{"id":21484,"date":"2017-08-02T09:19:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T16:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=21484"},"modified":"2017-08-02T09:19:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T16:19:58","slug":"why-i-no-longer-use-the-term-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=21484","title":{"rendered":"Why I no Longer Use the Term, \u2018Game.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it bushmeat or game? Who decides?<\/p><\/div>\n

Years ago, I was enjoying my bushmeat in an Australian restaurant in Belgium and said as much when my dinner companion gently reminded me that what I was eating was \u201cgame\u201d and not bushmeat, and I had been invited out to \u201cenjoy game.\u201d Apparently, bushmeat is what you get in a small, ramshackle affair by the roadside in Nsukka, paired with palm wine and most often eaten by hand, not meat carefully paired with a Pinot Noir or a Shiraz in a restaurant where the silverware is so shiny and so smudge free you can use it to fix your makeup.<\/p>\n

This morning, I did a quick google search and found this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe term \u201cbushmeat\u201d refers to meat that comes from wild animals captured in developing regions of the world such as Africa. Bushmeat comes from a variety of wild animals, including bats, nonhuman primates (e.g., monkeys), cane rats (grasscutters), and duiker (antelope).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGame are wild animals and birds. Large native game animals living in America include antelope, buffalo, bear, deer, elk, moose, reindeer, and wild boar. \u201c<\/p>\n

Fact 1: bushmeat and game come from wild animals.<\/p>\n

Fact 2: Antelope is bushmeat when in Africa but game once it crosses the ocean.<\/p>\n

Question: Who does the naming?
\nWhy does it matter?
\nWhat does naming say about the imperialism\/hierarchy of cultures?<\/p>\n

Naming is neither innocent nor neutral. Victors name the conquered, the wealthy name the poor. Think about why every westerner in Africa is an \u201cexpatriate\u201d and Africans in the west are \u201cimmigrants,\u201d and how the labelling influences the dominant narratives around these two groups. Think about why you are a cosmopolitan if you\u2019ve travelled extensively (in the west) and speak a variety of European languages but not if you are Nigerian and have lived\/travelled extensively across Africa and speak many African languages.<\/p>\n

One of the stories my father-in-law (who taught history and French for many years) and my husband (who is a history buff) love to tell the younger generation (children and grandchildren) is how William the Conqueror influenced the names of (cooked) meat in English. When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, he gave land to the knights who fought with him and made them dukes and earls and etc. They did not work the farms or cook their own food but they named the meat which landed on their plates. The transformation from cow to beef (le boeuf), from pig to pork (le porc), from calf to veal (le veau) happened once the animals left the farms of the poor Anglo Saxon farmers and landed all ready to be devoured by the nobility.<\/p>\n

Cultural imperialism of course goes beyond naming. It is also about what is framed as \u201ccivilized\u201d and therefore desirable and what is not. It is about people turning up their noses at people eating eba with their hands and yet killing themselves to learn how to use chopsticks so they can \u201ceat Japanese food the proper way.\u201d It\u2019s about people gagging at the thought of me enjoying goat meat (good thing it didn\u2019t make it to the plates of the nobility or we would have been calling it chevon like the French or some other variant of ch\u00e8vre) and yet ridiculing me for thinking that raw oysters are gross. It is people thinking that when the French speak English with their accent (including H-dropping), it is sexy but when a Yoruba does it, it is \u201cbush.\u201d It is people rolling their eyes at African superstitions yet believing that the position of the stars on the day they were born has an effect on their personality (and determines their fate). It is about people thinking that there is one single measure of civilization and that they calibrate it.<\/p>\n

Years ago, I was invited to talk about my favorite pieces of classical music on a radio show in Belgium. I was upfront in my correspondence with the (producer?) about classical music not being my cup of tea. I think I said I wasn\u2019t knowledgeable at all about it. Undeterred, she sent me a box of CDs of classical music, determined to bring me on the right side of \u201ccivilization.\u201d She very thoughtfully labelled each CD according to its \u201cmood.\u201d I gifted the CDs to my husband (who does enjoy classical music). A few weeks later, I get a mail from the producer asking if I\u2019d played the CDs. I lied and said I had. She decided I was ready to come on the show. Cut a long story short, I went on the show and the woman begins by talking about my ignorance of classical music before the show and then asks, \u2018So, you had no culture of music growing up in Nigeria?\u201d In proper Naija fashion, I answered her question with a question. I asked her what she knew of highlife (\u201cHighlife? What\u2019s that?\u201d). I asked her what she knew of juju (she\u2019d never heard of it.) I told her it didn\u2019t matter to my father that she knew Mozart and Beethoven, if she knew nothing of highlife and juju, she was a cultural barbarian. She was appalled. She had not thought that there was a \u201cmusical culture\u201d outside of the European tradition. Like my mother would say, I gave her homework.<\/p>\n

In recent years, I have begun making a conscious effort to pass out such homework where I can. We all have a responsibility in challenging narratives that privilege other cultures\/voices\/stories over ours.<\/p>\n

And that is why I no longer use the term, \u201cgame\u201d for any kind of bushmeat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Photo Credit: Guardian<\/a> \/ Issouf Sanogo \/ AFP \/ Getty)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago, I was enjoying my bushmeat in an Australian restaurant in Belgium and said as much when my dinner companion gently reminded me that what I was eating was \u201cgame\u201d and not bushmeat, and I had been invited out to \u201cenjoy game.\u201d Apparently, bushmeat is what you get in a small, ramshackle affair by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21486,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21484\/revisions\/21486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}