{"id":151,"date":"2010-09-30T14:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/2010\/09\/30\/a-classic-case-of-cultural-misappropriation-misrepresented-as-scholarship"},"modified":"2010-09-30T14:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T19:05:00","slug":"a-classic-case-of-cultural-misappropriation-misrepresented-as-scholarship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/30\/a-classic-case-of-cultural-misappropriation-misrepresented-as-scholarship\/","title":{"rendered":"A Classic Case of Cultural Misappropriation Misrepresented as Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am taking a mythology class.  First mistake: it&#8217;s an English\/Literature class, not an Anthropology class.  I should have known better.<\/p>\n<p>The textbook, about which you will be hearing a great deal, is <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Myth and Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology<\/span>, by Scott Leonard and Michael McLure.  There&#8217;s a lot of broad, systematic problems with the book from feminist, pagan, and various other angles (scholastic and otherwise), but here&#8217;s a nice and easy one.<\/p>\n<p>The French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar wrote a short story entitled &#8220;Kali Beheaded&#8221;.  It&#8217;s not a bad story (not great either &#8230; though I can&#8217;t say for sure since I can&#8217;t read the original French), but it&#8217;s just a story.  Jyoti Panjawani has <a href=\"http:\/\/castle.eiu.edu\/%7Eipaweb\/pipa\/volume2\/panjwani.htm\">written an essay<\/a> on the three Hindu stories that appear to have inspired &#8220;Kali Beheaded&#8221;<span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">.<\/p>\n<p><\/span>Myth and Knowing misrepresents Yourcenar&#8217;s fiction as an actual Hindu myth of the divine feminine<span style=\"font-weight:bold;\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\"> &#8211; <\/span><\/span>a &#8220;modern adaptation of traditional materials (Leonard 157)&#8221;, as though all she&#8217;d done was adjust the formatting from lyric to prose and tweak the language for modern comprehention.  No.  That&#8217;s not what she did.  It&#8217;s an utter fabrication, published elsewhere (rightly) not as anthropology but as her own goddamn <a href=\"http:\/\/search.barnesandnoble.com\/Oriental-Tales\/Marguerite-Yourcenar\/e\/9780374519971\">original fiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is officially the first in what will become a long series of posts about the epic fail that is this textbook.<br \/><span><strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am taking a mythology class. First mistake: it&#8217;s an English\/Literature class, not an Anthropology class. I should have known better. The textbook, about which you will be hearing a great deal, is Myth and Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology, by Scott Leonard and Michael McLure. There&#8217;s a lot of broad, systematic problems with &hellip; <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/30\/a-classic-case-of-cultural-misappropriation-misrepresented-as-scholarship\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[94,296],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","tag-gods","tag-white-people-steal-shit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-2r","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}