Telling the Stories of Others: Applying an Ameliorated Concept of 'Culture' to the Subject Appropriation Debate

AHRC (WRoCAH) : Nadia Mehdi : AH/L503848/1

My research project will examine subject appropriation. I will argue that subject appropriation - the representation of a culture by an artist from another culture - is of moral concern when dominantly situated artists (men, white people, and so on) misrepresent the experiences and subjectivities of the oppressed given that misrepresentations further perpetuate marginalization.

I will first develop an account of what misrepresentations are comprised of, something that has yet to be done in the debate regarding subject appropriations. I must then show, against popular philosophical belief, that it is indeed possible to misrepresent what is ultimately a fictional experience.

Next, I must establish that it is possible for audiences learn from fiction. I will explore the phenomenological dimensions of fictions, those dimensions related to the experience of consuming fictions, to demonstrate that fiction can impart a knowledge-of-what-it-is-like to live with a marginalized identity.

I will then determine why it is a problem for audiences to learn falsehoods about the oppressed, canvassing work in social epistemology to articulate the ways in which misrepresentations uphold oppression at both the material and ideological level.