Mar
9
Transculturation
Posted by: Brian | March 9, 2009 | Comments Off on Transculturation
I think I was doing pretty well with the term “transculturation” until I reached Millington’s article. According to Millington “transculturation stands alone as a description of a process of mixing” and “hybridisation… is linked with hybridity as a general concept… and with hybrid as a label for the product which is the outcome of a mixing process.” Now, would this “mixing process” be transculturation? And if so, can someone be labeled as hybrid after a process of transculturation?
As I read further through Millington’s article, I got to sense that transculturation is more than just absorbing a culture, it is also loosing one, and this is a very important part of this term. Reading Ortiz’s and Millington’s article I really felt that loss of culture is important when using the term transculturation. However, I am not sure if forced loss of culture is also an important part of it, because in Ortiz’s article, the suffering and horrible times that African slaves had to live through seems to go hand and hand with their loss of culture, and therefore, with transculturation.
Would the term transculturation be applied to someone born in Australia that goes to live in Honduras… by choice? Or would the word acculturation be more proper?
The African slaves and the Australian were in foreign countries, absorbing that countries “culture”, but how much is the Australian actually loosing of his culture, and how much are the African slaves loosing?
For now, I think transculturation implies absorption of one culture and loss of another through force.
