| Friday, April 27, 2007 10:16AM | | | | Mutliple Passports: Is Pride Ok? | Posted By: Aaron Hamburger
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| Tags: von Dis, Tafdrup, Mabanckou, Multiple Passports, Segolene Royal | At this panel, featuring writers from Denmark, Holland, and Congo, one of the questions asked was, what does it mean for a writer to feel at home? When we say a writer is “from” somewhere, or is of a certain origin, which aspect of his or her identity comes first? I was born in Detroit, but I have lived in New York for ten years. Am I a New Yorker? Not according to New Yorkers.
As writer and journalist Adriaan von Dis said, “In Paris I found out that I’m Dutch. The French made me feel Dutch. It’s always the Other who makes you feel like you’re something.”
Being Dutch, however, is not necessarily something von Dis wants to feel. Brought up in a household run by a woman with strong feelings about the falsehoods of patriotism and nationalism, when von Dis is asked to sing the praises of his country of origin, his first reaction is to say as many nasty things about it as he can. For him, nationality is a fact, not a source of pride (though perhaps a source of shame).
It’s a theme that I’ve heard repeatedly at this festival: the increasing anxiety among the population at large about the effects of immigration, and the resulting anxiety among writers who are embarrassed by what they perceive as their fellow citizens’ xenophobia. Von Dis, for example, talked with disdain of Socialist French presidential candidate Segolene Royal’s campaign to promote national unity by having French people fly the French flag and sing the national anthem. In Von Dis’s opinion, such jingoist expressions of national pride are not only without merit but also revolting. As an illustration, he told the story of a black man stopped on the subway in Paris by the police. The man, who was born in France, didn’t have his papers on him and so was forced to prove that he was French by singing La Marseillese. Von Dis noted that he doesn’t know his own country’s national anthem and isn’t interested in learning it either.
There’s no question that jingoistic nationalism (which is certainly not a uniquely European phenomenon) is stupid, baseless, and disgusting. Yet there’s something about the way we, as opponents of nationalists, talk about these issues that makes me uncomfortable.
Why shouldn’t someone take pride in his culture or nation? Every culture has things to be ashamed of, but also things in which to take pride. After all, isn’t that the whole point of this whole festival, to highlight that which is unique and wonderful about various world cultures? I think what’s troublesome here is not national pride, but jingoistic pride. And you can’t fight jingoism with more jingoism, even if it’s anti-jingoistic jingoism.
If national pride were really the problem, von Dis should have leapt out of his chair to denounce poet Pia Tafdrup when she expressed her deep identification with the history, culture, language, and landscape of her native country Denmark in dulcet tones that made the crowd swoon. Why is it revolting for a French factory worker’s heart to swell up with pride when he lustily sings La Marseillese off-key, but moving and meaningful for a Danish poet to wax eloquent about her homeland? Perhaps because Pia Tafdrup is a poet. Bourgeois lawyers, nouveau riche capitalists, and the proletariat at large are not entitled to similar sentiments because they lack a writer’s gift for expressing those sentiments delicately.
“Just shut up, you’re being ridiculous,” is not the way to soothe the fears of people who see their cultural heritage and values in danger, even if it’s a false danger. Somehow, we have to approach these frightened people with more empathy. “I know you’re afraid,” we might begin, “but there is a way to integrate without diluting, to increase opportunity for everyone without taking away from what you’ve earned already. There’s enough pie to go around.”
One possible source of inspiration might just be Franco-Congolese-and-now-add-American (I’d say yes, but I’m not sure what he would say) poet Alain Mabanckou, who sees identity on two tracks. There’s the public track, the one assigned to him by others, who may see him as black, then African or French-African depending on their mood, Congolese, etc., etc. But then there’s the private track, Mabanckou’s own sense of self. “I don’t care how other people view me, as long as it’s not racial,” he said with a smile. “Just be who you are.”
Mabanckou radiated a sure sense of who he was, a little ironic perhaps given the complexity of his background. He comes from a small country, Congo-Brazzaville, with a population of three million people who speak about two hundred languages. Mabanckou speaks seven of them, including his the language he grew up speaking, Lingala, and French, the language in which he writes. Because of the diversity of languages in Africa, French, a colonial language, has become a de facto lingua franca for various writers to communicate. Also, according to Mabanckou, most African languages are only oral, so French is basically the only option for an African writer. “I feel happy to speak French,” said Mabanckou, though he admits to feeling sad when he can’t find the right word in French, but only in Lingala. In these cases, he has to think hard, sometimes for a week, to find a decent substitute. “French is an African language. I have to invent it.”
This kind of sunnily paradoxical state of mind to me seems the wave of the future: to claim as one’s own without rancor what other people are too frightened to give you.
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| 5-11-07 4:26PM: Brian Stein said...
The other night on TV I watched aghast as a number of women were told they were going to Reno for a day. One woman actually wanted to know what State it was in. She couldn't take pride in her country because she was pathetically and hopelessly out to lunch. I hope the meal was better than her knowledge. For shame.
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