Rights Information

World rights available.

Lars Distelhorst – from a white male perspective and knowingly so – writes about a subject that is as omnipresent as it is inadequately theorised, and with an extraordinary potential to polarise as well. Ethnic party-costumes or dreadlocks, white soul music or yoga – are those cultural appropriations? Discussions tend to escalate quickly here.
Distelhorst demonstrates how the macro and micro level of cultural appropriation are connected. He discusses various definitions of the term, including the alleged assumption of essentialist cultural concepts.
He analyses three dimensions of cultural appropriation: looted art and artefacts from colonised people, the unasked-for representation of other cultures, and the consumption of culture as commodity.
Finally, Distelhorst relates cultural appropriation to anti-racist and anti-capitalist perspectives to use it in fighting against persisting systems of power and domination.

Author Biography

Dr. Lars Distelhorst, born in Georgsmarienhütte in 1972, studied political
science at the University of Bremen and holds a PhD on Gender Politics
from the Freie Universität Berlin. Living in Berlin, he is professor for social
science at the university of applied sciences Clara Hoffbauer in Potsdam.
His most recent publications are “Kritik des Postfaktischen. Der Kapitalismus
und seine Spätfolgen” (Fink 2019) and “Leistung. Das Endstadium
der Ideologie” (transcript 2014).