I guess this conversation pulls across a couple of friction points in my own thought. For me, the way this question usually comes up is in teaching poetry.
A poetic utterance not originally made by you is to some extent always and irreducibly other. To talk about cultural difference is fine, but individual lives, subcultures and shifts in values over time mean pretty much that even if our poet is officially a member of the same culture I am, I still can not ever really get at their intent and experience completely. Everything that comes from another mind seems to be micro or macro-exotic. Sure, Sappho is more alien to my Texan rural-and-suburban Freshmen than William Faulker, but they're both pretty alien. Both require a lot of contextualization for a pass near an accurate reading, and both have potential to knock on the fishbowls of my students, whether they make an accurate reading or not.
But the distance itself from the culture and habits of mind of the author can be what's useful. Ideas and habits of mind phrased in a more exotic or alien context can be more useful, and exert more leverage on a reader's ideas, habits and behavior than something that's from right down the street. Indeed, they're less apt to have preconceptions and defense mechanisms against ideas that come from an unfamiliar context.
And I've often found that something a little opposite of what you seem to have in mind happens. Things that were part of the systems of control in the original culture can be revolutionary and freeing in the one where it is (mis)-received. Your 19th Century American intellectual, say, could not possibly put Indian thought into its proper contexts: they didn't have the history available. But they could misappropriate those ideas (many of which were deeply conservative in their own cultural context) to make a radical critique of the mores, habits of thought, and government of, say, Boston in 1840.
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timeasmymeasure
Hm.
Date: 2009-01-08 11:43 pm (UTC)A poetic utterance not originally made by you is to some extent always and irreducibly other. To talk about cultural difference is fine, but individual lives, subcultures and shifts in values over time mean pretty much that even if our poet is officially a member of the same culture I am, I still can not ever really get at their intent and experience completely. Everything that comes from another mind seems to be micro or macro-exotic. Sure, Sappho is more alien to my Texan rural-and-suburban Freshmen than William Faulker, but they're both pretty alien. Both require a lot of contextualization for a pass near an accurate reading, and both have potential to knock on the fishbowls of my students, whether they make an accurate reading or not.
But the distance itself from the culture and habits of mind of the author can be what's useful. Ideas and habits of mind phrased in a more exotic or alien context can be more useful, and exert more leverage on a reader's ideas, habits and behavior than something that's from right down the street. Indeed, they're less apt to have preconceptions and defense mechanisms against ideas that come from an unfamiliar context.
And I've often found that something a little opposite of what you seem to have in mind happens. Things that were part of the systems of control in the original culture can be revolutionary and freeing in the one where it is (mis)-received. Your 19th Century American intellectual, say, could not possibly put Indian thought into its proper contexts: they didn't have the history available. But they could misappropriate those ideas (many of which were deeply conservative in their own cultural context) to make a radical critique of the mores, habits of thought, and government of, say, Boston in 1840.