Cultural Domination

How "cultural exchange" seems a little one-sided, and cultural predation is a thing, too

One of the many accepted norms of Palestine’s cultural system is the idea of ‘cultural exchange’ as a desired outcome of cultural workers engaging with the system. They’re encouraged (programmed / indoctrinated?) to desire cultural exchanges with peers in ‘the world’, which usually means they seek grants from international funds established to create access to cultural workers and / or institutions in the countries they’re from. The ‘cultural exchange’ means the local Palestinian creative makes stuff, and they get to share it with audiences internationally, and that one of the benefits to the creator of doing this work is the enriching experiences that extend way beyond the gallery or the stage - the warmth of human connections. Meeting their peers in person. Visiting one of the spaces of cultural connection in the safety of a place that’s not under siege. The tiny details of life overseas, such as the different graphic design on candy wrappers, or how the lock turns anti-clockwise in New York, but clockwise in Paris.

These are indeed the life-force of culture. Cultural exchange = good.

However, there’s a power imbalance that makes cultural exchange also a potential tool of cultural erasure, or at least, of cultural invasion, cultural domination and extinction.

It’s a bit like how Normalization sounds really good - we’re all going to chill and get to know each other. Palestinians get to eat Israeli Bamba, and the children of Palestine’s Nakba perpetrators get to eat Palestinian maftoul while enjoying all of the benefits of the Zionist state in terms of freedom of movement, economic access, and an army that protects them at the expense of the entire population of Gaza.

Everyone says kumbaya, and Israelis go home with a warm fuzzy feeling. Palestinians go home a little tiny bit further disempowered. They go home a little more muted and amenable from these human experiences. These interactions with ‘nice’ well meaning Israelis do change them to be more accommodating. To want peace a little but more as opposed to wanting justice at any cost.

Cultural exchanges do something similar when the power dynamic is not addressed - likewise, I want to talk about using Palestine as a petri dish, and how this is cultural predation, even if the well-meaning Westerners who generally do this think it’s how to center Palestinians. An example of this I saw recently is a seminar in London that’s drawing from the experiences and resilience of amputees in Gaza to help them think creatively about disability and debility in the West.

This is predatory. It’s for your own benefit, well-meaning London-based disability activists. It’s not centering Palestinians with disabilities at all - it’s centering your own London-based community of disabled people, who will benefit from Palestine’s disability community. Dah.

Also, VR - let’s not try out VR headsets as a potential tool for psychotherapy for folks who have survived the current ongoing genocide. I’ve heard that tech folks considered sending them VR headsets, knowing that they don’t know exactly who this would be a ‘fit’. I’d suggest this is also a well-meaning form of market development / experiment, as the potential pitfalls are immense - we don’t try new ideas on survivors of genocide. That’s my basic rule of thumb.

So yeah. I’m not suggesting we don’t do cultural exchanges - I myself have enormously benefitted as an artist from interacting with my creative peers, having toured, as well as currently being a guest here in Palestine. I’ve had cultural exchanges 24/7-365 for a very long time, and I don’t want to deny my peers access to exactly the same amount of cultural exchanges that I’ve had, and continue to have. Likewise, I do believe there’s a potential benefit for collabs between Palestinians and Israelis. I’m rare in this belief here in Palestine, but I do think there’s potential for Palestinian cultural projects to be empowered through collaboration with a very tiny amount of Israeli Jews who truly have done the work to be fit partners, supporting Palestinians.

But.

Without understanding the risks, it always ends in tears, and those tears are always in the eyes of Palestinians.

And so it is also with ‘cultural exchanges’ everywhere. French, Japanese, whatever.

Approach with quiet caution, friends. Let’s not inadvertently become perpetrators and predators in this imbalance of cultural power.