Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Culture and Politics of Identity: Impression 4

The following is fourth in a series of five posts on my impressions about the culture and politics of identity while living in Europe.  None of them are complete thoughts.  Instead, they are reactions I had to situations and events during my last two weeks in the UK and France.

Impression 4: Long Live the Multi-Singularity


In my first three impressions I discussed, in order, Scottish identity in relation to the UK; the culture of social class in the UK versus the states; and British identity in relation to the European Union. Common to all three posts are the themes of difference versus unity, the local versus the global, and going it alone versus working together

The focus of my fourth impression is how these themes go together.  I think, in many ways, a certain false dualism exists in these themes; as if, to be successful, one or the other side of these dichotomies needs to be chosen--for example, working together or apart. 

I think, however, given my travel experiences, that such distinctions are not helpful. In fact, following Michel Foucault, I think much is to be gained by blurring these dichotomies to create multi-singularities.  For example, I find it more useful to think about cultural or local differences emerging out of unity; or thinking about the global in the local; or about people, groups, networks, towns, cities, regions, and countries working alone and together at the same time.  In other words, multiplicities intertwined with singularities.

Such a multi-singularity, a negotiated ordering if you will, is well expressed in the following quote from William Johnston:
"When people meet at the level of personal love achieved through radical non-attachment, they do not merge, nor are they absorbed in one another.... There is at once a total unity and a total alterity" (Silent Music, 1976, p. 147, Perennial Library).
It is also well expressed in, for example, this recent painting I completed, called Cathy's First Dinner Party.  These four family members form, through their interdependent interactions, a system of characters, mimicking the Last Supper painting of Leonardo da Vinci.  What is interesting, amongst other things, is how four different unities emerge by assembling the differences amongst these family members in multiple ways.  The painting is a combination of local and global, difference and unity, going it alone and together.



Speaking of Leonardo da Vinci and differences within unity, have I told you about my trip to Italy?

There is No One Italy, France, Spain or UK.



I remember my first trip to Italy in 2009.  My family and I arrived in Rome and were overwhelmed by its beauty.  The food, in particular, was a focal point for us, as we are serious "foodies."  My first thought was, "Wow! Now, this is Italy!"  I did I not realize, at the time, I was wrong.  It was only one version.

From Rome we moved on to Florence--one of my most favorite cities in the world--then onward to Bologna, Lucca, Urbino and, finally, Pisa.  As we traveled to and stayed in each of these cities, we kept thinking, "Okay, now this is Italy, right?  Wrong.  Each place was only a particular take on Italian life.  Each with its own culture and history; its own approach to eating, cooking, wine, clothing, customs, folkways, architecture and art.  It all differed.  Amazing!

During our Italy trip, I was reading two social histories about the country.  Both books made my anecdotal experiences clear: there is no one Italy; instead, there are many.  Starting with the Roman era, alone, and moving forward, for example, the history of Italy and its people is a complex amalgamation of cultural differences; influenced, over the centuries, by invasions and war, changes in political boundary lines, the repeated collapse of various empires, including Rome and the Catholic Church, alliances with foreign countries, and trade and migration in and out of Italy from all over Europe, the middle east and the rest of the world.  The result is a network of different "little Italies." You ask someone from Florence their cultural background and they say Florentine, not Italian.  Point made, right?

I can go further.  Back in the states, for example, in 2011, I was watching an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  In this particular episode--click here to see it--which I think is one of the funniest rants Stewart has ever done, he goes off on Donald Trump and his approach to eating pizza.  Trump (who Stewart feels, as a New Yorker, should know better) takes Sarah Palin to eat pizza at a chain restaurant (major faux pas #1); stacks his pizzas on top of each other (major fauz pas #2); and then he eats his pizza with a fork (fauz pas #3). We are talking about NYC, rants Stewart, a pizza mecca.

Now, for me, what makes the bit so funny is that, during the entire rant, Stewart, who loves all things Italian, talks with a stereotypical Italian accent--based, mostly, on the American actor, Robert De Niro.  As I watched it, I just laughed and laughed, not having the heart to email Stewart and tell him or his writers that, in Italy, in particular Naples, they actually eat their pizza with a fork.

So, in reality, Stewart is not talking about Italian culture or, more specifically Italian-American culture.  He is talking about New York City pizza culture--which emerges out of the intersection of a variety of cultural influences, Italian, New York City and otherwise.

In other words, while the constant ability of humans to vary culture is one of the high points of travel--be it Italy, New York City or the UK--there is another side to the "differences" that one constantly finds; particularly if one is reading about the history of a place.  Bottom line: the uniqueness of most areas is a function of the conflicted, negotiated collision amongst the various peoples who have inhabited that piece of land.

More examples.  On his travel show, Anthony Bourdain, for example, always does a brilliant job showing how some street food he is eating in, for example, Taiwan, is the result of several hundred years of cultural collision between five or six different peoples from around the world, and the locals, cooking the food, are completely connected to this history in ways that make it almost impossible to recreate the dish anywhere else.

An example of such regional taste just happened while my family and I were in northern Scotland.  For those who have yet to travel there, I cannot quite explain it, but there is a certain smell in the air up there I have never smelled before.  It is this combination of rain and the sea and the land and the trees and the lochs and farm land and burning coal and so forth.

So, my brother John and I are both major scotch enthusiasts--said another way, alcoholics with expensive taste.  So, we are in this Liquor store in Scotland and the owner starts telling us all about Islay Scotch, which is made by a whopping total of only 8 distilleries on one of the western islands of northern Scotland.  Right?  So we buy the stuff and take it home, very expensive.  And, wow!, the first thing John and I say to each other is, damn, it actually tastes and smells like northern Scotland.  Too fuuken wild!  So, here is this whiskey that emerges out of all these cultural confluences, which come together to form something that can be found nowhere else in the world.  To me, that is what traveling is all about.

But, it hits on my larger point: unity through difference; or, multiple unities, all over the world, emerging through multiple collisions of various differences, evolving over time to produce culture(s).  So, the local and global, difference and unity, going it alone and together are always, already, together.  They are two sides of the same coin.
  
As a final example, last year, in 2012, my wife and I saw the Catalan (Spanish) musician and composer Jordi Savall perform at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where my wife works.  As part of his performance, Savall (who is also an ethno-musicologist) played a short and very, very old folk melody.  After his first performance of the piece, he explained to the audience that this song has multiple cultural origins, including Greece and various parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  He then went on to play for us several versions of the melody, noting how different cultures have influenced it.  The funny thing he said, however, is that the musicians he has worked with in these various countries and continents think they invented it first.  Everyone in the audience laughed, Savall's point was made.



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