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Social and Behavioral Sciences
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 93 (2013) 18-22 —
3rd World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership (WCLTA-2012)
Education and interculturality in approaching post-totalitarian identity discourse: Interactive views on re-reading the Romanian
cultural identity
Nicoleta Ifrim *
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania
Abstract
The Romanian post-communist culture witnesses a process of value re-definition within which the memory of the totalitarian experience is mediated through identity-focused literary discourses mirroring the bias between two opposing topoi: the Southeastern space and the West, both of them being interiorized as the "periphery ego" legitimizes its writing in relation with Otherness. The experience of "travelling aboard" entails an existential quest during which Romanianness is constantly called in question: the "ego-graphic" writings are coping with the issue of cultural identity by means of recognition process (Charles Taylor, 1994) enabling the identity-otherness interchangeable game. © 2013The Authors.PublishedbyElsevier Ltd.
Selectionand peer reviewunder responsibilityof Prof.Dr.FerhanOdaba§i
Keywords: Romanianness; ego-graphic writing; Westerncentric integrative pact; cultural identity; otherness.
1.Introduction. Theoretical aspects of identity mediation in the multicultural age
Within the multicultural dialogism, the identity carrying out the cultural traits of its native cultural space is decomposed and recomposed according to its relation to otherness so that the memory of the individual is juxtaposed over the cultural paradigms of origin. When facing otherness, the "personal history" voices its specificity in the attempt of finding its particular place, thus the ego-centric writing become a mediating discourse as mediation itself is "l'impératif social majeur de la dialectique entre le singulier et le collectif, et de sa représentation dans des formes symbolique." (Lamizet, 1999, p. 9) The cultural praxis (recognisable through its mediating discourses) defines the symbolical mirrors of representations within which
je puis lire, reconnaître et élucider l'appartenance sociale dont se soutient mon existence, et qui fait de moi un sujet de sociabilité. En ce sens, il y a un miroir des formes, et, par conséquent, se met en œuvre, à un certain moment, une forme culturelle du processus de l'identification spéculaire à l'autre constitutive de mon identité : la rencontre sociale de l'autre dans des processus culturels constitue, elle aussi, pour moi, un moment constitutif de mon appartenance, comme le stade du miroir représente le moment constitutif de mon identité. (Lamizet, 1999, p. 44)
* Nicoleta Ifrim. Tel.: +40 741350935 E-mail address: nicodasca@yahoo.com
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Ferhan Odaba§i
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.09.145
In its turn, the ego-centred writing enhances a relational nodal type of cultural discourse connected to "l'expérience fondatrice du stade du miroir" - "un miroir sublimé." (Lamizet, 1999, p.44) The social collective memory intermingles with the memories of the Self as
dans la mise en œuvre des pratiques culturelles, le concept d'identité change de consistance : il devient un signifiant de l'appartenance sociale, et cesse, de ce fait, de ne désigner qu'une place distinctive de la singularité, pour représenter ce qui peut distinguer une indistinction d'une autre : la médiation culturelle, finalement, se fonde sur ce que l'on peut appeler la sublimation sociale, c'est-à-dire sur la transformation d'un lieu d'appartenance et de sociabilité en signifiant de cette appartenance même. (Lamizet, 1999, p. 431)
Caught between the reminiscent history (the inherited Past) and the immanent one (the history of the new cultural space the writing ego is facing during with its "living with the Other"), the Eastern traveller - a narrative voice in the "ego-graphic" discourse - re-defines itself as subject "qui unit le monde de l'identité à son environnement sociétal, ce qui maintient un lien entre le dedans et le dehors, ce qui articule l'appartenance culturelle et la participation à la vie générale de la société." (Wieviorka, 2001, p. 149). The dialectics of mêmeté - ipséité (Ricœur) / reproduction à l'identique - subjectivité (Wieviorka) conveys special features when coping with the egographic writing as the prototype of the post-totalitarian traveller claims for a particular form of "interior exile" close to the poststructuralist notion of décentrement. Following the footsteps of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari or R.Barthes, Stéphane Dufoix argues that "le décentrement ne consiste pas à valoriser la marge, la périphérie, la limite, mais à intégrer la fabrication, la production de ces marges comme un élément à part entière de la construction historique de la modernité et non comme son envers." (Dufoix, 2011, p. 338) Consequently, it is connected to "l'anamnèse autobiographique" enhancing the identification process, as "une identité n'est jamais donnée, reçu ou atteinte, non, seul s'endure le processus interminable, indéfiniment phantasmatique, de l'identification." (Derrida, apud. Dufoix, 2011, p. 343) The "identité - rhizome" (emerging, according to Edouard Glissant, from the "rhizomatic thinking", "une poétique de la Relation, selon laquelle toute identité s'étend dans un rapport à l'Autre" - apud. Dufoix, 2011, p. 355) becomes relevant when coping with the post-totalitarian Eastern traveller discovering the fascination of the "Free World."
Seduced by the ever-unfolding Western reality, the ego writes down his memoirs in an autobiographical discourse reflecting on the one hand, the unconscious reverberations of the utopian "société des égaux" (Pierre Rosanvallon) and, on the other, the impact the Western pilgrimage has produced on its identity profile. In her study on La question de l'altérité en Europe dans l'interface Est / Ouest, (2001), Joanna Nowicki argues that the new "européanité revendiquée, souvent confondue avec l'occidentalité, se trouve aujourd'hui confrontée avec le réel, c'est-à-dire la cohabitation culturelle avec les pays de l'Union européenne, à laquelle beaucoup de pays de l'ex-Est ont immédiatement souhaité appartenir." (Nowicki, 2001, p. 285) Her approach mirrors three coordinates of the debate: the role played by the ex-constrained intellectuals of the East, the challenge of re-discovering the West and the boundaries of portraying their inner experience (within the Romanian culture, the integrative drive and the aesthetically re-evaluation of the writings published during the communist age are thoroughly analysed by Andrei Grigor in his "spoken discourse" interviewing Eugen Simion - see Simion, 2003) The fictional conversion of the "political utopia" into "narrative dystopia" (see Crihanâ, 2010) or the European metamorphosis of "the literature of the exile" (see Milea, 2005) are exemplified, in Nowicki's study, by reference to "identity-imprinted discourses" coping with the recognition quest undertaken by writers of ex-communist cultures. The controversial identitary question is openly expressed in Gombrowicz's diary written between 1953 and 1958:
Mon désir de 'surmonter la Pologne' équivalait donc à la volonté de renforcer notre polonité individuelle. Je voulais tout simplement qu'un Polonais cesse d'être exclusivement le produit d'une vie collective, et 'fait pour' cette vie collective. Je voulais le compléter. Légaliser son deuxième pôle, le pôle de la vie individuelle, et l'épanouir entre ces deux pôles. Je voulais le situer entre la Pologne et sa propre existence, dans une perspective plus dialectique et plus antinomique, le rendre conscient de sa propre contradiction interne et capable de l'exploiter dans le sens de son développement. (apud. Nowicki, 2001, p. 286)
The identity-alterity interchanging poles, the "internal exile" overruling the political one, the issue of living in a "periphery-culture" - all are central questions rising from the "discourses of the Self' which plays a different existential role on the Western ontological scenario:
Contrairement à la majorité des Occidentaux, qui découvrent le monde soit par conquête, soit en accueillant les autres chez eux, soit à travers des voyages de découverte, les Autres Européens connaissent plutôt l'expérience de l'assimilé, de l'exote, de l'allégoriste et de l'exilé, pour reprendre la classification du voyageur moderne proposée par Tzvetan Todorov. (Nowicki, 2001, p. 289)
In this perspective, Gombrowicz's, Milosz's or Kundera's identity quest becomes symptomatic for the "Other European" syndrome - "attitude confuse, inauthenticité, fascination malsaine accompagnée de répulsion: telles sont les différentes facettes des sentiments complexes éprouves par ces écrivains venus de l'Autre Europe qui ont souvent tâché, sans toujours y parvenir, de se réconcilier avec l'Occident." (Nowicki, 2001, p. 293) Their role of "cultural mediator" between the two opposing paradigms is still active in the post-totalitarian contemporary countries: the nowadays Eastern traveller, endowed with a traumatic totalitarian memory, negotiates his identity profile with each and every quest outside the ex-communist enclave.
2.Methodological strategies in approaching identity-alterity dyad
Within the Romanian educational system, interculturality - the cultural outcome of identity negotiation - plays an important role as the national curriculum selects representative writers to be exploited from an identity point of view. The didactical strategies involved are mainly the case study and the debate, as they are best suited for the interpretative approach on the literary works - the experiment proposed to the high-school pupils (organized both as group and as individual work) was indented to observe the extent to which the ego-graphic narrative is best understood. Based on discussing the selection of works and authors proposed by the high-school textbooks (diaries, autobiographical fictions, travel literature texts) and guided by the use of double-effect questions (such as "why is the concept of identity still symptomatic for the contemporary fictional narratives?", "what do you think of identity representation through culture? How can it be defined within the nowadays drive for consumerism and subculture?"; "is the literary text still representative for the writer's intercultural experience?"; "which are the basic elements displayed by the identity-alterity dyad?" etc.), the experiment has emphasized that identity-mediating discourses function as a landmark for voicing one's reconstructed identity in a pro-European society pleading for multicultural pluralism. Nevertheless, the didactical experiment has a second objective: to stimulate the intercultural approach through education by making the high-school students aware of their national heritage and identity. By debating such issues important to self-defining as part of the collective cultural paradigm, the experiment has both formative and informative purposes - furthermore,
it is important that educators are trained in socio-cultural sensibility and intercultural competence so that they will be able to disseminate cross-cultural knowledge and acculturative techniques, and influence members of host societies as well as members of different migrant groups. In the long run, educational institutions and educators, functioning as models of intercultural openness, create the basis of a society gradually developing towards pluralism and interculturalism. They can help prepare individuals to live and work effectively in new cultural settings, develop and maintain interpersonal relationships in other cultures, communicate more effectively in different cultural situations, assist others in managing cultural diversity, deal with inevitable cultural stress and, most importantly, reduce racism, sexism, homophobia, culture-related group conflicts. (Azcárate, 2011, p. 18)
3.Romanian cultural identity and the "ego-graphic" writing. The dilemmas of experiencing the other
The issue of cultural integration of the Romanian space, of its literary works adherent to the inter-cultural scenario, the "opening towards Europe" entailed by a recently freed post-totalitarian culture which tries to fill in the
"totalitarian void" by aesthetically re-validating its great iconic writings are the major themes of interest pointed out within Miroiu and Miclea's "ego-graphic" work entitled R'Estul Vestul / The R'E(a)st and the West (2005). It also portrays an "ideo-graphic" discourse coping with the status of Romanian culture reflected into the Eurocentric mirror, thus defining identity through alterity schemata enabling the ego to re-evaluate its "internal Romanianness". The interiorized reference to the Great History, the phantasmagorical presence of the Ketman syndrome (Czeslaw Milosz) which still imprints the "collective memory", are enhanced by the experience of travelling to the West during which the voyager rediscovers himself. "The provincial thrown into the great world", "the uprooted" (Simona Antofi analyses in her study on Romanian feminine writing the covert mechanism of alterity as mirroring the profile of the exiled ego, a compensative choice to the "uprooting" complex - see Antofi, 2009) faces the Western seduction by means of a double-reversed reference: to the "adrift in periphery" Romanianness overbidding the marginal stigmata and to a compensatory mirror-identity which mediate the integrative pact. The "ego-graphic" fiction is juxtaposed over the "personal rhetoric of cultural integration" allowing the Eastern traveler to overcome his identitary complexes.
The first chapter of the book (Barza, brazda, internet / Stork, rut, internet) containing the "emailed" dialogues between Miroiu and Miclea, overlaps the two temporal coordinates - "time of living" and "the time of confessing" (Simion, 2003). Far from turning the memorialistic discourse into an acid, vindictive confession, the intellectual diary - conveying dialogues of the two travelling to Holland, Great Britain and United Stated - frames the identitary ego-centered expression filtering the great History. As Mihaela Miroiu states in the Preface, "the Eastern root" and the "Western experience" bring into the open some significant the matrix topoi - "the basic reference to the native village, the last years of totalitarian age, the philosophical fundaments, especially the first encounters with the West. The relation to the West rouses up the feelings of longing, total choc, admiration and resentful. These are the stories telling about being torn apart between autochthonism and globalization, between the ubiquitous prison of the last communist decade and the door open to a far-away world yet incapable of understanding us." (our translation) Written during the interval October 1999 - May 2000, beyond the mirrored legitimization of the "peripheral conscience" (be it culturally, geographically or ideologically conveyed), the "confessing emails" point out, at a symbolical order, the "on-living" imaginary of Centre-Periphery, reloading - by means of confession strategies - the quest of Self-defining and its internal cleavages. Evermore, the experience of the Other viewed as dialogic / overtly shared praxis entails the aim at grasping the identitary whole ever searched for by the ego torn apart between two spaces. The "interchangeable identity" reiterates the symbolical scenario of "the Easternizes" who promote a double-directed recognizing praxis: the one focused on the Western space open to the "marginal exotics" and the other oriented towards the Margin, voicing its right to recognition and difference.
The second chapter of the book - Jurnal cu femei afgane / The Diary of the Afghan Women - recollects Miroiu's memories of living among the women freed from the Taliban regime,
after their first escape from the niqab regime. They have made me understand better that the East-European communist evil was soft as compared to the Taliban one. My relation to the West consists now of mediating among the two worlds and the two histories. (2005, p.8) (our translation)
The last chapter of the book - Cronica unei singuratafi alese / The Chronicle of the Self-Imposed Loneliness -remembers the American experience at both individual and collective levels, when the inner cleavages seem to progressively fade away - now,
the relation to the West is normal, natural, and even friendly. This time I have lived the American life like an ordinary democrat inhabitant, annoyed by the republican politics and television, but being completely integrated in the nest of the university camp and its Romanian colony. (2005, p.8) (our translation)
By faithfully rendering the three different stages of the identity re-construction caught in the process of both world and West-centred ego recognition, the travel expressing the marginal status in its exposure to the Free World is double oriented - towards the native cultural matrix and the seductive West waiting to be conquered. Mirroring the inner ruptures related now not to the totalitarian doctrine, but to the newly-occurred signals from the "Other World", the traveler experiences - after 1989, the year of the Romanian revolution - the symbolical pilgrimage
towards freedom: starting with the journey undertaken to Dubrovnik (in 1990) and then to Switzerland (in 1992), Mihaela Miroiu conveys in her diary the recollections emerging from travelling through the "internalized geographies" entailing the progressive sliding from the communist order to helloism - a paradigmatic pattern defining "Romenglish, the cosmopolite Romanian peasants, the juxtaposition of autobiography over curriculum vitae" (2005, p.48) (our translation).
In his turn, Mircea Miclea grasps the taste of the West once he has arrived to Paris: "When I reached Gare du Nord, I was dumb with surprise. So many colours, so many lights! No trace of the familiar grey and dark I was used to back home." (2005, p.51) (our translation) Hence, after passing over the conflictive stage coping with the annulment of ex-communist complex, the "discovery of the West" generates a second identity crisis: the occurrence of Madame Bovary syndrome enhancing the utopian drive of adherence to the European paradigm, displayed by the marginal which constantly returns to its native matrix in its attempt of legitimisation. As Mircea Miclea writes down,
confronting with the West actually means confronting with ourselves - a sad thing to say as I have discovered painful things: we do not love ourselves any longer; we permanently torment ourselves; we do not enjoy life any longer (...) we dream to be like them instead to just be ourselves!! (2005, p.59) (our translation)
It is about the Romanianness recuperated through the mediating Western alterity: after having experienced Otherness, the integrative discourse of the Self gives away the artificial rhetoric, re-enforcing the "lived" - and not "theorised" - experience.
Therefore, the integrationist dilemmas of the Self facing the West are conveyed by means of the "ego-graphic writing" through which autobiographical profile is re-defined according to the new system of reference - the West. The ideological perspective of "enclosure" - labelling Romanianness as solipsistic insular enclave generating the acute "periphery" syndrome - is counterbalanced by the ego in search for its new self-defining identity, overtly confessing its interaction with the "Other World."
Acknowledgements
This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number SOP HRD/89/1.5/S/59758.
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