Medium Post #2
In this class, I have studied many different groups of people that were facing a situation of losing their own cultural identities. For me, the “cultural productions” are representations of a specific culture or group of people. For example, Chinese people have their own music, arts, literature, etc. Japanese, Korean, European, African, and American people also have their own “cultural productions”.
The cultural productions can be linked to politics in two ways. One is those groups of people may lose their own cultural productions when others did not treat them as people from different cultures. One example I could think of is the modern China. Although the Chinese government never admit this, but many people think the Communist government are trying to make the people in Xinjiang and Tibet who are not Han people become real Chinese people by eliminate their own cultures and force them to learn Chinese culture.
Another way is those groups of people work hard to appeal their own cultural productions and make other people really see them as distinct groups even after being annexed by larger cultures. For example, Okinawan people keep their language and traditions to a certain extent after became a part of Japan. In addition, most people understand that Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan, but Okinawan people are not the same as Japanese people, or the Yamato people. Another example is the indigenous people in Taiwan. They are very similar to the Okinawans. They have their own language, traditions, clothing, etc. while they are still recognized as Taiwanese people.
However, no matter which situation, those groups of people must go through political struggles. The Okinawan people and the Taiwanese indigenous people are not treated as well as now in the past days. The Xinjiang people and the Tibetans are not treated well even now. I think cultural productions are related to the eruption of political struggles because nobody wants its own culture to be destroyed. I said cultural productions are representations of the cultures. When these representations are in danger, the people of course would erupt for protecting their own belongings.
I immigrated from Taiwan with my family to the U.S. about six years ago. Even this is almost my seventh year living here, I still could not adapt to the lifestyle of Americans. One reason is I do not contact the cultural productions of the U.S. I do not listen to English songs. I do not watch English TV shows, dramas, and cartoons. I do not read English books, including novels and comic books. I only like Asian products, such as Taiwanese pop songs, Japanese manga and anime, and Chinese novels. I then understand that I might not belong to here. Therefore, I think cultural productions are very important to the sense of belonging. Depriving cultural productions is also depriving that group of people’s identities and belongings. And vice versa, if you want to deprive a group of people’s identities and belongings, you deprive their cultural productions first.
