| Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:46AM | | | | The Problem of Europe | Posted By: Aaron Hamburger
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| Tags: Jane Kramer, At Home in Europe, Marguerite Abouet, Zafer Senocak, Janne Teller, Ilija Trojanow, Geert Mak | The first panel I attended, “At Home in Europe” was ostensibly about the problem of home, but was really about the problem of Europe. And Europe is a problem.
That “peninsula that passes itself off as a continent” (as panelist Ilija Trojanow called it) consists of variously-sized pockets of people who are more likely to identify themselves, for example, as Roman or Neapolitan or Venetian than Italian. That is, unless they are confronted by a foreigner, in which case all these separate peoples agree they are all definitely Italian and you, the foreigner, not only are not Italian but also never will be. Because to be Italian (or German, French, Austrian, etc.) is something you are, and it is not something you can become.
(Interestingly, I remember a friend of mine from Rome who scolded me for calling myself a New Yorker because I've only lived here ten years. He had lived in Rome all his life, and been born there, but did not consider himself a Roman because his parents came from the north of Italy.)
This conception of European identity can get kind of sticky, especially these days when so many of the people who live within the boundaries of entities known as “Germany” or “France” are like two of the writers on this panel (writer Zafer Senocak, born in Turkey and Marguerite Abouet born in Africa), are not necessarily considered "German" or "French." There simply isn't any kind of framework to weave foreign-born people into the fabric of the societies in which they live. Foreign-born residents in Europe may only exist discretely next to their native-born neighbors like drops of oil in water. You may try to elide as many of the differences between you and your neighbors as you can (though knowing no matter how hard you try you will always be different) or you may wall yourself in with your own communities (which will interact with the culture at large as little as possible.)
Jane Kramer, who moderated the panel, dubbed the first approach the assimilationist model (which she linked to France) and the second approach the multiculturalist model (which she linked the Great Britain).
A country may be able to live with this kind of marginalization for a time. But what happens when, thanks to technological advances, our world draws closer together, causing sharp increases in the number of people living in Spain who are not and can never become “Spanish” (or within France, “French,” Italy “Italian,” etc.)? Riots in the suburbs of Paris? Bombings on the London Underground? The murder of a Dutch filmmaker? Are these the inevitable consequences of a failed multicultural society?
(Dutch journalist Geert Mak argues no, that these incidents are the exception, not the rule, at least in his country, but not everyone was so sanguine.)
Some people who don’t want to change the definition of labels like “German” into something you can become may worry that the process of opening these currently closed groups to new members dilutes what these groups are to such an extent that the labels become meaningless.
Good riddance, seemed to be the point of view of writer Jaane Teller, who claimed that concept of nationalism is a relatively modern invention that has resulted in dangerous myths. She argued that in America, we have an elastic definition of nationalism that is based on an idea as myth, the hokey yet serviceable American Dream. To come to America is to strive for a better life, regardless of where you come from.
One thing all the panelists seemed to agree with was the notion that the debates over national identity were masking real problems, like the way capitalism, an economic system, has in the past decade or so been transformed into an ideology. Trojanow told an affecting and humorous story about how a town in Germany where the problems between Germans and non-Germans wasn’t a clash of ideologies or civilization but the fact that the non-Germans were leaving their windows open late at night when they were having parties, which was interfering with the Germans’ ability to get a good night’s sleep. An open window is a much easier problem to solve than the deep-rooted cultural conflicts reported in the media.
I agree with the points above. Notions of what is authentically “German” or “Italian” or “American” aren’t essential or even fixed. After all, what could be more German than a Turkish doner kebab stand on every corner? And last year, when I lived abroad, nothing made me more homesick for New York City and America than seeing a sushi restaurant. (By the way, my Japanese friends tell me that sushi is not a typical element of the Japanese diet.) Even pasta, that Italian staple, is an inheritance from China, and the tomatoes from the sauce are not native to European soil, but imported from the Americas. (When I pointed this out to an Italian friend, he replied, “But look what we Italians have done with pasta and tomatoes!”)
Still, I don’t think the debates over the definition of labels like “German” or “French” are meaningless. It’s sad to think of a world in which Italians will not take pride in their pasta stolen from the Chinese, or a time when the sight of a burrito joint abroad won’t recall feelings of nostalgia in an American for the United States. Maybe the answer is not to make labels like “Italian” more elastic or discourage or ridicule their use, but rather to encourage more hybrid notions of identity, so that we don’t change the Turk into a German, but to allow him or her to be both, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once, depending on the context. Of course for that to happen, both European natives and European newcomers are going to have to find a way to make room for each other.
P.S. (added a few hours later) One possible model might be the "Jewish New Yorker" model. In some ways, everyone who lives in New York has a right to feel a little bit "Jewish," especially, as compared to someone from say, Nebraska. We all know how to order a bowl of matzo ball soup at a deli. We can all use Yiddish slang words like "schlep." We all know when Yom Kippur is. But even though we are all a little Jewish (and maybe a little gay too), at the same time, there is a difference between a Jew and a "Jew," though not the kind of difference that causes resentment between the two groups. | | |
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3 Comments | Add a Comment |
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| 4-27-07 10:16AM: Will Heinrich said...
That's true--I wouldn't pull rank for any purpose beyond the occasional dismissive smirk.
I would say that it isn't a question of how long you've been here--to my mind, of course--but of how fully you've moved your life here. It's the people who put on airs but reserve the right to move back to Des Moines in case of a new crime wave--or when they have children--that come in for some dismissive smirking from me. On the other hand, Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, grew up here, and couldn't fly out fast enough after September 11th, so who's to say?
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| 4-26-07 3:30PM: Aaron Hamburger said...
I was actually thinking that "New Yorker" is an excellent model here too. How long does it take to qualify as a "New Yorker"? There seems to be such a thing, yet who knows exactly what it is. I don't mind if "real" New Yorkers pull rank on me. The trouble in Europe is that some "real" Europeans are pulling rank on the people they deem as "not real" for political and racial purposes.
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| 4-26-07 11:28AM: Will Heinrich said...
I don't think it's only European--as someone who grew up in New York, I generally think of "New Yorker" as meaning someone who grew up here. . . .
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