It seems like there are some assumptions here that you summarize in the last 'graf. I suspect you may have something interesting to say about these fairly obvious postmodernist counters ...
Is there 'one true meaning' in the context of the original culture? Who decided what that was? Is there some special kind of cultural isolaton or uniformity that is uniformly 'good' and which preserves such meanings forever, as long as they aren't watered down by reduction-to-entertainment value?
I think another legitimate way to look at it is that cultural behavior and meaning is usually introduced by individual innovators and small groups and *always* changes beyond recognition over historical time by any number of forces from benign misunderstanding to overt hostility and demonization to creative syncretization.
It's also difficult for the would be non-misappropriator to know with certainty that the cultural motifs encountered are in any sense pure and not distorted mis-appropriations themselves from some forgotten inter-cultural contact in the exotic outsider.
no subject
Is there 'one true meaning' in the context of the original culture? Who decided what that was? Is there some special kind of cultural isolaton or uniformity that is uniformly 'good' and which preserves such meanings forever, as long as they aren't watered down by reduction-to-entertainment value?
I think another legitimate way to look at it is that cultural behavior and meaning is usually introduced by individual innovators and small groups and *always* changes beyond recognition over historical time by any number of forces from benign misunderstanding to overt hostility and demonization to creative syncretization.
It's also difficult for the would be non-misappropriator to know with certainty that the cultural motifs encountered are in any sense pure and not distorted mis-appropriations themselves from some forgotten inter-cultural contact in the exotic outsider.