When I looked for a working analytical frame for my dissertation, i found the book of Edward W. Said on Orientalism quite useful. Sure, it is a contemporary classic, often cited and a corner stone of postcolonial studies. If you distinguish between culture-making and culture-preserving strategies, constructionists approaches usually tend to highlight the making-part of inventing culture. But Said, as an historian, is more interested in the persistance of orientalism over the time span of several centuries. Nonetheless, in the first chapter of the second part of his book (pp. 113-123, dealing with the drawing of frontiers and the secularization of christian topics into scientific knowledge) he identifies four elements central for eighteenth century orientalistic discourse structuring their imagination of oriental cultures:
- an expansion of European exploration of the world, moving eastwards as well as southwards: think of scientific excursions, travel literature (a typical classicist genre), utopic novels etc.
- an historical confrontation, comparing the exotic with other and older civilizations: cultural forms were newly interpreted not only in terms of christianity, but in relation to Greek antique, Rome or Egypt. Comparative methodology was now based on original sources, not on hand-down myths.
- a selective identification or sympathy with the orient: not everything oriental was appreciated. Rather, artists, historians, novelists etc. related to specific cultural forms, to different qualities of the orient: its supposed babarism as well as its humanity and enlightenment. Think of Mozart’s operas, of the different characters in Lessings “Nathan the wise” or look at Emily’s blog for her dissertation on the representation of Orientalism in the works of John Frederick Lewis.
- finally, a classification of mankind: different cultures, races or civilizations are hierarched in a naturalistic approach, typified and described in the taxonomical manners of Carl Linnaeus (the writer of the “Systema Naturae”). Suddenly you have inferior and superior cultures, embodied in characters, morals, temperaments etc.
So far, these categories are ment to describe the orientalists’ knowledge in the eighteenth century, the high tide of European enlightenment. As i am no historian but interested in contemporary phenomena of modern societies, you may ask of how much use such an analysis can be. My main problem in applying this analysis is the methodological a priori of Said to focus on the definition of culture via the construction of the other. Orientalism is essentially about the construction of the orient as the other of Europe. But my interest lies as much in the work make the culture from within. After a second reading of my material, mostly the speeches of the so-called Berlin Conference 2006 i developed the following analytical frame for the trivial constructions of culture:
- Instead of an expansion as the mode to define European culture in a globalized world, i suggest to look at the ways to articulate common substances, underlying the culture-made. Such a common substance might be a specific quality (being judeo- christian, enlightened, devoted to a specific aesthetic or common moral values etc., characterized by a mentality or even race). This category therefore includes Said’s description of selective identity and sympathy, for such claims highlight only parts of what may be included in a description of European culture: e.g. institutions and values of the liberal state are mentioned more often than the effects of social movements.
- Furthermore i propose to generalize the concept of historical confrontation and speak of constructed temporal horizons: For it includes the invention of tradition, the imagination of a shared history, the narration of a homogenic but empty time, organized and structured by filling it with dates, historical events and developments. See again the books of Hobsbawm/ Ranger and Anderson in the reference section, as well as the “Theses on the philosophy of history” by Walter Benjamin. When Ferrero-Waldner talks about the roots of Europe, citing Athens, Rome, Jerusalem or the ever-occuring reference to the fall of the Berlin wall, time is organized, structured and made applicable to a general narration of European history.
- My third category is called cultural frontiers and is located somewhere between all four of Said’s variables: by this, i want to identify strategies which construct a cultural classification, a positioning in a cultural drop, a qualification of cultures as progressive or regressive, its description as pure or hybrid, as enlightened or mythical. By refering to the outside, alliences are made, possible goals are developed and projects to be realized are defined: politically as well as economically.
- My last category i named cultural dynamics. This is an element lacking in Said’s analysis, although it is mentioned now and then, e.g. in the occuring of the orient as a thread to civilization. The invocation of culture as a strategy of its making usually depicts a certain necessity for its installment. Such necessities may be identified in a crisis (e.g. the constitutional crisis of the EU, the citizen’s lack of identification with the political regime), in a historical challenge (globalization, terrorism) or even in a desired social order to be established. Part of the construction of such a cultural dynamic is the identification of possible allies, the proposal of an agenda and the elaboration of any means to face such challenges or critical developments. Further examples of articulated threatening cultural dynamics might be the fear to loose one’s identity by a wave of migrants or the fear of a vanishing cultural memory in the current youth. The whole concept of the threatened and threatening child (developed by Philippe Ariés) as it is revived in recent debates on children as tyrants or on computer-games leading to young people running amok are other ways to problematize cultural dynamics.
These four variables allow me to analyze the culture-making strategies in my material on the level of discourse. But those categories do not aim at the social formation, those strategies take place in. The position of the speaker is to be identified as well the social constellations, ressources of legitimation and the dynamics of power within this arena. In order to grasp that, one needs a different set of categories, which i will save for a further post.
References:
Anderson, B. (1983): Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Ariès, Ph. (1962): Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage.
Benjamin, W. (1999): ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in: H. Arendt (ed), Illuminations. London: Pimlico.
Hobsbawm, E. / T. Ranger (eds) (1983): The Invention of Tadition. Cambridge: Canto.
Said, E. W. (1994): Orientalism. New York: Vintage (25th Anniversary Ed.).
