136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx

136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆
Volume 55
© 2016 by the American Counseling Association. All rights
reserved.
Received 12/29/14
Revised 09/29/15
Accepted 10/07/15
DOI: 10.1002/johc.12030
Overwhelmed With the
Burden of Being Myself:
A Phenomenological Exploration
of the Existential Experiences of
Counselors-in-Training
L. Marinn Pierce
s s s
Little research exists about the lived experiences of counselors-
in-training during their
practicum and internship experiences. The results of a
phenomenological study exploring
the existential experiences of counselors-in-training are
presented. Implications for counselor

development and supervision, as well as needs for future
research and exploration, are discussed.
Keywords: existential, counselor development, internship,
supervision
s s s
Rogers (1961) noted that the humanity of the counselor is the
most important
tool in the counseling session, and other theorists and
researchers (Glad-
ding, 1997; Guy, 1987; Patterson & Einsenberg, 1983) have
supported this
view. Therefore, it can be assumed that increased personal
understanding
of the self, or self-awareness, is an integral and foundational
part of the
development of the professional counselor. This belief in the
importance
of the humanity of the counselor is evident in the increased
emphasis on
personal dispositions in the ongoing assessment of counselors-
in-training
(American Counseling Association, 2014; Pierce, 2010). There
are a vari-
ety of ways to support counselors-in-training in their self-
exploration in
both academic and experiential settings, and much literature has
been
produced regarding how counselor educators can support the
develop-
ment of counselors-in-training. Various theorists of counselor
development
have addressed the progress of the counseling supervisee from a

place of
dependence on the supervisor to increased independence from
the su-
pervisor (Skovholt & Rønnestad, 1995; Stoltenberg, McNeill, &
Delworth,
1998). Although these models provide a framework for
understanding the
L. Marinn Pierce, Department of Counselor Education and
Rehabilitation, California State University,
Fresno. This author would like to thank Alexandra K. Holt and
Candice Newsum for their assistance
with this study. Correspondence concerning this article should
be addressed to L. Marinn Pierce,
Department of Counselor Education and Rehabilitation,
California State University, Fresno, 5005
North Maple Avenue, Fresno, CA 93740 (e-mail:
[email protected]).
Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume
55 137
development of the emerging counselor, they fail to address the
personal
experiences of developing counselors. Without an understanding
of the
intimate existential crises experienced by supervisees,
counseling supervi-
sors potentially neglect the personal struggles that counselors-
in-training
encounter as a result of the professional growth experience. An
increased
understanding of the lived experiences of counselors-in-training
related

to the existential experiences they encounter during their
practicum and/
or internship experiences can enhance the quality and depth of
counselor
supervision. The purpose of this study was to explore
specifically the ex-
istential experiences of counselors-in-training during the
practicum and/
or internship experiences.
Literature revieW
Counseling Supervision
Counseling supervision is a hierarchical, evaluative relationship
between
counseling professionals and a supervisor, through which these
counseling
professionals develop skills, gain knowledge, and increase self-
awareness
and understanding (Bernard & Goodyear, 2009). Bernard (1997)
identi-
fied three areas of foci for counseling supervision: intervention
skills (how
supervisees respond in session), conceptualization skills (how
supervisees
understand what is occurring in session and how they determine
what in-
terventions to use), and personalization skills (how supervisees
address issues
of countertransference and how they integrate their personal
selves into
the counseling session). On the basis of a review of the
literature, Falender
(2014) found that counselors place a greater emphasis on
intervention and

conceptualization skills.
Several theories and models of counselor development exist to
support
the practice and implementation of counselor education
(Bernard & Good-
year, 2009; Borders & Brown, 2005; Haynes, Corey, &
Moulton, 2003). Aten,
Strain, and Gillespie (2008) proposed a transtheoretical model
of clinical
supervision based on the stages of change model (Prochaska &
Norcross,
2001). In this approach, supervisees proceed through a series of
stages of
change, and supervisors use various interventions, known as
processes,
which are either experiential or behavioral, to support
supervisees’ growth
across the stages of change. Aten et al. noted that supervisees
experience
anxiety during the contemplation and action stages and that,
while in the
contemplation stage, supervisees experience heightened
awareness about
their roles and performance. This awareness leads to anxiety as
well as
ambivalence. The experience of supervisees in the action stage
is similar;
however, the anxiety is related to the use of newly developed
skills.
The integrated developmental model (Stoltenberg et al., 1998)
is
probably the most recognized of the developmental approaches
to
counselor development. Stoltenberg et al. (1998) described

counselors
as developing across three overriding structures: (a) self and
other
Volume 55
awareness, (b) motivation, and (c) autonomy. These counselors
develop
across three levels within eight specific domains: (a)
intervention skills
competence, (b) assessment techniques, (c) interpersonal
assessment,
(d) client conceptualization, (e) individual differences, (f )
theoretical
orientation, (g) treatment plans and goals, and (h) professional
ethics.
Level 1 counselors have limited first-hand knowledge or
experience
of the domain in question. Although they are highly motivated,
these
counselors are also highly reliant on the supervisor for guidance
and
approval and tend to be focused on their own inadequacies.
Although
Level 2 counselors are more focused on the client, they are in a
place of
fluctuation between dependence on supervisors and their own
indepen-
dence. They can, at times, become overly focused on the client
and lose
sight of themselves. Level 3 counselors are confident in their
abilities,
including the knowledge of when to reach out for consultation.

Level 3
counselors continue this development across their professional
careers,
and this continuation is noted as Level 3i, or the integrated
counselor.
These individuals effectively integrate their abilities across the
eight
domains within the three structures (Stoltenberg et al., 1998).
Several of these theories address supervisee anxiety. The source
of
this anxiety is described as the fear of being observed and
evaluated,
and anxiety is viewed as a positive opportunity for growth in
the
course of counseling supervision. Thus, counseling supervisors
face
the challenge of balancing their supervisees’ anxieties, which
they
increase, with support and encouragement (Borders & Brown,
2005).
Borders and Brown (2005) identified that supervisees
experience two
primary types of anxiety: state anxiety and trait anxiety. State
anxiety
refers to the anxiety that supervisees experience given their
current
developmental level, their amount of counseling experience, and
the
difficulty of their presenting clients. At the same time,
supervisees
enter the supervision experience with a preexisting propensity
toward
anxiety, which is known as trait anxiety (Borders & Brown,
2005). The
means by which supervisors address both state and trait

anxieties is
dependent on the theoretical orientation of the supervisor
(Bernard
& Goodyear, 2009).
Theoretical approaches to understanding counselor
development, rooted
in traditional counseling theories, are also used in the
supervision process
(Aten et al., 2008). These approaches seem to be used primarily
for teaching
counselors-in-training to use the theoretical approaches in
question (Aten et
al., 2008; Connell, 1984; Cummings, 1992; Farber, 2012;
Rowan, 2006), and
Chang (2013) noted that the practice of integrating a counseling
theoretical
model in the supervision process is diminishing. At the same
time, other
scholars presented ways of using counseling theories in the
supervision
process. Burnes, Wood, Inman, and Welikson (2013) described
the impact
of process factors present during feminist group supervision
experiences,
and Degges-White, Colon, and Borzumato-Gainey (2013)
provided a framework
55 139
for the use of feminist theory in supervision. Theoretical
approaches pro-
vide not only interventions to promote counselor development

but also
a means of understanding the process of counselor development
beyond
those provided by stage models.
These theoretical approaches to counselor development and
supervision
provide a framework for understanding the process of a
counselor-in-training
moving from a place of dependence to increased independence
(Aten et al.,
2008; Skovholt & Rønnestad, 1995; Stoltenberg et al., 1998).
Although these
models offer a developmental understanding of the professional
counselor,
they do not consider the personal experiences of counselors-in-
training.
An existential approach to counselor development is a
framework from
which counselor educators can begin to understand the intimate
personal
awareness that counselors-in-training experience as a result of
their profes-
sional development.
An Existential Understanding of a Counselor’s Developmental
Experience
Arising as a reaction to the psychoanalytic and behaviorist
ideologies, an
existential understanding of human beings emphasizes the
existence of
individuals. Drawing from philosophical works such as those of
Søren Ki-
erkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Maslow
(1968), one of

the first theorists to present existentialism as a
psychotherapeutic approach
in the United States, noted two main emphases of
existentialism: the focus
on the identity of the individual and the phenomenological
nature of the
approach. Frankl (2000), Maslow (1968), and May (1983) noted
that other
theorists, namely Carl Rogers and Gordon Allport, placed
emphasis on
these areas as well; however, from an existential perspective, an
increased
awareness of identity and existence leads to an increased
responsibility
for the individual’s existence. Existential theorists argued that
this “inner
nature” (Maslow, 1968, p. 3) is simultaneously individual and
universal
because this inner nature is unique to the individual, yet each
individual
possesses an inner nature. Various terms are used to describe
this inner
nature: being, essence, existence, and self (Frankl, 2000;
Maslow, 1968; May,
1983).
As individuals gain increased awareness of their existence, their
aware-
ness of the possibility of nonexistence also increases, which
creates anxi-
ety. May (1983) stated, “Anxiety is the subjective state of the
individual’s
becoming aware that his existence can become destroyed, that
he can lose
himself and his world, that he can become ‘nothing’” (pp. 109–
110). The

process of counselor development places emphasis on self-
awareness and
reflection. From an existential perspective, the process of
becoming a pro-
fessional counselor is inherently anxiety producing, not only
because of
the academic and clinical evaluation of the student as
previously described
but also because the counselor-in-training is continually asked
to increase
awareness of the self. May (1983) stated further,
Volume 55
anxiety always involves inner conflict. . . . anxiety occurs at the
point where some
emerging potentiality or possibility faces the individual, some
possibility of fulfilling
his existence; but this very possibility involves the destroying
of present security,
which thereupon gives rise to the tendency to deny the new
potentiality. (p. 111)
Maslow (1968) noted that anxiety is also generated through
encounters
with the human suffering of others, which can bring individuals
face-to-
face with their own nonbeing.
May (1983) also provided further insight into the effect of the
therapeutic
relationship on the professional counselor. He noted that in any
authentic

relationship between individuals, including the counseling
relationship,
both individuals are changed. Because of this aspect, the
encounter of
another being can simultaneously generate anxiety and joy, and
both of
these experiences can lead to change for the individuals
involved in the
encounter if it leads to increased awareness of the self and
responsibility
taking. Because of this aspect of the encounter between the
counselor and
client, existentialists encourage phenomenological exploration
of the self
rather than assume the presence of transference or
countertransference for
the client or counselor (May, 1983).
Although existential theorists provided a unique perspective on
the
experience of the counselor, there exists limited literature
regarding the
existential experiences of professional counselors beyond the
personal,
autobiographical writings of leading existential theorists
(Frankl, 1997;
May, 1983; Yalom, 2012). This limited knowledge base also
includes a lim-
ited understanding of the impact of these existential experiences
on the
development of the professional counselor.
MetHod
The following research question was used to guide this study:
What are the

existential experiences encountered by counselors-in-training
during their
practicum and/or internship experiences? To answer this
question, a heuristic
or psychological phenomenological approach, as described by
Moustakas
(1990, 1994), was used. The aim of any phenomenological study
is to explore
the lived experiences of individuals related to an identified
phenomenon. In
this case, the researchers sought to explore the lived, existential
experiences of
counselors-in-training during their practicum and/or internship
experiences.
Data Collection and the Role of the Researcher
The research team consisted of three individuals: the author—a
faculty
member with training and experience in qualitative research—
and two
counselor education students, who used the phenomenological
data analysis
process, as outlined by Moustakas (1990, 1994), in the
development and
implementation of this study. After receiving institutional
review board
approval, the research team established the role of the
researcher by initiating
55 141
the bracketing process, separating out their own experiences

through
reviews of writings and reflections on the topic. In addition to
this initial
bracketing process, the research team recorded all discussions
related to
the study for further bracketing purposes.
Counselors-in-training who completed their initial practicum
experience
and identified as having existential experiences during the
course of practi-
cum and/or internship were recruited. A snowball sampling
method was
used. Participants completed one interview via phone that was
approxi-
mately 1 hour in length. All interviews were audiotaped and
transcribed
for analysis purposes.
In an attempt to honor the phenomenological experiences of
participants,
all participants were asked one initial question: “What are the
existential
experiences you encountered as a practicum and/or internship
student?”
Additional open-ended questions and minimal encouragers were
used by the
research team to support the participants’ descriptions of their
experiences.
Data Analysis
The purpose of phenomenological research is to provide a rich,
thick descrip-
tion of an identified phenomenon, which, in this case, was the
existential

experiences of counselors-in-training. The research team
continued to use the
phenomenological data analysis process as outlined by
Moustakas (1990, 1994)
to code the collected data by highlighting significant phrases or
quotations
and establishing clusters of meaning. These clusters were used
to develop
textural and structural descriptions of the data. In addition, the
research team
reviewed their own experiences through the bracketing process
and meeting
recordings. The research team used this data to develop the
essence of the
existential experiences of participants (Moustakas, 1990, 1994).
Participants
Using snowball sampling, the research team recruited five
participants
(two women and three men). The five participants consisted of
counselors-
in-training from various programs throughout the United States
who had
completed practicum or internship and identified as having
existential
experiences during these experiential components of their
training. Par-
ticipants ranged in age from 25 to 35 years. Four participants
identified as
Caucasian, and one participant identified as Asian.
Limitations
several limitations exist in the use of phenomenological
research. First,

the very nature of phenomenological research— to describe the
lived ex-
periences of individuals—limits the generalizability of the
findings. This
limitation is further compounded by the small numbers of
participants in
Volume 55
phenomenological studies (creswell, 2013). in addition, the use
of snowball
sampling and voluntary participants also can limit the
generalizability of
the findings (maxwell, 2005).
Methods of Trustworthiness
The research team used four methods of trustworthiness:
triangulation, clari-
fying researcher bias, member checks, and a rich-thick
description (creswell,
2013). Triangulation was conducted through the use of multiple
researchers.
The bracketing process and continuing clarification of the
researcher’s role
provided systematic, ongoing clarification of researcher bias.
member check-
ing was accomplished by having participants review the
outcomes to ensure
accuracy. Three of the five participants responded to the request
for member
checks. One noted that she had nothing to add, but the second
stated, “Wow!!

Your research is spot on with what i went thru [sic] during
graduate school!
The whole darn thing. . . . Good work.” a third stated, “i am not
surprised
at what i read because of the theme of isolation. i think it’s a
great example
of how insight sometimes provides very little relief from painful
emotional
reactions. i reckon this is because they are just the painful
emotions associated
with life, rather than symptoms.” The research team developed a
rich-thick
description of the phenomenon and the analysis.
resuLts and disCussion
To provide a rich, thick description of the existential
experiences of partici-
pants, the research team used the phenomenological data
analysis process, as
outlined by moustakas (1990, 1994), to code the collected data
by highlighting
significant phrases or quotations and establishing clusters of
meaning. Theses
codes were used to develop the following structural, textual
description of
the phenomenon. Five major themes were developed related to
the personal
experiences of the participants: (a) actually being real; (b) i’m
not really de-
pressed. it’s more like overwhelmed; (c) questioning of self; (d)
worry; and
(e) loneliness. Two themes were developed that provided some
meditating
factors: (a) relationships with program faculty and (b)
relationships with

program peers. These seven themes are interconnected and
affect one another.
in addition, they all fell under the overarching theme of
overwhelmed with
the burden of being myself. Each of these seven themes and the
overarching
theme are discussed in the following paragraphs.
Actually Being Real
maslow (1968) noted that part of the existential experience is
the acknowl-
edgment of the differences between what individuals aspire to
be and
what they are actually capable of given their human limitations.
Partici-
pants described anxiety related to the reality of transitioning
from being
55 143
a counselor-in-training to working as a professional counselor.
The reality
of the transition seemed to be surprising to participants. This
anxiety was
present regardless of whether the participant was beginning
practicum
or completing internship. One participant described the
“massive, mas-
sive difference” between classroom training experiences and
work in the
professional setting. He went on to state, “i think it’s kind of
put me in a

certain place and had me question my belief systems to a certain
extent.”
although it might seem obvious that anxiety would result from
this tran-
sition, participants described that the result of this anxiety
included an
acknowledgment and recognition of their personal limitations,
particularly
in relation to the magnitude of the work they were doing. One
individual
acknowledged this recognition by stating, “i did the best i could
in that
hour,” which is a self-talk statement used to provide
encouragement in the
presence of personal limitations. inherent in this
acknowledgment is the
reality of just how much the counselor can effect change for a
client. There
seemed to be a cyclical nature to this anxiety because the
anxiety related to
the transition resulted in additional anxiety related to the
personal limita-
tions of the counselors-in-training.
I’m Not Really Depressed. It’s More Like Overwhelmed.
across the interviews, participants described an emotional
exhaustion
associated with their practicum and internship experiences. This
exhaus-
tion was not necessarily associated with the additional time
commitment
involved in these experiences but rather with the emotional
commitment
required during these experiences. One participant stated, “i
didn’t have

the mental energy.” another participant described this
exhaustion as be-
ing “almost like serving a sentence,” and a third participant
described the
overwhelming nature when she “accepted the mediocrity” of her
work
during these learning experiences. it should be noted that this
overwhelm-
ing feeling did not seem to inhibit their desires to continue in
the field of
professional counseling, but it was present, and participants
were aware of
it during the training process. Guilt, as described by may
(1983), seemed
to be inherent in this overwhelmed experience. Guilt
experiences arise as
individuals are faced with increased awareness, and therefore
responsibil-
ity, of their potentialities as well as their personal limitations
(Frankl, 2000;
maslow, 1968; may, 1983).
Questioning of Self
all participants acknowledged multiple moments and, in some
cases, periods
of time in which they questioned their selves. This questioning
included,
to a certain extent, an uncertainty in participants’ abilities as
professional
counselors, a “not being capable.” although this questioning is
related to
the acknowledgment of their personal limitations described
previously, the

Volume 55
questioning of abilities seemed to be beyond just the
acknowledgment of
capabilities. These feelings of incapability included a fear of
others’ percep-
tions. One participant stated, “i didn’t want my classmates to
judge me,”
and this fear lead to a reluctance to speak up and share concerns
in class
and supervision. at the same time, there seemed to be a deeper
questioning,
an uncertainty in their value as individuals. They described the
importance
of “feeling valued” but also not wanting “to burden people with
my shit.”
This devaluing of the self led to additional anxiety because
participants
described reluctance to address the questioning with supervisors
and peers.
may (1983) noted the anxiety generated from living an
inauthentic life,
one in which the value of the self is rooted in the perceptions of
others.
He described this as a form of social conformity rather than an
authentic
encounter with another. although individuals exist within a
social world,
the inner nature is not a product of this world. according to may
(1983),
self-esteem is present when individuals engage in authentic
relationships,
which allows for the presence of their potentialities as well as

their limitations.
Worry
Worry differs from the existential anxiety described by maslow
(1968) be-
cause it is not related directly to the realities of human
suffering; instead,
worry seems to be a consuming concern. One participant stated,
“i just
kept thinking.” The consuming thoughts were related to self-
doubt and
seemed always to be with participants. maslow (1968) listed
effortlessness
as one of the values of being. He described this as “ease; lack of
strain,
striving or difficulty; grace; perfect, beautiful functioning” (p.
83). This
effortlessness was present as a result of the participants’
connection with
being and awareness of the value of the unique self, including
potenti-
alities and limitations. in other words, this worry prevented
participants
from engaging in the encounter (may, 1983) with the client by
generating
a defense to the awareness of nonbeing that the encounter might
reflect.
Loneliness
Loneliness is a concept typically associated with existential
ideas, so it was
not surprising to hear a variety of themes of loneliness.
Throughout the
interviews, participants used words such as isolated, shut down,

and alone
to describe their experiences in practicum and internship. One
participant
described that she “always felt a little alone.” These feelings
were compli-
cated by the perceptions that peers “didn’t seem as worried as
me,” which
lead to increased worry and questioning of self. Participants
noted being left
to work on their own, and they seemed to wrestle with
experiencing au-
tonomy and independence in their work versus missing out on
something
that occurs within relationships, particularly relationships with
peers and
supervisors. One participant noted the importance of the
acceptance that
55 145
“i’m alone in the world.” This concept of loneliness was
particularly present
in the counseling relationship because participants described
feelings of
loneliness despite being in intimate counseling relationships
with clients.
One participant described the moment he realized this in a
group counsel-
ing session: “i was the one sitting in the room, and they were all
looking at
me.” Participants seemed to be struggling with the realities of
aloneness,
which maslow (1968) described in the following way:

The existentialist stress on the aloneness of the individual is a
useful reminder for
us, not only to work out further concepts of decision, or
responsibility, of choice, of
self-creation, of autonomy, of identity itself. it also makes more
problematic and more
fascinating the mystery of communication between alone-nesses
via, e.g., intuition
and empathy, love and altruism, identification with others, and
homonomy in gen-
eral. We take these for granted. it would be better if we
regarded them as miracles
to be explained. (p. 14)
Participants reflected the paradox of feeling lonely while
engaged in the
intimate relationship between counselor and client.
Relationships With Program Faculty
Participants reported that counselor education faculty provided
some
mediation for the existential anxiety counselors-in-training
experienced.
They described the importance of having trusting relationships
with fac-
ulty, particularly faculty they looked up to or with whom they
felt they
had a stronger relationship. in addition, participants noted the
value in the
trusting the training they had received from program faculty.
Finally, they
noted that program faculty were able to normalize their
experiences. One
participant described this as “normalizing nerves”; however, in

reference
to the previously mentioned themes, this idea might be better
described
as normalizing actually being real and worry, or the existential
anxiety that
can lead to change and growth for the supervisee. it should be
noted that
participants focused on program faculty in the teaching role, but
there was
no mention of site or university supervisors.
Relationships With Program Peers
Relationships with peers in their respective programs was
another medi-
ating factor for participants. in the previously mentioned themes
related
to individual experiences, participants described, across themes,
multiple
times in which they were reluctant to share these experiences
with peers,
which increased their anxiety. One participant described the
appreciation
of “just having [peers] around from time to time,”
acknowledging that,
in some cases, the simple presence of others who were going
through the
same process, even if the experience itself was not addressed,
provided
some relief from the anxiety. at times, however, it was
important to hear
another ’s experience to know that others were having similar
experiences.

Volume 55
Overwhelmed With the Burden of Being Myself
a common theme was developed that seemed to be interwoven in
the
previously described experiences. Throughout the interviews,
participants
described the vulnerable experience of discovering their
authenticities
and integrating them into their personal and professional lives.
They
acknowledged the importance of this discovery and a desire to
be fully
present with clients in session. at the same time, this genuine
presence
required effort and work that seemed burdensome for
participants, which
increased feelings of anxiety and emotional burden. These
aspects of par-
ticipants’ experiences reflect their anxiety related to the
encounter of life’s
seriousness and their responsibility for meaning in the lives.
They began
to experience the anxiety and joy of the authentic encounter
with another
individual through the counselor–client relationship. These
experiences
forced participants to begin the personal work of awareness of
the authentic
self and acceptance of responsibility for their choices,
particularly as they
related to being genuine in the counseling session.
iMPLiCations

a more thorough understanding of the phenomenological
experiences of
counselors-in-training has implications for the training of
professional
counselors. Because participants did not acknowledge having
their ex-
istential experiences addressed in supervision and the mention
of both
university and site supervisors was minimal in all interviews,
these
implications appear to be particularly important during the
supervision
of counselor trainees.
Transition in the Existential Experience
The existential experiences described by participants seemed to
be height-
ened during moments of transitions. Transitions took a variety
of forms, and
often participants increased simultaneous transitions. For some
participants,
a move to a new placement seemed to generate increased
awareness of the
existential for the counselor trainee. changes in placement can
occur for
variety of reasons: a shift in requirements from practicum to
internship, a
need for different experiences, or incongruence between the site
and the
trainee. Heightened awareness of existential experiences seemed
to be pres-
ent for participants regardless of the reason for the transition to
a new site.

although no assessment of the developmental level of
participants was
conducted, the existential seemed to be brought to the forefront
for par-
ticipants during times of developmental transition. From an
integrated
developmental model perspective, as counselors develop, their
needs from
supervisors will change, resulting in a shift in the
responsibilities placed
on the counselor as well as a shift in the relationship with the
supervisor
55 147
(stoltenberg et al., 1998). as participants described these
relational changes,
particularly in not receiving as much feedback as they had
previously,
anxiety related to their personal limitations and responsibilities
increased,
which, in turn, increased their awareness of the existential self.
Finally, personal transitions affected participants’ awareness of
existential
experiences. These transitions included changes in living
arrangements
as well as changes in personal relationships with significant
others. in
addition, all participants noted that their professional
counseling training
caused a shift in their personal relationships. Hazler and Kottler
(2005)

also described this shift in personal relationships that occurs for
many
counselors-in-training during their graduate studies.
Supervision Considerations
The acknowledgment of existential experiences and, in some
cases
crises, for counseling supervisees poses a challenge to the
supervisor.
This challenge is addressing the developmental needs of the
supervisee
while simultaneously supporting the supervisee through the
existential
experiences. in addition, an emphasis on the existential
experiences
of supervisees during supervision would require supervisees to
place
greater importance on the personalization skills of supervisees.
These
skills then could lead to greater awareness regarding
intervention and
conceptualization skills, as the supervisee’s awareness of the
encounter
is enhanced.
as previously noted, there seems to be a growing emphasis on
interven-
tion and conceptualization skills in supervision. This emphasis
was evident
in the literature and in the fact that the participants did not
acknowledge
that their existential experiences were addressed in supervision,
which
is possibly due to the recent emphasis on evidenced-based
practices and

interventions. at the same time, addressing personalization
skills often
requires supervisors to step into the counselor role. in doing so,
supervisors
must ensure that, although increased self-awareness and
understanding
are some of the purposes of supervision, the supervision process
must
always be directed toward the development of counselors-in-
training
and their counseling practice and not become personal
counseling for the
supervisee (Bernard, 1997).
Group supervision provides one avenue for addressing these
experiences.
supervisors can emphasize some therapeutic factors of
universality, altruism,
installation of hope, cohesiveness, existential factors, catharsis,
interpersonal
learning, and self-understanding related to these experiences
(Yalom &
Leszcz, 2005). Positive relationships with peers and faculty
provided some
means of coping with the existential experiences described by
participants.
Providing counselors-in-training opportunities in group
supervision to
develop these personalization skills would allow for increased
cohesion
and sharing of similar experiences.
Volume 55

supervisors also might consider using certain theoretical
approaches to
support supervisees’ growth through these existential
experiences. Given
that phenomenology is an integral part of existential theory,
theoretical
approaches that integrate a phenomenological framework seem
most ap-
propriate. may (1983) addressed some considerations for
counselors using
an existential approach, and supervisors can integrate his
perspectives in
the supervision process. Others have explored the use of
experiential ap-
proaches in supervision (connell, 1984; cummings, 1992;
Osborn, Danin-
hirsch, & Page, 2003; Pierce & Diambra, 2010). The integration
of experiential
approaches could allow supervisees to explore personalization
skills and
address the impact these skills and experiences are having on
their profes-
sional development, including their work with clients.
Future Research
This study is the first i know of to specifically explore the
existential
experiences of counselors-in-training. although an initial
understanding
of these experiences was provided in this study, additional
knowledge
is necessary to understand the function of these experiences in
the de-
velopment of the professional counselor. counseling supervisors

would
benefit from an additional understanding of the role that
existential
anxiety plays with the other anxieties experienced by
counselors-in-
training. in addition, information regarding best practice for
addressing
existential experiences in supervision is needed, particularly
considering
that participants never described that these experiences were
addressed
in supervision or how they were addressing them on their own.
ConCLusion
The purpose of this study was to explore the existential
experiences of
counseling supervisees in the practicum and internship
experiences. using
a phenomenological approach, five counselors-in-training were
interviewed
regarding the existential experiences they had during their
practical train-
ing requirements. Participants described a variety of existential
experiences
related to their professional development, but none of the
participants
indicated that these experiences were addressed in supervision.
These re-
sults open the door for further exploration regarding the
existential experi-
ences of counselors-in-training, the role and function of these
experiences
in counselor development, and how supervisors can support
supervisee
growth through these experiences.

referenCes
american counseling association. (2014). ACA code of ethics.
alexandria, Va: author.
aten, J. D., strain, J. D., & Gillespie, R. E. (2008). a
transtheoretical model of clinical supervi-
sion. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 2, 1–
9. doi:10.1037/1931-3918.2.1.1
55 149
Bernard, J. m. (1997). The Discrimination model. in c. E.
Watkins Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of psy-
chotherapy supervision (pp. 310–327). New York, NY: Wiley.
Bernard, J. m., & Goodyear, R. K. (2009). Fundamentals of
clinical supervision. upper saddle
River, NJ: Pearson.
Borders, L. D., & Brown, L. L. (2005). The new handbook of
counseling supervision. mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Burnes, T. R., Wood, J. m., inman, J. L., & Welikson, G. a.
(2013). an investigation of process
variables in feminist group clinical supervision. The Counseling
Psychologist, 41, 86–109.
doi:10.1177/0011000012442653
chang, J. (2013). a contextual-functional meta-framework for
counselling supervision.

International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 35,
71–87. doi:10.1007/s10447-
012-9168-2
connell, G. m. (1984). an approach to supervision of symbolic-
experiential psychotherapy.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 10, 273–280.
doi:10.1111/j.1752-0606.1984.tb00017.x
creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design:
Choosing among five approaches.
Thousand Oaks, ca: sage.
cummings, a. L. (1992). a model for teaching experiential
counseling interventions to novice
counselors. Counselor Education and Supervision, 32, 23–31.
doi:10.1002/j.1556-6978.1992.
tb00170.x
Degges-White, s. E., colon, B. R., & Borzumato-Gainey, c.
(2013). counseling supervision
within a feminist framework: Guidelines for intervention. The
Journal of Humanistic Coun-
seling, 52, 92–105. doi:10.1002/j.2161-1939.2013.00035.x
Falender, c. a. (2014). clinical supervision in a competency-
based era. South African Journal
of Psychology, 44, 6–17. doi:10.1177/0081246313516260
Farber, E. W. (2012). supervising humanistic-existential
psychotherapy: Needs, possibilities.
Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 42, 173–182.
doi:10.1007/s10879-011-9197-x
Frankl, V. (1997). Recollections: An autobiography. (J. Fabry &
J. Fabry, Trans.). New York, NY:

Plenum.
Frankl, V. (2000). Man’s search for ultimate meaning. New
York, NY: Perseus.
Gladding, s. T. (1997). Community and agency counseling.
upper saddle River, NJ: merrill.
Guy, J. D. (1987). The personal life of the psychotherapist. New
York, NY: Wiley.
Haynes, R., corey, G., & moulton, P. (2003). Clinical
supervision in the helping professions: A
practical guide. Pacific Grove, ca: Brooks/cole.
Hazler, R. J., & Kottler, J. a. (2005). The emerging professional
counselor: Student dreams to profes-
sional realities. alexandria, Va: american counseling
association.
maslow, a. (1968). Toward a psychology of being. New York,
NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
maxwell, J. a. (2005). Qualitative research design: An
interactive approach. Thousand Oaks,
ca: sage.
may, R. R. (1983). The discovery of being: Writings in
existential psychology. New York, NY: Norton.
moustakas, c. (1990). Heuristic research: Design, methodology,
and applications. Thousand Oaks,
ca: sage.
moustakas, c. (1994). Phenomenological research methods.
Thousand Oaks, ca: sage.
Osborn, c. J., Daninhirsch, c. L., & Page, B. J. (2003).
Experiential training in group counsel-
ing: Humanistic processes in practice. The Journal of
Humanistic Counseling, 42, 14–28.

doi:10.1002/j.2164-490x.2003.tb00165.x
Patterson, L. E., & Einsenberg, s. (1983). The counseling
process. Boston, ma: Houghton
mifflin.
Pierce, L. m. (2010). An exploration of the relationships among
wellness, spirituality, and personal
dispositions of practicing professional counselors (Doctoral
dissertation). Retrieved from
http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/738/
Pierce, L. m., & Diambra, J. F. (2010). an experiential model of
counselor supervision. Ten-
nessee Counseling Association Journal, 4, 51–64.
Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. c. (2001). stages of change.
Psychotherapy, 38, 443–448.
doi:10.1037/0033-3204.38.4.443
Volume 55
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person: A distinguished
therapist’s guide to personal growth and
creativity. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Rowan, J. (2006). Transpersonal supervision. The Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology, 38, 225–238.
Skovholt, T. M., & Rønnestad, M. H. (1995). The evolving
professional self: Themes in counselor
and therapist development. New York, NY: Wiley.
stoltenberg, c. D., mcNeill, B., & Delworth, u. (1998). IDM

supervision: An integrated devel-
opmental model of supervising counselors and therapists. san
Francisco, ca: Jossey-Bass.
Yalom, i. D. (2012). Love’s executioner and other tales of
psychotherapy. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Yalom, i. D., & Leszcz, m. (2005). Theory and practice of group
psychotherapy. New York, NY:
Basic Books.
◆ ◆ ◆
Copyright of Journal of Humanistic Counseling is the property
of Wiley-Blackwell and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted
to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.
The N e w Age Movement's Appropriation of
Native Spirituality: Some Political Implications
for the Algonquian Nation
SUSANNE MISKIMMIN
University of Western Ontario
In the predawn darkness, a line of figures can barely be

discerned as
they slip into the makeshift sweat lodge. Inside, in the
oppressive heat,
they encircle the fire and concentrate on purifying the mind, the
body and
the earth. Sweet grass is thrown on the fire to aid this process of
purification. In turn, each individual gives homage to the
spirits. One
honours Kitche-Manitou, one the Four Directions, another
acknowledges
the summer solstice while a fourth gives thanks to the Goddess.
It is a
scene becoming more and more c o m m o n in the suburbia
surrounding
large Canadian cities. It is the N e w Agers.
The participants are, for the most part, "white" and of Euro-
Canadian
heritage. The leader, however, is often a person claiming
"mixed blood",
although more often than not this claim to native heritage is
only the
most tenuous genetic thread linking an otherwise "white"
individual to a

vague and uncertain Indian ancestor. This thread is embellished
and
relished. Even individuals with absolutely no possible claim to
native
heritage are in fact making that claim, or are culturally adopting
what is
genetically lacking. This desire to be Indian has much to do
with the
New Age Movement which has sparked a new interest in
traditional
native spirituality. Native spirituality is revered for its
connection to the
earth and its respect for harmony and balance in all things and
Indians are
envisioned to be the spiritual healers of Euro-Canadian
maladies. A
market for Indian religious experience has developed
throughout North
America and "guides" such as those noted above have come
forward to
give spiritual counselling. In actual fact, the N e w Age
Movement's
approach to native spirituality is a "grab bag" of native spiritual
traditions, with an emphasis on Algonquian and Plains spiritual

belief
combined with holistic healing and "human potential" language.
206 SUSANNE MISKIMMIN
Not surprisingly, many entrepreneurs have embraced this fad as
an
opportunity for great profit. They sell sweat lodges or vision
quests
which promise individual and global healing. Or they sell books
and
weekend retreats which propose to teach traditional ceremonies
to bring
out the Indian in everyone. A visit to the local N e w A g e Shop
reveals
a bevy of items created to enhance the spirituality of the N e w
Ager.
Here, you can buy sweet grass for purifying, shaman's rattles
and drums
for that at home ritual, dream catchers, medicine wheels or tools
of
divination, such as "Sacred Path Cards" and "Medicine Cards".
These
cards are heralded as "an extraordinary tool for self-discovery

which
draws on the strength and beauty of Native American spiritual
tradition.
Developed by [a] Native American medicine teacher... this
unique system
distils the essential wisdom of the sacred tradition of many
tribal
traditions and shows users the way to transform their lives."
Each card
depicts a symbol of native spirituality and an accompanying text
relates
an "authentic" native story to aid in interpretation and direct
meditation.
N e w Agers are responding to a genuinely felt emotional need
within
dominant society. Despairing of their feelings of spiritual
emptiness and
the lack of meaning in their lives, N e w Agers look to others
for succour
rather than seeking transformation from within. Those w h o
embrace
native spirituality, for the most part, believe that in doing so
they admire
and express respect for First Nations. O n the surface, this

attitude toward
native heritage may indeed appear a positive thing; that native
spiritual-
ity is being revered and celebrated. In this paper, I hope to
illustrate that
this is not the case. Stereotyping, appropriation and the politics
of
primitivism are intrinsic to the N e w Age Movement's
"adoption" of
native spirituality and a dispute over ownership and authenticity
has
resulted.
In her article "The tribe called Wannabee: playing Indian in
America
and Europe", Rayna Green (1988) traces the history of the
"whiteman's"
tendency to emulate Indians from the time of initial contact to
the
present. This tendency, which she coins "playing Indian", offers
an
unique opportunity to escape the conventional and often highly
restrictive
boundaries of the "whiteman's" fixed cultural identity. Green
finds that

the role of "playing Indian" began to have spiritual implications
in the
late 19th century and was connected to several important
notions: that
APPROPRIATION OF NATIVE SPIRITUALITY 207
Indians inhabit the spirit world, that Indians are wise and
skilled in
healing, and that a medium directed by a guiding spirit can
speak to, or
instruct, others. M a n y of these spirit guides were perceived to
be Indian.
A precursor of the N e w Age fascination with Algonquian
spirituality
began in the 1960s, when counter culture hippies, wearing
headbands,
love beads, fringed jackets and feathers and inspired by such
cult books
as those of Carlos Castaneda, began to show up on
Southwestern mesas
and reservation areas in search of peyote cults and a state of
"higher
consciousness" (Green 1988:44).

Two early forms of "guruism" constitute the major literary
forms in
North American culture which led to the birth of the N e w Age
Move-
ment. In the first of these, the persona of a famous Indian leader
offers
the "truth" of the human condition through the voice of a wise,
old, (and
now conveniently dead) chief. In the second mode, the old guru
gives
the teachings through the transcriptions of a non-native student.
Indian
"truth" and wisdom are purveyed by the "white Indians" to an
audience
which prefers the white shaman to the real Indian (Green 1988).
One of the more notorious authors to write in an Indian persona
was
Jamake Highwater, an alleged Cherokee/Blackfoot from either
Montana
or Canada (the story varies), born by his own assertion in
several
different years. Prior to his "rebirth" as an Indian, Highwater
appeared

as Jay Marks, a non-Indian whose main literary claim to fame
was his
"authorized" biography of rock star Mick Jagger in the late
1960s. In
response to having been revealed by a native newspaper to be of
Armenian Jewish heritage, Highwater, clad in expensive "Santa
Fe Chic"
clothing, insisted that he is Indian because — and I quote — "I
say I am"
(Highwater 1981).
Two recent works in the "guru" genre attract attention because
of
their phenomenal success — Carlos Castaneda and Lynn
Andrews (Green
1988). Castaneda's series of works on the teachings of Don Juan
were
tendered both as serious anthropology and as an authoritative
treatise on
Indian life. Lynn Andrews capitalized on Castaneda's success
and her
own interest in feminism with her account of the teachings of
her wise
spiritual guide, Agnes Whistling Elk, whose apparent life's
ambition was

to unburden herself of her people's sacred knowledge to the first
available
"white" woman. These works, along with Highwater's, have
been
instrumental in engendering the vast and avid demand for native
religious
experience.
The image of native people held by many Euro-Canadians has
been
imprisoned in history. This has made it possible for N e w
Agers to
identify with images of First Nations people in the past and
attempt to
possess part of this identity, without considering the impact of
this
appropriation on the present. A s D o n Alexander writes, "From
cigar
store Indian, to cowboy and Indian movies, to the 'noble
savage', native
people live in a prison of images not of their o w n making"
(1986:45).

These pervasive images, removed from the daily reality of
native peoples,
mask their struggles for empowerment. They do not reflect the
history
of native people but rather express another heritage; those
representations
of natives by the non-native social imagination which fragments
and
freezes native identity. Native peoples exist within a milieux of
images
and contradictory symbols which result from history,
consumerism and
popular culture. These images have silently contradicted the
lived
experiences of native people and have worked to construct a
discourse of
subordination. They are pervasive and powerful and their
influence on
native identity has political implications. These images are
intrinsic to
the debates surrounding aboriginal rights and resources, cultural
tourism
and cultural trespassing, intellectual property and cultural
appropriation.

Further, the concern for "authenticity" and the "desire to rescue
'authenticity' out of destructive historical change" as Clifford
puts it
(1985:121) denies culture its dynamic quality. Indians are today
what
they have always been (constructed as it is): silent, stoic,
mystical and
clad in beads and feathers. A contemporary First Nations person
is
deemed less "authentic" than the distorted caricature residing in
the Euro-
Canadian imagination. This notion that native people today are
not "real"
or "authentic" makes the appropriation of aspects of their
cultural heritage
a non-issue.
The N e w Age Movement's conception of native spirituality is
superficial at best; it seems they are after a quick spiritual fix.
They
cling to the positive aspects of spirit forces and deny the
dualistic nature
of the spiritual world. As an Ojibwe friend recently elaborated,

Spiritual learning is a lifelong process; it has taken m e m y
whole life
to learn what I know about m y tradition. H o w can a N e w
Ager expect
APPROPRIATION OF NATIVE SPIRITUALITY 209
to learn all there is to know just from one book or a weekend
course?
What they know of native spirituality is so superficial, it makes
it look
as if it's not real or genuine; not something to be taken
seriously.
The concern is for the reaction of those Euro-Canadians w h o
have had
limited experience concerning First Nations people themselves
and are
forming their impressions of them based on what N e w Agers
are doing.
Further, the N e w A g e Movement's approach to native
spirituality does
not acknowledge the cultural diversity among native people and
creates
a "generic" Indian. Such a perception fosters the idea that the
First
Nations are not viable nations — nations that have ownership
and

jurisdiction over natural resources. Such a perception also
implies that
there is no political foundation for First Nations, that they exist,
for the
New Age Movement, merely as a spiritual guides.
It has been suggested that when N e w Agers see h o w "white"
people
have historically oppressed others and how they are coming
very close to
destroying the earth, they often want to disassociate themselves
from their
"whiteness". They do this by opting to "become Indian". In this
way
they can escape responsibility and accountability for "white"
racism
(Smith 1994:70). This dissociation also allows the individual to
continue
to benefit from the colonialism of which they are part, but to
not take
responsibility for it. Certainly, N e w Agers want to become
only part
Indian. They do not want to acknowledge First Nation struggles
for

cultural survival, treaty rights, self-determination or an end to
substance
abuse. They do not want to acknowledge that which would deny
them
their romanticized vision of Indian reality. Rather, N e w Agers
see
Indians as "gurus" w h o exist to meet their consumerist needs.
Andrea Smith writes that
The New Age movement completely trivializes the oppression
we as
Indian women face: Indian women are suddenly no longer the
women
who are forcibly sterilized and tested with unsafe drugs such as
Depo
Provera; we are no longer the women who have a life
expectancy of
47 years; and we are no longer the women who generally live
below
the poverty level and face a 7 5 % unemployment rate. No,
we're too
busy being cool and spiritual. [Smith 1994:71]
A further concern regarding the N e w Age Movement is its
appropria-
tion of native voice in the telling of native stories. Native
stories are
powerful and often sacred. Stories affect change, impart
strength and

heal. Stories convey the social values that the community deems
essential and storytelling situates people in the world and keeps
them
connected to it and each other. Stories are the fabric of native
societies
and if they are appropriated by others, native people will no
longer
control the process that is the very weave of their societies
(Walkem
1993). Given the importance of stories in transmitting First
Nations
cultures, a mistelling represents a destruction.
The question of ownership of stories and the licence of
outsiders to
tell the stories of other cultures are issues that are currently
being
debated. M u c h of the colonialist existence of the past few
hundred years
has silenced native voices. Native stories were largely
appropriated and
retold by non-native experts in such fields as anthropology,

history and
in the political realm. Not surprisingly, the appropriated stories
distort
the realities of native histories, cultures and traditions.
Underlying this
practice is the assumption that these "experts" have the right to
retell
native stories because of their place in dominant society. What
is
disturbing about those w h o would appropriate the voices of
native
peoples is that they do not see their actions as political or as a
continua-
tion of their o w n colonialist past. The appropriation of native
voices
through the telling of their stories is a political act; it dislocates
First
Nations people and attempts to restructure reality: it is
assimilationist
(Walkem 1993:38).
It has been suggested that cultural appropriation is not
necessarily a
bad thing all of the time, and that the world cultures are already
very

entwined. However, such thinking assumes that individuals are
playing
within an even field. This is not the case. The history of
colonialism has
led to significant inequities and to the exclusion of communities
not
regarded as belonging to the "mainstream" of society from
telling their
o w n stories.
As Smith (1994) comments, respecting the integrity of native
people
and their spirituality does not mean that there can never be
cross-cultural
sharing. However, such sharing should take place upon the
initiative of
First Nations. Interested individuals should acknowledge and
become
involved in native political struggles and should develop an
ongoing
relation with native communities based on trust and mutual
respect.
W h e n this happens, native people may invite a non-Indian to
take part in

a ceremony, but it will be on native terms.
APPROPRIATION O F NATIVE SPIRITUALITY 211
REFERENCES
Alexander, Don. 1986. Prison of images: seizing the means of
representation. Fuse,
February/March 1986, 45-^6.
Clifford, James. 1985. Histories of the tribal and the modern.
Art in America, April
1985, 164-177.
Green, Rayna. 1988. The tribe called Wannabee: playing Indian
in America and Europe.
Folklore 99(l):30-55.
Highwater, Jamake. 1981. The primal mind: vision and reality
in Indian America. New
York: Harper & Row.
Smith, Andrea. 1994. For all those who were Indian in a former
life. Cultural Survival
Quarterly 17(4):70-71.
Walkem, Ardith. 1993. Stories and voices. Fuse, summer 1993,
31-38.
Citation:

Rosemary J. Coombe, The Properties of Culture and the
Politics of Possessing Identity: Native Claims in the
Cultural Appropriation Controversy, 6 Can. J. L. &
Jurisprudence 249 (1993)
Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline
Mon Jan 1 16:18:11 2018
-- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance
of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license
agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License
-- The search text of this PDF is generated from
uncorrected OCR text.
-- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope
of your HeinOnline license, please use:
Copyright Information
Use QR Code reader to send PDF to
your smartphone or tablet device
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/caljp6&c
ollection=journals&id=251&startid=&endid=288
https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do?operation=go&s
earchType=0&lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0841-
8209
The Properties of Culture and the Politics
of Possessing Identity:
Native Claims in the Cultural Appropriation

Controversy
Rosemary J. Coombe
Between March 21, 1992 and April 14, 1992 Canadians
witnessed a remarkable
proliferation of controversy on the pages of The Globe and
Mail. The issue was
"cultural appropriation" or "appropriation of voice" in fictional
and nonfictional
writing. Articles, editorials, and letters to the editor considered
the propriety of
depicting a culture other than one's own, telling "someone else's
story", and
whether it was possible to "steal the culture of another."' The
debate was remarkable
because of its emotional intensity, the absurdity of the analogies
drawn in support
of the respective arguments, and the inability of the
protagonists to recognize each
other's terms of reference. Especially striking were the
rhetorical tropes of pos-
sessive individualism adopted by all participants in the
discussion.
I will use the controversy over cultural appropriation as a point
of entry into
a wider set of concerns. First, I will examine the philosophical
premises about
authorship, culture, and property that underlie this controversy
and define the legal
arena in which it is likely to be evaluated. The West has created
categories of prop-
erty-intellectual property, cultural property, and real property-
that divide peoples
and things according to the same colonizing discourses of
possessive individualism

that historically disentitled and disenfranchised Native peoples
in North America.
Exploring the internal logics of intellectual property and
cultural property laws,
I will question the concepts of culture and identity upon which
they are based, using
developments in contemporary cultural anthropology, legal
pragmatism, and cul-
tural criticism to put these concepts in issue. I will demonstrate
that the law rips
asunder what First Nations peoples view as integrally and
relationally joined, but
traditional Western understandings of culture, identity, and
property are provoked,
challenged, and undermined by the concept of Aboriginal Title
in a fashion that
is both necessary and long overdue.
Whose Voice Is It Anyway?
The recent Globe and Mail debate began with an innocuous
article calling
attention to the Canada Council's (the Council) concern with the
issue of cultural
I am grateful to Amanda Pask and Deborah Root for stimulating
discussions of these issues. I would also
like to thank Karen Clark for her research assistance and
insightful commentary
1. Although the controversy died down, references and allusions
back to it can be found throughout 1992.
Not having been in Canada since the end of 1992. 1 have not
pursued the debates in the Canadian press
since December 20, 1993.

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence Vol. VI, No-2 (July
1993)
Coombe
appropriation.2 The term was defined to mean "the depiction of
minorities or cul-
tures other than one's own, either in fiction or non-fiction." 3
Following a report
from its Advisory Committee for Racial Equality in the Arts,
the Council deemed
cultural appropriation "a serious issue,"4 and acknowledged that
"collaboration with
minority groups" 5 was an advisable strategy to avoid
perpetuating social stereotypes.
Despite the fact that the Council had done nothing to change its
existing policies,
formulate guidelines, rules, or impose any restrictions on
funding, the controversy
evoked was swift and furious, and it quickly polarized upon
familiar liberal terrain.
I will suggest that these poles-which I will designate as
Romantic individualism
and Orientalism-operate as dangerous supplements6 that define
an imperialist con-
ceptual terrain that structures our laws of property and may well
structure all con-
temporary political claims for cultural autonomy and public
recognition.
In a series of letters to the editor, the tyranny of the state over
the individual
was evoked, and the transcendent genius of the Romantic author
and his unfettered

imagination was affirmed. 7 Writers wasted no time evoking the
totalitarian state,
the memory of the Holocaust, and the Gulag. As Timothy
Findley forcefully inter-
jected:
Put it this way: I imagine-therefore I am. The rest-believe me-is
silence. What has
happened here? Does no one understand? In 1933 they burned
10,000 books at the gate
of a German university because those books were written in
unacceptable voices. German
Jews, amongst others, had dared to speak for Germany in other
than Aryan voices. Stop.
Now. Before we do this again.'"
Joy Anne Jacoby evoked Russian anti-Semitism to urge the
Council "to rethink
the implications of imposing any policy of 'voice appropriation'
lest they find them-
selves imitating the Russian approach to cultural censorship;",
Ema Paris titled
2. Stephen Godfrey, "Canada Council Asks Whose Voice Is it
Anyway?" The Globe and Mail, March
21, 1992 at C-I and C-15.
3. Ibid. at C 1.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. The term "dangerous supplement" is borrowed from Jack
Balkin, who borrows it from Jacques Derrida
in "Deconstructive Practice and Legal Theory" (1987) 96 Yale
L. J. 743.
7. I use the gendered pronoun deliberately here because I am

referring to a cultural concept-the Romantic
author---rather than any actual authors. The author in Westem
European history is a figure who occupies
a decidedly male gendered position. For further discussion, I
refer the reader to Sandra Gilbert & Susan
Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: the woman writer and the
nineteenth-century literary imagination
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).
8. Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, March 28, 1992 at
D-7. Reprinted in OUT Magazine: Canada's
National Gay Arts/Entertainment Monthly, June 1992. Canada's
gay and lesbian communities have
been disproportionately affected by the Supreme Court of
Canada's recent decision to uphold Canada's
obscenity laws. See R. v. Butler (1992) 89 D.L.R. (4th) 449. A
victory for mainstream feminists has
become an opportunity for federal officials to seize and
confiscate gay and lesbian erotica. This has
created a climate of opposition to state censorship amongst gay
and lesbian activists which perhaps
accounts for the reprinting of Findley's letter in a gay journal.
As I will suggest, however, opposition
to the repression of the alternative representations of minority
groups cannot be maintained solely in
the name of "Freedom of Expression" without thereby becoming
complicit with the relations of power
at work in the contemporary deployments of the term.
9. Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, March 28, 1992 at
D-7.
Culture and Property

her intervention in the debate "A Letter to the Thought
Police".'"
Other critics proclaimed the absolute freedom of the author's
imagination. Neil
Bissoondath affirmed the autonomy of his ego in a quotation
resplendent with the
-r' of Romantic individualism:
I reject the idea of cultural appropriation completely...l reject
anything that limits the imag-
ination. No one has the right to tell me who I should or should
not write about, and telling
me what or how I do that amounts to censorship...I am a man of
East-Indian descent and
I have written from the viewpoint of women and black men, and
I will continue to do
so no matter who gets upset."
Richard Outram declared that for the past 35 years he had been
appropriating the
"voices of men, women, dogs, cats, rats, bats,
angels,...mermaids, elephants...[and]
salamanders"'I and that he had no intention of consulting with
them or seeking their
permission:
In common with every writer worthy of his or her vocation, I
refuse absolutely to entertain
any argument demanding that I do so, or that I am to be in any
way restricted in my choice
of subject matter. I will not, in short, submit to such
censorship...."
Russell Smith confidently asserted that "appropriation of voice

is what fiction is""
while Bill Driedger lamented that "if cultural appropriation had
never been per-
mitted Puccini could not have written La Bohme, Verdi's Aida
would never have
been performed, we would never have thrilled to Laurence
Olivier in Hamlet and
we would have been denied the music of Anna and the King of
Siam."'"
In these constructions of authorship, the writer is represented in
Romantic terms
as an autonomous individual who creates fictions with an
imagination free of all
constraint. 6 For such an author, everything in the world must
be made available
and accessible as an 'idea' that can be transformed into his
'expression' which thus
becomes his 'work'.' 7 Through his labour, he makes these
'ideas' his own; his pos-
session of the 'work' is justified by his expressive activity. As
long as the author
does not copy another's expression, he is free to find his
themes, plots, ideas, and
characters anywhere he pleases, and to make these his own (this
is also the model
10. The Globe and Mail, March 31, 1992 at A-16.
11. Supra, note 2 at C-15.
12. Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail. March 28, 1992 at
D-7.
13. Ibid.
14. Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail April 3, 1992 at A-
3.
15. Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, March 28. 1992 at
D-7.

16. For a discussion of the relationship between Romanticism
and imperialism in the nineteenth century
see Jonathan Arac & Harriet Ritvo, eds, Macropolitics of
Nineteenth.Century Literatre; Nationalism.
Exoticism, Imperialism (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. 1991). For a discussion that
situates early copyright law in the larger context of colonialism
and the relation between mimesis and
altedrty see Rosemary J. Coombe, "Occupying the Colonial
ImaginatiouPreoccupations of Posteolonial
Politics: A Critical History of Copyright" in Peter Jaszi &
Martha Woodman.ee eds, The Politics and
Poetics of Intellectual Property in a Postcolonial Era (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, forth-
coming).
17. For a discussion of the similar and simultaneous logic of
European colonialism see Timothy Mitchell.
Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988).
Coombe
of authorship that dominates Anglo-American laws of
copyright).'" Any attempts
to restrict his ability to do so are viewed as censorship and as
an unjustifiable restric-
tion on freedom of expression. The dialectic of possessive
individualism and liberal
democracy is thereby affirmed. 19
But if the fictitious being of the Romantic author coloured one
side of the debate,

the essentializing voice of Orientalism dominated the other.'
The article that began
the debate was titled "Whose Voice is It Anyway?"' The
question presupposed
18. For critical considerations of "authorship" as it originated
and continues to figure in our intellectual
property laws (most obviously in copyright but also, I would
contend in publicity rights, trademark
and patent regimes), see Mark Rose, "The Author as Proprietor
Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy
of Modem Authorship" (Summer 1988) 23 Representations 51;
Mark Rose, Authors and Owners
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Martha
Woodmansee, "The Genius and the Copyright:
Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the
'Author' (1984) 17 Eighteenth Century
Studies 425; Peter Jaszi, "Toward a Theory of Copyright: The
Metamorphoses of 'Authorship'" (1991)
Duke L. J. 455; David Lange, "At Play in the Fields of the
Word: Copyright and the Construction of
Authorship in the Post-Literate Millennium" (1992) 55 Law and
Contemp. Problems 139; Jessica
Litman, "The Public Domain" (1990) 39 Emory L. J. 965;
Litman, "Copyright as Myth" (1991) 53
U. of Pitt. L. Rev. 235; Peter Jaszi, "On the Author Effect:
Contemporary Copyright and Collective
Creativity" (1992) 10 Cardozo Arts and Entertainment L. J. 293;
Martha Woodman see, "On the Author
Effect: Recovering Collectivity" (1992) 10 Cardozo Arts and
Entertainment L. J. 279. Many of these
articles also consider the idea/expression dichotomy. For a
recent discussion of the difficulties of main-
taining the stability of the idea/expression distinction in
copyright law, see Amy B. Cohen, "Copyright
Law and the Myth of Objectivity: The Idea-Expression

Dichotomy and the Inevitability of Artistic
Value Judgements" (1990) 66 Indiana L. J. 175.
19. Critical legal scholars have written extensively about the
inadequacies of Romantic individualism and
its understanding of subjectivity, cultural agency, and freedom
of speech, (albeit under the umbrella
term of liberalism). J. M. Balkin, "Ideology as Constraint"
(1991) 43 Stan. L. Rev. 1133; James Boyle,
"Is Subjectivity Possible? The Postmodern Subject in Legal
Theory" (1991) 62 U. of Col. L. Rev. 489;
Boyle, "The Politics of Reason: Critical Legal Theory and Local
Social Thought" (1985) 133 U. of
Penn. L. Rev. 685. Paul Chevigny, More Speech: Dialogue
Rights and Modern Liberty (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1988); Rosemary J. Coombe,
"Publicity Rights and Political Aspiration: Mass
Culture, Gender Identity, and Democracy" (1992) 26 New Eng.
L. Rev. 1221; Rosemary J. Coombe,
"Objects of Property and Subjects of Politics: Intellectual
Property Laws and Democratic Dialogue"
(1991) 69 Texas L. Rev. 1853; Coombe, "Room for Manoeuver:
Toward a Theory of Practice in Critical
Legal Studies" (1989) 14 Law and Social Inquiry 69; Coombe,
"'Same As It Ever Was': Rethinking
the Politics of Legal Interpretation" (1989) 34 McGill L. J. 603;
Drucilla Cornell, "Institutionalization
of Meaning, Recollective Imagination and the Potential for
Transformative Legal Interpretation" (1988)
136 U. of Penn. L. Rev. 1135; Drucilla Cornell, "Toward a
Modern/Postmodern Reconstruction of
Ethics" (1985) 133 U. of Penn. L. Rev. 291; Cornell, The
Philosophy of the Limit (New York:
Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1992); Cornell, Beyond
Accommodation: Ethical Feminism,
Deconstruction, and the Law (New York: Routledge, Chapman

and Hall, 1991); Stanley Fish, Doing
What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of
Theory in Literary and Legal Studies
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1989); Owen Fiss, "Why the
State?" (1987) 100 Harv. L. Rev. 781;
Fiss, "Free Speech and Social Structure" (1986) 71 Iowa L. Rev.
1405; Alan Hutchinson, "Talking
the Good Life" (1989) 1 Yale J. of Law and Liberation at 17;
Mary Joe Frug, Postmodern Legal
Feminism (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1992);
Martha Minow, "Identities" (1991) 3
Yale J. of Law & Humanities 97; Dennis Patterson,
"Postmodernism/FeminismiLaw" (1992) 77 Cornell
L. Rev. 254; Gary Peller, "The Metaphysics of American Law"
(1985) 73 Cal. L. Rev. 1152; Pierre
Schlag, "The Problem of the Subject" (1991) 69 Texas L. Rev.
1627; "Fish v. Zapp: The Case of the
Relatively Autonomous Self' (1988) 76 Georgetown L. J. 37 and
other sources cited therein. No such
list could claim to be exhaustive.
20. The term "Orientalism" is drawn from Edward Said's
pathbreaking work of the same title (New York:
Vintage Books, 1979). Although Said's work was concerned to
explicate the rhetorical strategies and
informing tropes of late eighteenth and early nineteenth
Orientalist scholars, the term has come to stand
for a mode of representing the other that projects upon non-
Western peoples qualities and characteristics
that are mirror opposites of the qualities the Vest claims for
itself. Moreover, such approaches have
a tendency to deny other societies their own histories, to present
them as internally homogeneous and
undifferentiated, 'timeless,' defined and subsumed by
unchanging 'traditions,'and unable to creatively
deal with outside influences, or interpret the impact of external

forces. Often, to 'Orientalize' also means
to represent others as both feminine and childlike, and in need
of representation by Western authorities.
21. Supra, note 2.
that a "voice" was both unified and singular and could be
possessed by an individual
or a collective imagined as having similar abilities to possess its
own expressions.
This debate was connected to earlier public discussions in
which Native writers
insisted that white writers refrain from telling stories involving
Indians so as to
enable Native peoples to claim "their own history."- Questions
of "Who's stealing
whose stories and who's speaking with whose voice" had been
posed by Native
cultural activists as cases of "cultural theft, the theft of voice."'
Canadians were
told that "stories show how a people, a culture, thinks"2' and
such stories could
not be told by others, without endangering the authenticity and
authority of cultural
works. The Canadian publishing and broadcasting industries had
long been accused
of stealing the stories of Native peoples and thus destroying
their essential meanings
in authentic traditions. Native artists asked if "Canadians [had]
run out of stories
of their own" 6 and claimed that the telling of Native stories
was theft, "as surely

as the missionaries stole our religion and the politicians stole
our land and the res-
idential schools stole our language." As I will suggest later,
however, the tropes
of cultural essentialism and possessive individualism evoked
here are belied by
the very expressive forms for which Native peoples seek
recognition and the speci-
ficity of the historical struggles in which they figure.
As Alan Hutchinson suggested, the three week newspaper
debate generated more
heat than light.? He proposed that in the struggle to eliminate
invidious social
inequalities, we need to hear the voices and understand the
experiences of those
who have been marginalized to cultivate imaginative means for
dealing with dom-
ination. But, in making this argument, he too adopts the tropes
of possessive indi-
vidualism, in which authors 'have identities' which may or may
not ensure 'their
own work's authenticity' (and Canada has a singular culture,
albeit a conversational
one):
It does matter who is speaking, but identity is neither entirely
dispensable nor completely
determinative...the hope is that by increasing the membership in
the larger community
of those who have previously been absent, the overall authority
and authenticity of that
body of work will be improved.?
Most of those who supported the Canada Council and its
Advisory Committee

for Racial Equality rested their arguments on a set of
assumptions that, I will sug-
gest, are equally problematic, equally Eurocentric, and employ
the same tropes
of possessive individualism as those of their opponents.
Proponents of the Canada
Council's suggestion defended their position on the grounds of
the integrity of cul-
tural identity. Speaking on behalf of the Canada Council,
director Joyce Zemans
22. Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, "Stop Stealing Native Stories".
(January 26, 1990) The Globe and Mad
A-7.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. "Giving Smaller Voices a Chance to be Heard", (April 14,
1992) Tie Globe and Mail A- 16.
29. Ibid.
Coombe
claimed that cultural appropriation is a serious issue because
"we have a new need
for authenticity. In our society today, there is a recognition that
quality has to do
with that authenticity of voice."' Susan Crean, chair of the
Writers Union of
Canada, analogized the issue to a legal claim of copyright, in
which any unlicensed

use of authorial property is theft."
It seems to be assumed in these arguments that Canada is either
a country with
its own culture or one in which there are multiple discrete
cultures, but that one
always has a singular culture of one's own, that one has a
history of one's own,
and that one possesses an authentic identity that speaks in a
univocal voice fully
constituted by one's own cultural tradition. As I will argue in
more detail, these
are extremely contentious propositions that themselves embody
contingent concepts
integral to Western histories of colonialism and imperialism.
Moreover, I will sug-
gest that the concepts of culture, authenticity, and identity that
define these argu-
ments are constructed around the same philosophy of possessive
individualism that
define our legal categories of property.
The challenges that postcolonial struggles32 pose for Canadian
society cannot
be met by our traditional reliance upon categories of thought
inherited from a colo-
nial era. The conceptual tools of modernity are ill-equipped to
deal with the
30. Supra, note 2, at C-I.
31. Ibid at C-15.
32. I have chosen deliberately to use the term postcolonial
rather than the term multicultural, and the lan-
guage of struggle rather than the currently fashionable discourse
of cultural diversity, because these

alternative terms emphasize rather than obscure the very real
histories of colonialism from which all
peoples in Canada are still emerging, and the very real relations
of power and domination inherited
from our diverse colonial pasts that continue to shape social
relations of difference in this country.
Multiculturalism seems to assume a social field of equivalent
differences, that can be subsumed under
a single policy of tolerance, without regard for the very real
psychic, social, economic, and cultural
damage done by histories of Western imperialism. For critical
discussions of multiculturalism see,
Kooglia Moodley, "Canadian Multiculturalism as Ideology"
(1983) 6 Ethnic and Racial Studies 320,
and Chandra Mohanty, " On Race and Voice: Challenges for
Liberal Education in the 1990's" (1990)
14 Cultural Critique 179. The literature discussing
postcolonialism is vast. There is a general agreement
that the reception and interpretation of two texts-Edward Said's
Orientalism, supra, note 20 and Frantz
Fanon Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press,
1967)-mark the beginnings of the devel-
opment of the discourse, but it has now expanded across several
disciplinary fields. For a fine overview
see Patricia Seed, "Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse" (1991)
26 Latin Am. Research Rev. 181.
For recent criticism of the term and its range of extension see
Arun P. Mukherjee, "Whose Post-
Colonialism and Whose Postmodemism?" (1990) 30 (2) World
Lit. Written in English 1; Ella Shohat,
"Notes on the 'Post-Colonial"' (1992) 32 Social Text 99; Helen
Tiffin, "Post-Colonialism, Post-
Modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-Colonial History"
(1988) 23(1) J. of Commonwealth Lit.
169; Ruth Frankenberg & Lata Mani, "Crosscurrents, Crosstalk:
Race, 'Postcoloniality' and the Politics

of Location" (1993) 17 Cultural Studies--(forthcoming) also
reprinted in Smadar Lavie & Ted
Swedenburg, eds, Displacement, Diaspora and the Geographies
of Identity (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, forthcoming in 1994). Linda Hutcheon has
written that "Canada [i]s still caught up
in the machinations of Empire and colony, imperial metropolis
and provincial hinterland"; a context
in which the debates about post-colonialism have historically
specific relevance, given the experience
and ongoing manifestations of British Empire, and the arrival of
immigrants from other post-colonial
nations. Furthermore, she suggests that "when Canadian culture
is called post-colonial today the ref-
erence is very rarely to the Native culture, which might be the
more accurate historical use of the term
... Native and Metis writers are today demanding a voice
(Cuthand; Armstrong; Campbell) and perhaps,
given their articulations of the damage to Indian culture and
people done by the colonizers (French
and British) and the process of colonization, theirs should be
considered the resisting, post-colonial
voice of Canada." See "'Circling the Downspout of Empire':
Post-Colonialism and Postmodemism"
(1989) 20 (4) Ariel 149 at 149 and 156.
conditions of postmodernity in which we all now live." To make
this argument,
I will delineate the conceptual logic that developed in the
nineteenth century colo-
nial context to categorize art, culture, and authorial identity.
This European art/cul-

ture system continues to dominate discourses about art, culture,
and identity in the
Western World, and seems to mark the contemporary limits of
the legal imaginary. '
The European Art/Culture System
In his influential work The Predicament of Culture, historian
James Clifford
discusses "the fate of tribal artifacts and cultural practices once
they are relocated
in Western museums, exchange systems, disciplinary archives,
and discursive tra-
ditions"3 Clifford delineates an "art-culture system", developed
during the nine-
teenth century in the context of global colonialism and
imperialism as a means of
categorizing artistic and cultural goods. I will suggest that these
categories continue
to inform our laws of property, and that these categories may no
longer be appro-
priate in a postcolonial context.
As many contemporary cultural critics suggest, the concepts of
art and culture
are mutually constitutive products of the European upheavals
and expansions of
the early nineteenth century, the ascendancy of bourgeois
values, the spectre of
mass society, imperialist expansion, and colonial nile." To
quickly summarize, art
in the eighteenth century primarily referred to skill and
industry, whereas culture
designated a tendency to natural and organic growth-as in 'sugar
beet culture'.
Only in the early nineteenth century was art as an imaginative

expression abstracted
from industry as a utilitarian one. The emergence of an abstract,
capitalized Art,
33. For longer discussions of the distinctions between
modernity and postmodernity see Rosemary J.
Coombe, "Beyond Modernity's Meanings: Encountering dte
Postmodern in Cultural Anthropology"
(1991) 11 Culture II1; Coombe, "Publicity Rights and Political
Aspiration". supra. note 19; Mike
Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. (London:
Sage Publications. 1991) at 1-12; David
Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernin' (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1989); and Fredric Jameson,
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(Durham: Duke University Press. 1991).
The term postmodem has been adopted into legal discourse in a
rather idiosyn atic and restricted man-
ner that concerns itself primarily with the social construction of
the subject or self (see sources cited
supra, note 19) but largely ignores the social, economic, and
cultural conditions that define the sire
of postmodernity and its relationship to the globalization of
capital or postcolonial politics. The vexed
relation between postmodernism (a concept that privileges the
Western World) and postcolonialism
is addressed by Hutcheon, Tiffin, & Mulkherjee, supra, note 32.
34. 1 use the term "imaginary" in the Lacanian sense to refer to
an agent's compulsion to seek "an iden-
tificatory image of its own stability and permanence (the
imaginary)" in "the order of images, rep-
resentations, doubles, and others." Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques
Loran: A Feninist Introduction (New
York. Routledge, Chapman and Hall. 1990) at 35.

35. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth
Century Etlnograply. Literature. and Art
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 ) at 215.
36. See Patrick Brantlinger, Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural
Studies in Britain and America (New York:
Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1990); James Clifford, supra.
note 35; Rosemary J. Coombe, "Beyond
Modernity's Meanings", supra, note 33; Renato Rosaldo, Culture
and Truth: Renakng Soeial Analysis
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Raymond Williams, Culture and
Societ--1780-1950 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1983); Raymond Williams,
Kcywords: A 1 ,cab:dary of Culiure andSv i
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). For a related
discussion of the development of copyright.
its concepts of authorship, expression, and work in terms of
their relationship to European colonialism
in Africa, India, and the Middle East, see Rosemary J. Coombe,
"Occupying the Coonial Imagination",
supra, note 16.
Coombe
equated with individual creativity and expressive genius, was
developed in the same
period as the concept of capitalized culture, as a noun or the end
product of an
abstract process of civilization. Tracing this development
through the German,
French, and English languages, Raymond Williams shows how
the term 'culture'
developed three sets of referents:

(i) the independent and abstract noun which describes a general
process of intellectual,
spiritual and aesthetic development,... (ii) the independent
noun, whether used generally
or specifically, which indicates a particular way of life, whether
of a people, a period,
a group, or humanity in general, from Herder and Klemm... (iii)
the independent and
abstract noun which describes the works and practices of
intellectual and especially artistic
activity...In English (i) and (iii) are still close; at times, for
internal reasons, they are indis-
tinguishable as in Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1867); while
sense (ii) was decisively
introduced into English by Tylor, Primitive Culture (1870)....
The decisive development
of sense (iii) in English was in [late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries]. 37
It was possible by the end of the nineteenth century to speak of
'Culture' with
a capital C-representing the height of human development, the
most elevated of
human expression as epitomized in European art and literature-
as well as plural
'cultures' with a small c-imagined as coherent, authentic ways of
life characterized
by "wholeness, continuity and essence."' These two concepts of
culture dominate
"the limits of a specific ideological consciousness, [marking]
the conceptual points
beyond which that consciousness cannot go, and between which
it is condemned
to oscillate."39 They may also mark the limits of the legal
imaginary.

Clifford begins his discussion of Western classifications with a
critical review
of a 1984 exhibit at the Museum of Modem Art in New York
(MOMA) titled
"'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and
the Modem" which
documented the influence of tribal objects in the works of
modernist masters such
as Picasso, Brancusi, and Miro.10 In the early twentieth
century, the exhibit suggests,
these modernists discover that primitive objects are in fact
powerful art and their
own work is influenced by the power of these forms. A common
quality or essence
joins the tribal to the modem in what is described under the
universalizing rubric
of 'affinity.' An identity of spirit and a similarity of creativity
between the modem
and the tribal, the contemporary and the primitive, is recognized
and celebrated
(a movement that continues to hold persuasive power in the
Western World, if the
recent television series Millennium is any indication).
The humanist appeal of the exhibit, however, rests upon a
number of exclusions,
evasions, and stereotypes. One could, for example, question the
way modernism
appropriates otherness, constitutes non-Western arts in its own
image and thereby
discovers universal ahistorical human capacities by denying
particular histories,
local contexts, indigenous meanings, and the very political
conditions that enabled
Western artists and authors to seize these goods for their own
ends. Needless to

37. Williams, Keywords, ibid. at 90-91.
38. Clifford, supra, note 35 at 233.
39. Clifford, supra, note 35 at 223 citing Fredric Jameson, The
Prisonhouse of Language: Narrative as
a Socially Symbolic Act. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1981) at 47.
40. Clifford, supra, note 35 at 189-214.
say, the "imperialist contexts that surround the 'discovery' of
tribal objects by mod-
ernist artists" just as "the planet's peoples came massively under
European political,
economic, and evangelical dominion," is not addressed in the
MOMA exhibit.
Indeed, the emphasis is upon the narrative of European
"creative genius recognizing
the greatness of tribal works,"'" thereby bestowing upon these
objects the status
of 'art' in place of their former lowly designation as
ethnographic specimens. As
Clifford states, "[Tihe capacity of art to transcend its cultural
and historical context
is asserted repeatedly." 2 The category of art, however, is not a
universal one, but
an historically contingent European category, in which the
artistic imagination is
universalised in the European image under the name of a
putatively 'human'
Culture.

The "appreciation and interpretation of tribal objects takes
place", according
to Clifford, "within a modem 'system of objects' which confers
value on certain
things and withholds it from others."' Clifford delineates the
"art-culture system"
that developed in the nineteenth century as a way of
categorizing expressive works
of aesthetic value in a context of European imperialism and
colonialism and the
collection of objects in imperialist forays around the globe."
Using a classificatory
grid, he demonstrates how two categories have dominated our
understanding of
expressive works and their proper placement, and two
subsidiary categories have
encompassed those objects not so easily subsumed by the
dominant logic. First,
he designates the zone of "authentic masterpieces" created by
individual geniuses,
the category of 'art' properly speaking. Secondly, he designates
the category of
"authentic artifacts" created by cultures imagined as
collectivities." Objects may,
therefore, be exhibited in galleries, as examples of a human
creative ability that
transcend the limitations of time and place to speak to us about
the 'human' con-
dition; representing the highest point of human achievement,
they are regarded as
41. Ibid. at 196.
42. Ibid. at 195.
43. Ibid. at 198.
44.Ibid. at 215-51.
45. Clifford's other two categories are inauthentic masterpieces

(counterfeits and illicit copies) w hich would
seem to include all works that infringe copyright, and
inauthentic artifacts (mass produced objects
and crafts) which would fall into the realm of items not
protected by law; such as crafts, or given a
lesser degree of protection due to their status as commercially
produced objects (as industrial design).
Ibid. at 223. Clifford points out that objects often pass from one
zone to another, in terms of the way
that they are socially valued. Hence, works that deliberately
copy other works in artistic statements,
such as the anti-art or anti-aesthetic movement in the 1980's,
are sought as original works of art by
collectors, hence moving from the zone of inauthentic to the
zone of authentic masterpieces as their
artists achieve renown (See Hal Foster, Tire Anti-Aesthetic:
essays on postmodern culture Port
Townsend: Bay Press, 1983) and Hal Foster, Recodings: art,
spe, tacle and cultural poitics (Port
Townsend: Bay Press, 1985) for discussions of artistic work in
this tradition). Similarly; examples of
early commercial packaging may cease to be seen as inauthentic
artifacts and become valued as authen-
tic artifacts that embody the culture of a particular era in
history. Some commercialized mass produced
painting from the Third World may become valued either as the
work of a culture, or eventually, as
the work of an individual artist, as is currently the case with
barbershop signs from West Africa. It
is important to note here that the law assigns works a category
and a degree of protection at the time
of origin, not at shifting points of public reception. Hence, an
artistic work that copies the work of
another, regardless of the social critique or political point the
artist believes she is ma.king. is a copyright

infringement and remains one even if the artworld comes to
regard the work/opy as an authentic mas-
terpiece. Works do not move through legal categories as quickly
as they are revalued in the social world.
Elsewhere I suggest that this works to the detriment of third
world peoples. See Coombe, Cultural
Appropriations: Intellectual Propeny Colonialism, and
Contemporary Politics lNew York: Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, forthcoming).
Coombe
testaments to the greatness of their individual creators.
Alternatively, objects may
be exhibited in museums as the authentic works of a distinct
collectivity, as integral
to the harmonious life of an ahistorical community and
incomprehensible outside
of 'cultural context'-the defining features of authentic artifacts.
For an object to be accepted as an authentic artifact, it must
locate itself in an
untouched, pristine state that bespeaks a timeless essence in a
particular cultural
tradition. That which is recognized as authentic to a culture
cannot bear any traces
of that culture's contact with other cultures; particularly it must
bear no marks of
that society's history of colonialism which enabled such works
to make their way
into Western markets. The tribal life from which such objects
magically spring are
permitted no histories of their own, relegated to an ahistorical
perceptual present,

perceived as essential traditions that are vanishing, being
destroyed, or tainted by
the forces of modernization. The capacity of 'tribal' peoples to
live in history, and
to creatively interpret and expressively confront the historical
circumstances in
which they live, using their cultural traditions to do so, cannot
be contemplated,
except under marginalised categories like 'syncretism' which
suggest impurity and
decline; "aboriginals apparently must always inhabit a mythic
time" 6. Those cul-
tural manifestations that may signal the creative life rather than
the death of societies
are excluded as inauthentic, or, alternatively, denied cultural,
social, or political
specificity by becoming incorporated into the universalizing
discourse of art.
Tribal objects may transcend their original placement; for
example, when
African objects become elevated and recognized as art, these
"artifacts are essen-
tially defined as masterpieces, their makers as great artists. The
discourse of con-
noisseurship reigns. ... personal names make their
appearance...." i.e., art has
signature.47 When non-Western objects fully pass from the
status of authentic artifact
to the status of art, they also escape the ahistorical location of
the 'tribal', albeit
to enter into a 'universal' history, defined by the progression of
works of great
author/artists (the canon of civilization). They become part of a
'human' cultural
heritage-Culture capitalized-rather than objects properly

136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx

136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to 136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx

Similar to 136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx (9)

More from moggdede

More from moggdede (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

136 Journal of HumaNisTic cOuNsELiNG ◆ July 2016 ◆ Volume 55.docx