this is not a post about yoga!

[colorblue]

I've been doing yoga all my life; I've never in my life paid to go to a yoga class. Sometime when I was too young to remember, my father started teaching me how to do the basic asans and meditation and pranayam, and then yoga classes in temples or community centers or acquaintances' houses, etcetc.

There was no way I could have afforded going to a white person's yoga class, and anyway, learning yoga isn't supposed to be something you pay for. It is too important for that; it is something that everyone is supposed to have a right to, and to charge money to teach is to degrade both the knowledge and yourself. This is what I believe; this is what my teachers believe; this is what my people, for literally thousands of years, have believed.

Of course that matters for shit these days.

*

A couple of reasons that free yoga classes are held and advertised in predominantly Indian spaces so often, when Indians make up a very small portion of the US:

Because Indians are awesome! :D

Because if you market to anyone else you have to pay thousands of dollars to get white people's yoga certification, no matter if you have been doing yoga all your life, no matter that your gurus, with a teaching lineage that can be traced back centuries, have given you permission to teach (sometimes with a shiny modern certificate attached natch!). You require white people validation, which usually costs thousands of dollars, and you require membership to a white people's yoga teaching association, something like that, am unclear about the details of all this except for the fact that it, once again, costs a lot of money. If you don't jump through these white people's hoops, even if you are doing this on your own free time and charging absolutely nothing, you will not be seen as qualified (to teach what is yours; to teach what you have been practicing all your life) and you might be held liable if something goes wrong.

So, be careful with giving free yoga classes to people (even if they are lower-income people who have so few other options for preventative health care) unless they are Indian. Because not only have clueless appropriative white people completely mangled yoga in pretty much every way possible by turning it into some hobby plaything (it is supposed to be a way of life and the asans are only a small small part of it) for the well off, they have made it horridly difficult for anyone else to teach it the way it should be.

This isn't even getting into the mess where the US patent office is apparently ready to award patents for yoga asans to whichever complete and utter waste of space sell-out has gotten there first to exclusively claim a practice thousands of years old, created and refined for the good of all people, as his own personal property in order to profit off it. And Indian organizations and the Indian government are trying to prevent that, and are being attacked by people saying that yoga isn't an Indian or a Hindu thing, and therefore we have no claim to do this. And does this mean one of these days we will have cops bursting through the doors of temples to charge volunteer yoga teachers with teaching the sun salutation without a license? The ridiculousness of having to live in this society, I can't even begin to explain it.

*

The reason I find this so grating is because yoga is not the only thing this has happened to, not by a long shot; the reason I find this so grating is that what has happened to yoga is practically benign compared to what has happened with some other things. There is apparently a Western company that has licensed genes that are crucial to studying breast cancer, thereby preventing some university research scientists from conducting research on how to cure it; there is a Western company that is trying to patent all the seeds it can get its hands on (the same Western company that was responsible for the terminator gene that was going to bring such glories to third-world farmers, btw, if the farmers had been smart enough to realize it! which leads to interesting question of what exactly it intends to do with those thousands of seed patents once it succeeds in collecting them); I could seriously go on all day. But I don't have to, because other people have.

It's what Patricia Hill Collins wrote in Fighting Words:

It is not that elites produce theory while everyone else produces mere thought. Rather, elites possess the power to legitimate the knowledge that they define as being universal, normative, and ideal. Legitimated theory typically delivers tangible social rewards to those who possess it... Describing this process in the UK, writer Michelle Cliff observes that "one of the effects of assimilation, indoctrination, passing into the anglocentrism of British West Indian culture is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the form in which it is meant to be expressed. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, and folklore can never be art." In this sense, analyzing social theories in isolation from their embeddedness in race, class, and gender produces the objectified knowledge that characterizes hierarchical power relations.

It's what bell hooks wrote in Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black:

In a white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal state where the mechanisms of co-optation are so advanced, much that is potentially radical is undermined, turned into commodity, fashionable speech as in "black women writers are in right now." Often the question of who is listening and what is being heard are not answered. When reggae music became popular in the United States, I often pondered whether the privileged white people who listened were learning from this music to resist, to rebel against white supremacy and white imperialism. What did they hear when Bob Marley said, "we refuse to be what you wanted us to be" - did they think about colonization, about internalized racism?

Appropriation of the marginal voice threatens the very core of self-determination and free self-expression for exploited and oppressed peoples. If the identified audience, those spoken to, is determine solely by ruling groups who control production and distribution, then it is easy for the marginal voice striving for a hearing to allow what is said to be overdetermined by the needs of that majority group who appears to be listening, to be tuned in. It becomes easy to speak about what that group wants to hear, to describe and define experience in a language compatible with existing images and ways of knowing, constructed within social frameworks that reinforce domination.

It's what Dick Kawooya wrote in Copyright, Indigenous Knowledge And Africa's University Libraries: The Case of Uganda (right before tearing into how the dichotomies of south/north insider/outsider are not at all what they seem, which is def. worth a read):

Recent interest in ITK (indigenous and traditional knowledge) has ignited heated debates on misappropriation of ITK aided by western intellectual property (IP) laws, or lack thereof. At the centre of the debates are 'Indigenous Communities' whose resources are misappropriated by 'outsiders.' Ironically, the ITK debate occurs in a context where such knowledge was, and in some cases still is, considered "inferior and of no value"... Not mentioning the fact that Africa's 'inferior' knowledge, transferred with the aid of the international IP system, plays "pivotal role" in scientific and technological advancement in western societies.

IP laws facilitate exploitation by applying western IP standards and constructs in non-western settings where alternative systems of protection and control existed. From patenting of biological substances to copyrighting cultural expressions, the 'south-north' flows of indigenous resources present major socioeconomic, political and cultural challenges to affected communities.

It's what Dieter Dambiec said in Indigenous People's Folklore and Copyright Law:

The close identification of indigenous folklore with community life has as its corollary the notion of overriding community control of intellectual and creative works so that to impart total control to the individual creators of these works is seen as undermining part of the foundations of that community [8]. This means that an individual's creative work attains a place and is attributed with some meaning within the indigenous culture when it is somehow co-extensive with the performance of communal obligations and adherence to communal requirements.

In consultation with others in the indigenous community, it is not uncommon for individual creators to work with concepts, styles and techniques handed down to them and be restricted in their creative and aesthetic inclinations in order to advance the mode and manner of collective traditions and practices [9]. As a result, the creative expression of an individual or group of individuals is considered to be an expression and product of the community as a whole. This is particularly so where current works are derived from older works whose original creation cannot be ascribed to any definite persons. This situation gives rise to ownership rights within indigenous cultures regarding works of folklore which are at odds with Western legal concepts such as absolute individual ownership and freedom of alienability of property [10].

The idea that folklore belongs to a living and changing group of people means that Western concepts of individual creation and individual ownership reflected in copyright law through such exclusive rights as reproduction and adaptation, publishing and recording, performing, and broadcasting rights [11] do not necessarily hold up for indigenous peoples [12].

It's what Makere Harawira said in his essay, the neo-imperialism and the (mis)appropriation of indigenousness:

Haunani-Kay Trask has defined imperialism as a total system of foreign power wherein another culture, people and way of life penetrate, transform and come to define the colonised society. The primary function of imperialism is exploitation; exploitation not only of the land and resources of the colonised country, but also of its peoples. Thus imperialism is the defining characteristic of colonialism in both its past and present forms. Some might ask what still remains to exploit now that colonisation has done its worst - has raped the land of its minerals, the seabeds of their fishes, the soil of its biodiversity, the peoples of their language and DNA, and long since reduced them to a state of dependence on their colonisers? The answer of course is the exploitation of indigenousness itself, the exploitation, nay even theft of cultural identity, the misappropriation of the essence of indigenous being. In recent decades, the imperialist practices of global capitalism carried out by certain non-indigenous interest groups not only continue to assert the relative social and economic supremacy of non-indigenous and peasant peoples through market-driven policies and the reification of notions of `economic man' but also appropriate and commodify for their own economic gain indigenous knowledge, sacred sites and traditional practices.

Throughout the world, indigenous peoples whose lands, whose resources, whose ways of life has been destroyed by capitalism and greed, who since the beginning of colonisation have been constructed as an inferior `Other' somewhat less than human, are engaged in a struggle to retain control over the last remaining vestiges of what makes them unique; their traditional spiritual beliefs, practices and knowledge. For too many indigenous peoples, it is already too late. Imperialism which throughout the 18th and 19th centuries legitimated its rape and pillage of both peoples and lands through liberal ideologies of difference which saw civilised man as godly, indigenous peoples as primitive and different and idleness as belonging to the devil, has reclaimed `difference' as a commodifiable asset and appropriated 'indigenousness' for economic gain.

It's what so many people, all over the world, have been saying for so long. The current system of intellectual property rights, embedded in the racist classist hegemonic individualist capitalist Western ownership system that by now has been imposed, in one way or another, on everyone, with or without their consent - this system is not just completely fucked up, it is a weapon wielded by those who have power, a weapon aimed directly and deliberately at the hearts of the people and communities and cultures that are considered lesser.

In this way, it is a system that does exactly what it has been designed to.

*

Quite honestly, I really resent that I felt the need to write this post! Especially in the context of the current piracy discussions, because I don't have any answers, I don't know what's right and just in certain situations, I'm still making up my mind on a lot of stuff.

Also, I am quite fundamentally selfish, and so tend to center my desire to have writers I want to read continue writing, as well as that of having easy access to books. And right now, given my location and income level, those two things are very easy and very compatible.

But then I came across this post, and felt the need to say my two cents. (Up to now it has all been background, believe it or not.)

*

So. My two cents, in response to a lot of things, though quite obviously prompted by what happened in Karen Healey's post.

Karen Healey is probably a very nice person most of the time.

This is why it's such a pity she wrote what she wrote.

Because this isn't just a question of poor oppressed published Western writers; because whenever you bring up intellectual property rights and make a moral issue out of enforcing them, whether you know it or not, you're invoking a very long history of the imperialist, capitalist West using it as a weapon against all the groups it classifies as Other, as lesser, both within its borders and outside them. Because you are not an innocent bystander caught up against your will in an unjust, bureaucratic system. There are no such things as innocent bystanders when it comes to these issues, and this is especially true when you stand where you are and make posts like that one, drawing such absolute lines between what is right and what is wrong, being so absolute about your concerns and needs being centered.

Because another thing you are definitely not is the most oppressed victim of this system.

Anyway, Karen Healey hasn't apologized, and I doubt that she ever will. The rage hasn't lessened, and when I'm done posting this I'm not going to be handing out cookies.

But, Internets, be it known. Making a black-and-white moral issue out of piracy, and in the process defending capitalist, imperialist Western notions of intellectual property rights, is unlikely to make me sympathize with your concerns.

Doing so while completely ignoring just how dangerous and destructive these capitalist, imperialist Western notions of intellectual property rights have been, for indigenous and other underprivileged minority communities in the West as well as for the rest of the world, is unlikely to make me sympathize with your concerns.

Doing so while being a white author who has written a book based on the Maori culture, an indigenous culture which has directly suffered from the Western legal system and its concept of intellectual property rights, is unlikely to make me sympathize with your concerns.

Rebuking a reader by saying that they are using the tone argument against you, when as a writer there is no structural or systemic inequality you have historically faced from your readers, when as a writer you are the one in a position of relative authority in that situation, when as a writer your voice is the one heard, and given attention and weight to, is unlikely to make me sympathize with your concerns.

Rebuking a reader by saying that they are using the tone argument against you, when you are the only white person in the convo, when there is no other oppression at work, is unlikely to make me sympathize with your concerns.

Doing so in public, while ignoring all the resonances and ramifications of what you're saying and doing, compounds these offenses.

Don't be clueless and trivializing! It is a basic guideline for life. (And hopefully by making this post I am not also violating it. *CROSSES FINGERS*)

*

Edited To Adds:

1/18/2011:

troisroyaumes's links roundup

1/22/2011:

Karen Healey's response to the ongoing discussion. I was wrong in my assumption that she would not apologize for bringing up the tone argument, or consider some of the underlying hierarchies & inequalities in both the current concept of IPR and the ways that it is used and enforced (and the impacts this might have on all writers/artists and their audiences) when some of these things were brought to her attention. I'm very glad that I was wrong in that assumption.

(Also, just to note: some people seem to be simplifying and flattening this post into saying that I am advocating piracy as the socially just thing to do, each illegal download a crushing strike against hierarchies! When um, never in my life have I had the privilege to be that naive, either. This post was written in a certain context, in response to certain things; I believe this is a black and white issue only insofar as you take this to mean that global hierarchies of race play a part and should be taken into account.)

*

Anyway, some other links:

starlady's post on IP rights

via delux_vivens: Stealing the Blues: Does Intellectual Property Appropriation Belong in the Debate Over African-American Reparations? & Criteria of Negro Art

[People have also brought up some points here on the history of IP laws in the US/UK; about how IP laws sometimes act to prevent access to affordable medicines; strip indigenous (and many other) people of their right and ability to make their own food & medicines; problematic IPR issues in science; among many other things.]

1/24/2011:

Seeking Avalon's Making A Living vs Profit, which captures a lot of where I'm currently at.

1/27/2011:

marina's I swear this was going to be a cheerful post...

Comments

[marina]

THIS POST. I have nothing to add to it except "yes, this." A thousand times YES, THIS.

[colorblue]

I'm glad this resonated with you!

[qian]

This is a seriously good post. Thanks so much for making it.

because I don't have any answers, I don't know what's right and just in certain situations, I'm still making up my mind on a lot of stuff.

I am in this place also! I want to be able to make up my mind on these issues without being distracted by feelings. Of IRRITATION.

I also dislike how the discussion's ended up being framed as a you vs. us debate, when the system affects all of us -- we all reap benefits and incur disadvantages by its operation, though obviously not to the same extent either way.

Although, also -- and you are doing much better at this than I was, I should say -- did you find while you were pulling up research for this post that a lot of what was coming up was um what is traditionally considered "authoritative"? White people, universities in the West, speaking of what developing countries want from a position of detachment. And I was sorting through these, thinking about the imbalance in access and availability -- how much easier it is for some people to get funding and time and space to voice their concerns, and to voice other people's concerns for them. It made me think of this:

Rather, elites possess the power to legitimate the knowledge that they define as being universal, normative, and ideal.

Which you've posted before. And I was thinking about how if I was going to make a post about the ways in which IPR support and codify hierarchies, there was a temptation to use the most "authoritative" sources, the most legitimated, to fight these people on their own turf as it were. But that is not the way to go!

[colorblue]

I am in this place also! I want to be able to make up my mind on these issues without being distracted by feelings. Of IRRITATION.

ahaha, YES.


I also dislike how the discussion's ended up being framed as a you vs. us debate, when the system affects all of us -- we all reap benefits and incur disadvantages by its operation, though obviously not to the same extent either way.

Yes, yes, this!

Your post & the discussions there helped me clarify a lot of where I was coming from, especially of my discomfort with the way things were being framed. Because right now it seems to have become a writers vs readers thing, which is ironic considering that this debate is mainly taking place in fandom circles where quite often there is no distinction between the two. So the question becomes, for me: what is the system that separates writers from Writers, what is the system that legitimizes them and not others, and why aren't the inequalities of that system even given a token mention in most of the dialogue around this? And why should I privilege the voices and concerns of Western MNC-legitimized Writers over everyone else's, and moreover, why am I expected to?

And this isn't even getting into the matter of just how privileged most of the people discussing this are, including me. If we're talking about what is best for the community and the world, what community and what world are we explicitly and implicitly defining here?


did you find while you were pulling up research for this post that a lot of what was coming up was um what is traditionally considered "authoritative"? White people, universities in the West, speaking of what developing countries want from a position of detachment.

YES. And I think one of the reasons is mentioned in the Dick Kawooya link, that most people who aren't white privileged people, or legitimized from the best accredited universities in the West, are wary of what they reveal out of concern about how it might be used.

Also, ahhhh, I'm not completely comfortable about what it says about me, where I am standing and who I see myself talking to and with, that the people I most naturally link to are academics. And I think the ones I link and pay attention to are a bit better than most white university-accredited academics, where even the progressive ones think it is a huge revelation that knowledge and art does not exist on some ideal plane, that these things are by nature politicized and often work against already disadvantaged populations, when srsly duh.

But at the same time, the stuff that they are saying and that is considered so controversial omg is the reality and operating assumption of most of the people in the world, I feel like? So, not really progress by any perspective but the privileged Western academic one!

So, yes, basically what you said, but at more length. XD


And I was sorting through these, thinking about the imbalance in access and availability -- how much easier it is for some people to get funding and time and space to voice their concerns, and to voice other people's concerns for them.

*nods*


And I was thinking about how if I was going to make a post about the ways in which IPR support and codify hierarchies, there was a temptation to use the most "authoritative" sources, the most legitimated, to fight these people on their own turf as it were. But that is not the way to go!

Completely agree!

[tevere]

The current system of intellectual property rights, embedded in the racist classist hegemonic individualist capitalist Western ownership system that by now has been imposed, in one way or another, on everyone, with or without their consent - this system is not just completely fucked up, it is a weapon wielded by those who have power, a weapon aimed directly and deliberately at the hearts of the people and communities and cultures that are considered lesser.

Yes, yes, YES. IP as a weapon used directly and explicitly in international trade negotiations, no less, with hideous repercussions for human life -- because apparently access to affordable medicines in certain parts of the world is less important than the West maintaining its competitive advantage in R&D. Bah.

[colorblue]

YES. This is so horrific and infuriating.

[buria_q]

"because I don't have any answers, I don't know what's right and just in certain situations, I'm still making up my mind on a lot of stuff"

better this than what i often see - people will talk to me about somethign they have loads of doubt about, and then the posted writing will be devoid of those doubts, ambiguities and nuances, like it's written in stone.

[colorblue]

*nods* Also, hey, if you see me doing this ever, let me know? This is something I trip over a lot.

[azuire]

+1. Presumably you know about them trying to patent Ayurvedic cures! I had to laugh at that, because that was the only way to deal with its horror.

[colorblue]

omg YES. I do not know all the details, because my memory is like a sieve, but one of those was for tumeric, wasn't it? TUMERIC!! THERE IS NO END TO THE SHEER WTFNESS OF THIS SYSTEM.

And I hear you on the laughing to deal with the horror part.

[the_future_modernes]

This is gorgeous. Just gorgeous. Can I link to ABW sometime?

[colorblue]

I'm so glad you think so, because the things you post, I feel, help me a lot in figuring things out. (And writing this post I kept of thinking of some of the things you've linked, such as that incident where a Hollywood blockbuster movie was shot abroad, and caused thousands of dollars of damage that the people living there had to deal with.)

So, yeah, thanks for reading & commenting, and feel free to link if you want.

[littlebutfierce]

This is a fantastic post; thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[colorblue]

Thanks for reading.

[glass_icarus]

This is an amazing post. &hearts Mind if I link?

[colorblue]

Go ahead!

[troisroyaumes]

Thanks so much for making this post! It's really great to see the whole concept of intellectual property being deconstructed. Actually, this made me think of all the problematic IPR issues in science (some of which you've pointed out here) and how much they are taken to be a norm unless they happen to hurt the self-interest of institutions on top. E.g. why the zeitgeist is slowly turning in favor of open-access publishing but the most successful model still disadvantages scientists with less funding/from institutions with less funding, something that of course also intersects heavily with where they are located. D:

[colorblue]

Actually, this made me think of all the problematic IPR issues in science (some of which you've pointed out here) and how much they are taken to be a norm unless they happen to hurt the self-interest of institutions on top.

I suspected that's how things happened, because I've seen them happen like that in other places, and it's good to get confirmation on this.


E.g. why the zeitgeist is slowly turning in favor of open-access publishing but the most successful model still disadvantages scientists with less funding/from institutions with less funding, something that of course also intersects heavily with where they are located. D:

That does sound like very questionable progress. (And it also makes me wonder who is doing the funding and what they are funding.)

Thanks for this comment!

[deepad]

Hi your post is awesome and so I thought all I needed to do was link to it but then I saw some more statements and got carried away. Anyway. Great post.

[demimonde]

This was a fascinating post to stumble across through my network, and I hope it's all right that I've linked it in my plurk timeline. It raised some thoughts I have about literature as a privilege (...if you're going to push it as one, then maybe don't be surprised when people aren't terribly sympathetic to your plight of not being privileged enough? this is a semi-formed thought presently), and solidified things for me re: appropriation! Thank you for writing it.

[colorblue]

It's cool to link! I'm glad it helped solidify stuff for you, and I'd be curious to read your thoughts when they are fully-formed.

[oyceter]

♥♥♥♥!!

[oyceter]

I have actual words now! But yes, thank you so much for writing this (and all of you guys for discussing it); it's really crystallized a lot of stuff for me re: why I felt so removed about discussions of privacy and copyright during grad school. (For privacy, a lot of it was because the focus was on people who had privacy to begin with, instead of focusing on people whose privacy is already being coopted and bodies subject to medical testing and cultures subject to scrutiny and analysis by others.) But yeah, still thinking a lot about academia and knowledge and what is assumed knowledge and common knowledge. Thank you for this!

[bell]

This post is seriously awesome. ♥

[inkstone]

♥

[lovepeaceohana]

Because this isn't just a question of poor oppressed published Western writers; because whenever you bring up intellectual property rights and make a moral issue out of enforcing them, whether you know it or not, you're invoking a very long history of the imperialist, capitalist West using it as a weapon against all the groups it classifies as Other, as lesser, both within its borders and outside them. Because you are not an innocent bystander caught up against your will in an unjust, bureaucratic system. There are no such things as innocent bystanders when it comes to these issues, and this is especially true when you stand where you are and make posts like that one, drawing such absolute lines between what is right and what is wrong, being so absolute about your concerns and needs being centered.

I am hugging this whole post, but this paragraph most of all. *hugs HARD*

[lovepeaceohana]

I'm also thinking of this post in terms of fanworks, such as fic and vids, that tend to come under fire for similar reasons: they violate someone's notion of copyright, or they infringe upon someone's idea of intellectual property - and so this has been really useful to me in deconstructing my baffled anger at those arguments. Thank you :3

[jhameia]

Thank you for this amazing post. I've been ambivalent about the latest piracy debate, partly because of lack of spoons, and partly also because the arguments against it are in favour of the privileged. I personally don't like piracy, but that's more of a "I hate that we have to resort to it and be condemned for it when this material should be made available to us anyway" thing than it is a "that's mine! Pay me, dammit!" argument, which a lot of arguments against it look like to me right now.

[colorblue]

I get where you're coming from here. And, re: the lack of spoons, I hope that you're in a better place soon. (And also, of course, that people stop using arguments focusing on the privileged and ignoring others.)

[plazmah]

This is one of the best posts I have read in a long time.

[ajnabi]

oh you are brilliant indeed. thank you, again.

[daedala]

Thank you; this was seriously helpful in clarifying my thoughts about many things.

[la_vie_noire]

Your entry is gorgeous, and thank you so much for writing it!

[crossedwires]

Thank you for this post! ♥

[lotesse]

This is a fantastic post.

[starlady]

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

random excited babble about your icon!

[lovepeaceohana]

I have an icon with the same quote as yours! And what looks like the same font! *points like a small, overexcited child*

[woldy]

This post is amazing. Thanks for making the point so powerfully & eloquently.

[elf]

Thank you so much for this.

I take back part of what I said at ebooks; Mobileread has NOT covered all aspects of the IP debate, because they flinch from privilege discussions so badly that they can't begin to coherently discuss how modern IP law reinforces western kyriarchy.

The issue of "whose stories get to be told" is being fixed by the internet. It's not all fixed, it maybe can't be all fixed, but between social networking and self-publishing and remix technologies, a whole lot of stories and perspectives that could never get published before are now available.

The issues of "whose stories get to be well-known and profitable and therefore considered important"--by the people with money and political power--and "whose stories get to be protected from misuse" are still going strong, and the people who used to be gatekeepers for the stories have shifted to being gatekeepers of protection and popularity.

And copyright law, designed to allow huge companies to play trial-by-combat in a courtroom, or for individuals to tackle entire companies (and a good thing that is; I don't want Disney to select DW posts at will and make movies off of them w/o permission from the author), is being aimed at individuals. Makes me think of trebuchets being used against individual peasants because there's no castles to take down at the moment.