Memory, Identity
and Politics of Memory
Ryszard Nycz
The Other Like Me.
Three-and-a-Half Voices to the Theoretically and Practically Valid Problem
D O I :i o .i 8 3 i 8 / t d .2 o i 6 . e n .i .2
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C ogn izin g the other, u s vs oth ers or our ow n vs s o m e one else's w ith in a divided group, along w ith processes o f diffu sional intercultural perm eation, hybridizing and fUsing the heterogeneous (thus conditioning not only the im itative and dependent, b u t also the origin al and sp e cific) - undoubtedly, these w ere the m o st fundam ental problem s for the hum anities and culture o f the previous century. It is not w ithout reason that th ey have given rise to a w ide range o f studies, com m entaries, philosophical and theoretical conceptualizations. It has long been obvi
ous that debate over these m atters has not been restricted to academ ia, but first and forem ost in the cultural arena w ith all its con flictin g historical, political and social is sues. One could say th at th ey constitute one o f the few dom ains in w h ich the h u m an ities, b road ly understood, can carry out research w hich is not only cognitively and substantially valuable, but also potentially good and so cially useful, depending on the effects o f im plem enting program m es w hich are (socially) corrective, form ational and educational in nature.
Ryszard Nycz - Professor at the Institute o f Literary Research o f the Polish Academ y of Sciences and Chair of the Departm ent of Literary Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Jagiellonian University. He is the Editor-in-Chief o f Second Texts.
Ordinary m ember of the Polish Academy o f Sciences and corresponding m em ber o f the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Com m ittee on Literature Studies, and The Committee on Cultural Studies o f the Polish Academ y of Sciences.
Chairman o f the Editorial Board of
"Nowa Humanistyka"
publishing series.
He recently published: Poetyka doświadczenia. Teoria - nowoczesność - literatura (2012).
Contact: ryszard.
nycz@uj.edu.pl
The trouble, as w e know, is th at the tw o m ain approaches developed in this field cam e to a deadlock. The first approach w as the classically m odern program m e o f cognizing the other in the culturally un iversal categories e s
tab lish ed b y E u ro -A m erican anthropology o f the first h a lf o f the 20th cen tury. The in d isp u tab le g re a tn e ss o f its ach ievem en ts can n o t con ceal the fact that the anthropologist, playing here the role o f an observer, translated specific form s and texts o f local culture into the “u n iversal” descriptive g lo s sary w h ich w as in fact the glo ssary o f E u ro-A m erican anth ropology and its h isto rical cognition. In the course o f tim e, th is E urocentric versio n o f u n i
v e rsal and objective cogn ition started to reveal clearer featu res o f kn ow l- e d ge-p o w er, resu ltin g in the d o m in atio n an d su b ord in ation o f the other.
U n d erstan d in g b y “lean in g over” and o b servin g the d istin ctiven ess o f the Other, disregarding the noble art o f persuasion in favour o f the know ledge- g ain in g value o f cognizing the other also d isclosed the superior, patron iz
in g p erspective w h ich in herently creates a hierarch y w h ile takin g aw ay the other's voice to speak on th eir ow n behalf; it stigm atized and m arginalized the other.
In the second h a lf o f the 20th century, the critique o f the cryp to -E u ro - centric cognitive u n iversalism stim ulated the developm ent o f another in flu ential m odel: m ulticulturalism w hich also had its tim e o f fam e and success;
the tim e w h ich alread y b elo n gs to the p ast. I f the fo rm er ann ounced that
“everyone is alm ost the sam e, but not quite” (paraphrasing the w ell-k n o w n fo rm u la b y H. B h abh a), the latter p ro po sed a p ro gram m e b a se d on the to le ran t-p lu ralistic (and relativistic) approach th at - sim p ly - ‘p eople are different' because there are different cultures in w h ich th ey participate and different role m odels and experiences defining their identity. A s a result, the p ro gram o f m u lticulturalism w as plann ed to support practices w h ich w ere to strengthen and develop the id en tity o f in dividu als and com m unities (no m atter h o w th ey w ere un derstood) and n ot th ose con sidered “u n iv ersa lly”
valuable and w orth prom oting from an external perspective. W hereas univer- salistic claim s to learn the truth generated cognitive disputes and id eo lo g i
cal conflicts in the form er Eurocentric approach, the latter m odel w as aim ed at sup pressin g these conflicts b y replacing disputes about beliefs w ith d is
p arities betw een subjective positions and disagreem ents b etw een different view po in ts.1
i I am inspired here by o b se rv atio n s o f W alter Benn M ichaels, K ształt zn aczącego, tran s. Jan Burzyński (Kraków: Korporacja ha!art, 2011) - esp e cia lly ch ap ter P osthistoryzm and Ruth Leys, From Guilt to Sh a m e: A uschw itz a nd A fter (Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press, 2007) - esp. ch ap ter Sh a m e Now.
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I sim plify - m aybe too radically - both approaches and I disregard their n u m erous im portant consequences in order to expose only one aspect com m on to both: un derstanding the other. The first approach leads to deform ing the other's im age in the categories o f dom inant culture. The second one, in p rac
tice, d e sists from attem pting to u n d erstan d the other at all b y elim inating id eological discord, supressin g cognitive in terest itself. A ccord in g to these assum ption s, cultures - sim ilar to h um an experiences - are equal because th e y are in com p arab le, in com m en su rab le. Furtherm ore, as id en tities are not b elie fs - y o u can n ot change th em or argue w ith th em - it's n e ce ssary to learn h o w to tolerate (bear w ith) them . A s long as norm ative (cultural, political, state) system s controlling hum an behaviour effectively fulfil their functions, there is no need to go beyond the requirem ent o f form ally integrat
in g federated enclaves o f ethnic groups or to m ake an effort to un derstan d their aspirations, m otivation s and peculiarities. In effect, the cognitive task is lim ited to recording personal and cultural differences, om itting challenges related to both the processes o f cognitive un derstanding and ethical engage
m ent or responsibility. W hat is w orth noting is that recording differences does not have to have an affirm ative character only - negation, rejection, refusal to u n d erstan d ‘others' p ro blem s' are also p a rt o f the equation. The reverse o f affirm ing cultural differences in m ulticulturalism w ould be refusing to be in terested in the other e xactly b ecau se th ey are the other - not m in e, not ours, but strange - a refusal adequately expressed in the follow ing reaction:
‘it's not m y problem.'
S E P (som ebod y else's problem ) is a category o f the p sych osocial a n a ly sis o f b ehaviou r and attitudes (rich in sp ecialist literature) w h ich h as been popularized in the Polish hum anities m ainly thanks to an excellent w ork Cudze problemy. O ważności tego, co nieważne. Analiza dyskursu publicznego w Polsce [Others’
Problems and the Importance o f What is Unimportant: A n Analysis o f Public Discourse in Poland], edited b y M arek Czyżewski, K inga Dunin and Andrzej Piotrow ski.2 This volum e, initially published 25 years ago, is still very m uch relevant, and it has been recently referred to in num erous posts online under such headlines as: “Im m igrants are not m y problem .” SE P practices functioning in everyday life and in political discourses - id en tified and show n b y the authors - are stim ulated b y three m ain affective m otives: fear, sham e and guilt w h ich m ay result in xenophobic attitudes m anifested now adays through different kinds
2 Cudze problem y. O w ażności tego, co niew ażne. Analiza dyskursu publiczn ego w Polsce, ed.
M arek C zyżew ski, Kinga Dunin, Andrzej C zcibor-Piotrow ski (W arszaw a: W ydaw nictw a A kadem ickie i Profesjonalne, 2010). If not o th erw ise sp ecified all tran slatio n s o f refer
en ced w o rk s are provided by th e tran slator o f th e resp e ctiv e article.
o f m entality and (anti)social behaviour. M erely referring to the subject taken up by today's hum anities and social sciences is not unusual. Here are the first tw o stanzas from Fisz's3 song entitled To nie mój problem [It’s Not M y Problem]11 in w hich both highly hum an istic m odels o f cognition (qu asi-universalistic and identity-related) are filtered through ideas and notions related to popular cul
ture portraying - very convincingly - the ‘habitus' of its typical representative:
There's no truth, only interpretations M y space has four faces
From atom s to molecules The space keeps shrinking Two quarters on the left Two quarters on the right You've got to decide But it's not m y problem But it's not m y problem
Every aspect is correlated You need to be black or white You need to be Batman or Zorro You've got to have pride and honour You've got to have the right opinion But it's not m y problem
But it's not m y problem
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In v ie w o f the dead lock as w e ll as negative con sequ en ces o f th ese tw o a p proaches, let u s observe th at m aybe w e need to look for other in spiration s and solu tion s co n sisten tly b ased on the du alistic th in kin g ab out the re la tio n b etw e e n I and the O ther as separate, auton om ous m on ads. G en erally speaking, I believe that it is n ecessary to re-o rien t this argum entation to ad m it that a crucial and inherent part o f our self-kn ow ledge, m ature se lf-co n sciousness, as w ell as critical self-cognition, w hile belonging to a community, is also our im age in the eyes o f others and the ab ility to adopt the external p oin t o f view , to confront it w ith our cultivated in ternal im age o f ourselves.
3 Fisz is th e s ta g e nam e used by Polish m usician and co m p o ser B artosz W aglew ski.
4 Fisz, „To nie mój problem ,” in Zw ierzę b ez nogi, Em ade, DJ Epron 2 0 11, a c c e sse d February 28, 2017, h ttp ://tek sty.o rg/fisz-em ad e,to -n ie-m o j-p ro b lem ,tek st-p io sen k i.
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I am certain that only this sim ple action, although p erh aps u n easy to carry out, can m ake developm ent o f in tercultural relation s, encou nters and d ia
logues indispensable on a daily b asis, and in the interest o f com m unities and individuals.
M ik h ail B akhtin, w ho is su rely one o f the m o st o rigin al an d relevan t scholars o f 20th cen tu ry literature and culture, offers u s a v e ry u sefu l cat
egory w h ich could help u s reach th is objective. W hat I have in m in d here is
“w nien ach odim o st” (“outsidedness”) - one o f the key concepts in Bakhtin's glo ssary. In h is w o rk ab ou t B akh tin , Tzvetan Todorov su g g e sts th at th is h ard ly tran slatab le term sh ou ld be “in te rn atio n a liz e d ” (by reach in g out to G reek sources) an d called “ exotopy,” w h ile a Polish tra n sla to r D anuta U lick a tra n sla te d it as “n ie w sp ó lo b e c n o sc ” (“n o n co p re se n ce ”). B akh tin in trodu ced th is term in h is w o rk s (probab ly in spired b y Jo h an n es Cohn's
“tran sg rad ien ce”) as early as in the 19 2 0 s, th en frequently u se d it, system atically expanding the spectru m o f its application. T h is tech n ical term d e scribing ‘in tra-lite rary' relatio n s b etw een author and character even tu ally turned into a u n iversal category o f historical cultural anthropology. It occu
pies a w e ll-d e se rve d p osition in contem porary interpretations o f Bakhtin's th e o ry (as w e ll as in the th e o ry o f in terp retation and p o st-co lo n ia l/p o st
dependence studies), w h ich allow s m e to p ass over exam in in g its p rim ary m eanings, that is to tre at it - outside its h isto rical and B akh tinian context - as a valid p ro po sition for the tran sitio n period, a typ e o f bridge or ram p over the abyss o f today's history, politics and m en tal-an d -social attitudes and behaviour.
In the m ost general term s, exotopy is about iden tifyin g the “shifted” p o si
tion o f the experiencing cognizant subject alw ays situated - tem porally, sp a
tially, nationally, and culturally - outside the object o f perception (whether it is another object, subject, community, culture, or him /herself). However, what is m ost im portant is that one should not see this as a w eakness or an obstacle to overcom e (for exam ple, by participation or em pathy), but an inherent fe a
ture o f hum an (self-)cognition , a condition o f authentic un derstanding and a m arker o f inventiveness (creative exploration).
“In u n d erstan d in g,” w ro te Bakhtin, “the m o st sign ifican t m atter is the (tem poral, spatial, and cultural) n o n c o p r e s e n c e o f the cognizing su b ject in relation to w hat he/she w ants to creatively com prehend. Yet, a person is not able to truly see even their ow n appearance or to grasp it fully. No m irror or photograph w ill help him /her w ith that. O nly other people are capable of grasping and un derstanding his/her real appearance, due to both their s p a tia l n on copresence and the fact th at th ey are t h e o t h e r s . [...] Som eone else's culture is only revealed in the eyes o f another culture. [ . ] We ask the other culture new questions w hich it w ouldn't have posed itself, and w e search
through it for answ ers, and the other culture responds, unveiling its n ew a s pects and n ew layers o f m eaning.”
One could say that this view, though originally form ulated, is in fact a clas
sically m odern outlook on the value o f the external point o f view, on looking at o n e se lf or confrontin g the im age o f o n e se lf w ith th at im age reflected in the eyes o f the other, w hich is p art o f that European trad itio n already in iti
ated b y “the strategy o f the O ther” in de M ontesquieu's Persian Letters. W hat is m ore interesting (and less often noticed), however, is that Bakhtin associates it w ith a truly innovative conviction. It leads the scholar to rejecting the idea o f the individual as w ell as a n ational culture as a kind o f a closed container (a v ie w w e owe to rom anticists, such as Schelling, and von Herder's concepts o f culture as a sphere or an island). A s far as the subject is concerned, Bakhtin argues that “one is not given any in ternal area o f independence, [but] one is alw ays on the verge, and delving into oneself, one looks into t h e o t h e r ' s e y e s or sees o n eself w ith the eyes o f the other.” The sam e concerns culture:
“We should not [...] im agine the field of culture as a certain spatial entity w ith boundaries, but also possessin g its internal territory. The field o f culture does n ot have an in ternal territory: it is entirely located on the boundaries. T hey run everyw here, intersect at its every point.”5
L et u s n otice th at from th is p o in t o f view , b ou n d aries b etw e e n w h a t is in tern al and extern al do n o t d istin gu ish an y longer an auton om ous id en tity o f the in dividu al or com m unal w holeness, but on the contrary, th ey run w ithin it, or m ore to the point, they gather in (and som etim es create) its cen
tre. T h is is b ecause, as w h o le n e ss origin ates on the verge, it h as the status o f b eing a border territory w here the external gets internalized, w h ereas the part considered to be m ost interior exposes its external genealogy. I believe th at th is latter id en tity con cept - as exotopy, as a se lf-d iv e rsify in g self, as the internalized Other - not only anticipates key observations o f contem po
rary thought, but it m ay also constitute the legitim ately shared assum ption concerning inter-cultural dialogues. It som ehow elicits (in the interest o f the one w ho understands w ith effective, critical self-cognition) the n ecessity of self-definition , attention, and respect - tow ards the Other. The Other w ho is both w ith in and without.
5 C haracterizing this th read o f Bakhtin's th o u g h t I partly used m y ow n description c o n tained in "Polish Post-Colonial and/or P o st-D ep en d en ce Stu d ies,” Teksty Drugie 1 (2014), special issu e: Postcolonial or P o std ep en d en ce Studies?, a c c e sse d February 28, 2017, h ttp ://tekstyd ru gie.p l/file/fm /D o ku m en ty/t2en _20 14_1w eb C O M B .p d f
Further q u otatio n s from Bakhtin's w o rks: Mikhail Bakhtin, Estetyka tw órczości słow nej, tran s. Danuta Ulicka, ed. Eugeniusz C zap lejew icz (W arszaw a: PIW, 1986), 474; Ibid., 444;
Bakhtin, Problem y literatury i estetyki, tran s. W in cen ty G rajew ski (W arszaw a: Czytelnik, 1982), 26.
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I realize that m y reason in g can be criticized as b ein g u n soph isticated, p ru dential, or even du ll... But even if this is so, I still believe that w hen w e realize or think, in short, about “the other” that he/she is “just like m e,” the barriers of un tran slatab ility o f perspectives, points o f v ie w and experiences disappear or are suspended - the sam e can be said about the politically odd, id eo logi
cally ‘tw isted ' ladder o f hierarchization, dom ination and subordination, and centre-peripheral dichotom ies. C om in g from the sam e source, w hat can be m anaged further is the syndrom e o f xenophobia and the feeling o f one's “d e
ficien cy” w h ich generates reactions: a refusal to offer interest b ased on fear, or open h ostility tow ards otherness, but also sham e (of w ho I am) and guilt (for w hat I did).
The other is like m e - an exotopical id en tity o f the Bakhtinian individual - and culture show s the w ay because our identity, being oneself, m eans b e ing outside o f oneself. In a sense, such a dynam ic represents the p rim ary so cialization, or b roader com m unalization; in the m ean in g o f interactive and reflective dependence on others; in a dim en sio n o f tran scen d in g, o f going
“beyond o n e se lf” in eccentric f a s h i o n . I f the specificity o f m odern co gn i
tion takes the form o f cognizing the other, it is because the real unveils itself to us as the radically other w h om w e are as w ell (as perhaps B ahktin w ould say). Therefore, w h en w e think that w e cognize w ith the cognized, in fact we cognize w ith ourselves. Literature and art have always know n about this - this is w h y th ey have the effect o f the tran sgressive-retroactive nature o f artistic invention: going beyond o n eself w hich gives access to w hat w e have p artici
pated in from the very beginning.
Translation: Marta Skotnicka
