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  • irishtimes.com - Posted: February 8, 2010 @ 3:21 pm

    Culture, witches and unicorns

    Bryan

    One of my favourite novels is Ngugi wa Thiong’s A Grain of Wheat. Even more powerfully than Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart, Ngugi lays out the complexities of colonialism and decolonisation. For both men, culture is the central locus of the political struggle against imperial domination. Culture is key because it is seen as central to the identity of the colonised; as what most crucially separates them from those who would conquer them. In the hands of these two novelists, as is the case with many other artists, philosophers and politicians before and after them, culture = identity, which in turn legitimates, even necessitates, resistance.

    But what is culture? I’m not so sure, and neither is Ngugi. In A Grain of Wheat, he convincingly suggests that the average person is more interested in their economic well-being than they are in collective cultural survival; that most politicians would happily adopt a new identity in pursuit of power – a charge which history seems to uphold. Which begs the question, is culture real and if so, does it really matter? Does it matter that contemporary urban Irish culture now tends towards that of the American urban setting as depicted by Hollywood? Does it matter that given the resources, supposedly ‘exotic’ peoples in the developing world would also probably go the same way?

    A West African friend asked me yesterday if my wife and I were planning on teaching our newborn chiShona, our mother tongue. Yes, I told him, for practical reasons, and even more importantly, to give him a sense of identity and an appreciation of his culture. But while I still hold to those sentiments, I’m not sure I know what culture even is, and I don’t know that it’s possible to swim against the current of the hegemonic global (read Hollywood) culture. Besides, Senghor and the other fathers of Négritude were quite possibly more French than most Frenchmen of their time in that they had a deeper intellectual appreciation as well as fondness for the French arts and philosophy. Garvey, Nkurumah and other giants of pan-Africanism never really got beyond Europe. For them, Africa would ‘arrive’ when it came to resemble Europe. And then there’s the political class, for whom it often seems as though the only aspects of culture that are tolerable are those which facilitate their stay in office. How else does one explain the fact that the postcolonial African state mimics its former European owner, or that today’s Ireland most closely resembles Britain?

    What is culture? I think it’s a lot like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman, who when asked what her name was, responded with, “Whatever you want it to be.” It’s not that she had no name of her own, she was just very amenable to the facilitation of her patron’s fantasies for a fee. And yet, even today, I think there is a lot of truth in the equation culture = identity, which is essential for and may even necessitate resistance – be that political, economic, social, religious…

    But going back to my son, I wonder if ‘our culture’ as a family or people group becomes whatever I decide to teach him it is. That may be the best I can do. And yet I can’t stop thinking about Alasdair MacIntyre’s pronouncement on the concept of human rights – essentially that because they are a political tool that becomes whatever you want them to be, ‘belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns’.

    I wonder if the same is true for a substantive portion of what we call culture? I wonder if it is only as real as witches and unicorns.

    • 8 Comments

    1.
    February 8, 2010
    5:31 pm

    With a parent’s eye view for this one I would be more interested that my kids get an insight into culture , history etc but not necessarily from an Irish perspective. I’d prefer them to see that there is a certain relativism but that every culture has it’s good points and bad points. As someone who grew up with parents that lived through insular Ireland from the 40’s and 50’s I see nothing to shed a tear over in its passing.

    I’m not sure how to judge the whole Hollywood “culture”. In history every world power had a capital that set the standards for elsewhere, London was the epicentre of the 19th C , today it is NY/Washington and LA , I guess the only difference now is that a peasant in a Mumbai slum has a link of sorts to it via TV / internet, which would have been inconceivable 30 years ago.

    Ultimately does the fact that an individual has the same travel documents as I do mean anything? And given that various states have used nationalism and culture to manipulate people should we not be glad to see the world possibly move in a different direction.

    Comment by Liam
    2.
    February 8, 2010
    7:09 pm

    Interesting post Bryan but it has me wondering – are we all moving toward “American” culture or did America, through its thorough embrace of capitalism, just reach that culture first? A culture of personal wealth.

    “I wonder if our culture… becomes whatever I decide to teach him it is.” From near-to-subsistence farming in Munster to skyping the other side of the word – my parents have witnessed a pretty dramatic gap between the culture of their parents and the culture of their children. Doesn’t culture evolve to suit the circumstances in which we live? I’m definitely not advocating out-and-out capitalism; we should consider the circumstances in which we choose to live. But having chosen those circumstances, isn’t it resonable that our culture influences and is influenced by them?

    Comment by Áine
    3.
    February 9, 2010
    12:56 am

    Interesting questions and difficult to resolve Bryan. I applaud your decision to teach your child chiShona and I hope it will succeed. It will need a lot of calm and resolve to carry through. I heard a funny story recently which nevertheless, had a serious point. It concerned a parent who decided to raise her son as a German speaker in an English language environment. When the boy began to talk, he steadfastly refused to answer his mother in German. One day, the pair was walking down the street and a talking parrot in a shop window suddenly said, ‘Guten Morgen!’ which the mother echoed back at it. Suddenly, the boy saw the point and began to speak German and never looked back. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile. Patience, love, kindness, those are the particular and the universal values you can impart on your journey. Good luck. Just a point to my namesake above – the person in a Mumbai slum is more likely to be influenced by Bollywood than Hollywood!

    Comment by Liam
    4.
    February 9, 2010
    12:07 pm

    Bryan,

    I suppose part of the problem is that there are as many definitions of “culture” out there as days in a year, so that does not augur well for clearly discussing it.

    A definition quoted in an article in todays IT says “Culture is defined as a shared system of beliefs and values. It has within it a cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimension.”

    On the basis of this definition I see myself a bit like a magpie picking and choosing from the cultures I have lived in. I suppose 70 to 80 % of my beliefs and values are “shared” with my fellow Irishmen. But offhand I can say that I do not believe in the value of nationalism or the value of religion, so that pretty much puts me outside a fair swathe of Irish culture.

    What turns me off is how culture, or this “common sharing”, can get us to believe things that are absolutely nonsense. I have met quite a few people in Ireland who share a belief that Irish weather is ‘lovely’. What an off the wall belief to share. Last year I went to see Giants Causeway for the first time. I sat there in disbelief looking at a very ordinary sight. But the tourists gurus have convinced many Irish that it is a great tourist site. Many countries develop a belief that they have the most beautiful country in the world, with sites to out beat the rest.

    Culture is often passed down through history lessons in schools. History is so biased, in favor of the country that it is being taught in, that in every country I have lived in a great majority of the natives think they are in the best country in the world. I am thinking of countries like Sudan, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Thailand etc. as well as Switzerland, Belgium etc. In each country people feed from the same collective trough of distorted historical facts and prejudices. This what is scariest about this “shared’ culture phenomenon.

    Finally like so many things in the 20/21th century, culture became one more golden goose for many countries. Throw sawdust on the pub floor, get a grant from the Tourist Board to thatch it, and take out the fiddle and bodhran. The Yanks will love it. We dress up culture and parade her like a prostitute.

    The bond that binds us must be deeper than culture. We humans share unique faculties, mainly that of consciousness and self-awareness. Thats what fundamentally connects me to all people I encounter stumbling from the cradle to the grave. It really doesnt matter that much to me if that person is from the deserts of Mali, the beaches of Fiji, or the hills of Connemara.

    Yes it will be “nice” to meet up with a few fellow paddies in the local irish pub here next Saturday as we scream blue murder at the French trying to mess with our O’Driscoll and O‘Gara. But its not what sustains me. A bit of ould nostalgia, no less and no more.

    Is culture worth any more than this? It is not an “objective” body of work built on rational foundations and peer reviewed by all other cultures. It is a pot pourri of what we can pick up or fabricate about our past and the attendant feelings we help each other attach to them. A little more real than unicorns, but not much.

    Patrick
    Bangkok

    Comment by Patrick Hennessy
    5.
    February 10, 2010
    12:04 am

    Liam @ 1 – As someone who grew up with parents that lived through insular Ireland from the 40’s and 50’s I see nothing to shed a tear over in its passing.
    Maybe I’m just a romantic who gets carried by nostalgia, but I’d have thought that were plenty of dying aspects of Irish ‘culture’ from the 40s and 50s that should be mourned, and maybe even resuscitated.

    Áine – Are we all moving toward “American” culture or did America, through its thorough embrace of capitalism, just reach that culture first? A culture of personal wealth.
    That’s a brilliant question. I suppose its probably a little of both. That being the case, you’re right. To the extent which we embrace an economic system that has predictable cultural effects, we can’t really complain about that culture. The question to ask after that is the degree to which people voluntarily adopt certain economic systems (today, those generally boil down to different forms of capitalism) as opposed to being ‘forced’ into them for survival sake.

    Liam @ 3 – Thank you. I’m looking forward to writing about that adventure.

    Patrick – [Culture] is a pot pourri of what we can pick up or fabricate about our past and the attendant feelings we help each other attach to them. A little more real than unicorns, but not much.
    I suspect you’re right. I wonder though if in the same way people once ‘needed’ to believe in unicorns, we need culture for the sake of social cohesion and some moral foundation on which to anchor our communities.

    Comment by Bryan
    6.
    February 10, 2010
    11:15 am

    Culture is what results in the expression of who we are – language, music, art, film. It is one of the first things to go in war – the bombing of Louvain in 1914 for instance – the manipulation and lies in the lead up to the war in the Former Yugoslavia, the reclaiming of homes in Israel. In conflict there is the tendency to destroy what expresses the other and reclaim it: Retribution. Culture is potent. It causes endless conflict. It inspires us to mythlogise and feel special. I believe we should try to preserve what is BEST in what we express of ourselves. But we shouldn’t be afraid to change the worst bits either or move with the times. The Catholic Church might survive this way. Look at its rich cultural history – and consider it’s sickness now. The strength of art and music and film is that – even in a Bollyhood or Hollywood film – there is the power to express to a huge mass of people what is common in the human experience. That in the end we really are all the same. The ‘common’ element can often seem hackneyed and trite in the worst art. In the best, however, it shows us we are human beings first, separate groups second. Even our fairytales are similar from place to place. In order to move on, sometimes it is best to cast aside our tired and tried ways of expression – marching down the road with a bowler hat on, for instance, to prove a point about our entitlements and history – and to think about the best possible future for our children. Our skin is constantly growing and regenerating, it is the outside of ourselves, but it needs scuffing and exfolitating to stay healthy.

    Comment by LP
    7.
    February 10, 2010
    11:45 am

    Brian, could be but might be useful to draw a line between cultural changes and changes in scoiety. I’d be misty eyed about not being able to let my kids play in the street, the tighter family connections we had when we are young etc….

    Comment by Liam
    8.
    February 10, 2010
    6:24 pm

    “The question to ask after that is the degree to which people voluntarily adopt certain economic systems (today, those generally boil down to different forms of capitalism) as opposed to being ‘forced’ into them for survival sake.”

    On first reading I’m tempted to agree that it is very difficult to escape a capitalist way of life but that’s probably because we have gotten so used to all the trappings of that life that we think of them as normal. Which is fair enough if that’s all we see around us. If we are serious about living a different way then, I think, it is possible to ‘survive’ without so much focus on material stuff.

    On talk radio last night they were talking about spending a fortune on communion days. The conversation centred on families who struggle with their daily finances but borrow heavily for this single day, and where the pressure comes from to do this. Callers claimed that schools and parishes tried to suggest ways to minimise the financial stress. But it seems like the stress was a circular thing and parents tend to pressurise themselves and, inadvertently, one another. All to meet a standard that gets higher with each year.

    Many of us feel ‘forced’ into situations by peer pressure, and that we are not ‘surviving’ if we don’t have what our neighbours have. But we if genuinely want to live a different way, and we are willing to have realistic expectations, I would have thought there is space enough for individuals to do that.

    Comment by Áine

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