumblr, and various other forms of social media when she pronounced
that the next generation of feminists needed to “define and empower” rather
than “divide and conquer.” Because Tallyn posted on what’s been happening with
Twitter, I wanted to examine my own privilege as a white female when it comes
to Tumblr.
Tumblr is a space where I seek to discover new writing (both
prose and poetry) from lesser-known writers.
Many of the writers that I have stumbled upon happen to be Black women,
including two of my favorites-Warsan Shire and Nayyirah Waheed (everyone should
check them out!) As I enjoyed the beauty
of their language and syntax, I found myself wondering if I really had a right
to relate to their words. As a white
woman, it is difficult to imagine the kinds of daily oppression that they face,
because is often insidious. They occupy
a unique position of intersectionality that is expressed very beautifully
throughout their poetry. They both write
fluently about the oppression that they feel.
I discovered a very passionate response written by a woman
of color to a white woman’s post of a Nayyirah Waheed quote tattooed on her
body. The white woman felt that the
words had so much meaning in her own life that she decided to put them on her
body. I struggled with this. Waheed’s writing is so lovely. But I feel that the woman who responded with
anger had a valid point. She said, “Here we are,
terrified of baring our souls because we know you’ll take our words, douse them
in bleach, twist them through your colonizing machine, and spew them back out
with your own trademark on it.” It’s not
that her tattoo, in and of itself, is oppressive to women of color. It’s that writing was Waheed’s way of
defining her existence, of verbalizing her intersectional experience as a Black
woman in the modern world. White people
do have a long history of appropriating the customs and creations of other
races and twisting them to fit their own lifestyles.
However, I’m not sure where to draw the line between
appreciating someone’s writing and art, and taking it as one’s own experience. I’d welcome other thoughts and opinions.
Since you mentioned Warsan, I feel obligated to share that her quote "I am lovely and lonely and belong deeply to myself" is one of very few things I've considered getting as a tattoo. I don't know what it would mean on a race/privilege level, especially because I feel like lots of Warsan's poetry is about the struggles of womanhood on general terms.
ReplyDeleteAnnika,
ReplyDeleteI find this incredibly interesting, and I think it raises a significant point about the extent to which a person's performative-social identity is their property, and if that identity extends to linguistic arenas of performance. I personally struggle with the unwillingness to share words, regardless of the origin, because I think it undermines the purpose of language in general. So, I think that the lines of appropriating customs is a bit fuzzy. I can understand the indignation, but I'm not entirely sold that the white woman was committing a "colonizing" act in embracing the words. It all hinges on how much of linguistic expression is owned by the writer/speaker.
I'm kind of showing my cards here about how I feel about this incident, because I think that things like "turnitin", trademarking phrases and slogans, is just a bit too close to bottling water and selling it for extortionist prices.
Thanks for posting this, it made me think.
This is one of the most thought-provoking scenarios to the idea of "colonizing" culture and the way white and black people intertwine in their expressions of art. It has always been my understanding that art and creativity are not trademarks of a certain peoples, but a universal statement that is all inclusive.
ReplyDeleteIf the words written by this woman are an honest expression of emotion and experience, then why must its meanings be only confined to those listeners of the same skin color. While I agree with your consideration for creative property and white people's tendencies to appropriate customs, I think the woman's anger was misplaced in the current context. It seems that as an avid admirer of this black woman's work, her tattooed listener found a place that bridged two world's and experiences together by purely an expression of raw emotion. It is often that writer's find a way to speak to those who can't speak for themselves and put into words the thoughts most people can't define. After all, that is why music, writing and art bring together people of all backgrounds-because artists find a way to relate the most opposite experiences.
So, while this woman may have validity in her point of protecting the nature of Waheed's experience to its true context, I think it misunderstood to view the woman's tattoo as anything other than a showing of appreciation and strength to the words or her art.
I agree with Shannon that there is a fundamental difference between appreciating versus claiming ownership of a work of art or a cultural artifact. However, there is an obvious grey area whenever the art is produced by a demographic which has a history of being oppressed by a more privileged demographic. On one hand, not every case of a privileged individual showing appreciation for a work of art from an oppressed demographic is oppressive, but on the other hand, the act of tattooing that art onto one's body could be construed as more of an act of identifying rather than appreciating. Ultimately, I wonder if the individual with the tattoo's motivation should be considered at all, or whether as an act of identifying or appreciating it even matters, since the outcome has such nebulous and problematic repercussions.
ReplyDelete