Aneignung (Appropriation as Learning)

Definition

Aneignung, the German word for appropriation, "has two very different meanings: to take something away, and to learn something." The second meaning — "to train until one has mastery and is able to make one's own" — is, Berger argues, what sets the German term apart from the English "appropriation" and names a whole theory of creative transmission: in German-speaking countries a craft "is still learned through the old medieval institution of apprenticeships, and an apprentice learns the craft through appropriation." The first process is copying: "duplication and repetition without any original thought or experimentation is integral to the first process of appropriation of the master's skills." But appropriation "is more than just imitation of the master" — it is "the slow and long accumulation of skills that become 'one's own,'" central to the making of "tradition," yet "not a static tradition, for as a set of skills become 'one's own,' the very achievement of mastery requires the apprentice to add something to what has been copied." Appropriation "in this sense also recognizes slow change that is integral to 'taking' and remaking." Berger's argument thus gives the English concept's negative register (theft, privatization) a productive shadow: learning-as-taking, where mastery requires adding something to what has been copied — with the "slow and subtle life force of creativity" rather than the "grand gesture of 'originality.'"

Key Thinkers

• Markus Berger — the concept's articulator (2018): the double meaning, the apprenticeship institution, Sennett's slow craft time, the guru-shishya tradition, and the palimpsest as aneignung's image.
• Richard Sennett (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — The Craftsman (2008, p. 295): "Craftsmen take pride most in skills that mature. This is why simple imitation is not a sustaining satisfaction; the skill has to evolve… Slow craft time also enables the work of reflection and imagination – which the push for quick results cannot. Mature means long; one takes lasting ownership of the skill."
• Agnes Heller — the everyday-life parallel: appropriation as the core activity of everyday life, the never-concluded taking-over of the objectivations "into which he is born" — the sociological register of the same word (see appropriation).

Related Concepts

• Appropriation — the parent concept: aneignung is its German depth-dimension, converting taking into learning.
• Tradition — tradition as aneignung's product: "the making of 'tradition'" through copying-plus-adding; "not a static tradition." Compare Gadamer's effective-history and Summerson's classical language.
• Repetition — the first process of appropriation: "duplication and repetition without any original thought or experimentation"; the craft-time through which skills mature (Heller's repetitive praxis; Felski's redeemed repetition).
• Death of the Author — aneignung presupposes the author's death: the apprentice's legitimacy rests on there being no original to violate, only transmissions to add to.
• Palimpsest — aneignung's image: "slow, accumulated transformations" of a layered text.
• Habit — the slow-craft medium: skill accumulated through repeated practice until it is "one's own."
• Praxis — the craft-practice pole of the concept: learning through doing, reflection enabled by "slow craft time."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Death of the architect: Appropriation and interior architecture (Berger 2018) — the defining source: the double meaning ("to take something away, and to learn something"); the apprenticeship institution; Sennett's "slow craft time" quoted (The Craftsman, p. 295); the guru-shishya tradition of Indian classical music (the student "must add something to the technical mastery he receives," "not with the grand gesture of 'originality,' but… the subtle soul force of creativity"); the critique of art history's "influence" model ("the only way to understand transmissions that shape us"); the copy's removal from education and IP law's criminalization ("a huge body of laws on intellectual property have made appropriation a dangerous, instead of creative, task"); Copyshop Copenhagen (2005–2007) and its merchandise of "modified originals," "improved copies," "political anti-brands," and the "Supercopy as a new original"; the aneignung ethos against the tabula rasa ("a far more vivid canvas of habitation to 'take away' from and add to, as an apprentice or a shishya must do").
• Everyday Life (Heller 1970) — the sociological register: appropriation of objectivation 'in itself' as the precondition of viability ("man must learn to 'use' the concrete things and custom patterns of the world into which he is born"), the word's other life in the wiki's everyday cluster.

Open Questions

• Can the apprenticeship model be institutionalized in design education without betraying itself — the studio thesis system rewards the "grand gesture of 'originality'" that aneignung explicitly devalues? (Cf. the wiki's design-studio-pedagogy register.)
• Berger keeps the two meanings together (taking away / learning) — but the first meaning is the site of the cultural-theory critique (appropriation without consent). Is aneignung's pedagogy available to the dominant culture's apprentice without the taking-away politics?
• "Slow craft time" against "the push for quick results" — is aneignung compatible with the construction industry's retrofit economy at all, or does it describe a pace (Sennett's craft time) that professional practice structurally forecloses?
• If mastery "requires the apprentice to add something to what has been copied," what is the criterion of a sufficient addition — when does the copy become a new work (Eliot's "good poets make it into something better, or at least something different")?