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Learning to Live between Cultures

Global village: Looking for cultural identity

Daya Kishan Thussu writes from London
***Conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia, Azeris and Armenians in Nagorny Karabakh and Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka show an upsurge in ethnic hatred, undermining cultural diversity. At the same time, a more cosmopolitan global culture is evolving as a result of the information revolution. Gemini News Service examines the possibilities of living between cultures.***
FROM Bosnia to Rwanda, multiculturalism Is un der attack, People of different religions, cultures and ethnic affiliations are finding it Increasingly difficult to live together In peace As always, cultural differences provide easy ammunition for those eager to seize power
Whether It is in the former Soviet Union, where the break-up of the empire has blown J he lid off simmering disputes, or in South Africa, as black majority rule becomes a reality, the rise of ethnic and national chauvinism threatens the very idea of co-existence between different communi ties and cultures
As well as centuries-old ri valrles. recession-hit Europe has seen the power of newer hatreds directed against Im migrants, as reflected in the success of neo-fascists in the recent Italian elections
Yet at the same time as this upsurge In nationalism, a new kind of global cosmopolitanism is evolving. Tills century lias seen huge movements of peo pie across national boundaries, seeking new lives or refuge, bringing their culture with them and absorbing what they find
Today it Is as normal to see a black or a brown face in Europe and North America as a white one in Africa or Asia One can find Coca-Cola and hamburgers In every corner of the glAbe as well as an Indian or a Chinese restaurant in all the world's major cttles
legacies of migration can be traced In the qichly mixed populations of many countries In Britain a broadcaster of Caribbean origin anchors tele
vision s most watched News At Ten Peru s President Alberto Fujimori is of Japanese descent In neighbouring Ar gentlna. the flamboyant Presl dent Carlos Menem has his roots in Lebanon In Lebanon Itself. President Rafiq Hariri originally comes from Saudi Arabia in South Africa Joe Slovo. of European Jewish ex traction. Is one of the most powerful leaders of the African National Congress
In addition, the United Na tions and Its allied agencies, the growing number of transnational corporations and Increasingly visible non gov ernment organisations employ International staff, blending cultures and languages
This growing cosmopoli tanlsm Is at the heart of the work of cultural theorists One leading exponent of this eso terlc discipline is Homi Bhabha. Reader In English Ut erature In Britain's Sussex University and a distant rela five of a more famous Homi Bhablia. the father of India s nuclear programme
In his new book. The Loco tion of Culture, Bhabha focuses on the perplexities of living, as he does, between cultures
He argues that migrant in tellectuals from the Third World have broken the bound aries of traditional cultural de bate and emphasised other ways of looking at the evolving global culture Prominent among them la Salman Rushdie, now in his fifth year of hiding from Islamic mill tants for his liberal cultural outlook who rejoices in the Idea ol cultural hybrldlty'
Bhabha was born In Bombay to a Parsee family a small
sect of fire worshippers who originally came from Iran — and says he always felt "outside the Indian mainstream".
He has lived In Britain for more than 20 years and has acquired the status of what an Oxford professor called one of "the West s finest intellectuals' Palestinian-American aca demlc Edward Said has called him a theorist of uncommon power"
Educated In Bombay s El-phlnston College and then at Oxford University Bhabha represents that group of Indians who. though born In India, are every bit Western in their attitude and language
Bombay he says with a glint In his eye has a cosmopolitan Identity II has no pure, an thentlc culture It is India tn miniature a mix of styles' — he labelled It "Bombay Mix" in a talk for the BBC"
Bhabha argues that the Western concept of organic authentic national culture needs to tie questioned In to day s Interdependent and in creasingly cosmopolitan world
His cosmopolitanism is well founded His wife was born in a German Jewish lam ily which had fled the Nazis to live In Bombay He Adds siml larlties between the Jews and Parsees tn that both are pre dominantly urban professional bourgeoisies But unlike the Jews. Hie Parsees do not have a Zionist movement, a need for a "homeland
According to Bhabha the migrant Is the key to a new view of culture, undermining the idea that culture and na tion are the same Thia chai lenge to the sovereignty of national culture as imagined
community" is being made by those who feel outside this community.
In the United Sates — the most culturally mixed of all societies — there has been a great debate about the inadequacy of the "grand narrative" of Western civilisation, what feminists call the work of "dead white males."
Instead of culture being used for the "transmission of national traditions," Bhabha sees a need for a new "global analysis of culture" and a new category of world literature based on the “histories of migrants. the colonised, or political refugees."
This analysis, he says, should not be based on the vision of a "global village" promoted by the media and corporate interests, but on a recognition of the "cosmopolitanism of the modern world."
Bhabha challenges the West’s "progressive myth of modernity, which relegates the colonised nations to a historical backwater, claiming that racism has been and still is an integral part "of the historical traditions of civic and liberal humanism.”
But he had not been able to fully extricate himself from that tradition. That he uses the phrase "post-colonial" rather than "post-independent" in his discussion of Third World cultures shows how much his intellectual framework is Eurocentric.
He is wary of discussing the political aspects of cultural domination — a kind of cultural colonialism which exists in insidious forms in an age when colonialism has supposedly ended.
Given that the world's Information and culture industries — film, television, videos, computers, books and news — are dominated by the West, the emerging information society is inevitably influenced by a Western view of the world
New media technology such as cable and satellite is bringing consumer culture. Instantly. to the world's remotest parts Does the "global village mean everyone will end up speaking Americanised English, watching reruns of bad American television serials and growing up on a diet of violent Hollywood films and banal celebrity chat and game shows?
Bhabha is more optimistic He is convinced that many Third World cultures have the strength to take on the consumerist onslaught For exam pie he says, the cultural elite In India has taken "what is best In the West and Indlanlsed it." in the same way as Western Europe became an Inheritor of the classical Greek and Roman cultures.
He hopes that India will be come a carrier of the modernist idea However, his op tlmism appears ambitious when the forces of reaction seem to get stronger In India as In the rest of the world
DAYA KJSHAN THUSSU la Associate Editor of Gemini News Service