Reappropriation

A cultural process wherein once disparaging or oppressive terms, tools, ideas, objects and devices are reclaimed in and as acts of self-empowerment. Appropriation is to take possession of something, it is to dominate an object or idea by claiming rights over it, either conceptually and/or materially. Reappropriation is the repossessing of these expropriated rights or claims, like the word ‘queer’ which has historically been used as a slanderous term, but has since been embraced by some as a term of empowerment and extrapolated into a rich branch of study (queer theory) focusing on normative nonconformity (from Gender Studies outwards to the general tendency to ‘queer’ disciplines). Reappropriation is the capacity for redetermination and for semantic resignification, where terms and objects are ascribed with new uses and meanings.