Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation

September 26, 2018 9:38 PM

"This complex socio-political reality of the U.S. is key to understanding how the cultural void of white society is intimately mixed with white supremacy, capitalism, and globalization; and it is within these oppressive structures that cultural appropriation and the yoga industrial complex flourishes." - Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation
posted by Errant (15 comments total)

This is utterly infuriating:

"...why various Indian yogis started travelling to England and the United States to “sell” yoga, is also tied up with colonialism. Yoga was often used as a tool to show the British that Indians were not backwards or primitive, but that their religion was scientific, healthy, and rational. This was a position they were coerced into, and unfortunately reified colonial forms of knowledge – that knowledge must be proven or scientific to be worth anything."

The assertion of coercion--with absolutely no argument or evidence anywhere else in the piece--absolutely robs these yogis of their agency. That's just bullshit. Perhaps they were coerced and it was all colonial facade. Or perhaps it was a cultural interface where yoga took "western" "scientific" ideas and appropriated them into yogic practice. At least try to make a fucking argument.

The thinking throughout this piece is just sloppy as all getout. I am VERY SYMPATHETIC to the idea that yoga contains elements of cultural appropriation, and this article actually made me less sympathetic to that idea because it is such a sloppy mess.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:01 PM on September 26, 2018 [27 favorites]

Super timely to read this today in comparison with just finishing the 9/11 episode of This Day in History Class mini-podcast, Vivekananda's Speech on Hinduism - Sept. 11, 1893. (Look, I'm really behind on listening to my podcasts with daily episode.)

In an similar, older vein: Namaste on language podcast The Allusionist.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:45 PM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Also, the relativist assumption that “science” is just another aspect of Western colonialist hegemony, like cricket or Christianity, and no less arbitrary or subjective, and that, as ways of knowing things, science and mysticism would stand on an equal footing if the former hadn't been backed by the armies of the British Empire, does nobody any favours.
posted by acb at 3:01 AM on September 27, 2018 [26 favorites]

Colonialism is bad, but cultural interchange and cultural blending are inevitable in a connected world. The differences can be complex and subtle, and not all of it is "appropriation".
posted by rocket88 at 5:11 AM on September 27, 2018 [30 favorites]

The yoga poses used in western exercise were invented in Scandinavia in the 19th century.
posted by jb at 6:25 AM on September 27, 2018 [5 favorites]

I agree with the strong critique of cultural appropriation. I will not venture any particular opinion on the history of yoga in the US, but am willing to assume that the authors are authoritative. However, I think almost everything else about the argument is wrong.

Cultural appropriation is, I agree, a function of colonialism. But their argument that it is historically contingent upon the specific history of American immigration -- that it fills a "void" -- is wrong. The implication that there is no real "white culture" is wrong. The argument that American culture is uniquely spiritually impoverished is wrong. There is more than a bit of orientalism implicit in their argument, which is surprising.

After all, there's a long history of western cultural appropriation that is predicated upon this very notion that the exotic other is the necessary corrective to the spiritual bankruptcy of the dominant power. This has always been a superficially ironic mode in which colonialism expresses itself. It's complementary to the export of the imperial culture. They go hand-in-hand.

This essay really seems to me like something written thirty years ago.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:00 AM on September 27, 2018 [21 favorites]

oh good it's not just me.

My reaction to this essay was that I agree with its overall thesis but that many of the specific points or arguments made are not quite right. I think at its core the essay falls into a bit of the noble savage view of historical yoga and makes too much of a clean-cut dichotomy between yoga's origins and the appropriated version of it.
posted by GuyZero at 9:36 AM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think a bunch of my criticisms are mostly quibbles, but the one part that really shocked me was:

The cost of Western yoga classes can be prohibitive for low to middle-income people. This often includes People of Color, including recent immigrants, such as Indian women to whom this practice rightfully belongs.

So the first sentence, yes, yoga studios are pretty bougie as they say. But to say that yoga, as a practice, belong to Indian women is really oddly erasing of Indian men. It's a minor point but it really struck me as an unnecessary exclusion.
posted by GuyZero at 10:37 AM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

The central problem I have with this is that I do not believe people own culture but rather that culture exploits people in order to reproduce and survive.
posted by Pembquist at 11:06 AM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oh dear, it's is-yoga-racist'o'clock again. Already?
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 1:05 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

The cost of Western yoga classes can be prohibitive for low to middle-income people. This often includes People of Color, including recent immigrants, such as Indian women to whom this practice rightfully belongs.

Many yoga studios, but not all of course, offer, "in keeping of the spirit of yoga," free or low cost classes so that yoga is available to everyone. I've seen these in older, more established studios that still have a spiritual vs a fitness bent.

It's also my (albeit limited) understanding that yoga was once the domain of men. And that the first woman to teach yoga in India was Indra Devi (nee Eugenie Peterson, a Westerner) sometime in the late 1930s. She was also Tirumalai Krishnamacharya's (considered the father of yoga) first female yoga student and the first woman ever in an ashram.
posted by vivzan at 1:14 PM on September 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised by the dismissive comments about the history of colonialism and appropriation in yoga. I can imagine a better article could have been written, but I believe this is an important topic and disagree with the dismissive attitude shown here and don't believe that even if the article did get some things wrong that it makes it ok to dismiss the many voices I've heard of people who DO feel impacted by the way yoga is used in the "west".


I feel like I originally saw a lot of mockery here on the blue when discussing native issues, indigenous issues, and appropriation and slowly even though those threads are more quiet, there is less mockery or kneejerk reaction against even considering the position of people who feel harmed by it and more people who seem to genuinely care. I hope that this changes in this topic as well, the abuses of colonialism in India was still barely taught here at all the US when I was going to school 15 years ago and so a lot of adults know very little about it. I personally hope for these things to be taken more seriously and I don't consider the context in which people make decisions to be "denying agency".

Thanks for posting this Errant.
posted by xarnop at 2:16 PM on September 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

Yoga is good.

It can be good for a person's mental/physical/spiritual health or any combination of the three. If you are a good person and you do yoga, you will be a slightly better for it.

Yoga can help people be happier and healthier. More people practicing yoga means more happy and healthy people.

Maybe some people aren't getting all the benefits of yoga.
Maybe some people are only getting a bastardized version.
Maybe some people don't care at all about the cultural history of yoga.

That there is a lot of yuppie yoga doesn't also mean there is less true yoga.

More yoga (in any form) has not brought more of anything bad into the world. It's an unmitigated good. It's hard to understand someone who sees that and also sees danger or hate.

I also don't get what the critics of people practicing yoga actually want. Just let people use the tools they have available to improve their lives in the way they want. It's hard enough to help yourself, why make it harder?
posted by KBGB at 4:12 PM on September 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

Mother Maya gives a powerful speech about her experience of the divine behind yoga and challenging the capitalist health movement that neglects those in need. "Yoga has become another trillion dollar industry in the world"

"Food for one must be food for all, that is the mandate of the mother. Health for me must be health for you. The mother has suffered enough!

And now we will elevate that suffering to the divine wisdom of what that shakti is all about. And watch us do that, all together."
posted by xarnop at 4:31 PM on September 27, 2018

I also don't get what the critics of people practicing yoga actually want. Just let people use the tools they have available to improve their lives in the way they want. It's hard enough to help yourself, why make it harder?

No one wants to stop you doing yoga. It's literally the first sentence of the article:

To the so many white people who practice yoga, please don’t stop, but please do take a moment to look outside of yourself and understand how the history of yoga practice in the United States is intimately linked to some of the larger forces of white supremacy.

They want you to go beyond the shallow, packaged, sanitised version of yoga that is marketed in western nations and understand the deeper context and meaning that has been stripped out.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:39 PM on September 27, 2018 [8 favorites]