4 Views on Ethinicity

8/3/2019 4 Views on Ethinicity

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Four Views on EthnicityAuthor(s): Linda Hutcheon, Homi K. Bhabha, Daniel Boyarin, Sabine I. GlzSource: PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethnicity (Jan., 1998), pp. 28-51Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463407 .

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F o u r V i e w s o n Ethnicity

LindaHutcheon

Crypto-EthnicityLINDAHUTCHEON s univer-sity professor of English andcomparative literature at theUniversity of Toronto, SaintGeorge Campus.Her most re-cent books includeIrony'sEdge:TheTheory ndPolitics fIrony(Routledge,1995)and,with Mi-chaelHutcheon,Opera:Disease,Desire,Death(U of NebraskaP,1996). Her currentresearcho-cuses on rethinkingiteraryhis-tory using comparative ratherthan national models. She isalso continuingher collabora-tive workon the intersectionofmedicine and literary-musicalculture.

WHEN I WENT frombeing a Bortolottito being a Hutcheon,my so-cial and cultural nteractionswithin a predominantlyAnglo-Saxonenvi-ronmentchanged;my ethnicidentitybecameencrypted, ilenced,unlessarticulatedby choice-a pointed lesson in the constructednessof con-cepts of ethnicity. Like me, Cathy (Notari) Davidson, Marianna(DeMarco) Torgovnick, and Sandra(Mortaro)Gilbert are crypto-Italianteachersof English.What we do not share, however, s nationality: heyare ItalianAmerican,while I am ItalianCanadian. thereforemay havea somewhatdifferentexperienceof ethnicityandits encrypting.'

Withouta melting-pot deology or a pluralistnational dentityto rallyaround,Canadians-be they British,Chinese, Italian,Pakistani,or So-mali-have only the model of officially defined multiculturalismwithwhich to constructtheirsense of self-in-nation.I first became aware ofthe differentpolitical associations of the wordmulticultural n Canadaandthe United Statesduringthe so-called culturewars. While politicaldenunciationsof multiculturalism-seen as a reconfiguration f nationalidentity resultingfromtheperceived oss of a single commonculture-were frequentenoughin theUnitedStates,most often the termwas usedthere n a morelimited sense to definethe dominant deology on collegecampuses, which was said to be contaminatedby political correctness.Dinesh D'Souza was not the only one who worriedabout the "ethniccheerleading" mplied in certaincurricularchanges (33); HenryLouisGates, Jr.,too expressedconcern aboutpotential"ethnicchauvinism" nthe multiculturalacademy("Studies"288). Some scholarsworried thatmulticulturalism's oliticsof differencemightsimplybe anotherway ofensuringwhite supremacy (Wiegman);others voiced relatedfears thatinterest in ethnic studies would elide the historical realities of racethrough he use of a European mmigrantparadigmas the masternarra-tive of difference SanJuan132).2Nevertheless, n theUnitedStates,the

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associations of multiculturalismsoon broadenedbeyond race andeth-nicity to include issues of gender,sexualchoice, andoccasionallyclass.

In contrast, multiculturalism in Canada is not so much a questionof the canon or of campus politics as a legal matter of national self-definition. Canadians'self-understandings in partforcibly definedbyits designationas multiplerather hansingle. An earlyusage of the termmulticultural appears in a 1970 report of the Royal Commission onBilingualismand Biculturalism ntitledTheCulturalContribution f theOtherEthnicGroups."Other thnicgroups" eferred o all who were notaboriginal.Fromthis reportcame a 1971 policy statementby PierreEl-liott Trudeau,Canada'sprimeminister,andin 1988 the Act for the Pres-ervationand Enhancement f Multiculturalismn Canada.The CanadianCharterof Rights andFreedoms also articulatesa commitment to pro-tectingthe nation'smulticultural eritage.Such legal provisionsareper-haps typicalof Canadianpolitical society,which thepoliticalphilosopherCharlesTaylorhas characterized s "morecommittedto collective pro-vision, over againstAmericansociety thatgives greaterweight to indi-vidualinitiative" Reconciling 159). In Quebec,as in polyglot (andthusmisnamed)English Canada, here exists a "pluralityof ways of belong-ing"thatTaylorcalls "deepdiversity" 183).It is no accidentthat it was Trudeau, he fierce federalistopponentofQuebecseparation,who formulated hepolicy statementaboutmulticul-turalism n the early 1970s. ChangingCanada'sself-image from bicul-tural to multicultural was not simply a recognition of a demographicreality; t hada political purposeand, in some people's eyes, a politicalresult(see Multiculturalism).On the nightof the 1995 separation efer-endum,Quebec'spremier,JacquesParizeau, amentedthatthe (French)quebecois chance for independencehad been ruinedby whathe contro-versiallyreferred o as"moneyand theethnic vote."3 t is also no coinci-dence thatnational multiculturalpolicies were introduced at the sametime thatQuebec was developing its own discoursesof decolonization,derived from francophonetheorists such as Albert Memmi andFrantzFanon. Forsome, these policies still function as implicit barriers o therecognitionof bothquebecoisdemands or independenceandaboriginalpeoples' land claims anddesirefor self-government.

The novelist Neil Bissoondath, a self-proclaimed assimilated Cana-dian, has voiced otherobjectionsto multiculturalism s officialgovern-mentpolicy.InSellingIllusions:TheCultof Multiculturalismn Canada,Bissoondathwrites thathe does not feel as if he is partof theTrinidadiancommunity n Canada, hathe movedawayfrom theWest Indies to starta new life, to expandhis horizons, to move beyond the confines of hiscultural heritage. Yet not all Canadian immigrants arrive with suchchoices andhopes, andmany have sufferedthe displacementof forcedemigration.The ease of acculturationBissoondathexperiencedhas ar-guably been madepossible by the very policies he is attacking:before1971 Canadawas anythingbut hospitableto immigrants,especially to

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nonwhites.However,Bissoondath s respondingat least in part o the ideaof government ntervention n ethnicityandculture,which he regardsasa personalmatter,andto the reductionof ethnic and racial differencetoinstitutionalized,grant-supported olklore or, worse, ethnic food festi-vals andparades.

Historyandgeographyconspired o create ethnic enclavesin Canada.Unlike the United States, Canadaexperiencedno drive westwardfroman Atlanticbeginning; nstead,as Cole Harrisputs it, a disjointedarchi-pelago was settled one island at a time by variousEuropeangroupswithdifferent technologies and economies, not to mention languages andcustoms.The result was "densenetworksof kin and local traditions hatamalgamatedelements of the differentregionalbackgroundsof found-ing populations into distinctive folk cultures"(465). Some Canadiansfear thatthesecultureswill be reified ntocompulsoryandlimitingiden-tity labels andthat,as a result of the nationalpolicy of multiculturalism,"familialgenealogies ... or biologism"could become definingterms ofsubjectivity Kamboureli 7). Onepossible replyto concernsaboutreifi-cationis thatany sense of ethnicity s bound to be configureddifferentlyin a new place because of the inevitable changes that come with dis-placement:an outwardmanifestation of this process is the lack of cul-turalresemblance Toronto'sLittle Italybearstoday to late-1990s Italy.Taylorhas argued hat one reasonfor this discrepancy s that human ifeis dialogic: it is formed in relation to otherpeople and othercustoms("Politics"32). To use Michael Fischer's terms,ethnicity is something"reinventedandreinterpretedwith each generationby each individual.... Ethnicity s not somethingthat is simplypassed on fromgenerationto generation, aughtandlearned; t is somethingdynamic,often unsuc-cessfully repressedor avoided"(195)-even by crypto-ethnics,whoseavoidanceandrepressionof theirethnicitycan go publiclyunnoticed.Some Canadiansamentthe absenceof a syncreticmelting-pot deol-ogy that,atleast in theory,would aim to transcenddifference n the nameof national dentity.Instead,difference s officially supported.But a ma-jor dilemma haunts his form of multiculturalism: ow to respectdiffer-ence withoutadvocatingthe concepts of ethnicpurityandauthenticitythathave led to civil strife in otherpartsof the world.Dialoguebased onrecognitionof mutualotherness-that is, on everyone'sethnicity-is onemodel for dealing with the unavoidableclashes andinterpenetrations fcultures.It is in themeetingof cultures hatethnicity s lived(see Pivato,Echo 57 and Contrasts30). As a second-generation talianCanadian iv-ing in a multiracial ndmultiethnic ity,I do notfeel atall caughtbetween"theexperienceof loss and of beingothered n a web of old andnew cul-turalregisters" Kamboureli22); for me ethnicityhas muchmoreto dowith the process of "inter-reference etween two or morecultural radi-tions"(Fischer201)-and not only the two whose names Ihaveborne.In a provocative, even prophetic, essay entitled "A Critiqueof PurePluralism,"WernerSollors urges that the classification of writersand

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critics as members of ethnic groups be understoodas a "verypartial,temporal,and insufficientcharacterization t best"(256). In arguing n-stead for a dynamic "transethnic" ocus based on the complexities of"polyethnic interaction"(257), he emphasizes the dangers of timidlychoosing to speakwith the "authority f ethnic insiders rather hanthatof readersof texts"(256). When Sollors states that"literature can]be-come recognizableas a productive orce thatmay Americanizeand eth-nicize readers" (275), he implies that readers are what they read.Perhapsreaders are also how they read,as Gates suggests when he ar-gues that"under he sign of multiculturalism,iteraryreadingsareoftenguided by the desire to elicit, first andforemost, ndices of ethnicpartic-ularity,especially those that can be construedas oppositional, ransgres-sive, subversive" "CultureWars"8). The influenceof ethnicity, ike thatof race andgender,on the act of interpretations hotly debated,butlikethe culturalconstruction of "nationness," he culturalconstruction ofethnicity may also be a "formof social andtextual affiliation" Bhabha,"DissemiNation" 92)-for readersas for writers,since both areformedby being placed in an orderof words and both emerge as a function ofdifferentand,for some, of conflictingencodings.Such encodings clashed for me when, as an ItalianCanadian,I con-sideredbecoming a professionalreaderandwriter.I wonderedwhetherteachersof English inevitablydo ethnicallyEnglish readings.I receivedmy undergraduate ducation in English literarystudies in Canada andtherefore argelywithin the normalizing, thnocentric ontext of Leavis-ite humanism: heimmigration f Britishprofessorsof Englishhadguar-anteed thatLeavis's "greattradition"would be my tradition. In otherwords,I was taught o dowhat FrancisMulhemcalls "Englishreading."The realizationof this insidious formof crypto-ethnicity-in which theEnglishnessof Englishwasocculted in favorof theuniversal-may wellbe what drove me into Italianstudiesandfinallyintocomparative itera-ture at the graduateevel; it may even have dictatedmy choice of theoryas a researcharea,for I believed thatsucha metadisciplineoffered me atleast a potentialmeans to deconstructuniversals. had a growingaware-ness that in the academy, as well as in my Italian family, the Englishconstituteda specificethnicgroup,not thegeneralculture.

I saw in comparative iterature he hope of learningto respectdiffer-ence as well as encouragingculturaldialogue. ThatI became a crypto-ethnic at about the same time I chose my field and researchareamayseem like one of life's strange ronies. YetI foundlosing the markerofmy ethnic identityby turns iberatingandconstricting.In the 1970s thenameHutcheonwas a form of protectivecoloration-I could pass as anEnglish teacher in the ethnic sense-but by the 1990s things hadchanged considerably. I now find myself living in a culture that offi-cially-by law andin most social andpolitical situations-values differ-ence and views ethnic diversity more with pride than with simpletolerance.The multicultural ynamic n Canada s of coursenotutopian;

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racism and intolerancedo not end becauseof officialpolicies. But in thelast twentyyears, crypto-ethnicityhas ceased to be the protectivemaskof assimilation t once was, for global as well as local reasons: hepoly-ethnic, diasporic world of the 1990s allows for multiple postmodernidentities(Buell 214).Michael Ondaatje's n the Skinof a Lion, a Canadiannovel, offers astrikingvisualmetaphor orcrypto-ethnicityn a scene involvinganItal-ian Canadianmanevocativelynamed DavidCaravaggio.He is in prisonfor theft when he learnsthathis nameis a carrierof ethnicity,a mobileattractor f scorn andabuse, for he is called "wop"and"dago."One ofhis tasks while in prisonis to paintthe roof of the penitentiaryblue-hethereby ironically lives up to his namesake's profession. As he goesaboutthis job, he realizes thathe is losing his sense of the boundariesbetween blue sky andblue roof. Withthis realizationcomes a sense ofliberation and empowerment. He not only gains the visual illusion offreedom; in an act of cunning self-cryptography,he has his fellow in-mates painthim blue so that the boundariesbetween himself, the roof,andthe sky are erased.Caravaggio henescapes.Therehave been such liberatingmoments for me as a crypto-ethnic,moments when the imprisoningboundariesof puristnotions of ethnicitycould be challenged merely by being Italian while othersthoughtI wasEnglish or Scottish. But this doubleness and its pleasures underlie therealityof Sollors's interactive"transethnic"deal.I know frommy dailyexperiencethatcrypto-ethnicityhas establisheda dynamic(andhealthy)tension within me between how I was taught to read and how I nowread. And the crypto-ethnicmarker once valuedas a protectivemask Inow appreciateas a reminderof the constructedness f all formsof eth-nic identity.

Notes'By crypto-ethnicity I mean the situation of immigrants whose family name was

changedwhen they arrived n a new land orwomen like me who marriedat a time whensocial custom meanttakinga husband'ssurnameand who suddenlyfound morethan thenominalmarker f theirethnicityaltered.2CornelWestarguesthatEuropean mmigrantsarrived n the UnitedStatesperceivingthemselves as Irishor Sicilian andhad to learnthattheywere white "principally y adopt-ing an Americandiscourse of positively-valuedWhiteness andnegatively-chargedBlack-ness"(29). In Canada he process was not this straightforwardecause of a smallerblackpopulationwith a verydifferenthistory.However,one worryamongCanadian cholarsofethnicity s thatEuropean thnic minoritieswill be homogenizedas white.3Thevote was 50.56%againstseparation; lmost 93%of eligible voterscast ballots.Pa-rizeauclaimed thatthe49.44% who voted forseparation epresented 0% of Francophonesin theprovinceand that herefore he so-calledpurelaine 'purewool' quebecoishad ndeedvoted for independence.

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WorksCitedBhabha,Homi K. "DissemiNation:Time, Narrative,andthe Marginsof the Modem Na-tion."Bhabha,Nation291-322.--- , ed. Nation and Narration.London:Routledge,1990.Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions: The Cultof Multiculturalism n Canada. Toronto:

Penguin,1994.Buell, Frederick.National Cultureand the New GlobalSystem.Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUP, 1994.D'Souza, Dinesh. "TheBig Chill? Interview with Dinesh D'Souza." With RobertMac-Neil. Debating PC.: The Controversyover Political Correctness on College Cam-

puses. Ed. Paul Berman.New York:Dell, 1992.29-39.Fischer,MichaelM. J. "Ethnicity nd the Post-modem Arts of Memory."WritingCulture:The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.Ed. James Clifford andGeorgeE. Marcus.Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1986. 194-233.

Gates,HenryLouis,Jr."Beyondthe CultureWars: dentities n Dialogue."Profession93.New York:MLA, 1993.6-11.."'Ethnic and Minority' Studies." Introductionto Scholarship in Modern Lan-guages and Literatures.Ed.JosephGibaldi.New York:MLA, 1992. 288-302.Harris,R. Cole. "Regionalismandthe CanadianArchipelago."HeartlandandHinterland:A Geographyof Canada. Ed. L. D. McCann.Scarborough: rentice,1982.459-84.Kamboureli,Smaro. "CanadianEthnicAnthologies:Representationsof Ethnicity."Ariel25.4 (1994): 11-52.

Mulhern,Francis."EnglishReading."Bhabha,Nation 250-64.Multiculturalism:Retrospectand Prospect. Spec. issue of Journal of Canadian Studies17.1 (1982).Ondaatje,Michael.In theSkinof a Lion.Toronto:McClelland,1987.Pivato, Joseph, ed. Contrasts:ComparativeEssays on Italian-CanadianWriting.Mon-

treal:Guernica,1985..Echo: Essays on OtherLiteratures.Toronto:Guernica,1994.SanJuan, S., Jr.Racial Formations CriticalTransformations:Articulationsof Power inEthnic and Racial Studies in the United States. Atlantic Highlands: Humani-ties, 1992.Sollors, Werner."A Critiqueof Pure Pluralism."ReconstructingAmericanLiteraryHis-tory.Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch.Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1986. 250-79.Taylor,Charles. "The Politics of Recognition."Multiculturalism:Examiningthe Politics

of Recognition.Ed. Amy Gutman.Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1994. 25-73.. Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism.Montreal:McGill-Queen'sUP, 1993.West,Corel. "TheNew CulturalPoliticsof Difference."Out There:Marginalization ndContemporaryCulture.Ed. RussellFergusonet al. New York:New Museum of Con-temporaryArt;Cambridge:MITP, 1990. 19-36.

Wiegman, Robyn. AmericanAnatomies: TheorizingRace and Gender. Durham:DukeUP, 1995.

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Homi K BhabhaOn the IrremovableStrangenessofBeingDifferent

HOMI K. BHABHA, visitingprofessor in the humanities atUniversity College, London,and the Chester D. TrippPro-fessor of the Humanitiesat theUniversity of Chicago, is au-thorof TheLocation f Culture(Routledge,1994) and editorofNation and Narration Rout-ledge, 1990). He is workingonprojects in vernacular cosmo-politanism,culturalrights,andthe ethics of literary culturaltranslation.

WHAT are the dialectics of recognition in contemporarycultures ofdiversity? What are the anomalous, antagonistic, or ambivalent loca-tions of culturaldifference n the new worldorder,and how can they bearticulated?And how can an ethical relationbe achievedwith whatClif-ford Geertz calls the "irremovabletrangenesses" f the "uses"of diver-sity (120)?A useful starting point for grapplingwith these questions is to readJacquesDerrida'sspectraland schematiccomments on interethnicwarsin the new internationalism, ut to readagainst hegrain.Intheten-wordtelegram in Specters of Marx, on the new world order,Derridaarguesthat the public sphere is both articulated through and disturbed by"techno-tele-media apparatusesand new rhythmsof information andcommunication" 79). The particular orce of these new media,distinc-tive for their "acceleration"and "dis-location" ies in theircapacity todisturb heassumptions f nationalontopology-the specific conjunctureof identity, ocation,andlocution that mostcommonlydefines thepartic-ularityof an ethnic culture.In thedislocationsof postmodernmedia,theidea of historicalcultureand of ethnic affiliationmustbe conceptualizedthrougha problematicbreak n the link between"theontological valueof present-being-the political subjector culturalcitizen-and its situa-tion in a stable andpresentabledeterminationof a locality, the topos ofterritory, ativesoil, city ... " (82). Derrida uggeststhatthesedisplace-ments undermine he ontopological tendency,for the nation "is rootedfirst of all in the memoryor anxiety of a displaced-or displaceable-population. t is notonly time that s outofjoint,butspace,spacein time,spacing" 83). But even moreimportant, acism,community,blood, andbordershaunt the new internationaland have gained remarkable deo-logical andaffectivepower.

The anxiety of displacementthattroubles nationalrootedness trans-formsethnicityor culturaldifferenceinto an ethical relationthatservesas a subtlecorrective o valiantattempts o achieverepresentativenessndmoralequivalence n the matterof minorities.For too often these effortsresultin hyphenatedattempts o include all multiplesubjectpositions-race,gender,class, geopolitical ocation,generation-in anoverburdenedjuggernaut hatridesroughshodover the singularitiesandindividuationsof difference. I want to articulatea particular elationthroughDerrida'sthoughtson ethnicity andontology, but withoutallowing rootedness tobe underminedby the displacement of peoples that structures he na-tionalimaginary.

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In the narrowpassagebetweenrootednessanddisplacement,whenthearchaicstability of ontology touches the memory of culturaldisplace-ment, culturaldifferenceor ethnic locationaccedes to a social andpsy-chic anxiety at the heartof identificationandits locutions.This passageopens an unsettling space thatadjudicatesamong differences and con-structsepistemologicalboundaries mongcultures.As Freudwrites,anx-iety, like ontopology, is an archaic,atavistic "cathexisof longing ... adefensive reactionto the felt loss (or displacement)of the object"(66).Anxiety keeps visible andpresentboth the moment of birth as a traceandthe displaced stateand in that sense constitutes a transitionwherestrangenessand contradiction annotbe negatedand must be continuallynegotiatedandworkedthrough.Anxiety is a culture's onging for placeandits borderlineexistence, its objectlessnessthat does not lack an ob-jective, the mediatorymomentbetween a culture'sontopology and itsdisplacement, the tryst between the phantasm of rootedness and thememoryof dissemination.

Anxiety's asymptotic existence is finely capturedin a poem by theChicago-MysorewriterA. K. Ramanujan ntitled"Anxiety":

Notbranchlesss thefear ree...Notgeometrics theparabolasofhope....Flames aveonly ungs.Waters alleyes.Theearth asbone ormuscle....Butanxietycan indnometaphoro end t. (11)

Anxiety standsas a frontierpost thatprovidesa spaceof representation,a strategyof reading hat "nolongerconcerns a distancingrendering hisor thatabsent,and then a rapprochement endering his orthat intopres-ence."Ina "layingbare[of] the substitutive tructuretself," heontologyof culturalidentity confronts the anxiety and memory of its displace-ment. This enunciatespace is an"overlapwithoutequivalence: ort:da"(Derrida,Post Card321).Such a rhetoric(andan analytic)of anxiety is both the symptomandthe substance of much influentialwritingon the ethical ethnographyof

contemporarycultural difference. In "TheUses of Diversity,"Geertzchargesthe traditionalnotion of culture as self-containedness with theestranging,ethical responsibilityof encounteringdiversityand thus en-gaging with strangenessat the moment of its enunciation.This process"make[s]us visible to ourselves,"Geertzwrites,"byrepresentingus andeveryoneelse as cast into the midst of a worldfull of irremovable trange-nesses we can't keep clear of" (120). The location of this strangeness snot "the distant tribe enfolded upon itself in coherent difference"but adisjunctive,anxious terrainof "sudden aults anddangerouspassages"

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(117, 119). Because these hazardsproducemoralasymmetrieswithin acollectivity, strangenessesare more oblique and shaded,less easily setoff as anomalies, "scrambledtogether in ill-defined expanses, socialspaces whose edges areunfixed,irregular, nd difficult to locate"(121).Geertzsplendidlyconcludes, "Foreignnessdoes not startat the water'sedge butat the skin's" 112).And yet Geertz does not fully graspthe amniotic structure f culturalspacingas a temporalmovementthat crosses culturalboundaries. n hisargument, he moral dilemmasarisingfrom culturaldiversityare insis-tently represented hroughspatial metaphors hatconstitute"puzzlesofjudgement.""[I]ll-defined xpanses,""socialspaceswhose edges areun-fixed,"uneven errains, dangerous assages," lefts,and contours-theseare offered as the ethnographicconditions for a new culturalepisteme.Geertz'sbrilliantspatializationof the contingent, ncomplete temporali-ties of ethical-politicalenunciationas a landscapeof juxtaposedterrainsof knowledge installs him in an Archimedianposition from which hemeditates,"[T]heworld s comingateachof its local pointsto look morelike a Kuwaitibazaar han like an English gentlemen'sclub (to instancewhat, to my mind-perhaps because I have never been in eitherone ofthem-are thepolarcases)" (121).In a responseto Geertz's ecture,RichardRortylargelyassents to theidea of diversity as a collage of juxtaposeddifferences andadmits that"[l]ikeGeertz,[hehas]neverbeen in a Kuwaitibazaar nor n anEnglishgentleman'sclub)"(533). From theperspectiveof these resolutely post-modernsavants,the "irremovable trangenesses"of diversity suddenlybecomes everyday iberalproceduralism. Wecan urgethe constructionof a world orderwhose model is a bazaarsurrounded y lots and lots ofexclusive privateclubs,"Rorty suggests,as he envisagesthepostmodernbourgeois liberalamblingbetween the equivocationsof the bazaarandthe moralequivalences of the club, "encouraging he diversity of doc-trines and the plurality of conflicting and, indeed, incommensurableconceptionsof the good"(533, 532).As a postcolonial native who learned his morals in an Indianbazaarandpicked up literature n what some (too hastily) consider an Englishgentlemen'sclub (Oxford),I see the relationbetweenbazaarandclub asmoreagonisticand ambivalent.Between them ies theanxiouspassage-"overlapwithout equivalence:fort:da"-to be traversed n the searchfor truthresiding in the encounterbetween the ontological cultural m-pulse and the memoryof the displacements hat makenationalculturespossible. I takemy lesson fromA Passage to India,perhaps he greatestof all novels about the complicationsbetween orientalbazaarsand En-glish clubs:

There s nopainting ndscarcely nycarvingn thebazaars. heverywoodseemsmadeof mud, heinhabitantsf mudmoving.So abased, o monoto-nous s everythinghatmeets heeye, thatwhen heGanges omesdown t


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mightbeexpectedo wash heexcrescence ack nto he soil. Housesdofall,peoplearedrownedndrotting....... Onthe secondriseis laidout the littlecivil station, ndviewedhenceChandraporeppearsobeatotallydifferent lace. tis acityof gardens....The oddypalmsandneem reesandmangoes ndpepul hatwerehidden e-hind he bazaars ow becomevisibleand n their urnhidethe bazaars...

[T]hey oarabove he owerdeposit ogreetone anotherwithbranches ndbeckoningeaves,and o buildacityfor the birds.Especially fter herainsdotheyscreenwhatpassesbelow,butat alltimes .. theyglorify hecitytotheEnglishpeoplewhoinhabit herise,so thatnew-comersannotbelieveit tobe as meagre s it is described, ndhave obe drivendown o acquiredisillusionment. (Forster-5)Forster seems to guide the eye from the lowly bazaarto the Europeanclub, the civilizationon the rise in the city of gardens.Butjust as he es-tablishesthe self-containednessof cultures, hereaderbecomes awareofthe overlapping,oscillating energiesof the Gangesthat driveeverythingdown and the bird-filled trees that act as a lofty screen for the bazaar.The alienation andanxiety is inscribed in the hidden line of trees thatbecome visible andin turnhide the bazaars.The trees forma boundarythatestablishes and then displaces the culturalontopology, screeningandrevealing,enclosing anddisclosing. At the same time they providean essentialpassagethrough he culturaldivide, standingbetweenoppo-sitions andsowingconfusion.These are"the eartree[s]"of "naked ootsand secrettwigs. / Not geometric" ike parabolas.

Between bazaarandclub, the fear tree casts each site of differenceasincomplete andthereforemakespossible the colonial dialectic of mas-tery andmisrecognition,sexuality andpowerthat creates the narrative.The proceduresof "rationalist" ationality(a clarification hatBernardWilliamsurges)and dueprocessbreakdownirretrievablyn bothbazaarandclub, in courtroomandcivil station-the anxious echo of Forster'sMarabarCavesensuresthat.Buthavingovercome theanxietyof culturaldesignationandalienation, he ethicalrelationseems to return o thepri-vate andprotectedrealm. Aziz reconstructs his personal life at home,writing illogical poems on orientalwomanhood(although n one poemhe bypasses motherhoodandmotherlandandgoes "straight o interna-tionality" [Forster329]). Adela learns the lesson on the surfaceof herbody as a servant removes cactus thorns.In her anxious-some call ithysterical-delirium, she repeatsendlessly, "Inspace things touch, intime things part" 214).If anxietyreveals a negotiationwith the"irremovable trangenesses"of culturaldifference,what role do violence, reparation,andhistoricalagency play in the fate of culturaldifference withincolonial space andhistoricaltemporality?FrantzFanon has famouslysaid in TheWretchedof theEarththat"thezone wherethenatives ive is notcomplementaryothe zone inhabitedby the settlers.The two zones areopposed,butnot inthe service of a higherunity" 38). Fanonprovidesanaccountof colonial

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ontopology in which there is an"overlapwithoutequivalence: ort:da."He then derives a revolutionaryandreparativeethical position throughthe strategicaffect of psychic and social anxiety.From the splittinganddisintegratingof the personality subjectto mental illness, he producessome of his notions of social transformation nd historical rauma.Psy-chotic andprojective mechanisms that inform the everyday life of thecolonized are transmutednto theagencyof subaltern ctionby "lay(ing)hold of this violence which is changing direction"(58). "Thenative'schallenge to the colonial world is not simply a rationalconfrontation,"Fanonwrites;"it is not a treatiseon theuniversal,but theuntidyaffirma-tion of anoriginal dea" 41).Fanon affirms his ethics of agency by acknowledging the desire forland-for ontopological belonging-as the most "concretesymbol ofbreadanddignity" 44). But in theperformative rocessof revolutionasaction andagency-the search for equality andfreedom-natives dis-cover that theirlife, breath,andbeating hearts are the same as those ofsettlers:"TheNegrois not.Any more thanthe white man" Fanon,BlackSkins231). This ethical-politicalproximity s antagonistic o the Mani-chaeancompartments f theracialdivide and sets the scene for theethicsof revolution.In Fanon'srevolutionary reed,"thethingwhich has beencolonized becomesmanduring hesameprocessby which it freesitself"(Wretched 6-37). However, his "thing"s not simplythe colonizerandthe colonized. It is the historicalrelationality, he interstitial n-betweenthat defines and divides them into antagonisticsubjects.(Fromthis per-spective t wouldbe possibleto elaborate he issues of genderandsexual-ity that Fanonfails to articulate.)The"thing" epresents he takingup ofa position,as EmmanuelLevinaswouldsay,beyondtheontologicalcon-sciousness of difference, n relation o the anxietyof a liberatoryhistorywhose objectremainsto be fulfilled. As Fanonexplains,decolonizationstarts for the native with a blank first page on which is inscribed thecompletedisorderof thedesire fordecolonizationand thecontinuitiesofhistorical ransformation f which it is a part.Forthe colonizer,thepos-sibility of changeis also experiencedas a terrifying uture.The anxiousstrugglefor the historicalconsciousness of freedomthateschews tran-scendence-or a higherunity-derives fromviolence anethicsthattakesresponsibility or the other n the transformation f the "thing."In "OnViolence"Fanon insists that the native'smorality s concrete:"it is to silence the settler'sdefiance,to breakhis flauntingviolence-ina word to put him out of the picture" Wretched44). But this does notrepresentFanon's finalposition or his sense of ethical reparation.Levi-nas captures he anxietyof proximity:anethicalrelationcan exist wheresubjectsare unitedneitherby a syntheticunderstanding orby a subject-object relation but where one subjectconcerns or is meaningful to theother(116).In the finalchapterof TheWretchedof the Earth,Fanonproducesacredofor the nationalandinternational elation:

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Four V/ewsonEthnicity

Fromhemoment ouandyour ikeare iquidatedikesomanydogsyouhaveto retain our mportance....Youmust herefore eighasheavily syoucanupon hebodyof your orturern order hathissoul, ost n somebyway,mayfind tself once more. .. And hen here s thatoverwhelmingilence-butof course hebodycriesout-that silence hatoverwhelmshe orturer.295)

Is this plot of proximity a vindicationof violence? I do not believe so.But Fanon s suggestingthat humansubjectscan andmustwage wars ofrecognition in the knowledge that historical freedom and culturalsur-vival exist in the midstof antagonism.Overwhelm he torturer's ilence,and heed thebody's cry!Theproximityof bodies at theedge of waterandskin andin the transfer f ethicalweightfrom the whiteman'seyes to thetorturedblack man's body marks the possibility of a kind of freedom.This is a freedomthat does not demanduniversal ramesor synchronousknowledges but thatwill allow the silence to inscribe the raveling andunravelingbetweenthe psychic body andits political weight.

WorksCitedDerrida,Jacques.The Post Card:FromSocrates and Beyond.Trans.AlanBass. Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1987.. Spectersof Marx:The State of the Debt, the Work f Mourning,and theNew In-

ternational.Trans.Peggy Kamuf.New York:Routledge,1994.Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks. Trans.Charles Lam Markmann.New York:Grove,1967.. The Wretched f theEarth.Trans.ConstanceFarrington.New York:Grove,1991.Forster,E. M. A Passage to India.New York:Harcourt,1952.Freud,Sigmund.Inhibitions,Symptoms,andAnxiety.Trans. Alix Strachey.New York:Norton,1989.

Geertz,Clifford."TheUses of Diversity."Michigan QuarterlyReview25 (1986): 105-23.Levinas,Emmanuel.CollectedPhilosophicalPapers.Trans.Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht:Nijhoff, 1987.Ramanujan.A. K. SelectedPoems. Delhi: OxfordUP, 1976.Rorty,Richard."OnEthnocentrism:A Replyto CliffordGeertz."MichiganQuarterlyRe-view25 (1986): 525-34.Williams,Bernard.ShameandNecessity.Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1993.

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world (see Boyarin 244-70). Symptomatically,Freudgoes on to writeof "ourchildren,adultswho areneurotic,andprimitivepeoples"andofthe successionof thematriarchal ocial orderby thepatriarchal ne. Theconnectionsbetweentheseexpressionsareclear,butit is vital to remem-ber that it was the Jews who were brandedas neurotic in fin de sieclecentralEurope.Freud'sclaims for the superiority f the Jews areclosely related o hisrecodingof submissivenessas masculinerather han feminine.By read-ing the "inclination o intellectual nterests"as a resultof the dematerial-ization or sublimationof God, Freudbrilliantlyasserts thatthe Jewishmale,by circumcisionandby devotionto interior,"feminine" tudies,ismore masculine han he muscularGreek,who is less restrained,ess ableto "renounce nstincts" 115, 116), andthusparadoxically s less "male"thanthe Jew.This masculinity is bolstered by the infamous analogy that Freuddraws between "declaringthat our God is the greatest and mightiest,althoughhe is invisible like a gale of wind or like the soul,"and"decid-ing thatpaternity s more important hanmaternity,although t cannot,like the latter,be establishedby the evidence of the senses"(118). Freudthus seeks to reinvest the Jews with the phallus in an almost patheticquest for the "self-regard" 116) that the nineteenth-century"emanci-pated"Jew of Austro-Germanyacked. Like otherJews of his time andplace, Freudcompensates or the absenceof an assetprohibited o Jews.In a recentreadingof this passage, GayatriSpivakconfounds Jewishdesireforthe Europeanphalluswith Jewishpossessionof it. In a sectionof heressay entitled somewhatominously "Arabsand Jews"(54), sheestablishesa binaryoppositionbetween the MaghrebiwriterAbdelkebirKhatibi (the Arab) and the French LacanianDaniel Sibony (the Jew).Ultimately,however,the Jew is SigmundFreud and thus in some senseMoses, the originatorof monotheistic universal cultural imperialism,and in Spivak's text Sibony, the FrenchLacanian,is only his stand-in.The Jew,for Spivak,is simplythe same as the Europeanwhite man,thecolonialist,and indeedin a sense theprogenitorof his predation.2The crucial move in Spivak's argument s hercharacterization f Si-bonyas "shifting helines from twoPeoplesof the Book to anoppositionwhich reflects the vicissitudes of the long losing streak of the by-nowlesser team:ArabagainstFrench."ThusSpivakbindsSibony "the Jew-ish Franco-Maghrebin" ithMartineMedejel, "aGauloise married o aMoroccan" 55). Both Sibony andMedejel indeedrepresent hemselvesas French vis-a-vis a non-Frenchother, yet Sibony, who was born inNorthAfrica and who bears a distinctlyNorthAfricanandJewishname,is no more FrenchthanMedejel's husband.Nevertheless, in Spivak'sdiscussionof the treatmentn France allegedly by Sibony)of anaphonicthree-year-old oy of NorthAfricanMuslimorigin,"Sibony s the well-placed male migranthelping cure the problemsof underclassmigrants.His hold on the Frenchness of Frenchsociety may be minimally more

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secure because of his Jewishness,although hereareplentyof historicalironies behind this claim" (56). There are more than historical ironieshere,foralthoughSibonyis certainlya"well-placedmalemigrant,"manyNorthAfricanJews in Franceare not male or well-placed,and thereareNorthAfrican Muslims in Francewho are as well placed as Sibony is(and ustasmale).Spivakassumes hatSibony s indeed he"well-placed"Jewishtherapistwho treats he underclassArabboy. Sibony,however, snot the therapist;he is commenting on the work of "untherapeutedelanguearabe" anArabic-speaking herapist'who treated heboy "et fortbien" 'andvery well' (Sibony 83). Howeverfamiliar, he oppositionbe-tweenArab andJew thatSpivaksets up is false. Sibonyhasjust as muchrightto the identificationArab as the patientdoes (see Alkalay).A bit of"fieldwork"n Belleville would makemy pointbetter hanwordswill.

To be sure, the rhetoricof Sibony's essay seems to identify him withFrenchness,a move redolentof Freud'sassumptionof Englishness.In-sofar as Sibony himself insists that the contact is between Arabic andFrench,rejectsthe possibilityof hybridity,andinsists thathis own Ara-bic identitybe leftbehind,he engagesin the sameprocessof self-erasure,of mimicry, as Freud does in his attemptsto appropriate he universalphallus for Jews andto makethem full members of the brotherhoodofthe universal spirit. Spivak forecloses the possibility of Sibony's andFreud'spainanddislocation,of a postcolonial anguishas vivid in its re-pressionas Khatibi'sorherown:3

Sibony eemsnot tocare hat heso-calledcountry f originhas a differentmodeof existence oday, lsewhere;t is notsimplyhispastand hepastofhispatients.He seems o ignore hat hecutting f thegraft s also thedeathof thehost, he oss of a language,hat f the"countryforigin"s consideredasalibibutnot nillotempore,ircumcisions notsublating prehistoricas-trationnthesecases. (56)Anothermisreadingoccurs when Spivakcomments on Sibony's de-scriptionof his boyhoodin a djamad,anIslamicschool, in theMaghreb.The teacherrefers to the"Sacrificeof Ishmael"as a radicalact, and Si-

bony commentsthathe ignoresthe fact thatthis is "unemodulation nte-ressantede sa versionoriginaledite sacrificed'Isaac et ecrite 15 sieclesplus tot" 'an interesting modulation of the original version, which iscalled the sacrificeof Isaacand which was written ifteencenturiesear-lier' (88). ForSpivakthiscomment s a sign of Sibony's"visibletie withthe universalizingFatherwho is the Subjectof Science"-that is, withFreud. But the struggleover the sacrificeof Isaac or Ishmael is not be-tween universalizing subjectsof science and natives but between ArabJews and Muslims-both very particularnatives. (ForFrenchmen t isirrelevant.)Sibonyis not the Frenchmanhere but the NorthAfricanJew.And althoughthe language of the scientific is a markerof a desire foruniversality, he subject (sujet)markshimself as of the Maghreb.

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Circumcision is not merely a "male bond"between Sibony and theboy (Spivak58) but a graftbetween Jew and Muslim and a cut betweenbothof them and France.As JonathanBoyarinhas noted(58-59), in Al-bert Memmi's autobiographicalnovel ThePillar of Salt, the narrator,Jewgrowingup in Tunis n the 1930s,describesbeing on a streetcarwithvariouscharacters-a Bedouin,a Frenchwoman,a "Mohammedan" ndhis two-and-a-half-year-oldon, and a Djerbangrocer.Thegrocerbeginsa socially acceptedform of teasing, askingthe littleboy whetherhe hasbeen circumcisedyet andoffering successively higherbids for his "littleanimal," ventuallysnatchingat the child'sgroinin mockfrustration ndprovokingthe boy's real terror.This episode bringsthe narrator ack toa remembered cene in his kouttab chool (theNorthAfricancounterpartof the EastEuropeanheder).In the teacher'sabsence,the class followedan anarchicimpulse: the students "felt that [they] needed one anotherand discovered that [they]were a crowd ... [then]soon returned o an-cestral traditionsand decided to play,like adults,at circumcision."Theychose one of the younger boys as the victim and carriedout a mock cir-cumcision, acting the roles of their fathers and theirfutureselves, untilthe victim burstout crying andthey all collapsedinto helpless laughter.The scene from his school, in which the narrator imultaneously denti-fied with the victim and was thrilledto be partof the crowdperformingthe sacrifice, allows him an imaginative dentificationwith the Muslimchild in the trolley who, unlike a Jewish infant,will in fact be aware ofthe cut to be made on his body.The sentences that link the two partsofthe chapterconfirmthis association: "CanI ever forgetthe Orient?It isdeeplyrootedin my flesh andblood, andI need but touchmy own bodyto feel how I have been marked or all time by it. As though t were all amere matterof culturesand of elective affinities!" 169). Memmiis bothpostulatingan Orient from a position outside it and identifying with it.He is assertingas a link to fellow "Orientals"what is usuallytakento beexclusively Jewish, renderingthe ironies in Sibony's situation all themorepalpable.

Spivak'smisreadingof Sibony generatesor is generatedby hermis-takingof Freud.Sibony, ikeFreud, s inbetween.Healso, less eloquentlythanMemmi andcertainly hanKhatibi, vokes anOrient rom a positionoutside t andsimultaneouslydentifieswithit. Spivakproducesa brilliantmetaphor n herdiscussion of Frenchcricket,an appropriation y colo-nized childrenof the Englishgame.Both girls andboys can play Frenchcricket, and "the wickets [are] stable, usually subtropicaltrees"(60).Frenchcricket is a peculiarset of parodic,shifting appropriations f thecultureof themetropolis.However, ikeMemmi,Jewshavealwaysplayedtheir own forms of Frenchcricket, nhabiting he intersticesbetweenthecolonizer and the colonized and seen by bothas theother.MemmiplaysJewishcricket.Spivak,who misreadsFreud andSibony)like a latter-dayBose, discounts he "racialdifference"betweenthe JewandtheEuropean,even when the Jew is an ArabJewseekinghis own Frenchness.

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Insteadof being universal, he Jewsonce were-maybe still are-try-ing to become universalaftermillenniaof standing or difference,of be-ing embarrassinglyvisible. Freud'sotherethnological texts, TotemandTaboo (1912-13) and GroupPsychology and the Analysis of the Ego(1921), can be read as symptomaticof his desire for an unambivalentwhiteness,not as the transparent ignifierof such whiteness.Like manyothersymptoms,they areunpleasant ndeed.Readingthese texts symp-tomatically does not defuse or excuse their racist importbut may helpbracket t withina criticalevaluationof what remainsuseful forprojectsof cultural herapeutics.This perspectivedoes not explainaway or denythe triumphalism r racism,butit does help to framethemin a differenthistoricalcontext. Defense andapologetic as types of mimicryare dan-gerously close to triumphalism,and identification with oppressorsal-ways produces oppression. However,the observation thatthe termsofthe apologeticare drawn rom the value systemof a dominatingculture,a system internalizedby the dominated, s profoundlyrelevant o an un-derstanding f textual andhistoricalprocesses."Freudhadcertainlyassumedan implicit identityfor the analystas awhite Europeanman,"KalpanaSeshadri-Crookswrites (194), an asser-tion with whichI canonly agree.I wouldinterprethissentence,however,in a sense that wasperhapsunintendedby its authorbut thatneverthelessresides n thesyntax:Freudcertainlyassumed puton) anidentity mask)for the analyst(himself,cast as off-white,Jewish,effeminate)as a whiteEuropeanman.It is not difficult to see why victims of Britishimperial-ism (suchas Spivak)-the "rebels"-might readthispassage differently.Freudsought to escape the characterizationof his people as feminineandaccomplished his aimby stigmatizingothers. To dodge the stigma-tization of Jews as weak and submissive,Freud nsisted that Judaism smasculine andaggressive.And when Spivakremarks omewhatacerbi-cally, "Transcendentalmperialismby this Freudianaccountis a Jewishgame accidentallyplayed by the British"(60), she recognizes thatthisFreudianclaim is a form of colonial mimicry,since she is explicitly al-ludingto Ashis Nandy'sremark"Crickets an Indiangame accidentallydiscoveredby the English"(1). And yet Spivakleaves a tantalizingam-biguityaboutwhetheror not she acceptsFreud'sargumenthere.4FortheJews no more invented "transcendentalmperialism" han the Indiansorthe Jamaicansnventedcricket.

Notes'Seshadri-Crooks 85. On Bose in general,Seshadri-Crookss illuminating.2WhenI questionedSpivakaboutusingKhatibiandSibonyas stand-ins or theirrespec-tive peoples, she denied thatallegorizationwas her intent. I continue to findit difficultto

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interprethertext any otherway. In the narrativeone Arab(Khatibi) nteracts with a Jew(Freud),and one Jew (Sibony)interactswithan Arabboy;thus the title "ArabsandJews"certainlyseems to give anarchetypal tatus o these interactions f not quiteto theiractors.3Spivakwritesthatthesefeelings areanointedwitha "differenthybridity"while Sibonygets only thedubiousdistinctionof "aprivilegedaccess to a secureFrenchness"67).4InSpivak'sterms,do Jews play Englishor Frenchcricket?A note suggests that she infact agrees with Freud:"This is not an argument or a similaritybetween the BritishandtheJews. (Thetwo arenot,of course,mutuallyexclusive.) It is ananalogybetween theen-duringspiritof Imperialismof the EighteenthDynasty of Egypt, carriedforwardby theJews' contactto thecultureof that mperialism hroughMoses's governorship ndthespiritof the BritishEmpire.As we shallsee in the case of Fanon, t is an argumentorcricketers"(72n55).But what is thepointof thisanalogy f theFreudianaccount s only a fiction?Thenotion n the Freudianaccount hatuniversalism s a productof imperialistpowerseems tome sound,or at anyrateplausible.However,ancient Hebrewmonotheism s not transcen-dentalor universalist in its claims; it assumes those traitsonly when temporalpower isaddedto the mix in the latestavatarsof the RomanEmpire BoyarinandBoyarin).

WorksCitedAlkalay,Ammiel.AfterJews and Arabs: TheRemaking f LevantineCulture.Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1992.Boyarin,Daniel. Unheroic Conduct:TheRise of Heterosexualityand the Inventionof theJewishMan.Contraversions:tudies nJewishLiterature,Culture, ndSociety.Berke-ley: U of CaliforniaP, 1997.Boyarin,Daniel, and JonathanBoyarin."Diaspora:Generationand the Groundof JewishIdentity."Identities. Ed. KwameAnthonyAppiahandHenryLouis Gates, Jr. Chi-cago:U of ChicagoP, 1995. 305-37.Boyarin,Jonathan.Thinkingn Jewish.Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1996.Freud,Sigmund.Moses and Monotheism:ThreeEssays. 1939. TheStandardEditionofthe CompletePsychologicalWorks f SigmundFreud.Ed. andtrans.JamesStracheywith Anna Freud,Alix Strachey,and Alan Tyson. Vol. 23. London:Hogarth,1955.3-317.Memmi,Albert. ThePillar of Salt. 1955.Trans.EdouardRoditi.Boston:Beacon, 1992.Nandy,Ashis. The Taoof Cricket:On Gamesof Destinyand the Destinyof Games.NewDelhi:Penguin,1989.Seshadri-Crooks,Kalpana."The Primitive as Analyst." Cultural Critique 28 (1994):175-218.Sibony,Daniel. "Effetsd'entre-deux-langueset exils d'origine."Cahiersintersignes 1.1(1990): 81-90.Spivak, GayatriChakravorty. Psychoanalysis n Left Field andFieldworking:Examples

to Fit the Title."SpeculationsafterFreud:Psychoanalysis,Philosophy,and Culture.Ed. SonuShamdasani nd MichaelMunchow.New York:Routledge,1994.41-76.

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Four Views onEthnicity

Sabine. GbClHow Ethnic Am I?

SABINE .GOLZ, ssociatepro-fessor of comparative iteratureandGermanat theUniversity fIowa, is the authorof The SplitScene of Reading: Nietzsche/Derrida/Kafka/Bachmannandof articles on Ilse Aichinger, n-geborgBachmann, urekBecker,Paul Celan, Jacques Derrida,and Esther Dischereit. She isworkingon a book-lengthproj-ect on Karoline von Ginder-rode'sreadingnotes.

Jemandmu3fte osef K. verleumdethaben,denn ohne daJ3 r etwas Boses getanhdtte,wurdeer eines Morgens verhaftet.Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anythingwronghe was arrestedonefine morning. FranzKafka,Der Procefi(The Trial)ONE FINE MORNING I found myself called on to confess my "Ger-man"ethnicity. My response, naturally, was to go looking for an exit. Yetsuch escapes, as one learns from reading Kafka, are not easy to come by.Could I deny the charge, dispute its presuppositions, have someone tes-tify in my favor, or-extravagant hope-even produce an alibi? Ofcourse, I could argue that my ancestors were not so much German asSwabian, Prussian, Danish, and even (yet more distantly and legendarily)Italian and Spanish. Or I could seek refuge in, for instance, Jacques Rou-baud's efficient deconstruction of provable ethnic origin in "Is Le PenFrench?" Roubaud considers the implications of Jean-Marie Le Pen'sdefinition of a French person as someone whose parents are both French:

Si Le Pen etait frangais,selon la d6finitionde Le Pen, cela voudraitdireque, selon la definitionde Le Pen, la mere de Le Penet le perede Le Pen au-raientete eux-memesfrancaisselon la definitionde Le Pen,ce qui signifieraitque, selon la definitionde Le Pen, la mere de la merede Le Pen, ainsi que leperede la mere de Le Pen ainsique la mereduperede Le Pen, sans oublier eperedu perede Le Pen auraient te, selon la definitionde Le Pen, francaisetparcons6quentla mere de la mere de la merede Le Pen, ainsi que celle duperede la merede Le Pen ainsiquecelle de la mere duperede Le Pen,et celleduperedu perede Le Pen auraientete francaisselon la d6finitionde Le Penet de la meme maniereet pourla meme raison le pere de la mere de la merede Le Pen, ainsi quecelui du perede la mere de Le Pen ainsi que celui de lamere du perede Le Pen, et que celui du peredu perede Le Pen auraientetefrancais, oujours elon la memedefinition,celle de Le Pend'oiuon deduirasanspeine et sans l'aide de Le Pen en poursuivante rai-sonnement

ou bien qu'il y a une infinitede francaisqui sont n6s francaisselon la defi-nitionde Le Pen,ont vecu et sontmorts francaisselon la definitionde Le Pendepuisl'aube ducommencementdes tempsou bienqueLe Pen n'est pas francaisselon la definitionde Le Pen. (15-16)

If Le Pen were Frenchaccordingto the definition of Le Pen, this wouldmean,according o the definitionof Le Pen,thatLe Pen's motherand Le Pen'sfatherwould themselves have been Frenchaccordingto the definitionof LePen, which would mean,according o the definition of Le Pen, that Le Pen'smother'smother,as well as Le Pen's mother's fatherand Le Pen's father'smother,withoutforgettingLe Pen's father'sfather,wouldhave been French,

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Four ViewsonEthnicity 47

accordingo thedefinition f LePen,and onsequentlyhemother f LePen'smother'smother,s wellasthatof LePen'smother'sather, swell as thatofLe Pen's ather'smother nd hatof LePen's ather'sather, lsowouldhavebeenFrench ccordingo the definition f LePen,and n thesamewayandforthesame easons he ather f LePen'smother'smother,s well as thatofLe Pen'smother'sather, s wellasthatof Le Pen's ather'smother nd hatof Le Pen's ather'sather, ouldhavebeenFrench,tillaccordingo thesamedefinition,heonebyLePenfromwhich,by continuinghereasoning,nemaydeducewithoutroubleandwithouthehelpof Le Peneither hat here s an nfinity f French eoplewho since he dawnof thebeginning f time werebornFrench ccordingothe definition f LePen,livedanddiedFrench ccordingo thedefinition f LePen,orelsethatLe Pen s notFrench ccordingo thedefinitionf LePen.'

But even if Roubaudwere authoritative s a witness and even if I couldtemporarilygain some groundwith his help, wouldn't my motives fortryingto make an escape be questioned?Wouldn't the very impulse toescapebe takento confirmmy guilt?In postwar(West)Germany,"beingGerman"was not somethingonewent arounddoing in public. The proclamationandelaborationof na-tional, racial,or ethnic identity in general-and of Germanness n par-ticular-had all the wrongassociations.Any categorization f people bysuch means was taintedanddeeply suspectbothpoliticallyandethically.On the basis of such evidence,I could now expect my veryhesitation operform"as a German"o be diagnosedas themostquintessentiallyGer-manthingabout me. My continuedresistancewouldmerely suggestthatthe guilt mightbe even greater han at firstsuspected.In the postdeconstructive ontext of the 1990s, the practiceof elabo-ratingethnic and other sorts of culturalandgroupidentities has becomepopularonce again.Andyet afterdeconstruction, thnicitycan no longerbe a truth. tmustbe somethingconstructed,potentiallymultiple,hybrid-ized, and interstitial.WernerSollors'suse of the wordinvention n theti-tle of his book The Inventionof Ethnicity ndicatesthis change:

Bycallingethnicity-that s, belonging ndbeingperceived yothers s be-longing o anethnicgroup-an "invention,"nesignalsan nterpretationnamodem ndapostmodercontext. (xiii)If I am uncomfortable underethnic "arrest,"Sollors's relation to the"postmoderncontext" seems not altogetheruntroubledeither: he per-ceives it as an "assault":

Is it possibleto takethe postmodern ssaultseriouslyandyet to adhereto some notionof historyandof individual ndcollective ife in the mod-emworld? (xi)In the absence of a credible theory that would uphold the claims ofreferentiality, the meaning of these inventions slips and threatens to


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disappear.In response to this problem, Sollors offers a redefinedcon-ceptionof ethnicity:[E]thnicitys not so mucha deep-seatedorcesurvivingrom he historicalpast,butratherhe modem ndmodernizingeature f acontrastingtrategy.... It marks nacquiredmoder senseofbelonginghat eplaces isible, on-crete ommunities.... t is notathingbutaprocess-and trequiresonstantdetectivework rom eaders. (xiv-xv)

Sollors shifts the meaning rom actualcommunities hatconstructions fethnicity could still designate to the activity of subjects who desire tobelong to such communities.Ethnicityis transformed rom somethingone is into somethingone does.But what if one hadacquirednot a "modern ense of belonging"butrathera desirenot to belong-or at least a desire to keep openthe possi-bility of not belonging as an emergency exit throughwhich one couldgive the (always potentiallyovereager)detectives the slip? The idea ofethnicity would move from a model of acknowledgmentor denial of a(moreor less obvious) truth o a choice between two modes of and twodesires in reading. Sollors's redefinition thus also makes room for thepossibility of choosing not to belong-an option I consider indispens-able. For only the option of doing otherwise can preventthe inventionfrom becoming essentially indistinguishable rom the old notion of in-escapabletruthwith all its attendanthorrors.Theexperienceof being at homehas as its uneasybutnecessarycom-plementthe experienceof being a foreigner.2n 1977, as anundergradu-ate, I spent my firstyearabroad,at a university n Ohio. Many studentstherecasually mentionedthatthey were "German" oo. Yet I also knewthatI was the only studentfrom Germanyon thatcampus of fourteenthousand.When I attended n close successiona readingby Elie Wieseland a studentperformance f Cabaret,my sense of my strangesingular-ity intensified.Both eventsseemed to single me out fromthe whole largeaudienceas theiruniqueaddressee. suddenlysaw myself as anisolated,spotlighted point in a darkenedroom filled with a mass of people thatseemed inert and unreal.If this was a momentof essentialism, accordingto which I felt that Iwas the only "genuineGerman" mongthe studentson thatcampusandthe only addressee of those performances, the sensation was hardlyacomfortableone. Nor was it one thatmade me feel in any way at homein a community. If one interpretsthatmoment as one thatfounded anidentity,thatidentity was the exact opposite of a collective one. And ifthemomentwas aboutbeing"German,"t was not aboutbeingethnicallyso. At such a moment, rather,one is beyondlanguage-both utterlyex-posed andcompletely invisible, both central to significance andmute,fallenout of anysignifyingorder.Oneis simultaneously heonly accusedand the only judge. The works of Franz KafkaandIngeborgBachmannbeartracesof eventsof this sort.

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FourI/ews onEthnicity

Kafka's Joseph K. grows more and more exhausted in the course of histrial. Most of the time, he still makes distinctions carefully, but there aremoments when he must take a break on the divan in his office. In a pas-sage Kafka deleted, Joseph K. lapses into half sleep, and the distinctionsbetween those who are connected to the court and those who are not blur:

[H]ierim Halbschlafmischten sich alle, er vergaBdann ... die grol3eArbeitdes Gerichtes, hm war als sei er dereinzige Angeklagteund alle anderngien-gen durcheinanderwie Beamteund Juristenauf den Gangeneines Gerichts-gebaudes,noch die stumpfsinnigstenhatten das Kinn zur Brustgesenkt,dieLippenaufgestiilptundden starrenBlick verantwortungsvollenachdenkens.(348-49)Herein this half sleep they all got mixed up:he forgotthe greatwork of thecourt;he felt as if he were theonly accused and all others wereminglinglikethe officials andlawyersin the corridorsof a courthouse; ven the dullest hadtheir chins lowered to theirchests, theirlips pursed,and wore the rigid gazeof responsible hought.

The neglect of the necessary distinctions leads Joseph K. from the feelingthat he is "the only accused" to a "breakthrough" in which he suddenlyemerges on the side of the judges. The side of the judges, however, is aforbidden place for Joseph K. The Trial could not have continued withJoseph K. in the role of a judge. Thus Kafka censored the passage, re-established the distinction, and rescued his novel.3

Whereas Kafka's novel maintains the perspective of the accused,Bachmann's story "Ein Wildermuth" explores the situation of a judgeobliged to try a murderer whose last name is the same as his own. As thetrial proceeds, the judge grows increasingly restless "weil er seinen Na-men immer wieder lesen muBte als den eines Fremden" 'because he hadto read his name again and again as that of a stranger' (217-18):

Und sein Name war hier in einem iiblenMarchen.... Die Vorkommnisse, iein die Aktengeschriebenwaren,hatten hn sonst nie derartbewegt.Nie jeden-falls hatteergefragt,wie zu einem Namen einMord,ein zertriimmertes uto,eineUnterschlagung,in Ehebruchkamen.Es war hmselbstverstandlich,a3NamendavonKundegabenunddaBVorfalle ichmitjenenNamenzusammen-taten,an denen manAngeklagteundZeugenerkennenkonnte. (218-19)And here his name was partof a nastytale .... The incidents written ntothefiles had neverbefore moved him like this.Never,atanyrate,had he wonderedhow a name came to be associated with a murder,a smashedcar,an embez-zlement,an adultery. t was self-evident to him that namesgave informationabout such thingsandthat incidentsgot togetherwith those namesby whichone couldrecognizedefendantsandwitnesses.

As in Kafka's fragmented chapter, the difference between the accusedand the judges collapses, and with it crumbles the self-evidence ofnames, the possibility of articulating truthby means of language and thus

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of reachinga definitiveandintelligibleverdict.In the course of the trial,the murdererries too hard o confess-and succeedsonly in makingthestorymore andmore untellable.Finally the prosecutorcalls the lost as-sembly backto reality"mit seiner schneidendenStimme" 'with his cut-ting voice' (225). At thatmoment thejudge screams,andfromthen onhe is unfitto practicehis profession.

Er las die BerichteundStellungnahmen,annte ie baldauswendig, er-suchte,wieeinUnbeteiligter,ie Geschichten sichzuerzeugen nddannnsichzuzerschlagen, ie man urdie OffentlichkeitusdemVorfall emachthatte.EralleinwuBtea,daBkeineGeschichteichausdenElementeniigenundkeinSinnzusammenhangichvorzeigeniel3, ondern aBnur inmal insichtbarer nfallverursacht ordenwardurchdenEinschlag es Geistes nseinenGeist,dernicht augte,mehranzurichtenn derWeltals eine kurzekopfloseVerwirrung. (215)He read hereportsndopinions,oonknew hembyheart,riedas if he wereuninvolvedocreatensidehimself nd hen o smash opieces nsidehimselfthestory hathadbeenmadeof the event or thepublic.Healone,afterall,knew hatnostorycouldbe forgedandnomeaningful onnection emon-strated ut hata visibleaccident adbeencausedonlyoncethroughhe m-pactof thespirit nhisspirit,whichwas notfittocauseanygreater avoc ntheworld hanashort, anickedonfusion.

Whathappens o thejudge yields no storyand nojudgment.His silencemerely marks the site of an impact,a place where somethinghas fallenout of language, where something defies any attemptto forge a storyabout t.In the events thatdisruptKafka'snovel and thatoccasionthesilenceofBachmann'sudge,a momentof self-reflexivitymakesahole in language.Kafka's novel reasserts itself against thatevent, whereas Bachmann'sstoryinsists on it. After the incident,thejudge-accused ives with andinthose moments of incommensurability hatdefy language's referentialgrip.This is a subjectthat maintainsnot the distinctionsbut the exit, thekind of subjectJulia Kristevaadvocates n "Women'sTime":

Thisprocesscould be summarizedas an interiorization f the oundingsepa-rationof thesocio-symboliccontract,as anintroduction f its cuttingedge intothevery nterior f every dentitywhetherubjective,exual, deological, rso forth.This n sucha way hat hehabitual nd ncreasinglyxplicit ttemptto fabricate scapegoat ictimas foundress f a societyora counter-societymaybereplacedby theanalysisof thepotentialities f victim/executionerwhich haracterizeach dentity,achsubject,achsex. (210)

The potentialitiesof this victim-executionerorjudge-accusedare thoseof a subject hatknows it will not be able to confess its identity n a name.Names thatsignal ethnicity(like all other namesandlike language ngeneral) acquireor fail to acquiresignificance-casually, ironically,cat-

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astrophically-depending on whetheror not (andhow) people readoneanotherandthemselves n terms of such names.The comfortnamespro-vide for some andthe dangers they pose for othersgrow proportionallywith the "self-evident"aith "thatnames [give] information .. andthatincidents [get] togetherwith those namesby which one [can]recognizedefendantsandwitnesses." nversely, nventionsof ethnicitycan be morecheerfully ndulged he less seriouslytheytakethemselves.However, hescene of thecrime,of mortification ndarrest, s locatedelsewhere.Andelsewhere,too, is thepotential or laughterand formakinga getaway."Yes,I am German oo,"those students n Ohio used to say.AndI tooam happyto say these wordsoccasionally. But in those moments,theymean almostnothing.An English translationof the Latin alibi is "else-where."I havefoundmy alibi.

Notes'I would like to thankJean-JacquesPoucel for helpingme locate andtranslate his text.All othertranslations remy own.2SeeRosi Braidottion this issue:"Culturaldentitybeingexternalandretrospective,hemost immediateeffect of the Australian xperiencewas to make me discover the depthofmy Europeanness,whichwas far from a simplenotion or a singleexperience.Notonly wasI a whiteimmigrant,whencompared o theaboriginesbutalso I was off-white(a 'wog,' or

a 'dago')whencompared o theAnglo-Australianminoritywho ran thecountry.... It wasby oppositionto the antipodeanpsyche and cultural dentitythat I foundout, often at myown expense,thatI am, indeed,a European. often wonderwhether his awarenesswouldhave been so acute hadI not experiencedthe loss of Europeanroots throughmigration.Cancultural dentityemerge from an internaldynamic,or is it always external,that is tosay oppositional?"9).3Fora more detailedreadingalong these lines of TheTrial as well as The Castle, seeGolz, chs. 4 and5.

WorksCitedBachmann, ngeborg.Werke.Ed.ChristineKoschel,Inge von Weidenbaum, ndClemensMunster.Vol. 2. Munich:Piper,1982.4 vols.Braidotti,Rosi. NomadicSubjects:Embodiment nd SexualDifferencein ContemporaryFeministTheory.New York:ColumbiaUP, 1994.Golz, Sabine. TheSplitScene of Reading:Nietzsche/Derrida/Kafka/Bachmann. tlanticHighlands:Humanities,1997.Kafka,Franz. Der Procefi.Roman in der Fassungder Handschrift.Ed. Malcolm Pasley.Frankfurt: ischer,1990.Kristeva,Julia."Women'sTime." TheKristevaReader. Ed. TorilMoi. New York:Colum-biaUP, 1986. 188-213.Roubaud,Jacques.Poesie, etcetera:Menage.Paris:Stock, 1995.Sollors,Werner.TheInventionof Ethnicity.New York:OxfordUP, 1989.

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4 Views on Ethinicity