Jens Balzer Ethik der Appropriation
[Ethics of Appropriation]

Culture is always also appropriation: In his essay The Ethics of Appropriation, Jens Balzer makes a case for a critical, self-aware practice of appropriation.

Whoever loved to play “Cowboys and Indians” as a child, who had been engrossed in the books by Karl May, and felt they were on the safe side of the “noble savages” is presently—in times of an increased language sensitivity—faced with more than just one problem. What can be said in retrospect about a child’s dreams if the expression “Indian” is anathema and if “longing to be an Indian” brings suspicion of “appropriating”—that is, stealing from—foreign cultures? How can we deal with the debates on cultural appropriation and the accusation that those who assume elements of other cultures are adorning themselves with borrowed feathers (to continue the metaphor)?

In his very readable essay of only eighty-seven pages, Ethik der Appropriation (The Ethics of Appropriation), Jens Balzer begins with Franz Kafka’s short vignette “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” and his own childhood enthusiasm for Winnetou. Culture always involves appropriation and transformation, according to the author, journalist, and pop-culture theorist. But there are different ways to appropriate the Other: not by aiming for purity and authenticity, but rather by making power relations visible. It comes down to replacing the current logic of bans with better appropriation practices.

Balzer develops the problem in five chapters: Using the example of today’s tabooed expression “Indian”—a Green Party politician had to immediately apologize for an off-the-cuff remark—he introduces the initial paradox. Is it possible to draw clear-cut boundaries between cultures? And who is responsible for determining who belongs and who does not? In contrast to a culture that is hermetically self-contained and identified only with itself, Balzer insists on permeability. Appropriation is not theft per se; quite the contrary: “Appropriation is a creative, culture-endowing force. At the same time, however, it is also entangled in violence and exploitation. One could say that this is true for all types of culture. But such conditions appear with particular clarity in certain forms of appropriation.”

In a second step the essay attempts to distinguish “improper” from “proper” appropriation. After providing a history of blackfacing and American culture and music over the last two centuries, Balzer uses Elvis Presley and Eminem as examples in declaring: “Once again, whites profited from Black music.” African American musicians, such as the Public Enemy rappers, countered with a “culture of self-empowerment” relying on polyphony, sampling, and a technique of counter- and re-appropriation. This is where fragmentation and inauthenticity come into play, as well as a subject that views itself as disjointed and decentered.

In the third chapter, “Sampling Identities,” Balzer cites postcolonial theorists Paul Gilroy and Édouard Glissant in opposing “cultural purity.” What is sought is instead heterogeneity and Deleuze’s rhizomatic model. Good or proper appropriation in this sense would be a form of appropriation that “is inventive, expanding the realm of cultural possibilities” rather than pushing for homogeneity. Bad or improper appropriation, on the other hand, exploits the culture of marginalized people and lays down their status as victims.

The next chapter poses the question “How can forms of appropriation that are perceived as injurious be reflected upon and criticized without using concepts of identity, property, and bans?” In the sense of counter-appropriation in hip-hop, Balzer notes that “good appropriations” aim for the dissolution of boundaries and for hybridity. He reflects on “playing Indian,” which was popular in the 1970s in Germany, in which the costume also made room for “ethnic drag.” Boys could try out long hair and makeup. The androgynous Winnetou permitted gender transgression. In short, Karl May’s figure also laid out a homoerotic desire. Balzer cites Judith Butler in reflecting the queer masquerades of the 1920s and the present that seek liberation precisely by not seeking a unique, true identity.

Balzer sums up in the fifth and final chapter: Those who react to appropriation with bans and prohibitions rob “culture of all agility and life.” An ethics of appropriation ought to focus instead on what should be done: “Appropriate! But do it right!” A critical reflection of power relations and an awareness that that which one assumes to be one’s own is not original but has its origins elsewhere make up the cornerstones of a future “ethics of appropriation”. It is of course doubtful whether it is even possible to draw clear-cut boundaries between “proper” and “improper” appropriation. But one thing is certain: Balzer aptly and calmly rejects the woke, leftist logic of bans as well as the libertarian, right-wing “we can certainly still say” polemics. His enlightening essay explores a terrain that goes far beyond the unproductive extremes of “everything is prohibited” and “everything is permitted.” And it is not by chance that this brings to mind Kafka’s ride in his “Wish to Be a Red Indian”: As Balzer writes, “There is only a never-ending chain of appropriations of appropriations of appropriations….”