Natal Nationalism?

Consider the expression "Natal Nationalism." Isn't this more catchy than, say, "Ethnic Nationalism"?

But it's perhaps less specific. I meant for it to mean "Ethnic Nationalism." But it could mean that any person born in a particular country will automatically belong to that nation. A bit like in the U.S.

Islamists aren't the only 'fundamentalists' to worry about . . .

Sadhvi Deva Thakur

. . . for there are ladies like this Hindu politician:

Sadhvi Deva Thakur is a leader of All India Hindu Mahasabha, a leading Hindu organization in India. On April 11, 2015, she demanded that Muslims and Christians in India be forcibly sterilized, as they were during Emergency Rule in 1975, when such forced sterilizations were carried out. The following are excerpts from a media report: A leader of Hindu Mahasabha on Saturday [April 11, 2015] stoked a controversy saying Muslims and Christians must undergo sterilization to restrict their growing population which was posing a threat to Hindus . . . . [Specifically, she said,] "The population of Muslims and Christians is growing day by day. To rein in this, [the] Center [the federal Indian government] will have to impose emergency [rule], and Muslims and Christians will have to be forced to undergo sterilization so that they can't increase their numbers," vice president of All India Hindu Mahasabha, Sadhvi Deva Thakur told reporters . . . . [and] also exhorted Hindus to have more children and increase their population so as to have an effect on the world. In another controversial remark, she said that idols of Hindu gods and goddesses should be placed in mosques and churches. Thakur also came out strongly in support of installing a statue of 'patriot' Nathuram Godse [the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi] in Haryana [state near Delhi ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi].

You can read even worse things by other radical Hindu nationalists in the same Memri Report (Special Dispatch No. 6033, April 26, 2015), e.g., "Today there is a need to dig up the [bodies of the Muslims' deceased] mothers, sisters and daughters from graves, and to rape them . . ."

What a horrifying thing to say! What's the world coming to?

Byeng-ju Lee Hadong International Literary Festival 2014

Lee Byeng-ju
Google Images

I'm currently at a conference on "Literature and National Community" being held in conjunction with the Byeng-ju Lee Hadong International Literary Festival 2014, and I presented a paper yesterday:

Literature and National Community: The United States and the Case of Stephen Vincent Benét

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University

Introduction

I am informed that my presentation on "Literature and National Community . . . . will be representing the English speaking countries." That's a lot of countries, and I can probably only manage to represent myself, but since I'm American, I'll pretend to represent the United States. Still . . . what am I to say? I suppose I can start with Benedict Anderson's famous view of a nation: "In an anthropological spirit, . . . I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign." Limited, because there are other nations. Sovereign, because not under the rule of another nation. Community, because of a "deep, horizontal comradeship." And imagined, because members do not know most of their fellow-members, yet have a mental image of their communion (Anderson, 6-7). Where does this mental image come from? Partly, at least sometimes, from literature. Which brings me to my subject: Stephen Vincent Benét.

A Forgotten Man?

Stephen Vincent Benét was born in 1898, began writing professionally when only thirteen, in 1911, and from the publication of his bestselling epic poem John Brown's Body in 1928 to his death at the height of his fame in 1943, he was perhaps the best-known American poet living. His poems were read even more than those of the ever popular Robert Frost, and his books of poetry sold in the tens of thousands, receiving good reviews. He wrote not only poems, but also short stories, novels, dramas, radio scripts, screenplays, book reviews, lectures, and speeches, and he edited dozens of book-length manuscripts per year in the mid-1930s. He was one of the eminent American men of letters throughout the thirties and very early forties (Griffith). In the 2002 book Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work, the editors David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle thus note the irony that Benét's "work is not widely known today" even though when he "died in 1943 at the age of 44, the loss was felt by an entire country to whom Benét was a national hero" (1). Twelve years later than Izzo and Konkle wrote, nowadays, in 2014, Benét is still little remembered.

Ironically, he has been neglected due to one of the reasons for his prior popularity, his nationalism. In the 2009 Companion to Literature, edited by Abby H. P. Werlock, the entry on Stephen Vincent Benét says the following:

His work is characterized by his interest in . . . American themes . . . . [but t]he patriotic . . . themes of Benét’s work . . . became less fashionable after his death and led some critics to label him an old-fashioned, quaint, and chauvinistic writer who wrote "formula stories" designed to appeal to mainstream readers. ("Stephen Vincent Benét" 80b-81a)

If his works became "less fashionable after his death," one can imagine how unfashionable they were in the rebellious decades of the 1960s and 1970s. The Left objected to his nationalism and didn't much read him, so as Leftists came to dominate academic discourse in the 1980s and beyond, Benét's writings were less and less taught (Izzo and Konkle "Stephen," 4). No doubt his nationalist writings have also not fared well in our time of political multiculturalism and literary fragmentation, both of which celebrate ethnic and cultural diversity to the detriment of Benét's own imagined community of national unity, as in his epic poem, John Brown's Body: "So, from a hundred visions, I make one, / And out of darkness build my mocking sun" (Benét John, 6). The term "mocking" is likely intended here as imitation for non-frivolous purposes, e.g., "mock exam" ("Mock"), or as with "mockingbird," i.e., "[f]rom its skill in mimicking other birdsongs" ("Mockingbird"), though I wouldn't exclude a bit of self-deprecation on Benét's part. But even in his own time, Benét's work was sometimes criticized for its nationalism. An April 5, 1943 editorial in Life magazine on Benét's recent death (March 13, 1943) acknowledges that "[b]ecause of his strong American utterance, Steve Benét has sometimes been accused of chauvinism or narrow nationalism" ("Stephen Benet" p. 22, col. 3).

In His Own Time

In his own time, Benét offered Americans a vision of themselves that could serve as their imagined community. In Jackson J. Benson's book Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, we find this remark about Benét:

Benet . . . was interested in native materials and the importance of bringing forth (as Emerson had advocated a century earlier) a uniquely national literature divorced from the influences of Europe. (Benson 64-65)

The so-called "influences of Europe" alludes to a long-held American belief that Europe was corrupt and corrupting. Benét therefore offered a national literature of moral uplift, as we find in Joan Shelley Rubin's 2009 book, Songs of Ourselves:

"I have no way of telling you the place in my life your [book] has found," a Texas man declared in a letter to Benét. "Let me say this – it is the book I pick up when I am frayed out, disgusted, exhausted – and it always brings back my balance." (Rubin 231)

Reviewers compared Benét to Walt Whitman due to their common scope and subject, but readers responded with an enthusiasm not seen since the public adulation for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Rubin 231).

What He Offered

As we saw earlier, Benét was sometimes accused of "narrow nationalism" ("Stephen Benet" p. 22, col. 3). A "narrow" nationalism would be exclusive, so we should ask if he excluded some groups from belonging to the "nation." Perhaps a longstanding distinction is useful here: ethnic nationalism versus civic nationalism. The former limits membership to a community characterized by an 'imagined' shared ethnicity, the original meaning of "nation." The latter extends membership to any individual – regardless of ethnicity – who is willing to embrace the shared values of the imagined community (Miscevic). Which of these two nationalisms did Benét extol? Rubin tells us:

One passage [in Benét's poem "Nightmare at Noon"] succinctly reiterates the principle of civic nationalism: "You can be a Finn or a Dane and an American. / You can be German or French and an American, / Jew, Bohunk, Nigger, Mick – all the dirty names / We call each other – and yet American." (Rubin 233)

We Americans may not always speak politely to one another, admits Benét, but we're still Americans, he insists, every one of us. Indeed, he was very generous in extending membership within his imagined community of Americans. Rubin tells us that he "acknowledged the suffering of both North and South" (Rubin 234), even going so far in his 1937 story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" as to insist that in the making of America, "everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors" (Benét 177)! Hard to be more inclusive than that. But, of course, membership in this imagined national community was limited to Americans, as Anderson's definition of community entails (Anderson 1), and hence "divorced from the [corrupting] influences of Europe" (Benson 65).

His Anti-Fascism

With his hugely inclusive conception of America as a nation imbued with civic nationalism, Benét can likely be expected to have taken a dim view of ethnic nationalism, especially the aggressive ethnic nationalisms of Europe's fascist states in the 1930s and 1940s, evidence of a corrupt and corrupting Europe that must be resisted. The scholars Izzo and Konkle confirm his opposition to fascism:

During the late 1930s Benét, just as many other Americans, was alarmed at the tragedy of fascism in Asia and Europe. He took seriously his role as national spokesperson and began to write poems and stories as warnings to the American people. Among these were "The Blood of the Martyrs," "Into Egypt," "The Last of the Legions," "Nightmare at Noon," and "By the Waters of Babylon" . . . . Benét wished to reach more Americans and realized radio was the way . . . . What followed would be the most astonishing output of original works for radio by a literary author ever produced, and more importantly, ever listened to over a four-year period. Benét was a natural writer for radio . . . . His mastery of poetry and the short story suited the need for compactness with a singular effect; his reputation as a man of conscience and a patriot who loved his country was exactly right for an America facing the threat of fascism that was already producing killing fields abroad. (Izzo and Konkle, “Benét” 225)

Benét's 1937 short story "The Blood of the Martyrs" is an especially powerful piece of anti-fascist literature, and all the more significant for its relatively early date, two years before WWII began and four years before America's forced entry into the war. Benét tells the story of an apolitical scientist who is imprisoned and tortured by an unnamed European fascist state, tortured partly because being apolitical is itself a position of suspicion under fascism. The scientist is offered a Faustian bargain. He can have his university job back if he will just agree to publically support the state by giving nationalist speeches and even use his scientific work to undergird the state's belief that its people are racially superior to all other peoples. I won't provide any further details of the plot since some of you might want to read the story, and I don't want to give away any plot spoilers. Just trust me that the story is powerful. It is also short and can be read in half an hour if your English is good.

His Generous Civic Nationalism

Another story published in 1937 was the famous tale of the devil already mentioned in this talk, "The Devil and Daniel Webster." The story is a Faustian one partly inspired by Washington Irving's own Faustian story, "The Devil and Tom Walker." Irving’s story lacks a champion, but Benét's story of Jabez Stone has the famous senator, orator, and lawyer Daniel Webster defend the New Hampshire farmer named Stone who had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for better luck. In the course of a legal argument between Webster and the devil, the latter insists that he himself is American, at which point Webster persuades the devil to let his client have a trial by jury:

"I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client!"

"The case is hardly one for an ordinary court," said the stranger, his eyes flickering. "And, indeed, the lateness of the hour–"

"Let it be any court you choose, so it is an American judge and an American jury!" said Dan'l Webster in his pride. "Let it be the quick or the dead; I'll abide the issue!" (Benét 173)

The devil agrees to the conditions, but fills the American jury with traitors, criminals, and other unsavory men nursing a grudge against America. Webster, however, rises to the challenge:

He started off in a low voice, though you could hear every word. They say he could call on the harps of the blessed when he chose. And this was just as simple and easy as a man could talk. But he didn't start out by condemning or reviling. He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man.

And he began with the simple things that everybody's known and felt – the freshness of a fine morning when you're young, and the taste of food when you're hungry, and the new day that's every day when you’re a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasn't a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors. (Benét 177)

And by his eloquence and gentle manner, Webster reminded those twelve damned men of their innocent childhoods in what came to be America, and of the mistakes that men make, and he even succeeded in getting Stone released from the conditions of his contract with the devil – all by reminding men of what being free Americans felt like, even if the twelve had gone on to err in their adulthoods. Benét's vision of a civic nationalism was thus a very generous one.

Civilizational Literature?

In fact, Benét's civic-national 'Americanism' – despite his aim of composing a uniquely American literature – moved toward broader horizons. This is evident from his attack on fascism in the 1930s, wherein he extended American civic nationalism to Europe no longer simply as judgment but more as solution and assistance. Broader horizons are also notable in his choice of the Faustian theme, for the story of a man making a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for knowledge and power, entails a basic mythos of Western Civilization, the original sin of mankind having been precisely this sort of bargain, namely, one's soul for knowledge and power. Unlike the original mythos, however, but like in Goethe's Faustian reinterpretation, Benét gives the story a twist, such that the devil is defeated. Civic nationalism in America can even overcome 'sin'! It can also therefore – as in "The Blood of the Martyrs" – help purge the extreme corruption of European fascism! Such optimism!

Conclusion

Well, I seem to have gone beyond "Literature and National Community," beyond the nationalism defined by Benedict Anderson, and even beyond English-speaking countries generally, all the way to Western Civilization as a whole! I hope you don't mind. I’m new to this theme. But I wonder if a uniquely national literature is actually possible. Even ethnic nationalism borrows stories from other nationalities, perhaps mostly from stories of other nationalities within its own civilization, though not solely. Stephen Vincent Benét had an American vision for a national literature, but his feeling for Europe, his opposition to fascism abroad, and his re-telling of Western Civilization's fundamental mythos offer a broader perspective on his work, a perspective that ought to orient literary scholars toward a reinterpretation of his oeuvre as greater than American "chauvinism or narrow nationalism."

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso: 2006.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. John Brown's Body. Doubleday, Doran, 1928.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. "The Blood of the Martyrs." Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benét, Stephen Vincent. Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

Benson, Jackson J. Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work. University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Griffith, John. "Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898-1943." Poetry Foundation.

Irving, Washington. "The Devil and Tom Walker." Tales of a Traveller. Carey and Lea, 1824.

Izzo, David Garrett and Lincoln Konkle. "Benét as Dramatist for Stage, Screen, and Radio." Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work. McFarland: 2002. 215-232.

Izzo, David Garrett and Lincoln Konkle. Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work. McFarland: 2002.

Miscevic, Nenad. "Nationalism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta.

"Mock." The Free Dictionary Online.

"Mockingbird." The Free Dictionary Online. Cf. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2009.

Rubin, Joan Shelley. Songs of Ourselves. Harvard University Press, 2009.

"Stephen Benet: The Ultimate Objectives of Free Men are to be Discovered in their Arts and Letters." Life. April 5, 1943. 22.

"Stephen Vincent Benét." Companion to Literature: Facts on File Companion to the American Short Story. Abby H. P. Werlock, ed. Infobase Publishing, 2009.

That's the entirety of my presentation - well, I didn't read out the references aloud, but they were in the individual copies possessed by everyone present.

I now have to get ready for today's discussions . . .

David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle on Stephen Vincent Benét's Anti-Fascism

Amazon

David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle, the editors of Stephen Vincent Benét: Essays on His Life and Work (McFarland, 2002), also contributed the book's final essay, "Benét as Dramatist for Stage, Screen, and Radio" (pages 215-232), which has this to say about Benét's opposition to fascism:

During the late 1930s Benét, just as many other Americans, was alarmed at the tragedy of fascism in Asia and Europe. He took seriously his role as national spokesperson and began to write poems and stories as warnings to the American people. Among these were "The Blood of the Martyrs," "Into Egypt," "The Last of the Legions," "Nightmare at Noon," and "By the Waters of Babylon," the last of which is credited by science-fiction historians as establishing many of the conventions of stories about a future world of survivors after an apocalyptic war . . . . Benét wished to reach more Americans and realized radio was the way. In those pre-television days, radio had as devoted audiences as TV does now. Benét's poems and stories were read over the air and heard by millions. His good friend, the poet Archibald MacLeish, had written three plays just for radio, and encouraged Benét to do the same. What followed would be the most astonishing output of original works for radio by a literary author ever produced, and more importantly, ever listened to over a four-year period. Benét was a natural writer for radio. As Norman Rosten says in his foreword to the published radio scripts, "Steve Benét had that gather-ye-round quality, and the folks sure did gather when he spoke!" . . . His mastery of poetry and the short story suited the need for compactness with a singular effect; his reputation as a man of conscience and a patriot who loved his country was exactly right for an America facing the threat of fascism that was already producing killing fields abroad. But, as Rosten points out, writing "[p]ropaganda was nothing new to [Benét]. He was always selling Americans the idea of America" . . . .

Izzo and Konkle note that the public response to Benét's works for radio was extraordinary, for letters and telegrams poured in after his broadcasts, expressing gratitude. While I ordinarily find politically motivated literature rather bad literature, I find that Benét wrote propaganda that is also very fine literature. Apparently, he was such a sincere nationalist that he wrote about exactly what inspired him to support 'Americanism' and oppose fascism.

Unfortunately, he did not get to see the American victory over fascism, nor was he to continue his inspiring broadcasts, for he died in 1943, at the young age of 44.

Stephen Vincent Benét's Grave

Grave of Stephen Vincent Benét
Find a Grave
Photo supplied by Robert Rich

This webpage of Find a Grave offers viewers a few photos of Benét's grave, plus a brief but informative bio by "Iola" that tells me a few things I didn't know, including this:

A short story collection, 'Thirteen O'clock' published in 1937, included . . . one of his most famous stories, 'The Devil and Daniel Webster'. The story was later made into a play, an opera, and a film, the title becoming 'All That Money Can [Buy].'

Also, this information speaks to Benét's 'Americanism':

By 1940, Benét was a strong advocate of America's entry into WWII.

But the question is "Why?" For Europe's sake? Or America's?

Invocation to Stephen Vincent Benét's Epic Poem John Brown's Body

Stamp Honoring Stephen Vincent Benét
Google Images

Note the allusion to the Civil War in the stamp's background - those marching African-American troops - an allusion also related to today's blog topic, which I foreshadowed yesterday with my promise to post the Invocation to Stephen Vincent Benét's epic poem John Brown's Body (1928), so here it is:

American muse, whose strong and diverse heart
So many men have tried to understand
But only made it smaller with their art,
Because you are as various as your land,

As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers,
Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows,
As native as the shape of Navajo quivers,
And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.

Swift runner, never captured or subdued,
Seven-branched elk beside the mountain stream,
That half a hundred hunters have pursued
But never matched their bullets with the dream,

Where the great huntsmen failed, I set my sorry
And mortal snare for your immortal quarry.

You are the buffalo-ghost, the broncho-ghost
With dollar-silver in your saddle-horn,
The cowboys riding in from Painted Post,
The Indian arrow in the Indian corn,

And you are the clipped velvet of the lawns
Where Shropshire grows from Massachusetts sods,
The grey Maine rocks - and the war-painted dawns
That break above the Garden of the Gods.

The prairie-schooners crawling toward the ore
And the cheap car, parked by the station-door.

Where the skyscrapers lift their foggy plumes
Of stranded smoke out of a stony mouth
You are that high stone and its arrogant fumes,
And you are ruined gardens in the South

And bleak New England farms, so winter-white
Even their roofs look lonely, and the deep
The middle grainland where the wind of night
Is like all blind earth sighing in her sleep.

A friend, an enemy, a sacred hag
With two tied oceans in her medicine-bag.

They tried to fit you with an English song
And clip your speech into the English tale.
But, even from the first, the words went wrong,
The catbird pecked away the nightingale.

The homesick men begot high-cheekboned things
Whose wit was whittled with a different sound
And Thames and all the rivers of the kings
Ran into Mississippi and were drowned.

They planted England with a stubborn trust.
But the cleft dust was never English dust.

Stepchild of every exile from content
And all the disavouched, hard-bitten pack
Shipped overseas to steal a continent
With neither shirts nor honor to their back.

Pimping grandee and rump-faced regicide,
Apple-cheeked younkers from a windmill-square,
Puritans stubborn as the nails of Pride,
Rakes from Versailles and thieves from County Clare,

The black-robed priests who broke their hearts in vain
To make you God and France or God and Spain.

These were your lovers in your buckskin-youth.
And each one married with a dream so proud
He never knew it could not be the truth
And that he coupled with a girl of cloud.

And now to see you is more difficult yet
Except as an immensity of wheel
Made up of wheels, oiled with inhuman sweat
And glittering with the heat of ladled steel.

All these you are, and each is partly you,
And none is false, and none is wholly true.

So how to see you as you really are,
So how to suck the pure, distillate, stored
Essence of essence from the hidden star
And make it pierce like a riposting sword.

For, as we hunt you down, you must escape
And we pursue a shadow of our own
That can be caught in a magician's cape
But has the flatness of a painted stone.

Never the running stag, the gull at wing,
The pure elixir, the American thing.

And yet, at moments when the mind was hot
With something fierier than joy or grief,
When each known spot was an eternal spot
And every leaf was an immortal leaf,

I think that I have seen you, not as one,
But clad in diverse semblances and powers,
Always the same, as light falls from the sun,
And always different, as the differing hours.

Yet, through each altered garment that you wore,
The naked body, shaking the heart's core.

All day the snow fell on that Eastern town
With its soft, pelting, little, endless sigh
Of infinite flakes that brought the tall sky down
Till I could put my hands in the white sky

And taste cold scraps of heaven on my tongue
And walk in such a changed and luminous light
As gods inhabit when the gods are young.
All day it fell. And when the gathered night

Was a blue shadow cast by a pale glow
I saw you then, snow-image, bird of the snow.

And I have seen and heard you in the dry
Close-huddled furnace of the city street
When the parched moon was planted in the sky
And the limp air hung dead against the heat.

I saw you rise, red as that rusty plant,
Dizzied with lights, half-mad with senseless sound,
Enormous metal, shaking to the chant
Of a triphammer striking iron ground.

Enormous power, ugly to the fool,
And beautiful as a well-handled tool.

These, and the memory of that windy day
On the bare hills, beyond the last barbed wire,
When all the orange poppies bloomed one way
As if a breath would blow them into fire,

I keep forever, like the sea-lion's tusk
The broken sailor brings away to land,
But when he touches it, he smells the musk,
And the whole sea lies hollow in his hand.

So, from a hundred visions, I make one,
And out of darkness build my mocking sun.

And should that task seem fruitless in the eyes
Of those a different magic sets apart
To see through the ice-crystal of the wise
No nation but the nation that is Art,

Their words are just. But when the birchbark-call
Is shaken with the sound that hunters make
The moose comes plunging through the forest-wall
Although the rifle waits beside the lake.

Art has no nations - but the mortal sky
Lingers like gold in immortality.

This flesh was seeded from no foreign grain
But Pennsylvania and Kentucky wheat,
And it has soaked in California rain
And five years tempered in New England sleet

To strive at last, against an alien proof
And by the changes of an alien moon,
To build again that blue, American roof
Over a half-forgotten battle-tune

And call unsurely, from a haunted ground,
Armies of shadows and the shadow-sound.

In your Long House there is an attic-place
Full of dead epics and machines that rust,
And there, occasionally, with casual face,
You come awhile to stir the sleepy dust;

Neither in pride nor mercy, but in vast
Indifference at so many gifts unsought,
The yellowed satins, smelling of the past,
And all the loot the lucky pirates brought.

I only bring a cup of silver air,
Yet, in your casualness, receive it there.

Receive the dream too haughty for the breast,
Receive the words that should have walked as bold
As the storm walks along the mountain-crest
And are like beggars whining in the cold.

The maimed presumption, the unskilful skill,
The patchwork colors, fading from the first,
And all the fire that fretted at the will
With such a barren ecstasy of thirst.

Receive them all - and should you choose to touch them
With one slant ray of quick, American light,
Even the dust will have no power to smutch them,
Even the worst will glitter in the night.

If not - the dry bones littered by the way
May still point giants toward their golden prey.

Most of you probably didn't read the entire Invocation. I've had to read it three times to understand it. Basically, the poet calls upon the unnamed American muse - which he compares to a seven-branched elk, a buffalo-ghost, a broncho-ghost, a running stag, a gull at wing, and a mysterious bird of the snow, all of which he is actively pursuing, in effect, hunting - in hope that this muse will aid him, "So [that], from a hundred visions, I make one, / And out of darkness build my mocking sun." By "mocking," he doesn't mean that he is ridiculing the theme he has chosen. Rather, he means that he hopes to imitate the sun that lights "a hundred visions." Benét celebrates America's diversity, but he is no multiculturalist, for he seeks the completion of e pluribus unum ("Out of many, one"), not the division of ex uno, plures ("Out of one, many"). That's the sun that unifies the manifold visions.

Benét is not uncritical, for does refer to the European settlers as "Shipped overseas to steal a continent." And his poem is about slavery . . .

Back to Benét: References to America in John Brown's Body

Tragic Prelude (1938–1940)
John Steuart Curry
Wikipedia

I actually saw this mural when I visited Topeka, Kansas with Sun-Ae and my older brother way back around 1993. The image of a gigantic John Brown makes him to be a force of nature like the fiercely whirling tornado and the wildly raging fire in the painting's background.

Anyway, in line with my investigation into Stephen Vincent Benét's 'Americanism' for the upcoming conference on "Literature and National Community," I was wondering how many references there are to America in Benét's poem John Brown's Body, first from the "Invocation":

American muse, whose strong and diverse heart
So many men have tried to understand
But only made it smaller with their art,
Because you are as various as your land . . .

Never the running stag, the gull at wing,
The pure elixir, the American thing . . .

To strive at last, against an alien proof
And by the changes of an alien moon,
To build again that blue, American roof
Over a half -forgotten battle-tune . . .

Receive them all and should you choose to touch them
With one slant ray of quick, American light,
Even the dust will have no power to smutch them,
Even the worst will glitter in the night . . .

That's four references. Now from "Prelude: The Slaver":

His hand made the outflung motion of a sower
And the mate, staring, seemed to hear the slight
Patter of fallen seeds on fertile ground,
Black, shining seeds, robbed from a black king's storehouse,
Falling and falling on American earth
With light, inexorable patter and fall,
To strike, lie silent, quicken . . .

That's one reference. Several passages from the long poem itself:

The bearded faces look strange
In the old daguerreotypes: they should be the faces
Of prosperous, small-town people, good sons and fathers,
Good horse-shoe pitchers, good at plowing a field,
Good at swapping stories and good at praying,
American wheat, firm-rooted, good in the ear.
There is only one whose air seems out of the common,
Oliver Brown. That face has a masculine beauty
Somewhat like the face of Keats . . .

A Mr. Brua, one of Brown's prisoners,
Strolled out from the unguarded prison-room
Into the bullets, lifted Stevens up,
Carried him over to the old hotel
They called the Wager House, got a doctor for him,
And then strolled back to take his prisoner's place
With Colonel Washington and the scared rest.
I know no more than this of Mr. Brua
But he seems curiously American . . .

When the news of Beckham's death spread from bar to bar,
It was like putting loco-weed in the whiskey,
The mob came together at once, the American mob,
They mightn't be able to take Brown's last little fort
But there were two prisoners penned in the Wager House . . .

One need not weep romantic tears for them,
But when the last moonshiner buys his radio,
And the last, lost, wild-rabbit of a girl
Is civilized with a mail-order dress,
Something will pass that was American
And all the movies will not bring it back . . .

Call up the American names,
Kagi, the self-taught scholar, quiet and cool,
Stevens, the cashiered soldier, bawling his song,
Dangerfield Newby, the freed Scotch-mulatto,
Watson and Oliver Brown and all the hard-dying . . .

Singing at night against the banjo-moon
That you will be a match for any song
Sung by old, populous nations in the past,
And stand like hills against the American sky,
And lay your black spear down by Roland's horn . . .

And with these things, bury the purple dream
Of the America we have not been . . .

That's seven references. Looks like twelve references all told. Not many, especially for an epic poem, but I was relying on a search function, which can miss a misspelling (I caught one that it missed). The call to the American muse is full of patriotic fervor, but many of the other instances of American references are neutral or even critical, as you can see in these passages even without a context.

I'll look more closely at the invocation tomorrow.

Stephen Vincent Benét: National Literature?

Stephen Vincent Benét

Wikipedia

I am scheduled to give a talk of 15 to 20 minutes about "literature and the national community" on September 26th, so I'm thinking about some of the influences of American literature on my own writing, for example, a story about the devil by Stephen Vincent Benét. In Jackson J. Benson's book Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, we find a remark about Benét:

Benet (author of John Brown's Body, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Listen to the People) was interested in native materials and the importance of bringing forth (as Emerson had advocated a century earlier) a uniquely national literature divorced from the influences of Europe. (Benson, pages 64-65)

The so-called "influences of Europe" alludes to a long-held American belief that Europe was corrupt and corrupting. The story titled "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was about powerful patriotism, a strong love of country, so strong that it could even defeat the devil. Of this powerful patriotism, John Griffith - writing the entry on "Stephen Vincent Benét, 1898–1943" for The Poetry Foundation - informs us:

From his earliest years, Benét developed a taste for romantic, melodramatic, and heroic fiction and poetry, a sympathetic observer's interest in America's regional cultures, and an old-fashioned devotion to domestic and patriotic values[,] . . . . his patriotic love of the United States . . . [stemming from his appreciation of America's] vital complex of culturally distinct regions and heritages."

I'll have to give this issue a lot more thought, perhaps by looking back at Emerson's call for a national literature . . .

The Vautour-Hodges Theorem: Nobel Prize-Worthy Formula Nearly Formulated!

Google Images

Over at the Marmot's Hole is a thread discussing the relative friendliness of nations. I wasn't planning to participate in that discussion, but the cogs of my mental processes were jolted into motion through a query by Douglas Vautour:

DV: I would like to know what the scientific unit of measurement for 'friendliness' is.

HJH: The objective scientific unit for measuring "Apparent Friendliness" is "one smile," but the number of smiles in a particular year must be divided by the total quantity of a country's "Nationalism" for an adjusted measure of "Real Friendliness."

DV: Put that into an oversimplified mathematical-looking formula, and we'll get our PhDs for sure. We can call it the Vautour-Hodges Theorem. We'll make tens!

HJH: Sounds good to me! If you'll merely quantify "Nationalism," we'll be in the running for a Nobel prize!

DV: N(personal)=(# of times you can sing the national anthem in a metric hour)*(# of immigrants you've had deported in the previous 12 months+1), reported in units of renditions x people/hour, commonly known as an 'arizona'. True Fun Fact!: You have to have at least 560 ari to become a Minute Man. The more you know, huh?

HJH: Now, we're making progress. I concede your mathematical capacity exceeds my own. I see what you mean in your comment, but I have a question or two. Why the "12 months+1" rather than just "12 months"? That's my substantive query. What operation does the asterisk stand for? Multiplication? That's my procedural query. Yours in Nobelity!

DV: If you've never deported anyone, you'll get a score of 0, no matter how many times you can sing the national anthem in an hour, if you don't have the plus 1. and * is multiplication. Finally, my degree comes in handy.

HJH: Excellent! Now, since you're the far better mathematician, you may have the honor of putting the entire expression into a mathematical formula expressing "Real Friendliness"!

DV: I think I'm going to need government funding to pursue this further. 100,000 should do nicely.

HJH: Good idea, but since this is joint research, we'll need more like 1,000,000 . . . each. Travel expenses and photocopying, that sort of thing . . .

The Vautour-Hodges Theorem expressing "Real Friendliness" as a number is merely two million US currency-units distant from the moment that grant is granted! Nobel Prize, here we come!

Europe's Integration Problems

Dani Rodrik

Homepage

A year ago last fall, as some may remember, I taught a course on European integration, focusing on cultural issues, mainly, but touching upon some economic and political points, e.g., the Euro as common currency without the equivalent of America's Federal Reserve system to oversee a common monetary policy and without a political center to make fiscal policy. Not that I foresaw any of the current difficulties -- I am too ignorant of economics for that. Others predicted such risks, of course, and the contemporary economic problems in Europe have a way of focusing one's mind, so I've learned to appreciate reading what economists write, even taking a certain grim pleasure -- though not shadenfreude -- in their vocabulary of misery:

So, let's say you have mastered the euro zone concept of "financial contagion." Maybe you even know a thing or two about the euro "doom loop," in which sickly banks and indebted governments threaten to drag each other down a death spiral.

Time now to learn a new buzzword, one that captures the anxieties of those seeking long-term stability for the euro currency union: "trilemma."

The term, coined a dozen years ago by a Harvard University economist writing about the global economy, has come to encapsulate the awkward political options confronting the 17 euro zone countries.

To make the currency union work for the long haul, euro countries' heads of state have generally concluded that they must more fully integrate their economies. But within their own countries, the political leaders have only shallow support for that idea, if not outright resistance, from voters.

According to the trilemma theory, drawn in part from studies of the economic crises of 1930s and 1940s, it is possible to have two of three things: deep economic integration, democratic politics and autonomous nation-states.

But under the theory, it is not possible to have all three.

Lovely terminology: financial contagion, doom loop, trilemma. And ever notice how the word "terminology" sounds so . . . terminal? As though the end is near? But to get back to the trilemma noted by Stephen Castle in this article, "Euro Zone Nations Wrestle With a 'Trilemma'" (New York Times, July 6, 2012). This trilemma has been articulated by the above-depicted Dani Rodrik, Harvard Economist, who also proposes a resolution:

So how does Mr. Rodrik, the Harvard economist, propose that Europe resolve its trilemma?

A solution, in his view, might involve giving Greek, Spanish and Italian voters a greater say over euro zone decisions through a transnational system of democracy.

"This would be something like the U.S. federal system . . . in which the federal government doesn't bail out state governments but looks after residents of Florida, California, etc. directly because they are represented through their congressmen and senators."

He might have added that the bicameral American federal system offers a democratic compromise in return for the loss of individual, autonomous nation-state sovereignty. Each state would have both 'congressmen' and 'senators' who represent the people of their respective nations. Moreover, the 'senators,' who constitute the upper chamber of the bicameral legislature, would retain for each state a degree of state authority (not quite autonomy, of course) and a measure of state power even for states with small populations, so as to not let them be swallowed up in the political system by the democratic power of states with large populations.

But this doesn't so much resolve the trilemma (if a resolution means retaining all three horns) as offer a compromise in return for the loss of nation-state autonomy, and individual European nations might be unwilling to accept that.

Scott Burgeson on Korea's Anti-Democratic Left

2008 Anti-FTA Protests

(Image from Wikipedia)

Long-time Korea resident Scott Burgeson has published an online article, "A Stranger in Chongno" (hat tip, Robert Koehler), analyzing the anti-democratic character of the Leftist street protests of 2008, which were aimed at reversing the Free Trade Agreement between South Korea and the United States and at bringing down the pro-American Lee Myung-bak administration. Burgeson's explication of the Korean Left's irrational anti-Americanism is particularly persuasive because he himself is on the Left and in fact started out covering the protests as a sympathizer, a position made clear in a letter to the International Herald Tribune (cf. NYT) on June 19, 2008:

As a long-term American resident of South Korea, I have often been perplexed by extreme manifestations of Korean nationalism on both sides of the demilitarized zone. However, I think Philip Bowring missed the mark in 'A potent, troubling nationalism' (Views, June, 16), by overstating the anti-American and nationalistic aspects of protests over resumption of U.S. beef imports in South Korea.

Fears of beef tainted with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE -- while legitimate to a certain extent -- were merely the spark that set off a much wider firestorm across the Korean Peninsula.

In effect, U.S. beef was used as a kind of stealth weapon by opponents of the newly installed president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, in order to put a check on his neo-liberal policies, which include the privatization of numerous state companies and services.

Speaking as someone who has attended the protests daily, they are largely about internal Korean politics and social divisions, with nary a whiff of anti-U.S. sentiment to them.

As a regular reader of the IHT and also a long-time resident of Korea paying close attention to the anti-beef protests, my reaction at the time was one of incredulity, and I wondered how Mr. Burgeson could be so blind. Well, eventually, so did he. His article serves the double purpose of explicating not only the Korean Left's unreasonable blindness but also how his own eyes were opened.

Burgeson's article is fascinating but a hard read. Most difficult for many readers will be the liberal sprinkling of Korean expressions throughout the text -- in Korea's own Hangul alphabet! Granted, these are mostly translated in footnotes, but few readers will be able to wade through them without losing patience and giving up. Second in difficulty is the heavily theory-laden character of Burgeson's writing, even somewhat distractingly overtheorized. If you're not up to snuff on critical theory, you'll find his analysis nearly impenetrable. This doesn't mean that his writing is abstract or stilted. Indeed, he has a tough, vigorous style that kept my attention. Personally, I enjoyed much of the theoretical aspect (a quirk of mine) and thought that some of the material on myth worked fairly well -- though I wonder if Benedict Anderson might not have been more relevant than Roland Barthes. Nevertheless, I learned something about Barthes on myth, and that appeals to the historian of ideas in me.

Where Burgeson really stumbles, I think, is in the analogy that he makes between the anti-US beef protests in Korea and the pro-war sentiment in America leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Burgeson finds in both a profound complex of deception and irrationality. I agree that the anti-beef protests were deeply deceptive and irrational, but the pro-war sentiment seems to me to have been fundamentally sincere and rational, which isn't to say that I was pro-war. Let me explain. Even though the chant "Bush Lied, People Died" has become a meme of the Left, I don't think that the Bush Administration did lie about its intelligence on Saddam. Rather, the intelligence was faulty and incomplete, as intelligence often is. The mistaken conclusion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was understandable, for the man acted like he had something to hide. He did in fact have something to hide, to wit, the fact that he had nothing, as Burgeson acknowledges:

Saddam Hussein could not have simply come straight out and admitted in public to having no active WMDs program, since such a naked admission would have left his country dangerously vulnerable to his enemies in the region, Iran most of all.

Absolutely correct . . . in hindsight. That explains why the weapons inspectors could find no hard evidence but simultaneously felt compelled to keep searching. Saddam had nothing, but acted like he had something. Prior to the invasion, the belief that Saddam had WMDs was reasonable and widely held, not just among conservatives, and remained to be disproven. I thought that he had them, though I was also in favor of continuing the weapons inspections and not in favor of invasion to rid Saddam of WMDs unless there were no other choice.

The anti-beef protests, however, were based upon 'evidence' that was demonstrably false at the very moment that the 'evidence' was cited. Belief that US beef posed a high risk of Mad Cow Disease in human beings who ate it was clearly, empirically unreasonable.

Burgeson's analogy thus appears flawed to me. A comparison to the current "Tea Party" has been suggested instead by other readers, citing the widespread "Birther" views among those attracted to its protests (or the belief that Obama is a "Secret Muslim). I suppose that Burgeson's Iraq analogy, however, could serve to establish his street cred among the Korean Left and leave them more open to considering his critique of their irrationality . . . though that same irrationality might preserve them against any rational critique even from others on the Left.

Burgeson's article, as I've noted, is a hard slog, but it's worth the intellectual hike and serves as a manifestation of his basic honesty and willingness to follow pretty much where the facts lead him. He might be rather overstating his case in arguing that the hard Left leading the protests was aiming an an coup d'état (why not a revolution instead?), but he is surely on the mark in noting this Left's undemocratic attempt to bring down the then recently elected Lee Myung-bak government.

"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?"

Park Wan-suh in Colonial Modernity in Korea

Colonial Modernity in Korea

(Image from Amazon.com)

In ranging about the internet yesterday in search of Pakchŏk Village, Park Wan-suh's birthplace, I came upon an article about another of her novels, this one in the book pictured above, Colonial Modernity in Korea, edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson. The article, by Kyeong-Hee Choi, is titled as follows:

Neither Colonial nor National: The Making of the "New Woman" in Pak Wansŏ's "Mother's Stake 1"

Note yet another variant on the romanization of her name: Pak Wansŏ. This sort of problem happens all the time with Korean names, and one must remain alert to possible variants on a name or else miss out on translated books and literary-critical articles. I'll stick to Park Wan-suh except when quoting.

At any rate, the novel treated -- Mother's Stake 1 (Ômma ûi Malttuk 1, 엄마의 말뚝 1) -- is the first in a trilogy, each volume of which is distinguished merely by a number: 1 (1980); 2 (1981); and 3 (1991). I note it here because it seems to be much the same story as Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, albeit perhaps more 'fictionalized'.

Anyway, Kyeong-Hee Choi makes the observation -- obvious also to any reader of the Shinga book -- that Park Wan-suh's trilogy hardly mentions any Japanese characters. Park seems not to share the intense nationalism with which so many Koreans now look back upon the colonial period, seeing constant oppression everywhere, but rather presents a more complex picture of colonial Korea. Choi cites Anne McClintock at the onset of her article, perhaps as representative of Park's apparent neglect of Korean nationalism:

All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all dangerous . . . . Nowhere has feminism in its own right been allowed to be more than the maidservant to nationalism.

Park, however, also isn't explicitly feminist, at least not in Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, though her autobiography -- and moreso many of her fictional works, apparently -- leaves room for feminist interpretations.

I suppose that one could even frame Park's oeuvre in nationalist terms if one wished, but that would take a more nuanced nationalism than many Koreans are willing to concede when looking back upon the colonial past.

But I'll leave things at that for now.

My Beef about the Protests in Korea: A Rambling Rant

Mad Cow Protest

Neomercantilism in South Korea

(Image from Wikipedia)

I haven't written much about the ongoing Korean protests against American beef on the fear that it contains the prions that cause mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans.

I didn't want to enter the fray because even though I consider the fears irrational, given the extreme unlikelihood of contracting the disease, I didn't have the energy to collect all the wild, baseless rumors about American beef and look into all of the scientific details that would refute them.

A couple of weeks ago, a student asked me what I thought about the beef protests. I replied that the protests weren't really about American beef but about the left trying to manipulate young people in order to damage Lee Myung-bak and his rightwing policies. I added that since so many middle- and high-school students were protesting, they were likely being urged to do so by their leftwing teachers.

I didn't have any proof of this, but I strongly suspected it, for I know from experience how nationalistic and anti-American the leftist high-school teachers are here in Korea. When I was teaching at Hanshin University, I began teaching an evening class in the fall of 2001 for high-school teachers who were seeking a higher degree in education to enhance their teaching careers, and though I knew nothing of their politics or of the teachers' union and its rigorously leftist views, I soon discovered that many of the high-school teachers in my class were strongly anti-American. I've seen this elsewhere in the world, so I ignored it the way that one learns to ignore static when the radio reception is poor.

However, in the class following the 9/11 attacks, the static became much of the broadcast as several of the high-school teachers in my class expressed open satisfaction at the death and destruction. One woman described with a smile how her own husband, also a teacher, had smiled joyously as he watched the Twin Towers fall.

I listened to all of this without betraying any emotion, for I wanted to see how far this would go. There was talk of the 'American Empire' falling, and several in my class seemed ready to support Bin Laden as the American military geared up for war in Afghanistan.

Some of the teachers disagreed, I should add, arguing that the Al Qaeda attack was unjustified.

Most, however, seemed either to hold viscerally anti-American views -- probably stemming from their experience as protesters during the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, when they blamed the United States for its support of Park -- or to care little that innocent Americans and other foreigners had suffered. Whatever their motives, those with anti-American views appeared hostile to other opinions, so I didn't bother to debate them, but I decided that I would offer a talk on 9/11 sometime in a more-official format, and that decision ultimately bore fruit as a presentation at Hanshin University on the religious roots of 9/11, which I reworked as a published paper: "Striving to Understand 9/11."

Although my Masters class didn't attend, for a year had passed by the time that I gave my talk, which took place on September 11, 2002, the reaction of many in attendance seemed scripted from anti-American positions carved in stone, especially given that this was after a traffic accident in the summer of 2002 in which a US soldier on duty ran over two teenage girls in his tank during military maneuvers because he couldn't see them around the curve as he raced along. Students in middle schools, high schools, and universities, along with the greater Korean left, had protested and spread vicious rumors about the soldier and the US military, calling the soldier a "murderer" and insisting that the 'accident' had been intentional and had been carried out because the US didn't like the leftist policies of President Roh Moo-hyun. I know this personally because that's what one student -- with the agreement of others -- insisted when one of my undergraduate classes wanted to discuss the deaths of the two girls.

From experiences like these with Korean anti-Americanism, I had little taste for arguing over the quality of American beef. I did discuss the issue with my wife, however, and seem to have convinced her that since only three people have died in America from vCJD out of some 300 million Americans, then one has, roughly, only one chance in 100 million of contracting vCJD from American beef -- even assuming that the three who died had contracted the disease from American beef, which they probably did not. I argued that attending the protests against American beef was far, far riskier to one's health than eating American beef. I added that Koreans don't even know if their own, locally produced beef is safer than American beef because they don't test for the disease. But the clincher to my arguments was that American beef is only one-fifth the cost of Korean beef and that many Koreans have to go without beef because they cannot afford the price, but that if American beef were allowed in, these same Koreans could afford beef at a low cost and use their extra money for something else, which would be good for the Korean economy.

"Why are Korean farmers so special?" I asked. "Shouldn't someone be thinking of the Korean consumers, too?"

My wife, being a Korean consumer, suddenly, and fully, agreed with me. I was rather surprised, but it sometimes happens this way.

That's about all that I have to say on the topic, but if you want some logic on American beef, go to Andy Jackson's article, "Rumors, Fear and US Beef," in the Korea Times (6/16/2008), and if you want some information on Korea's anti-American nationalism, go to Philip Bowring's article, "A potent, troubling nationalism," in the International Herald Tribune (6/16/2008).

I just hope that the nationalist emotions don't get out of hand in this country, or we may see more xenophobic attacks of the life-threatening sort that Matt Lamers experienced.