Iulian Boldea

Japanese literature-identity and intercultural memory

Part I
Preliminaries. Identity, memory, intercultural
As we have seen before, the communication between cultures assumes dialogue, interaction,
conceptual interference, putting into play multiple assessment tools, comparison, confirmation or
invalidation, relying even on an transfer of identity paradigms. In the process of intercultural
communication, there exists a several numbers of pressures, influences or variables, such as
communicative intention, individual identity patterns, identity accents, the profile and the
number of actors, or the substance of the communicative process that are exercised over the
cultural identity. Tzvetan Todorov believes, that the difference derives its legitimacy precisely
from the individuals identity affinites resources: the rethoric of difference, seen as the
appearance of the eulogies of the plurality, its not just a opportunist camouflage toward an
aspiration to identity ... Under the mask of fighting for difference and plurality, they want to
build smaller groups but more homogeneous and armonious ... The difference its not an absolute
value, but to learn to live together is, however, better than the fearing closure of ones true
identity. Being forced to talk with people different from you, make himself to no longer believe
that he is the center of the universe, or that he is important. He wil develop a certain amount of
tolerance, while enriching his spirit. Actually, the difference is good because it will open us to
universality: in this regard, Rousseau said, we must look for differences, in order to find the
properties.
In the process of shaping the identity, memory plays a crucial role and the deconstruction
approach is in itself, a deconstruction of systems and mechanisms of cultural memory, through
the reassessment of difference and otherness and also the gaps that are found between reality and
language. The deconstruction process promoted by Derrida further a logical deconstruction of
dichotomous thinking and language, all this through detaching, identifying and analyzing
discoursive strategies, by moving the reference system and the game strategies and meaning,
thus stimulating the dynamism of differencies, as an injure to centralism, entranced identity,
justify, however, concepts such as difference, otherness, marginality or interference.For example,
as Sorin Alexandrescu notice, Romanian culture it belongs to a cultural area of border, a
boundery of interstitial interference, but not an area of exclusion, border or periphery, but also
one of dynamism and interference, of dialog and beneficial influences of fruitful meetings: If
exclusion has as a basis of comparison a single center, the interference wears not only of ( at
least) two centers, but also by its own dynamics. Indeed, the interference cannot be reduced to a
double exclusion, because it implies a conflict often violent between several sets of rules derived
from the respective centers, an identity of its own tragic, based on deep dilemmas, their success
strategy, of attack and counterattack, a local theme and a reservoir of values and alternative
ideas, as well as a spirited creativity, ready to dash on the big scene. If exclusion implies
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inaction, fatalism, low intellectual creation and high consumption of a single culture, that of
external center, then interference implies dynamism, ambition, assertiveness, lofty creation,
adaptation to several cultures. Which image fit for us? Traditionally, we have been seen and we
have seen us as marginals. I propose here interference as an altervative dynamic, proud, but also
active, to exclusion.
The intercultural process of awareness is supported by works imagology, especially of the
one compared. Compared imagology studies the way making imaging, but also the way they
articulates in intercultural dialog by pressing the context which it has generated, but also on other
cultural spaces. At the same time, imagology proposes to clarify also the role and functionality of
literary of cultural images, in the durability of intercultural dialog. Hugo Dyserinch emphasizes
the role of imagology in reducing the nationalist feeling, to the extent that imagology is not a
part of a thinking imbued by nationalist ideology, but rather helps to eliminate this ideology.
The imagological viewpoint found, in Europes cultural space, a prolific field of investigation.
Relations between East and West, the ratios, sometimes tensed, sometimes relaxed, between the
Center and the edge, between centrality and boundary, this aliens images, represented sharp
constant from the current imagological speech, represented by famous names such as Michel
Foucault, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak or Homi Bhabha.
The multicultural social framework is, in a specific way, a field dimmable forces, with
disseminated power centers, with returns of the periphery over the dominating trends of the
Center etc., in which the dominant speech is counterbalanced by exclusion speeches, including
the imagology space, which favor, in its theoretical joints, but also in its materialization, the limit
to the detriment of centrality privileges. In the context of intercultural communication, the
theories about difference have been favored by fertile reflections about the identity condition that
was within postmodernism. Postmodernism is, moreover, an orientation that puts an emphasis on
difference, polycentrism and ecletism, reflecting, in its structure, about the transformation of
current world, by temptation to open to pluralism, ambiguity and a multicultural world. The
paradoxical condition is exactly why the European area is related to the ratio between the center
and the edge, between the global paradigm advantages and the conservation of cultural and
national identity. For these reasons, the intercultural communication implies, first of all, having
access to an identity condition permeable to differences, to a changed speech, to ways of thinking
and knowledge belonging to representatives of other cultures. In this context, the modern destiny
of Japan has been marked, essentially speaking, by the intercultural dialogue, revelations and
avatars of globalization, the openness toward the West and its values.
Be continued in our next number