The Problem with Nationalism?

Joseph Roth

Wikipedia

Writing for the New York Times (September 3, 2015), George Prochnik reviews Michael Hofmann's translation of Joseph Roth's long lament over the fall of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire in "The Hotel Years":

He had a passion for hotels, which he considered remnant microcosms of that multiethnic ideal savaged by the Great War. In an essay titled "Arrival in the Hotel," Roth proudly enumerates the nationalities represented at one establishment: "The waiter is from Upper Austria. The porter is a Frenchman from Provence. The receptionist is from Normandy. The headwaiter is Bavarian. The chambermaid is Swiss. The valet is Dutch. The manager is Levantine; and for years I've suspected the cook of being Czech." Its guests, who included "Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists," found themselves in the hotel "slightly on holiday from the rigidity of love of land," seemingly restored by these precincts to "what they should always be: children of the world."

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was not only multiethnic, it was multicultural in a way that almost worked - having worked for about 1000 years - because it was European and unified by loyalty to the Christian emperor, but the rise of ethnic nationalism put an end to all that and engendered genocidal ethnic cleansing at the 20th-century's beginning that was picked up again in the Balkan wars of the 20th-century's end.

In raising resistance to radical Islamism, then, one should be wary about inflaming ethnic tensions . . .

Happy Ballantine's Day . . . Belated?

Ballantine's Whisky
You Tube

Sorry for missing Valentine's Day, all of you'uns out there, so here's to a Happy Ballantine's Day:

Ballantine's Whisky - Old Commercial

Enjoy the multiculturalism! Or the multiethnicity! Or the Scotch whisky! Or all three!

Cheers!

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman on Duchesne's Uniqueness of Western Civilization

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman
The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies

Retired historian Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman has a very brief piece in Comparative Civilizations Review (Number 67, Fall 2012, pp. 130-132) that summarizes Ricardo Duchesne's book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, and she offers Duchesne's five objectives in writing this book:

First, to trace the ideological sources behind the multicultural effort to "provincialize" the history of Western civilization (anthropological relativism, critical theory, dependency theory, evolutionary materialism, post-modernism, feminism, and identity politics).

Second: to assess the empirical adequacy of a highly influential set of revisionist works published in the last two decades dedicated to the pursuit of dismantling the "Eurocentric" consensus on the "rise of the West." Duchesne demonstrates that the entire revisionist school was founded on precarious and doubtful claims in an attempt to rewrite history.

Third, the traditional Eurocentric historiography on the rise of the West still holds much significance despite the unrelenting attacks on it. There are numerous additional sources from historians of Europe who have written about Western achievement from the ancient Greeks to the present. The West has always existed in a state of variance from the rest of the world's cultures, as can be shown in the "Greek miracle," the Roman invention of the legal persona, the Papal revolution, the Portuguese voyages of discovery, the Gutenberg press, the cartographic revolution, the Protestant reformation, and the "industrial enlightenment." Not one of the other major civilizations had such experience in their histories.

Fourth, Duchesne insists that the development of a liberal democratic culture was an indispensable component of the rise of the West. Western culture is more than just scientific or industrial; the ideals of freedom and the reasoned pursuit of truth were cultivated and realized only in the development of the West.

Fifth and finally, Duchesne argues that the roots of the West's "restless" creativity and libertarian spirit should be traced back to the aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers. The primordial basis for Western uniqueness lay in the ethos of individualism and strife. This is an extremely original position, and one that I had never considered before. What Duchesne writes about this particularly prickly nature of the Indo-European culture I recognize from my own work on the ancient Persian psyche, before they got carried away with the autocracy of the Semitic world which surrounded and outnumbered them.

All of this sounds interesting and worth looking into, for I've long wondered -- aside from the issue of the West's possible uniqueness -- about what, if anything, characterizes the West as "Western" throughout its lengthy history.

Individualism and strife, she says he says . . .

Taboo Query: Islam and Violence?

Piero Gheddo

Website

The Catholic priest Piero Gheddo openly wonders about a mystery. No, not a mystery of the Christian faith, something more mundane than that, a mystery contemplated in an article, "Tunisia in chaos: Why is Islam taboo?" (02/11/2013), published in the Catholic paper Asia News (spelling and punctuation corrected in quote):

The situation today is this: no country with a Muslim majority (and there are more than thirty) has a tolerably democratic government. Many of these are in a state of civil war: Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Nigeria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia. In no country with a Muslim majority is there full religious freedom for Christians and other religions. In some countries where the faithful of the Koran are sizable minority, there are separatist guerrillas and terrorism: Philippines, Thailand, India, China, Burma, Indonesia.

Father Gheddo overstates the case in some of these countries. The expression "civil strife" would describe some of the Muslim majority countries better than "civil war" does. Also, note that Nigeria is not a Muslim majority country -- there are slightly more Christians. And note that Muslims are not a minority in Indonesia! But let's not quibble over details. We know what the man is talking about, and now comes his question:

We all know the latest news, the events of that day-to-day confirm this situation. What is surprising is the fact that the West does not question, does not ask itself where the Islamic world's instability originates and how it propagates, the uprisings, guerrilla warfare, terrorism that breaks out in all or almost all Islamic countries and what can be done to get to the root of this violent extremism, this loose cannon that threatens world peace. When before World War II, Nazism was already an expanding power, the free world discussed it at the popular level, studied the ideology and visited Germany, trying to make deals, it summoned international conferences for world peace. After World War II, when International Communism began to expand, from the 40s to 1989, the danger of contagion was perceptible, measures were discussed to prevent the spread of this ideology-religion, studying the roots of Marxism-Leninism and what to do to counter its spread in the free world. Communism was a threat, it was discussed a lot.

The same does not happen with Islamic extremism, condemned by all but which remains like a mysterious object.

Gheddo doesn't explicitly answer the question, but it's one that a lot of non-Muslims must be asking. Actually, Gheddo asks two questions: 1) what is the source of Islamic 'extremism' and 2) why isn't this question being openly discussed. I have an opinion on both questions. On the latter question, the reason for official silence is political correctness. The mainstream media and governments don't generally address the question for fear of offending multicultural sensitivities, of being accused of Islamophobia, of expressing bias against a 'great' religion, or of some similar offense. Outside of the mainstream, however, the question is being discussed. For instance, in the context of the recent murder of three North Korean doctors working in northern Nigeria, I speculated on what we confront:

This is the sort of civilizational conflict Huntington wrote about, and as he also pointed out, the Islamic world has bloody borders, so we're going to be hearing, seeing, and experiencing the consequences of Islamism for a long time, until the Muslim world discovers the bitter truth that the Protestant-Catholic wars of religion taught the West, namely, that religion should be a private affair of the heart (a lesson we have to keep learning), not a scheme for transforming the world through force, though this lesson might prove harder for the Muslim world to learn since Islam is overtly political, has in its fundamental texts a scheme for ordering the world, and has always been willing to turn to war as an instrument for furthering Islamic aims -- and, yes, I know that all this isn't very politically correct to point out, but I prefer to see the world with open eyes, and I don't think that I'm alone in this attitude.

My point was that Islamism, or political Islam, will be around for a long time fomenting trouble because Islam itself is political, which means that Islamism is radicalism not at the extremes but at the core of Islam, drawing upon core texts and grounding its actions in them.

This should be obvious to everyone by now since the Islamists continually cite core Islamic sources, but as Gheddo notes, the issue is not being openly discussed.

Not yet, anyway. Not quite yet. But I think that it soon will be.

Adam Garfinkle on Mali . . . and what we fail to learn

Adam Garfinkle

FPRI

In "Mali: Understanding the Chessboard" (E-Notes, January 2013), Adam Garfinkle has some kind words about a prior American counterterrorism policy in Mali formulated by policymakers oblivious to its ethnic complexity and the implications of inadvertently favoring one ethnic group above the others:

Speaking of full-frontal ignorance, . . . the U.S. counterterrorism training mission in Mali made the stupefying mistake of choosing three of four northern unit commanders to train who were ethnic Tuareg . . . [W]hen the Tuareg rebellion in Mali gained steam after the denouement of the Libya caper, greatly stimulated by the return of heavily armed Tuareg brethren from that fight, these three Tuareg commanders defected to the rebels, bringing soldiers, vehicles, ammunition and more to the anti-government side. Anyone who was surprised by this is at the very least a terminal ignoramus. And anyone in the U.S. military who failed to understand the ethnic composition of the country's politico-military cleavages, such that he let U.S. Special Forces training be lavished on Tuareg commanders, was clearly insufficiently trained to do his job. And believe me, that's about as nice a way to put that as I can summon.

See? I told you he was being kind. He put his criticism as nicely as he could manage. He also has some kind words about the American assumption of Enlightenment universalism:

How do things like this (still) happen, after what we should have learned from years of dealing with Iraqis and Afghans and others on their home turf? I happen to know someone who teaches in the U.S. military education system, and this person happens to be a field-experienced Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology. This person tries very hard to clear away the thick fog created by the innocent Enlightenment universalism that pervades the American mind -- the toxic fog that tries to convince us that all people, everywhere, are basically the same, have the same value hierarchies, the same habits of moral and tactical judgment, and mean the same things by roughly comparable translated words.

I think I know the anthropologist he's referring to. Garfinkle's right that our military is still naive, but as he also points out, this merely reflects a larger American ignorance of something that Samuel Huntington tried to drum into our heads, namely, that the world is not as Francis Fukuyama expected at the 'end' of history, a triumph of bourgeois democratic values. Instead, there will be blood -- over clashes of values. But there's hope that we Americans might still learn, for the unnamed anthropologist keeps trying:

Sometimes this person senses success, because the Special Forces officers in class who are still climbing the promotion tree tend to "get it." They "get it" because they have collected personal experience -- whether in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Pakistan, or the Philippines, or even in Mali -- so that what they are learning in class corresponds to the realities they know. I have been to this person's classes on several occasions to guest-teach, and I agree: A lot of the guys (and the few women in the spec ops field) who have been on the ground do "get it." But it seems that a lot of their senior officers don't yet get much of anything at all. It is almost inconceivable that we could screw-up so badly, since understanding basic Malian circumstances isn't rocket science, as they say. So why did this get so thoroughly botched? I'm trying to find out; patience, please.

One thinks that 9/11 should have taught us that some groups don't even come close to sharing out values, but too many people still don't "get it." I'm all for Enlightenment universalism, bourgeois democratic values, and basic human rights, but I'm not naive. I know that a lot of cultural, religious, civilizational groups out there in the world are not for these things.

Some of these groups, such as those represented by the likes of Al-Qaeda, are even violently opposed to anyone anywhere holding to Enlightenment universalism, bourgeois democratic values, and basic human rights.

Souren Melikian on PC Kitsch . . .

Three Graces Crowning Venus

(Late 19th Century Kitsch)

Antonio Frilli
Photo from Southby's

Souren Melikian, in "The Impoverished Connoisseurs" (NYT, September 12, 2012), offers an intriguing observation:

In the museum world, the academic approach now prevails over visual appreciation. This in turn has helped spread the political correctness that would have us believe that all art deserves equal consideration. It has revolutionized the scale of values and sent soaring sky-high the prices of works once dismissed as derivative or kitsch. In the Sotheby's July sale, a marble group of "The Three Graces Crowning Venus" carved by Antonio Frilli in the late 19th century brought £109,250, less than hoped for, but a stupendous price for an interpretation of a model conceived decades earlier by Antonio Canova.

Melikian argues that collectors had more taste and judgment back in the fifties and early sixties, before big money and an absence of standards came to dominate the art scene, and he concludes on a pessimistic note:

With the transformation of art buying into a money-churning mill, and its consequences, an essential part of the Western living culture has been lost.

I haven't included all the details of Melikian's critique, but it's rather persuasive, though he says too little about the role of academic critics. While there are exceptions, many academics refuse to judge, possibly for fear of being attacked as "judgmental"! We therefore get kitsch promoted as art. Rather than offer judgment, academic critics speak of 'influence' because they can always trace that and defend it by comparing two visible artworks, whereas aesthetic values are invisible.

This is the postmodern Western world of political correctness, a type of relativism that pervades everything, insists on 'multicultural' tolerance, and refuses to render judgment.

Incidentally, I see only two Graces crowning Venus . . .

Cultural Anthropologist Terence Turner on Multiculturalism

Terence Turner

Cornell University

The cultural anthropologist Terence Turner published an article in 1993 from a leftist point of view that explicitly criticized what he called "difference multiculturalism," which sounds almost exactly like what I've called "radical multiculturalism." He favored "critical multiculturalism," of course, which has some aspects in common with what I've termed "moderate multiculturalism" (albeit, again, from a left perspective on his part). The article, "Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What Is Anthropology That Multiculturalists Should Be Mindful of It?" (Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 4. (Nov., 1993), pp. 411-429), deserves to be read in its entirety, for it is a balanced article, but I will focus on his critique of "difference multiculturalism."

Turner acknowledges that the conservatives are largely right -- though with some "distortions" -- about the problems of "difference multiculturalism":

In sharp contrast to critical multiculturalism is the multiculturalism of the cultural nationalists and fetishists of difference, for whom culture reduces to a tag for ethnic identity and a license for political and intellectual separatism. This is the stereotype of multiculturalism that has been touted by neoconservative critics of "political correctness" in academia, who apart from their other distortions have described multiculturalism as if it were a homogeneous set of ideas and attitudes. There is no denying, however, that some participants in the multiculturalist debates have adopted positions approximating this stereotype of difference multiculturalism. (414)

The mere fact that Turner finds necessary a critique of "difference multiculturalism" indicates that this sort of multiculturalist is by no means rare, despite his reference to merely "some" proponents of multiculturalism (and thus raising skepticism about the term "stereotype"). Turner sees risks, threats, dangers in this leftist understanding of multiculturalism, namely, its devolution into crude identity politics:

The term multiculturalism [when it signifies "difference multiculturalism"] has come to be used primarily in connection with demands on behalf of black and other minority groups for separate and equal representation in college curriculums and extra-academic cultural programs and events. It has also assumed more general connotations as an ideological stance towards participation by such minorities in national "cultures" and societies, and the changing nature of national and transnational cultures themselves. As a code word for minority demands for separate recognition in academic and other cultural institutions, multiculturalism tends to become a form of identity politics, in which the concept of culture becomes merged with that of ethnic identity. From an anthropological standpoint, this move, at least in its more simplistic ideological forms, is fraught with dangers both theoretical and practical. It risks essentializing the idea of culture as the property of an ethnic group or race; it risks reifying cultures as separate entities by overemphasizing their boundedness and mutual distinctness; it risks overemphasizing the internal homogeneity of cultures in terms that potentially legitimize repressive demands for communal conformity; and by treating cultures as badges of group identity, it tends to fetishize them in ways that put them beyond the reach of critical analysis -- and thus of anthropology. (411-412)

Turner notes that multiculturalism's "cultural relativism" derives from cultural anthropology, a point that I have also previously made:

Certain aspects of the concept of culture originally developed by anthropologists (such as the distinction of culture and race) are unquestionably relevant to multiculturalist positions, but for the most part these have by now been assimilated into the common sense of Anglo-American culture in the form of vulgar cultural relativism, according to which all cultural traditions are regarded in principle as equally valuable. Apart from making ideological use of this broadly "anthropological" notion of cultural relativism as an ideological weapon against Eurocentrism, however, multiculturalism remains essentially unconcerned with culture in any of its usual anthropological senses. (413)

As we see, he considers this cultural relativism a 'vulgarization,' but he nevertheless acknowledges its derivation from anthropology, and he cites the leftist multiculturalist Todd Gitlin on its flawed consequences for the left:

The academic left has degenerated into a loose aggregation of margins -- often cannibalistic, romancing the varieties of otherness, speaking in tongues. In this new interest-group pluralism, the shopping center of identity politics makes a fetish of the virtues of the minority, which, in the end, is not only intellectually stultifying but also politically suicidal. It creates a kind of parochialism in which one is justified in having every interest in difference and no interest in commonality. One's identification with an interest group comes to be the first and final word that opens and terminates one's intellectual curiosity. As soon as I declare I am a Jew, a black, a Hispanic, a woman, a gay, I have no more need to define my point of view. (188-189; Todd Gitlin, "On the Virtues of a Loose Canon," Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding, Patricia Aufderheide, ed, 185-190. St. Paul, MN: Greywolf Press)

With identity politics and cultural relativism, the central flaws of "difference multiculturalism" becomes salient, namely, "moral relativism" and "ethnic essentialism," on which Turner quotes fellow anthropologist Richard J. Perry:

They [i.e., the "difference multiculturalists] commonly confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism . . . [and] tend to view non-Western cultures as stable, tradition-bound, timeless entities, [which] shifts us dangerously back toward viewing the others as beings who are profoundly and inherently different from ourselves . . . . The sense of the "timeless heritage" of traditional peoples, albeit respectful, is just a short step from ethnic essentialism . . . . At its worst, this romanticism tends to blur the distinction between culture and race -- a distinction that we anthropologists thought we had established several generations ago. (419; Richard J. Perry, "Why Do Multiculturalists Ignore Anthropologists?" Chronicle of Higher Education, March 1992, 4, 52)

Through these quotes from an article by Turner, a scholar on the left who cites other scholars on the left (e.g., Gitlin, Aufderheide, and Perry), we see that my views on much of what goes for multiculturalism were correct, despite my interlocutor's accusations over at the Marmot's Hole (MH) that I was a racist engaged in distorting multiculturalism.

For my summary of that MH debate, go here. For my other Gypsy Scholar posts in support of my views on what I call "radical multiculturalism," go here and here.

Philosopher Eric Mack on Multiculturalism as Cultural Relativism

Eric Mack
Professor of Philosophy
Tulane University

Having had a busy day of editing late into the evening, I don't have the requisite energy this morning to work up a profound post, so I'll just blog about other people's thinking, this time on what the philosopher Eric Mack says about multiculturalism as cultural relativism (to show I didn't invent the controversy):

Multiculturalism is, in effect, a dressed up and politicized version of cultural relativism -- the doctrine that every group has its own distinct but equally sound patterns of perception, thought, and choice. According to cultural relativism, no one can validly object to beliefs and actions of any group which reflect that group's own indigenous worldview. While cultural relativists have always claimed to be friends of tolerance -- indeed the only true friends of tolerance -- this doctrine actually implies that no one can object to any group's intolerance, if intolerance is that group's thing. Neither the cultural relativist nor the multiculturalist can object to Mayan infant sacrifice, or Spanish Inquisitional torture, or Nazi genocide because each of these practices is validated by the perspective within which it arises. To criticize indigenous intolerance or any culturally authentic practice no matter how brutal or exploitative, one must apply general, trans-cultural norms which both cultural relativism and its multicultural descendent denounce as imperialist. But multiculturalism's moral relativism precludes any such appeal and, hence, it precludes any affirmative case for tolerance.

In addition to its moral relativism, multiculturalism also proclaims (as the one great Objective Truth) that all truth, objectivity, and evidence are also relative. Each culture has its own truth, objectivity, and standards of reason and evidence. Thus, whatever beliefs any culture emits, they are validated by the fact of their emission. This, of course, precludes any rational dialogue among individuals. Each individual is merely a representative of a certain biologically defined perspective with its own idiosyncratic, but self-validating, biases. Hence, each individual must agree with members of his or her own group and be unable to make rational contact with members of other groups.

By chanting his mantra of relativism, the multiculturalist can evade honest confrontation with all intellectual challenges. Consider the argument that multiculturalism cannot support tolerance since grotesquely intolerant social orders can be as true to their distinctive ways of perceiving, cognizing, and feeling, as any other social order. According to the multiculturalist mantra, this argument itself is merely an expression of one particular perspective, the Eurocentric -- hence, linear and logocentric mode of perception and thought. Thus, this challenge, like all attempts at rational disputation, can be rejected by anyone who doesn't feel that way about it. (Eric Mack, "What Is Multiculturalism?" The Freeman, October 1996, Volume 46, Issue 10)

Professor Mack, of course, is debating this issue with opponents, and there are some advocates of multiculturalism who argue that it does not presuppose cultural relativism, but it certainly does so in its radical form, as I've maintained, and Professor Mack even supplies an anecdote demonstrating the sort of multiculturalism that he and I are critiquing:

In a campus debate a couple of years ago with an earnest multiculturalist, I strove to help her see that she could not both accept multiculturalism's relativism and continue confidently to proclaim the profound evils of various regimes. In desperation, I appealed to the instance of Hitler and Nazism. Given this relativism, I asked her, can you even assert that Hitler was evil? Well, she said after a moment of thought, I'm not valorizing him.

But also not judging him as evil, it seems. This "earnest multicultualist" is by no means rare, for as I've said, I've met some who defend genital mutilation of young girls because it's a cultural practice!

But enough for now, I've no energy for more, but go and read Mack's article . . .

Multiculturalism in Sarajevo and beyond?

Maja Bajevic, Double – Bubble, 2001

Maja Bajevic and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich
ZAK | BRANICKA, Berlin

I've been asked over at the Marmot's Hole blog why I grew skeptical of multiculturalism. I intend to stay away from this topic over there since I don't want to waste my time being called names by some commentators who prefer shouting to listening and arguing to thinking, and I'm not ready yet to go deeply into the issue here, but I did come across an interesting quote yesterday from the 1961 Nobel Prize winner for literature, the Bosnian Serb writer Ivo Andric, taken from his short story "A Letter from 1920," and it seems apt:

Whosoever spends sleepless moments in a bed in Sarajevo might hear the voices of the Sarajevo night. Hard and firmly strikes the bell at two o'clock in the morning in the Catholic Church. More than one minute passed (exactly seventy-five seconds -- I counted) and only then . . . did I hear the slightly weaker, shrill sound of the Orthodox Church clock, also striking two o'clock in the morning. A moment later the sa-hat-kula spoke in a hoarse, subdued voice from the Bej Mosque, striking the eleventh hour -- the ghostly Turkish hour, the strange timekeeping of distant foreign countries. The Jews have no clock, only the heavens know what time it is -- whether according to Sephardic custom, or according to Ashkenazi. When all around is still and quiet, the difference separating men equalized by sleep is in the calculation of this hollow phase of the night. When they awake, they will be happy and sad, feast and fast by four different feuding calendars, and all their requests and prayers will be sent to heaven in one of four liturgical languages. The difference is sometimes visible and open, sometimes hidden and treacherous, but it always resembles hatred -- this difference is often hatred itself.

This passage (another translation found here) accompanies the remarks of curator Agata Rogos on the exhibition "From the Sunniest Day to the Darkest Night," which shows the artworks of Maja Bajevic, Adrian Paci, Alban Hajdinaj, Igor Grubic, and Hubert Czerepok. Concerning such night thoughts of Andric, Rogos observes:

With these words the Bosnian writer and Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric described Sarajevo -- a town where four religions meet -- in his short story entitled A Letter from 1920. Such places never know peace, as the confrontation between various visions of the world more often serve to emphasize differences, and not similarities. Meanwhile, political correctness notwithstanding, the idea of multiculturalism, so deeply rooted in European philosophy, will always remain [merely?] a pious desire. This exhibition focuses on the ties between power, violence, and religion, and draws upon difference as a source of conflict . . .

Neither Andric nor Rogos appears to put much faith in the power of multiculturalism to quell hatred over differences, though they acknowledge the exceptionally deep culturally determined hatreds of the Balkans. Perhaps the Bosnian conflict itself initiated my skepticism as well, though I still advocated multiculturalism in those years of the early 1990s. Only with time -- toward the latter 1990s -- did I come to perceive the paradoxes of multiculturalism.

The problem with multiculturalism in its radical form is that it offers no metacultural foundation upon which to stand and critique cultural flaws, and one is left with extreme cultural relativism, except that everyone's supposed to be tolerant of other cultures, including such intolerable cultural practices as the genital mutilation of young girls, I suppose, and how does one deal with a culture of intolerance . . . tolerate it?

A moderate multiculturalism based on human rights offers a metacultural foundation for grounding a critique of cultural flaws, in every culture, but to what degree is moderate multiculturalism genuinely multicultural? It seems, rather, to assume a universal culture with national or ethnic variants. Moreover, what Rogos refers to as "the idea of multiculturalism, so deeply rooted in European philosophy," was likely predicated upon the values of Western Civilization and is in practice a moderate multiculturalism that works relatively well in Europe, which largely shares common foundational values, though there are obvious tensions even in the European multicultural reality.

That's all I have to say for now, but perhaps today's post here on Gypsy Scholar will provide some of those at the Marmot's Hole a partial answer to the question as to why I grew skeptical of multiculturalism.

Criticism of Multiculturalism: Evidence of Racism?

Cypher

Figuring Me Out

Over at the Marmot's Hole blog, in a somewhat heated discussion on the pros and cons of multiculturalism, I posted the following as an elaboration of my point that multicultural ideology has roots in the relativism of cultural anthropology, adding a 'hypothetical' case to provoke reflection:

I acknowledge a difference between moderate and radical multiculturalism.

The former is grounded in human rights and allows for cultural critique. The latter, however, is grounded in cultural relativism (with roots in cultural anthropology), and it is not a figment of its opponents' imaginations.

I myself have met multiculturalists who would defend female circumcision as a cultural practice that we cannot criticize.

The big problem is that in our modern world, enclaves of an incompatible culture can form and grow within a society.

Imagine a culture that has its own language, its own religion, and its own laws, that subjugates women, practices female circumcision, and supports honor killings, and that considers its culture superior, insists that it be respected, and threatens violence to those who demur. I'm not saying that such a culture exists -- heaven forbid -- but if such a culture did exist, could one say that it wants the same things as other cultures?

In such a case, regardless what the larger society would want -- whether it supported radical or moderate multiculturalism -- it would have radical multiculturalism as a fact on the ground.

How would even moderate multiculturalists react in such circumstances? Would they subject such a culture to an explicit, fundamental, far-reaching critique, or would they keep quiet for fear of being called "racist," "imperialist," "xenophobic," or worse?

Fortunately, such a case is merely imaginary . . .

One of my interlocutors replied with an accusation that -- if read in its least negative construal -- misses my irony and accuses me of being dishonest, of obscuring the truth:

You are being disingenuous with this example. You know full well that the most strident opposition against multiculturalism is not about criticizing the multiculturalists' alleged complicity to FGM. No, it is about immigration and the desire to exclude darker-skinned people from entering the country.

I offered appreciation for my interlocutor's 'generous' response:

Thanks for the ad hominem, . . . which I'll accept as a gift freely given and assume that you don't expect a gift in return, for you are generous to a fault.

My interlocutor continued to attack my putative dishonesty and possible racism:

[L]et us not pretend as if THAT [opposition to FGM] is the problem that the opponents of multiculturalism are concerned about. If you are allowed to criticize multiculturalism because some crazies appropriate its good name, I can just as easily put you in the same category as the dyed-in-the-wool racists who clamor for higher walls along the border.

I saw no reason to continue the discussion with an interlocutor who refuses to engage me on a level other than name-calling, so I closed with these words, in which I reflected on my own callow views of earlier years:

I was an early supporter of multiculturalism, already speaking out in the 1980s in the States, then in Germany in the 1990s, also in Australia during the latter 1990s. Like . . . [my interlocutor], I suspected those opposed to multiculturalism of xenophobia, or even racism, but as I read more on what multiculturalists generally meant, I came to see myself as a "moderate" multiculturalist, for I didn't accept strong cultural relativism.

The difficulty that I have with . . . [my interlocutor] is not his multiculturalism, per se, but his resort to personal attacks -- accusing me of dishonesty and, implicitly, of racism -- whereas I don't think I've said anything that can reasonably be interpreted as a personal attack on [him] . . . .

Naturally, I'm disappointed, but I can't criticize [him] . . . without first being harsh on my younger self. I've learned in the past quarter-century not to make assumptions about others, to listen more carefully to what they say, and to attempt to meet their actual arguments rather than what I would prefer their arguments to be.

I suppose that's all I have to say on this subject, on this thread, anyway.

This is why I generally steer clear of such debates. They almost always degenerate into personal attacks and name-calling, regardless how courteous one tries to be, especially when one is dealing with anonymous or pseudonymous interlocutors, who need not concern themselves with preserving their own good name.

Perhaps they'll learn to listen better as they grow older . . . though we too often also grow harder of hearing with age.

Multicultural 'Deceit' in Korea?

Monument to Multiculturalism
Francesco Pirelli
Some cultures would destroy this statue . . .
Wikipedia

I read a disturbing article in yesterday's JoongAng Daily about cases of migrant workers in Korea deceiving Korean women into marriages of convenience. This is the sort of thing one ought to expect, but according to Yim Seung-hye in "Woman recalls deceit in migrant marriage" (February 23, 2012), the women are naively taken advantage of in many 'multicultural' marriages involving a particular subgroup of migrant workers:

As the number of international marriages continues to rise, there is no shortage of stories painting multiculturalism in a positive light. But one such marriage has left a woman fighting for custody of her son in a trend of marital deception that appears to be growing.

The woman, who asked to be identified only as Oh, 38, is part of an Internet group with thousands of members who have suffered as a result of marriages with Pakistani and Bangladeshi men. The Korean women writing there have shared stories of being tricked into marriages with migrant workers from the two countries as well as verbal and physical abuse.

The most disturbing point is that this sort of deceitful marriage has happened to thousands of women. I wish some statistics had been provided, but if the reference to "an Internet group with thousands of members" is accurate, then this may be a huge problem indeed, for this internet group could be just the tip of a very large iceberg. Most of the stories that we read in the papers about so-called 'multicultural' marriages focus on Korean men marrying foreign women, and if those marriages fail to work out, blame often gets placed on the Korean husbands or the Korean in-laws, but the focus in most articles is on successful marriages and on how Koreans need to change and be more open to foreign ways. That message has its downside, as Ms. Oh's case shows:

"There are so many women who have similar stories as mine. Most of us were hesitant to marry a migrant worker, but all of the TV shows and news stories beautifying multiculturalism and the stories of multicultural families living happily in Korea comforted us," Oh said. "But now, all of us are suffering from broken marriages. I just don't want to see any more victims like myself."

My advice to Korean women considering marriage to foreigners is twofold: Get to know the man well first and also get to know the man's culture. Don't depend only on what he says. Read about his home country and the treatment of women there. Find out what his religion teaches about the treatment of women. Don't rely on sources with an interest in painting a rosy picture of other cultures. Look for the dirt that's being swept under the rug. Turn over a few stones and see what turns up. Think hard about the future with a foreigner. For instance, consider what might happen if you did marry a foreigner and had children with him. Could you be certain that on a visit to his home country, your children could not be taken from you by your in-laws? That could happen in some countries where the husband has the legal control over his children.

This advice is sound no matter what the statistics concerning cases such as that of Ms. Oh.

UPDATE: Readers in comments have expressed skepticism about the prevalence of such cases, a point on which I also had questions, but my doubts were very carefully couched, so I've now added a question mark to this blog entry's heading to indicate that I have lingering questions.

Anders Behring Breivik: Self-Proclaimed Inspiration for Terrorism

Anders Behring Breivik

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm yet having problems downloading Breivik's Manifesto on my computer and can still only manage to locate fragments out of context. Perhaps others can confirm the two passages below. I think that the Manifesto can be accessed here.

The first passage seems to offer Breivik's own, self-proclaimed inspiration for attempting large-scale terrorism. He claims to have taken a page from jihadi terrorism:

Unfortunately, spectacular operations like these are the only way to be heard. Everything else we have tried has failed and yielded nothing. The Muslims showed us that deadly shock attacks are the only tool we have at the moment which will guarantee that our voice is heard.

Breivik doesn't refer to jihadis here, but claims to have copied his terrorist tactic from "the Muslims," for he does not distinguish between Islam and Islamism. The primary target of his terrorist action is not the Muslim minority in Europe, however, but the Left, or what he calls the "cultural Marxist/multiculturalist media establishment," which he blames for allowing the "Islamization of Europe":

By forcing them [Leftists] to acknowledge our presence and explaining our agenda to everyone we are making it very hard for the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist media establishment to ignore the call of the free people of Europe. The message is simple: "WE DO NOT WANT AND WILL NOT TOLERATE ISLAM IN EUROPE!" Any individual or organisation that actively supports or are participating (directly or indirectly as silent bystanders) in the Islamisation of Europe are flagged as valid targets.

If we take Breivik at his word, he learned of the successful application of extreme violence from Muslim terrorism. Whether we can really take him at his word, however, remains to be seen. I know from ten years of reading on Islamist terrorism and various responses to it that the expression "the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist media establishment" is not Breivik's own coinage. This is the language found in rightwing critiques of the European Union (and its predecessor, the EEC), which is seen as a Leftist political construction and blamed for allowing Muslims into Europe, which Breivik sees as the "Islamization of Europe." Such Leftists are considered valid targets by Breivik, for he sees them as traitors.

But let me be very clear on a central, crucial point: the vast majority of rightwing materials that I have read do not call for violence, though I have seen the occasional anonymous or pseudonymous comment that does urge a violent response to Muslim immigration. The evidence so far suggests that Breivik acted alone. He doesn't appear to have revealed his plan to anyone until releasing his Manifesto onto the internet. But he probably won't be the last rightwing terrorist. Some may separately have arrived at conclusions similar to his own. Others will now be motivated by his example, given that his Manifesto will be widely available on the internet.

We don't like to acknowledge the fact, but those who study terrorists tell us that extremists use terrorism because it works. Breivik's terrorist act has worked so far -- he wanted to be heard, and we're even now discussing his views.

Cultural Diversity and European Integration

Ewha Womans University

(Image from Wikipedia)

The photo above shows pretty much what I see nearly every morning after exiting the subway station and heading for the entrance to Ewha campus, and I'll be seeing this scene later on this early Sunday morning, albeit with fewer students milling about, as I head for my duty as judge in a nationwide speech contest sponsored, if I recall correctly, by the JoongAng Daily.

Because of this early morning responsibility, I have little time for a substantive blog entry today, but I can at least note that Ewha's Division of International Studies has asked me to teach its course on European History this coming spring semester since the regular instructor will be on sabbatical. I intend to rework a course that I designed for Yonsei University's Underwood International College. Some of this will sound familiar to long-time readers of Gypsy Scholar:

In the book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, Robert Kagan proposes that Europeans are "turning away from power . . . [and] moving . . . into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation . . . . a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant's 'perpetual peace'" (page 3). But is this European perception of its role realistic or deluded? European integration has drawn together a collection of distinct nations, each characterized by its own particular culture, forming the EU a truly multicultural organization. These nations, nevertheless, share much the same civilizational identity, as Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) would have agreed and Rémi Brague (Eccentric Civilization) would still attempt to set forth. But as Christopher Caldwell shows in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, the ongoing, extensive immigration from the world to Europe may be introducing a more radical version of multiculturalism, as groups adhering to other than Western identities begin to dominate and to practice, if not explicitly demand, cultural autonomy. Do such groups pose a political threat to the European paradise of peace? Were the Paris riots, for example, a harbinger of cultural -- perhaps even civilizational -- conflict to come? And with the current economic problems reflected in the Euro currency's woes exacerbate these cultural differences and bring the entire process of European integration to a halt, even a collapse? This course will focus upon such questions, broadly conceived.

This is a preliminary draft of the course description, and I intend to rework and reword it as soon as I get beyond finals grading and other editing jobs that have piled up recently.

Meanwhile, wish me energy for today's judging duty. I foresee three grueling hours . . .

"Korean Identity?" in Philosophy and Reality

Korea in Asian Context

(Image from Wikipedia)

At the request of a Korean friend of mine, Yoon Pyung-joong (윤평중), who teaches philosophy at Hanshin University (where I once taught English), I've recently written a somewhat general article on "Korean Identity" ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?") and had it printed in the quarterly journal Philosophy and Reality (철학과 현실), a publication issued by the Research Institute of Philosophy and Culture (철학문화연구소), which has put out three other articles on Korean identity in the same volume, each of these three having been written by Koreans.

Some will note that the article's title in Korean differs: ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?" = "What is a Korean to be?" (rather than "Korean Identity"). That was an editorial choice on the part of the journal. Anyone who might go to the trouble to read both the English and the Korean versions of the article itself might also notice that the former is longer. The shortened Korean version is also an 'editorial' decision -- by my wife. In translating, she shortened the parts that would be obvious to Koreans . . . so as to preclude my appearing like a fool (which might or might not have succeeded). I don't expect anyone to be greatly impressed by my views anyway, for I state what is fairly well known and offer no fine-grained analysis.

At any rate, the article follows below, and regular readers will recognize some passages from blog entries in which I worked through my thoughts.


Korean Identity?

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University


1. Introduction

In his insightful book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (Europe, la voie romaine), a fascinating analysis of European cultural identity, the French philosopher Rémi Brague relates an anecdote about Ortega y Gasset. The latter had recently returned from America and was asked the reason for his return. He answered with a pun of ambiguity:

"Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido."

The Spanish word "continente" means both "continent" and "container," permitting either of two translations for Ortega's reply: "Europe is the only continent that has a content" and "Europe is the only container that has a content." He meant both, and one sees what he meant. Europe has a cultural unity that other continents lack.

Perhaps Europe's cultural unity is less impressive as a unique fact when one reflects that this continent is the artifact of an arbitrary line drawn to separate what is considered 'Europe' from what is considered 'Asia.' Looked down upon from above, Europe seems merely an Asian peninsula.

But the imaginary line exists in everyone's mind. To its west, Europe. To its east, Asia. West of the line, we find a civilization that integrated Athens and Jerusalem. East of the line, however, we find many civilizations. To be identified as "Asian" is therefore only a geographical distinction and implies nothing about one's cultural identity. Whereas a German might casually remark, "I am a European," and thereby make a recognizable statement of cultural identity, a Korean would not formulate a corresponding remark in stating, "I am an Asian."

For a Korean to offer a parallel statement of cultural identity, the formulation would have to be, "I am a Korean."

But what does that mean -- what is a Korean?


2. Eccentric Inclusions

Perhaps a contra-Braguean turn can help us approach an answer to this question. Brague begins his analysis of European cultural identity geographically by drawing a pair of cartographical dichotomies, a north-south axis to separate West from East and an east-west axis to separate North from South. These axes have shifted over time -- east or west and north or south -- with the vicissitudes of history, but they are understood as lines of cultural exclusion. Yet, let us initially approach the question of Korean identity in an opposite manner, as a series of inclusions, a procedure that entails surveying some rather familiar territory.

First would perhaps be Buddhism, which arrived on the Korean peninsula as early as the fourth century AD, with the monk Sundo entering the Kingdom of Goguryeo in 372 and the monk Marananta entering the Kingdom of Baekje in 384. Buddhism was slower to enter the Kingdom of Silla, where it was resisted by the upper classes until 527, when the court official Ichadon announced that he had become a Buddhist and was promptly beheaded. Legend says that Ichadon's head flew off into the distance and that milk rather than blood streamed from the body as the earth quaked, the sun grew dark, and glorious flowers rained down from the heavens. Whatever might actually have occurred that day, Ichadon's martyrdom led to acceptance of Buddhism as Silla's official religion. By the sixth century, therefore, Buddhism was well established on the peninsula, and it continued to grow in power and influence during the Unified Silla period (668-918) and the Goryeo period (918-1392). Although Buddhism explicitly encourages its adherents to seek individual enlightenment on a path toward nirvana, which can be characterized as its vertical dimension, it has also an implicitly egalitarian horizontal dimension in which Buddhists are exhorted to identify with all sentient beings, who are suffering in this illusory world of desires, and to instruct all beings in renouncing desire, which is responsible for suffering. As an otherworldly religion with implications for moral action in the temporal world, Buddhism shaped Korean metaphysics and infused Korean ethics with what the writer Lee Gwang-su (이광수) articulates as "the Buddhist philosophy of sacrificial service, treating everyone as likewise benevolent and interconnected" (The Soil). Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Buddhism brought to Korea the ethical-meditative aspect of Indian identity, albeit mediated by its passage through Central Asia and China.

Despite its longstanding power and influence, Buddhism and Buddhist values and ethics were partially eclipsed by a surgent Confucianism pressing its countervailing values and ethics with the rise of a new unified state under the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). This shift may have come suddenly, as Joseon abruptly superceded Goryeo, but Confucianism's presence on the peninsula actually went back several centuries. It seems to have entered by way of Goguryeo, but Baekje more thoroughly integrated Confucianism into its administrative system, thereby ensuring its influence on the culture. As was the case with Buddhism, Silla was last to adopt Confucianism for administrative purposes, and Goryeo inherited its use of Confucianism from Silla, but only in the Joseon period was Confucianism established as an all-encompassing system intended to displace Buddhism. For over 500 years, the Joseon government encouraged Koreans to internalize Confucian teachings on establishing harmonious relationships through the three cardinal principles and the five ethical norms (samgang-oryun). The three cardinal principles (samgang) comprise: 1) loyalty to the ruler, 2) filial piety to parents, and 3) a wife's fidelity to her husband. The five ethical norms (oryun) govern human relationships and may be listed as: 1) love between parents and children, 2) faith between rulers and people, 3) distinction between husband and wife, 4) order between elders and juniors, and 5) trust between friends. Three additional rules informed women on the obedience due to men in their lives (samjongjido): 1) obeying her father before marriage, 2) obeying her husband after marriage, and 3) obeying her sons after her husband's death. All of these principles and rules pertain without exception to relationships. All apply to direct, personal relationships -- except for the limiting case of faith and loyalty to the ruler, which can be distant and abstract. All of these direct, personal relationships are understood in hierarchical terms -- except for the limiting case of close friendships, which can offer the possibility of equality. A society organized by these Confucian duties will thus be strong in vertical obligations but weak in extended horizontal relations. Because strangers in such a society lack personal relationships, they will seek to ascertain their relative status for proper hierarchical interaction, and the at times attendant jostling for position can foster disharmonious relations. Moreover, the explicit emphasis upon maintaining harmony by observing hierarchy does not encourage a culture of open discussion despite Confucianism's admirable emphasis upon education, the latter of which has left its indelible mark upon Korean culture. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, therefore, Confucianism has brought to Korea the hierarchical aspect of Chinese identity, with its emphasis upon learning the Confucian classics and applying them toward governing the state and society.

Both Buddhism and Confucianism have profoundly shaped Korean identity, and despite their obvious differences, both agree upon at least one crucial thing: the intrinsic goodness of the human being. For Buddhism, the goodness is to be uncovered by stripping away desires. For Confucianism, the goodness is to be drawn out by encouraging proper obligations. A third great external influence upon Korean identity has come to Korea with a more negative view of human nature: Christianity. This religion initially entered Korea with the Japanese invasions of the 1590s through the Catholic commander Konishi Yukinaga, but Catholicism had no impact upon Korea at that time because the priests were not allowed to proselytize. In the early 1600s, however, Korean diplomats began returning from China with Jesuit material on Catholic theology that gained the interest of some scholars, and Christian ideas obtained an indigenous foothold without the direct influence of foreign missionaries. By 1784, Catholicism had grown enough for the diplomat Yi Sung-hun, who had been baptized in Beijing, to establish a prayer-house in Pyongyang. But the new religion of Christianity was resisted by most Confucians and even persecuted by the state and thus did not begin to make mass converts until the late nineteenth century when the Korean government began to allow Protestant missionaries into Korea in the hope of gaining Western protection. Christianity in both its Catholic and Protestant forms was associated with Western science and technology, for the early Jesuit treatises also brought the fruits of the scientific revolution and the later Protestant missions brought Western medicine and education. In Korea, therefore, Christianity was perceived as inseparable from Westernization. Not even the 35-year-long period of Japanese colonization diminished this impression despite the fact that the Japanese suppressed Christianity in favor of Shintoism and continued the 'Westernization' of Korea without the attendant Christian ideology. Perhaps Japan's policies even encouraged the opposite result, for in the post-liberation period, Christianity began its truly phenomenal growth and now accounts for roughly one-third or more of the South Korean population. The percentage of Christians in North Korea is not known, but the number is perhaps quite low -- despite the extensive Christian population prior to the Korean War -- because the North's totalitarian government has ruthlessly suppressed Christianity there. The issue of North Korea will have to be returned to later in this discussion, for the Christian influence on Korean identity mostly concerns South Korea. As already noted, Christianity holds to a more negative view of human nature than does Buddhism or Confucianism. But there is nuance here. For Christians, human nature may be fallen, but the individual person is nevertheless formed in God's image and is oriented in a vertical dimension toward God. The horizontal dimension of Christian ethics thus makes high demands but anticipates human failure unless the effort is sustained by God's hand. One particularly steep ethical expectation is that of universal love, what Lee Gwang-su describes in The Soil as the "Christian love for humanity," a love extended even to one's enemies. In social terms, this means that Christianity contributes to a society in which strangers have obligations to one another based upon an ethic of service that treats as equal every person, whether possible enemy or potential friend. The exemplar is Christ, understood as having come to serve others, even his enemies, and draw followers into a community oriented not exclusively upon its members but also outwards toward others, as if they too belonged. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Christianity has brought to Korea an egalitarian aspect of Western identity, with an emphasis upon the responsibility -- both collective and individual -- to treat as equals the others that one encounters, even if they be strangers.


3. Ethnocentric Exclusions

In the longer run, Christianity tends to reshape society from a shame culture to a guilt culture, for the real value of an individual is found not in what others think but in what God knows. Christian influence in Korea, however, has been of significance for only a very brief time, and Confucian values continue to predominate, maintaining a society where that which matters most of all is one's hierarchical status, undergirded by honor and threatened by shame. Confucianism would thus seem to be the dominate quality in Korean identity, though the long Buddhist presence on the peninsula has left an underlying substratum, and Christianity is growing in its significance. Korean identity would therefore appear to be what Brague calls "eccentric," centered on places that -- to its own geo-cultural sphere -- are external, namely China, India, and the West. But not all is as it appears. Koreans experienced thirty-five years of Japanese colonialism, and the post-liberation period has seen an exponential rise in Korean nationalism, a surge of feeling that pervades society and infuses the political right, left, and middle. Especially North Korea has emphasized Korean nationalism of an extreme form, for what is the North's ideology of juche other than a radically nationalistic elaboration of exclusively Korean identity? Hostility to the US and Japan, and distrust toward Russia and even China characterize the North's ethnically based ideology. The North Korean case is extreme, of course, but South Korea shares some degree of the North's ethnic nationalism and still claims Korean purity of blood as the basis for this nationalism. Koreans therefore appeal to an indigenous Korean identity that would predate Western Christianity, Chinese Confucianism, and Indian Buddhism, thereby centering Korean identity in nativist ethnocentrism.

From a thirteenth-century history book by the Buddhist monk Iryeon, Samgukyusa (삼국유사), comes a story that supposedly pushes the date of Korean origins back to 2333 BC. According to this story, the Emperor of Heaven had a son, Hwanung, who requested the right to rule what would eventually be called the Korean peninsula. The request was granted, and coincident with this request, a tiger and a bear were fasting in a cave not far from where Hwanung had descended from heaven to earth and were praying to become human beings. The tiger gave up too soon, but after 100 days patiently enduring weariness and hunger, the bear became a beautiful woman whom Hwanung made his queen. This royal couple produced the child Dangun, who engendered the Korean 'race' and became the first King of Korea, ruling from his throne in what is now Pyongyang, North Korea. Probably very few modern-day Koreans accept this story literally, but most perhaps take it as figurative of actual events. Anthropologically considered, the story might plausibly be interpreted as relating the invasion of the Korean peninsula by an advanced tribe that made an alliance with a tribe whose totem animal was a bear against a tribe whose totem animal was a tiger. Even if the story is entirely invented and purely mythological, it serves as a foundational myth for the Korean people and has been interpreted by Koreans as justifying an ethnic nationalism based on purity of blood. Understood in this manner, the myth offers a vertical dimension in the descent of all Koreans from Dangun and a horizontal dimension oriented toward exclusive inclusion of all Koreans in a tightly bound society of kin.


4. Excursus: The Guest

This use of the Dangun myth might at times be extended from purity of blood to purity of thought and thereby serve as ideological counter to outside influence. As such, only a pure Korean shamanism would be truly and entirely Korean, all other ideological systems being rejected as foreign. Koreans seldom go quite so far, but an interesting case of radical exclusiveness can be found in Hwang Sok-yong's recent novel The Guest. In this novel, the character Big Grandma holds to Korea's traditional shamanistic beliefs despite her own son's conversion to Christianity, and she demands that her great-grandson accept shamanism along with other indigenous Korean beliefs, explaining:

Our ancestor, the founding father of our race, was Tan'gun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. (page 40)

Concerning her son's conversion to Christianity, Big Grandma angrily explains that smallpox -- which was called "the Guest" by Koreans and was believed to have its home to the west, in the southern part of China -- is a spirit identical with the Holy Spirit of Christianity:

Ever since we were children we have known that the Guest is a western disease. A barbarian disease, they call it, from a country to the west, so it's certain that it came from the land where they believe in the Western Spirit, you see? I had to send away two sons, your grandpa's two older brothers, with the Guest. So would I be overjoyed, would I be ready to believe in the Western Spirit like my one surviving son -- or would I be angry at it -- angry forever? (page 44, changes in translation mine)

Big Grandma refers to the Holy Spirit as the Western Spirit and identifies it as the same spirit from the direction west of Korea that has always been known to bring smallpox. Let us look closely at Big Grandma's reasoning. Note that she calls smallpox a "western disease" (서쪽 병: seojok byeong), indicating the direction west, because it comes from a "country to the west" (서쪽 나라: seojok nara). However, when she refers to the "Western Spirit," she uses the Korean expression yanggushin (양구신 [양 (洋) + 구신]), where yang (양 [洋]) is an abbreviation of seoyang, "The West" (서양) -- and gushin (구신) is dialect for guishin (귀신), meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Thus does Big Grandma succeed in identifying the direction "west" (서쪽) with the place "The West" (서양). In giving such voice to the character Big Grandma, Hwang Sok-yong would seem to be presenting views with which he strongly identifies, for the intense ideological fervor of the Christian characters in this novel expresses itself in cruel massacres during the Korean War, as though the old smallpox spirit had returned with vengeance in a new form to infect the very minds of Koreans.

But Hwang's critique may go even deeper by playing further on the direction "west" (서쪽) and the place "The West" (서양). Anything that had come from a western direction might be understood as suspect because not indigenously Korean. Hence, Catholicism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which like smallpox all arrived in Korea by way of China, the country to the west, would implicitly count as western diseases (서쪽 병: seojok byeong). And Protestantism, which arrived in Korea from the West (서양: seoyang), would therefore be a Western disease. By extension, Westernization itself would amount to a Western disease, whether in the guise of Japan's colonization of Korea, which accelerated Korea's pre-colonial Westernization, or even in the guise of Marxism, another Westernizing ideology. Rather than accepting all these things western (서쪽) and Western (서양), Koreans should "Believe in the God of Chosŏn," as Hwang's non-Christian character Pak Illang exhorts the Christians who are leading him off to his execution (page 195). To believe in the God of Chosŏn (조선으 하나님: chosŏn u hananim, dialect for chosŏn ui hananim) -- the God of Korea -- would apparently mean to believe in Korea's traditional God. The term hananim (하나님) for "God" in Pak's exhortation is also the term used by Protestants, but in Pak's usage, it would seem to mean the same as Big Grandma's reference to hanunim (하느님) in her insistence on remaining faithful to Korean religion:

"Here in our Chosŏn, we say the son of God is Tan'gun." (page 42)

For "son of God," she uses hanunim adeol (하느님 아덜). Both terms, hananim and hanunim, appear to be longstanding Korean expressions for God and have been explained as dialectical variants. At any rate, Hwang seems to have identified them for the purpose of his central theme, the call for a return to what is traditionally, exclusively, and authentically Korean.


5. Mixed-Up Koreans

Most Koreans do not go so far as Pak Illang urges or Big Grandma demands in terms of Korean exclusiveness, though many, perhaps a majority, do still appear to hold to the purity of blood ascribed to the Dangun myth. But does this myth in fact teach 'racial' purity? The assumption seems to be that Koreans have all descended through Dangun from that original pair, Hwanung and his queen, and never mixed with other groups. Yet even if one were to grant that Koreans have not mixed with Chinese, Japanese, Mongolians, or any other non-Korean tribes over Korea's putative 5000-year history, the Dangun story is itself a tale of mixing, as Korean anthropologists have recently begun to acknowledge. Whether one takes it literally or symbolically, mixing is presupposed, for Hwanung and his queen have radically different origins -- either from a divine being and a bear-woman or from the son of an invading tribe and the daughter of an indigenous tribe. As such, Koreans are from the outset implicitly understood as a mixed people.

Broader recognition of this mixed Korean identity implicit in the Dangun story might well be needed these days because of the precipitous rise in the percentage of international marriages or gukjaegyulhon (국제결혼). Already by 2005, international couples accounted for 10 percent of all marriages for that year in South Korea, according to official government statistics, and the numbers have been rising every year due to more foreigners settling in Korea and to many Korean men seeking foreign wives, especially from such countries as China and Vietnam, but also from Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, the United States, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Russia, among others. Foreign men residing in South Korea and marrying Korean women come from such countries as Japan, China, the United States, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, but also from other places. As these mixed marriages bear fruit, a new, undeniably mixed population will begin to emerge, generally differing in appearance from previous generations of Koreans. This process of mixing is often called "multiculturalism" by Koreans. Multiculturalism, however, exists in Korea only as a term, not as a clear and distinct concept, for it is commonly conflated with multiethnicity, as though the two terms meant the same thing. Admittedly, an ethnic group usually does carry its own culture, but no necessary connection binds ethnicity to a particular culture. This is not especially difficult to grasp, and the Korean language does have different terms for multiculturalism, damunhwajui (다문화주의), and multiethnicity, dainjong (다인종), but the latter term rarely gets used in Korea because it sounds pejorative among a people long accustomed to the assumption of Korea's blood-based ethnic superiority. Multiethnicity can hardly be a positive thing in a country that still celebrates the purity of its Korean blood. Koreans therefore prefer to use the term "multiculturalism" even when they are talking about "multiethnicity." The children of international marriages are thus referred to as multicultural children even when these children are growing up in Korea, attending Korean schools, and becoming culturally and linguistically Korean. Such children are not multicultural, but could more accurately be called multiethnic, in the limiting sense of mixed ethnicity. Korea may therefore be developing into a multiethnic society if we mean by this the ethnically mixed children who are becoming ever more numerous, but such a process will not invariably lead to multiculturalism in Korea. For a multicultural Korea to develop, large-scale immigration of entire communities settling into self-isolating enclaves and maintaining their own cultural values would have to take place, and that does not yet seem to be happening. Nor would that be a good thing for Korea if it were to happen, for the result would likely be an unworkable radical multiculturalism of the sort that currently looms in Europe.


6. Conclusion

Perhaps we should now finally return to the question with which we began our inquiry: "What is a Korean?" One is tempted to respond with platitudes. For example: a true Korean combines the universal sympathy of the Buddha and the all-encompassing love of Christ with the solemn dignity of Confucius, the teachings of all three having been grafted onto the ancient trunk of the sandalwood tree under which Dangun sat and taught. Such a nation of eccentrically centered individuals would be an imagined community indeed! Granted, these four great teachers have had profound pedagogical influence in Korea, and Korea is a land that respects teachers, but their teachings do not mutually cohere. Conflict is therefore inescapable, even in a nation that highly extols harmony. Moreover, the teachings of a particular tradition are not always well-learned. We thus too often meet with the indifferent Buddhist, the hateful Christian, the arrogant Confucian, and the exclusivist 'Dangunian'. But whether we encounter the good or the bad, we begin to recognize that for better or for worse, Korea itself is rapidly changing into an even more complex, increasingly multiethnic society that contains the world.

The question is therefore not so much "What is a Korean?" as "What is a Korean to be?"

Korean Multiculturalism: "Tuts My Barreh"

"Tuts My Barreh"

It's radical!

(Image from You Tube)

I have never been one to shy away from controversy over what I consider the dangers of radical multiculturalism and have therefore long cautioned Koreans not to make the same mistake that Europeans have made in rushing headlong toward some putative multicultural utopia only to find themselves in a dystopian reality, but I will always be the first to admit that I have been wrong . . . and I have indeed been wrong.

From my polymathic friend Malcolm Pollack comes this rich linguistic evidence that even radical multiculturalism can work as an unknown young Korean man sings with gay abandon what seems to be a complex multilingual mix titled "Tuts My Barreh." The video can be viewed on You Tube, which also includes the lyrics as subtitles, and I've gone to the trouble to type them up for my readers' pleasure:

Tuts My Barreh

OyeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEay

I know that you bean waiting for me, I'm weighing too
Inma inaiinasin I be a lump on you
I know you cop dat fever for me hundrentu
Bo I know dat fir sem my temperentthru

If there's a camel up a hill
Then it's Gong Li with me when I do I do
If there's a camel up a hill
Then its asbestos flaygon you too you too
Coz if you run your mother break a bottle sicker run day boo
I will hunt chu down
Coz baby I'm up in my beegees like a windy interview
But dis is prry vee bit two in eye

Tuts my barreh
Pull me on the flow
Wrestle me around
Play it wit some more
Tuts my barreh
Throw me on the bay
I juss wanna mek yu fill like yu never dee
Tuts my barreh
Rape me in my thighs
Uh around your way
Just a little taze
Tuts my barreh
Know you love my cock
Come on a give me water dessert

Bo you can poo me on yolakka branoo eye-tee
I'll honk you berra tara den my favorite cheese
I want you to caress me like a tropical priest
A flororo with you in the caribbean se

If there's a camel up a hill
Then it's Gong Li with me when I do I do
If there's a camel up a hill
Then its asbestos flaygon you too you too
Coz if you run your mother break a bottle sicker run day boo
I will hunt chu damn
Coz baby I'm up in my beegees like a windy interview
But dis is prry v bit two in eye

Tuts my barreh
Pull me on the flow
Wrestle me around
Play it wit some more
Tuts my barreh
Throw me on duh bay
I juss wanna mek yu fill like yu never dee
Tuts my barreh
Rape me in my thighs
Uh around your way
Just a little taze
Tuts my barreh
Know you love my cock
Come on a give me water dessert

Don't you like a teddybear
You won, wanna go Norway?
In the labor luxury
Boys just turn to me
You wanna run for nothing bo
I will give you plankton

Tuts my barREH!
Pull me on the flow
Lesson me around
Play it wit some more
Tuts my barreh
Throw me on the bay
I juss wanna mek yu fill like yu never dee
Tuts my barreh
Rape me in my thighs
Araranyo way
Just a little Tay
Tuts my barreh
Know you love my cock
Come on a give me water dessert

And toss meh

oyEe oyEe oyEe oyEe oyEe a a a a a
ohyEe ohyEe ohyEe ohyEe ohyEe ohyEe
a A a A a
hoOOOooOOoo hoo hoo babeh
oooooOOOOOooOOo oo oo tuts my
aaaaAAaaaAaa aah aahh uhaughh

Come on and give me water dessERt!

hoo!
hooooooohohoOho ohooho ahuh

Now I may be no credentialed judge of musical ability, but I'll go out on a limb and say that this music video reveals a young man with enough raw musical talent to rival the vocal skills of Paul Potts or Susan Boyle.

I anticipate this video soon to go viral.

Christopher Caldwell - Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West

Revolution in Europe?

'There Will Be Blood'

(Image from Amazon.com)

John Vinocur, who writes the "Politicus" column for The New York Times, has written a timely article, "Downturn Draws a Veil Over Islam," alerting his readers to the imminent publication of a new book by Christopher Caldwell that I'll definitely have to read: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.

Here's what Vinocur reports on Caldwell's book:

Christopher Caldwell has written a dense and important book about whether Europe's identity (itself an uncertain issue) can absorb or survive a fast growing Muslim population, in part deeply engaged in Islam. It is called "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" and is published in London by Allen Lane and by Doubleday in New York.

Its most cutting insights, rather than on Muslim immigrants' capacity or motivations to assimilate -- I'd say they turn on Europe's will to establish more demanding standards for their integration -- deal with the Europeans themselves.

Mr. Caldwell, who is an editor at The Weekly Standard in Washington and writes a weekend column for The London Financial Times, says Europe's "writers, academics and politicians act as if it is only some quirk or accident or epiphenomenon (and never immigration itself) that has left their country with intractable problems."

All European countries, he writes, pursue the same strategy: "elevating Muslim pressure groups to pseudo-governmental status and declaring that doing so will produce an Islam that reflects the values of Europe than vice versa."

But because Europe was unsure of what those values are, and accepted a "neutrality of cultures," Mr. Caldwell finds "declaring immigration a success and an enrichment became the only acceptable opinion to hold."

As a result, he concludes, "Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers. For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest."

Strong words, too, and rather bitter for the Europeans to hear, but neither can they ignore Caldwell's words. Here's what Amazon.com's editorial review of the books says:

Christopher Caldwell has been reporting on the politics and culture of Islam in Europe for more than a decade. His deeply researched and insightful new book reveals a paradox. Since World War II, mass immigration has been made possible by Europe's enforcement of secularism, tolerance, and equality. But when immigrants arrive, they are not required to adopt those values. And they are disinclined to, since they already have values of their own. Muslims dominate or nearly dominate important European cities, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Strasbourg and Marseille, the Paris suburbs and East London. Islam has challenged the European way of life at every turn, becoming, in effect, an "adversary culture."

The result? In Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Caldwell reveals the anger of natives and newcomers alike. He describes guest worker programs that far outlasted their economic justifications, and asylum policies that have served illegal immigrants better than refugees. He exposes the strange ways in which welfare states interact with Third World customs, the anti-Americanism that brings European natives and Muslim newcomers together, and the arguments over women and sex that drive them apart. He considers the appeal of sharia, "resistance," and jihad to a second generation that is more alienated from Europe than the first, and addresses a crisis of faith among native Europeans that leaves them with a weak hand as they confront the claims of newcomers.

As some readers know, I taught a course at Yonsei last fall -- "Multiculturalism and the European Union" -- that focused partly on this very issue. The Europeans face a dilemma. If they want an EU to work, then they must accept multiculturalism, for the EU is a union of different cultures. However, if they accept multiculturalism, then the growing Muslim enclaves within Europe can legitimately demand the right to practice their own Islamic culture in the urban areas where they increasingly dominate.

One solution to this problem is to go between the horns of the dilemma.

Reject a radical multiculturalism predicated upon radical cultural relativism and insist upon a moderate multiculturalism defending human rights and requiring immigrants to accept European values and assimilate into the countries where they settle.

This solution will not come without a struggle. Vinocur tells us to consider the Dutch Labor Party, which put forward a position paper in December 2008 suggesting that the Dutch reject the unsuccessful system of Dutch "tolerance':

Considering the long Dutch experience with multicultural laissez-faire involving Muslim immigration, it said some extraordinary things. Notably, that government and politicians had too often ignored the feelings of "loss and estrangement" in Dutch society in the face of newcomers who disregarded its language, laws and customs.

Lilianne Ploumen, the party chairwoman, insisted that attempts to stifle Dutch criticism of religions (read Islam) and cultures had to stop; double nationalities had to disappear; punishment for troublemakers had to be of such severity that it could no longer serve as a badge of honor for them.

"The street is mine, too," she said.

As Vinocur notes, this "new line seemed like a path-finding change of course inside Europe’s left." But he adds: "Almost." And explains:

Up for approval at a party congress in March, the double-nationality ban disappeared. The text didn't say, as Ms. Ploumen had, "Let go of where you come from." It no longer contained a call to newcomers to abandon "self-designated victimization." Nor did it refer to "bringing our (Dutch) values into confrontation with people who think otherwise."

And the notion of "unconditional" engagement by immigrants in Dutch life was gone.

The Dutch Labor Party, the Euro-Left generally, and indeed all of Europe has yet to put forward a proper, civilized but firm demand that Muslim immigrants assimilate and adopt European values.

If this is not done soon in a civilized manner using the language of common European values, then we could very well see within European nations a resurgent ethnic nationalism that will turn in violence not only against Muslim immigrants but also against the very EU itself.

In that case, as European history has often proven, there will be blood.