When people talk about "cultural appropriation," they usually don't have to wait long for outrage.

Anyone who criticizes stereotypes in Winnetou films and books and questions whether they are still up-to-date is then quickly insulted as an apologist for prohibition, as an advocate of the "cancel culture".

The fact that these actually occasionally exist (the most recent example comes from Bern, where a reggae band made up of white musicians had to stop their performance because they were exploiting “black culture”) is often suppressed by the opposing side.

So is usually implacable railed against each other.

As a rule: without gaining knowledge.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The Frankfurt club Zoom wanted to do better on Monday evening.

The musician Stefan Hantel, known by his pseudonym Shantel, had invited to a discussion and music program.

He completed the first part of the evening as a solo.

Hantel spoke about how the music he DJs and produces has become increasingly eclectic and "heterogeneous" throughout his career - and the role played by his family's roots in the now-Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi and Greece.

And he played an acoustic medley accompanied by two string players.

A society that gives space

Later, the music journalist Jens Balzer and Subin Nijhawan, research assistant at the Institute for English and American Studies at the Goethe University and high school teacher, joined the podium.

Jean Trouillet, who has been with Shantel for many years, moderated.

Jens Balzer, who mostly writes for Die Zeit, has just published a highly acclaimed essay on the "Ethics of Appropriation".

In it, he pleads for the “right” way of dealing with the acquisition of culture and refers to humanities scholars such as Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze or the theorists Paul Gilroy and Édouard Glissant, who are associated with postcolonialism.

On the stage in the Zoom Club, Balzer repeated the basic assumption of his book: that culture does not exist without appropriation, that it is always made up of countless different set pieces.

He described the idea of ​​cultural purity as an illusion, especially in pop music playing with influences, with differences, was part of everyday life right from the start.

Édouard Glissant coined the appropriate Creole term for this.

Subin Nijhawan also doubts that there is such a thing as authenticity.

As a supposed expert, he is often asked where one can go to eat "authentically Indian".

Nijhawan doesn't know the answer to that, the subcontinent's cuisines are so varied and diverse.

Behind the desire for authenticity is also the search for clarity, an unambiguousness that can no longer be found in a globalized world.

But why are we still arguing so fiercely?

Why complain about cultural theft when purity or authenticity doesn't exist anyway?

Stefan Hantel says it has a lot to do with anger.

Those who do not feel represented in mainstream society, who are seen as "foreigners" even though they were born in the country, no longer want to accept not being noticed.

They no longer want to accept that their voices go unheard.

That is why a society is needed that does not deny its diversity but gives it space.