Modern Language Association

Four Views on Ethnicity

Author(s): Linda Hutcheon, Homi K. Bhabha, Daniel Boyarin, Sabine I. Gölz
Source: PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethnicity (Jan., 1998), pp. 28-51
Published by: Modern Language Association
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Four Views
LINDAHUTCHEONis univer-
sity professor of English and
comparative literature at the
University of Toronto, Saint
George Campus. Her most re-
cent books includeIrony'sEdge:
TheTheoryandPoliticsof Irony
(Routledge,1995) and, withMi-
chael Hutcheon,Opera:Disease,
Desire, Death (U of NebraskaP,
1996). Her currentresearchfo-
cuses on rethinkingliteraryhis-
tory using comparative rather
than national models. She is
also continuing her collabora-
tive work on the intersection of
medicine and literary-musical
culture.
28
on Ethnicity
LindaHutcheon
Crypto-Ethnicity
WHEN I WENT from being a Bortolottito being a Hutcheon,my so-
cial and culturalinteractionswithin a predominantlyAnglo-Saxon envi-
ronmentchanged;my ethnic identitybecame encrypted,silenced, unless
articulatedby choice-a pointed lesson in the constructednessof con-
cepts of ethnicity. Like me, Cathy (Notari) Davidson, Marianna (De
Marco) Torgovnick, and Sandra (Mortaro) Gilbert are crypto-Italian
teachersof English. What we do not share,however,is nationality:they
are ItalianAmerican,while I am ItalianCanadian.I thereforemay have
a somewhatdifferentexperienceof ethnicityand its encrypting.'
Withouta melting-potideology or a pluralistnationalidentityto rally
around,Canadians-be they British, Chinese, Italian,Pakistani,or So-
mali-have only the model of officially defined multiculturalismwith
which to constructtheir sense of self-in-nation. I first became awareof
the differentpolitical associations of the word multiculturalin Canada
and the United States duringthe so-called culturewars. While political
denunciationsof multiculturalism-seen as a reconfigurationof national
identityresultingfrom the perceived loss of a single common culture-
were frequentenough in the United States, most often the termwas used
therein a more limited sense to define the dominantideology on college
campuses, which was said to be contaminatedby political correctness.
Dinesh D'Souza was not the only one who worried about the "ethnic
cheerleading"implied in certain curricularchanges (33); Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.,too expressedconcern aboutpotential"ethnicchauvinism"in
the multiculturalacademy ("Studies"288). Some scholars worriedthat
multiculturalism'spolitics of differencemight simply be anotherway of
ensuring white supremacy(Wiegman);others voiced related fears that
interest in ethnic studies would elide the historical realities of race
throughthe use of a Europeanimmigrantparadigmas the masternarra-
tive of difference(San Juan 132).2Nevertheless,in the United States,the
Four ViewsonEthnicity 29

associations of multiculturalismsoon broadenedbeyond race and eth-

nicity to include issues of gender,sexual choice, and occasionallyclass.
In contrast, multiculturalism in Canada is not so much a question
of the canon or of campus politics as a legal matter of national self-
definition. Canadians'self-understandingis in partforcibly defined by
its designationas multipleratherthan single. An early usage of the term
multicultural appears in a 1970 report of the Royal Commission on
Bilingualismand BiculturalismentitledThe CulturalContributionof the
OtherEthnic Groups."Otherethnic groups"referredto all who were not
aboriginal.Fromthis reportcame a 1971 policy statementby PierreEl-
liott Trudeau,Canada'sprimeminister,and in 1988 the Act for the Pres-
ervationand Enhancementof Multiculturalismin Canada.The Canadian
Charterof Rights and Freedoms also articulatesa commitmentto pro-
tecting the nation'smulticulturalheritage.Such legal provisionsare per-
hapstypicalof Canadianpoliticalsociety, which the politicalphilosopher
CharlesTaylorhas characterizedas "morecommittedto collective pro-
vision, over against American society that gives greaterweight to indi-
vidual initiative"(Reconciling 159). In Quebec, as in polyglot (and thus
misnamed)English Canada,there exists a "pluralityof ways of belong-
ing" thatTaylorcalls "deepdiversity"(183).
It is no accident that it was Trudeau,the fierce federalistopponentof
Quebec separation,who formulatedthe policy statementaboutmulticul-
turalismin the early 1970s. Changing Canada'sself-image from bicul-
tural to multicultural was not simply a recognition of a demographic
reality;it had a political purposeand, in some people's eyes, a political
result (see Multiculturalism).On the night of the 1995 separationrefer-
endum, Quebec's premier,JacquesParizeau,lamentedthat the (French)
quebecois chance for independencehad been ruinedby what he contro-
versiallyreferredto as "moneyand the ethnic vote."3It is also no coinci-
dence that national multiculturalpolicies were introducedat the same
time that Quebec was developing its own discourses of decolonization,
derived from francophonetheorists such as Albert Memmi and Frantz
Fanon. For some, these policies still function as implicit barriersto the
recognitionof both quebecois demandsfor independenceand aboriginal
peoples' land claims and desire for self-government.
The novelist Neil Bissoondath, a self-proclaimed assimilated Cana-
dian, has voiced other objections to multiculturalismas official govern-
mentpolicy. In Selling Illusions:The Cultof Multiculturalismin Canada,
Bissoondathwrites thathe does not feel as if he is partof the Trinidadian
communityin Canada,that he moved away from the West Indies to start
a new life, to expand his horizons, to move beyond the confines of his
cultural heritage. Yet not all Canadian immigrants arrive with such
choices and hopes, and many have suffered the displacementof forced
emigration.The ease of acculturationBissoondath experienced has ar-
guably been made possible by the very policies he is attacking:before
1971 Canadawas anything but hospitable to immigrants,especially to
30 Four ViewsonEthnicity

nonwhites.However,Bissoondathis respondingat least in partto the idea

of governmentinterventionin ethnicity and culture,which he regardsas
a personalmatter,and to the reductionof ethnic and racial differenceto
institutionalized,grant-supportedfolklore or, worse, ethnic food festi-
vals and parades.
Historyand geographyconspiredto createethnic enclaves in Canada.
Unlike the United States, Canadaexperienced no drive westwardfrom
an Atlanticbeginning;instead,as Cole Harrisputs it, a disjointedarchi-
pelago was settled one island at a time by variousEuropeangroupswith
different technologies and economies, not to mention languages and
customs. The result was "densenetworksof kin and local traditionsthat
amalgamatedelements of the differentregional backgroundsof found-
ing populations into distinctive folk cultures"(465). Some Canadians
fear thatthese cultureswill be reifiedinto compulsoryand limiting iden-
tity labels and that, as a resultof the nationalpolicy of multiculturalism,
"familialgenealogies ... or biologism"could become definingterms of
subjectivity(Kamboureli27). One possible reply to concernsaboutreifi-
cation is thatany sense of ethnicityis boundto be configureddifferently
in a new place because of the inevitable changes that come with dis-
placement: an outwardmanifestationof this process is the lack of cul-
turalresemblanceToronto'sLittle Italy bears today to late-1990s Italy.
Taylorhas arguedthat one reasonfor this discrepancyis that humanlife
is dialogic: it is formed in relation to other people and other customs
("Politics"32). To use Michael Fischer's terms, ethnicity is something
"reinventedand reinterpretedwith each generationby each individual.
... Ethnicityis not somethingthat is simply passed on from generation
to generation,taughtand learned;it is somethingdynamic,often unsuc-
cessfully repressed or avoided" (195)-even by crypto-ethnics,whose
avoidanceand repressionof theirethnicitycan go publicly unnoticed.
Some Canadianslament the absence of a syncreticmelting-potideol-
ogy that,at least in theory,would aim to transcenddifferencein the name
of nationalidentity.Instead,differenceis officially supported.But a ma-
jor dilemmahauntsthis form of multiculturalism:how to respect differ-
ence without advocating the concepts of ethnic purity and authenticity
thathave led to civil strife in otherpartsof the world.Dialogue based on
recognitionof mutualotherness-that is, on everyone'sethnicity-is one
model for dealing with the unavoidableclashes and interpenetrationsof
cultures.It is in the meetingof culturesthatethnicityis lived (see Pivato,
Echo 57 and Contrasts30). As a second-generationItalianCanadianliv-
ing in a multiracialandmultiethniccity, I do not feel at all caughtbetween
"theexperienceof loss and of being otheredin a web of old and new cul-
turalregisters"(Kamboureli22); for me ethnicity has much more to do
with the process of "inter-referencebetween two or more culturaltradi-
tions"(Fischer201)-and not only the two whose names I have borne.
In a provocative, even prophetic, essay entitled "A Critiqueof Pure
Pluralism,"WernerSollors urges that the classification of writers and
Four ViewsonEthnicity 31

critics as members of ethnic groups be understood as a "very partial,

temporal,and insufficientcharacterizationat best" (256). In arguingin-
stead for a dynamic "transethnic"focus based on the complexities of
"polyethnic interaction"(257), he emphasizes the dangers of timidly
choosing to speak with the "authorityof ethnic insiders ratherthan that
of readersof texts" (256). When Sollors states that "literature[can] be-
come recognizableas a productiveforce thatmay Americanizeand eth-
nicize readers" (275), he implies that readers are what they read.
Perhapsreadersare also how they read, as Gates suggests when he ar-
gues that "underthe sign of multiculturalism,literaryreadingsare often
guided by the desire to elicit, firstand foremost,indices of ethnic partic-
ularity,especially those that can be construedas oppositional,transgres-
sive, subversive"("CultureWars"8). The influenceof ethnicity,like that
of race and gender,on the act of interpretationis hotly debated,but like
the cultural construction of "nationness,"the cultural construction of
ethnicity may also be a "formof social and textual affiliation"(Bhabha,
"DissemiNation"292)-for readersas for writers,since both are formed
by being placed in an order of words and both emerge as a function of
differentand, for some, of conflictingencodings.
Such encodings clashed for me when, as an Italian Canadian,I con-
sidered becoming a professionalreaderand writer.I wonderedwhether
teachersof English inevitablydo ethnicallyEnglish readings.I received
my undergraduateeducation in English literary studies in Canadaand
thereforelargely withinthe normalizing,ethnocentriccontext of Leavis-
ite humanism:the immigrationof Britishprofessorsof Englishhad guar-
anteed that Leavis's "greattradition"would be my tradition. In other
words, I was taughtto do what FrancisMulhem calls "Englishreading."
The realizationof this insidious form of crypto-ethnicity-in which the
Englishnessof English was occulted in favorof the universal-may well
be what drove me into Italianstudies and finally into comparativelitera-
ture at the graduatelevel; it may even have dictatedmy choice of theory
as a researcharea,for I believed that such a metadisciplineofferedme at
least a potentialmeans to deconstructuniversals.I had a growingaware-
ness that in the academy, as well as in my Italian family, the English
constituteda specific ethnic group,not the generalculture.
I saw in comparativeliteraturethe hope of learningto respect differ-
ence as well as encouragingculturaldialogue. That I became a crypto-
ethnic at about the same time I chose my field and research area may
seem like one of life's strangeironies. Yet I found losing the markerof
my ethnic identity by turnsliberatingand constricting.In the 1970s the
name Hutcheonwas a form of protectivecoloration-I could pass as an
English teacher in the ethnic sense-but by the 1990s things had
changed considerably. I now find myself living in a culture that offi-
cially-by law and in most social and political situations-values differ-
ence and views ethnic diversity more with pride than with simple
tolerance.The multiculturaldynamicin Canadais of course not utopian;
32 Four ViewsonEthnicity

racism and intolerancedo not end because of official policies. But in the
last twenty years, crypto-ethnicityhas ceased to be the protectivemask
of assimilationit once was, for global as well as local reasons:the poly-
ethnic, diasporic world of the 1990s allows for multiple postmodern
identities(Buell 214).
Michael Ondaatje'sIn the Skin of a Lion, a Canadiannovel, offers a
strikingvisual metaphorfor crypto-ethnicityin a scene involvingan Ital-
ian Canadianman evocatively namedDavid Caravaggio.He is in prison
for theft when he learns that his name is a carrierof ethnicity, a mobile
attractorof scorn and abuse, for he is called "wop"and "dago."One of
his tasks while in prison is to paintthe roof of the penitentiaryblue-he
thereby ironically lives up to his namesake's profession. As he goes
about this job, he realizes that he is losing his sense of the boundaries
between blue sky and blue roof. With this realizationcomes a sense of
liberation and empowerment. He not only gains the visual illusion of
freedom; in an act of cunning self-cryptography,he has his fellow in-
mates paint him blue so that the boundariesbetween himself, the roof,
and the sky are erased.Caravaggiothen escapes.
There have been such liberatingmoments for me as a crypto-ethnic,
moments when the imprisoningboundariesof puristnotions of ethnicity
could be challenged merely by being Italianwhile others thoughtI was
English or Scottish. But this doubleness and its pleasures underlie the
reality of Sollors's interactive"transethnic"ideal. I know from my daily
experiencethatcrypto-ethnicityhas establisheda dynamic(and healthy)
tension within me between how I was taught to read and how I now
read. And the crypto-ethnicmarkerI once valued as a protectivemask I
now appreciateas a reminderof the constructednessof all forms of eth-
nic identity.

Notes
'By crypto-ethnicity I mean the situation of immigrants whose family name was
changed when they arrivedin a new land or women like me who marriedat a time when
social custom meant taking a husband'ssurnameand who suddenly found more than the
nominalmarkerof theirethnicityaltered.
2CornelWest argues that Europeanimmigrantsarrivedin the United States perceiving
themselvesas Irishor Sicilian and had to learnthatthey were white "principallyby adopt-
ing an Americandiscourse of positively-valuedWhiteness and negatively-chargedBlack-
ness" (29). In Canadathe process was not this straightforwardbecause of a smallerblack
populationwith a very differenthistory.However,one worryamong Canadianscholarsof
ethnicityis thatEuropeanethnic minoritieswill be homogenizedas white.
3Thevote was 50.56% againstseparation;almost 93% of eligible voterscast ballots.Pa-
rizeauclaimed thatthe 49.44% who voted for separationrepresented60% of Francophones
in the provinceandthatthereforethe so-calledpure laine 'purewool' quebecoishad indeed
voted for independence.
Four ViewsonEthnicity 33

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tion."Bhabha,Nation 291-322.
--- , ed. Nation and Narration.London:Routledge, 1990.
Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalismin Canada. Toronto:
Penguin, 1994.
Buell, Frederick.National Cultureand the New Global System.Baltimore:Johns Hopkins
UP, 1994.
D'Souza, Dinesh. "The Big Chill? Interview with Dinesh D'Souza." With Robert Mac-
Neil. Debating PC.: The Controversyover Political Correctness on College Cam-
puses. Ed. Paul Berman.New York:Dell, 1992. 29-39.
Fischer,Michael M. J. "Ethnicityand the Post-modemArts of Memory."WritingCulture:
The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.Ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus.
Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1986. 194-233.
Gates, HenryLouis, Jr."Beyondthe CultureWars:Identitiesin Dialogue."Profession93.
New York:MLA, 1993. 6-11.
."'Ethnic and Minority' Studies." Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Lan-
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Harris,R. Cole. "Regionalismand the CanadianArchipelago."Heartlandand Hinterland:
A Geographyof Canada.Ed. L. D. McCann.Scarborough:Prentice,1982. 459-84.
Kamboureli,Smaro. "CanadianEthnic Anthologies: Representationsof Ethnicity."Ariel
25.4 (1994): 11-52.
Mulhern,Francis."EnglishReading."Bhabha,Nation 250-64.
Multiculturalism:Retrospectand Prospect. Spec. issue of Journal of Canadian Studies
17.1 (1982).
Ondaatje,Michael. In the Skinof a Lion. Toronto:McClelland, 1987.
Pivato, Joseph, ed. Contrasts: ComparativeEssays on Italian-Canadian Writing.Mon-
treal:Guernica,1985.
.Echo: Essays on OtherLiteratures.Toronto:Guernica,1994.
San Juan, S., Jr.Racial Formations/ Critical Transformations:Articulationsof Power in
Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United States. Atlantic Highlands: Humani-
ties, 1992.
Sollors, Werner."A Critiqueof Pure Pluralism."ReconstructingAmericanLiteraryHis-
tory. Ed. SacvanBercovitch.Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1986. 250-79.
Taylor,Charles. "The Politics of Recognition."Multiculturalism:Examiningthe Politics
of Recognition.Ed. Amy Gutman.Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1994. 25-73.
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West, Corel. "TheNew CulturalPolitics of Difference."Out There:Marginalizationand
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UP, 1995.
34
HOMI K. BHABHA, visiting
professor in the humanities at
University College, London,
and the Chester D. TrippPro-
fessor of the Humanities at the
University of Chicago, is au-
thorof TheLocationof Culture
(Routledge,1994) and editor of
Nation and Narration(Rout-
ledge, 1990). He is working on
projects in vernacular cosmo-
politanism, cultural rights, and
the ethics of literary cultural
translation.
Four ViewsonEthnicity
HomiK Bhabha
On the IrremovableStrangenessof
Being Different
WHAT are the dialectics of recognition in contemporarycultures of
diversity? What are the anomalous, antagonistic, or ambivalent loca-
tions of culturaldifferencein the new world order,and how can they be
articulated?And how can an ethical relationbe achievedwith what Clif-
ford Geertzcalls the "irremovablestrangenesses"of the "uses"of diver-
sity (120)?
A useful startingpoint for grappling with these questions is to read
JacquesDerrida'sspectraland schematiccomments on interethnicwars
in the new internationalism,but to read againstthe grain.In the ten-word
telegram in Specters of Marx, on the new world order,Derrida argues
that the public sphere is both articulated through and disturbed by
"techno-tele-media apparatusesand new rhythms of information and
communication"(79). The particularforce of these new media, distinc-
tive for their "acceleration"and "dis-location"lies in their capacity to
disturbthe assumptionsof nationalontopology-the specific conjuncture
of identity,location,and locutionthatmost commonly definesthe partic-
ularityof an ethnic culture.In the dislocationsof postmodernmedia, the
idea of historicalcultureand of ethnic affiliationmust be conceptualized
througha problematicbreakin the link between "the ontological value
of present-being-the political subjector culturalcitizen-and its situa-
tion in a stable and presentabledeterminationof a locality, the topos of
territory,native soil, city ... " (82). Derridasuggests thatthese displace-
ments underminethe ontopological tendency, for the nation "is rooted
first of all in the memory or anxiety of a displaced-or displaceable-
population.It is not only time thatis out of joint, but space, space in time,
spacing"(83). But even more important,racism,community,blood, and
bordershaunt the new internationaland have gained remarkableideo-
logical and affective power.
The anxiety of displacementthat troubles national rootedness trans-
forms ethnicity or culturaldifference into an ethical relationthat serves
as a subtlecorrectiveto valiantattemptsto achieverepresentativenessand
moralequivalencein the matterof minorities.For too often these efforts
result in hyphenatedattemptsto include all multiple subjectpositions-
race,gender,class, geopoliticallocation,generation-in an overburdened
juggernautthatrides roughshodover the singularitiesand individuations
of difference.I want to articulatea particularrelationthroughDerrida's
thoughts on ethnicity and ontology, but without allowing rootedness to
be underminedby the displacement of peoples that structuresthe na-
tional imaginary.
Four ViewsonEthnicity 35

In the narrowpassagebetweenrootednessand displacement,when the

archaic stability of ontology touches the memory of cultural displace-
ment, culturaldifference or ethnic location accedes to a social and psy-
chic anxiety at the heartof identificationand its locutions. This passage
opens an unsettling space that adjudicatesamong differences and con-
structsepistemologicalboundariesamongcultures.As Freudwrites,anx-
iety, like ontopology, is an archaic, atavistic "cathexis of longing ... a
defensive reactionto the felt loss (or displacement)of the object"(66).
Anxiety keeps visible and present both the moment of birth as a trace
and the displaced state and in that sense constitutes a transitionwhere
strangenessand contradictioncannotbe negatedand must be continually
negotiatedand workedthrough.Anxiety is a culture'slonging for place
and its borderlineexistence, its objectlessness that does not lack an ob-
jective, the mediatory moment between a culture's ontopology and its
displacement, the tryst between the phantasm of rootedness and the
memoryof dissemination.
Anxiety's asymptotic existence is finely captured in a poem by the
Chicago-MysorewriterA. K. Ramanujanentitled"Anxiety":

as thefeartree ...
Notbranchless
Notgeometricas theparabolas
of hope....

Flameshaveonlylungs.Wateris all eyes.

Theearthhasboneformuscle....
Butanxiety
canfindno metaphor
to endit. (11)

Anxiety standsas a frontierpost that providesa space of representation,

a strategyof readingthat"no longer concernsa distancingrenderingthis
or that absent,and then a rapprochementrenderingthis or that into pres-
ence."In a "layingbare [of] the substitutivestructureitself,"the ontology
of cultural identity confronts the anxiety and memory of its displace-
ment. This enunciatespace is an "overlapwithoutequivalence:fort:da"
(Derrida,Post Card321).
Such a rhetoric(and an analytic) of anxiety is both the symptom and
the substanceof much influentialwriting on the ethical ethnographyof
contemporarycultural difference. In "The Uses of Diversity,"Geertz
charges the traditionalnotion of culture as self-containedness with the
estranging,ethical responsibilityof encounteringdiversity and thus en-
gaging with strangenessat the moment of its enunciation.This process
"make[s]us visible to ourselves,"Geertzwrites, "by representingus and
everyoneelse as cast into the midstof a worldfull of irremovablestrange-
nesses we can't keep clear of" (120). The location of this strangenessis
not "the distant tribe enfolded upon itself in coherent difference"but a
disjunctive, anxious terrainof "suddenfaults and dangerouspassages"
36 Four ViewsonEthnicity

(117, 119). Because these hazardsproducemoral asymmetrieswithin a

collectivity, strangenesses are more oblique and shaded, less easily set
off as anomalies, "scrambled together in ill-defined expanses, social
spaces whose edges are unfixed, irregular,and difficultto locate"(121).
Geertz splendidly concludes, "Foreignnessdoes not startat the water's
edge but at the skin's"(112).
And yet Geertzdoes not fully grasp the amnioticstructureof cultural
spacing as a temporalmovementthat crosses culturalboundaries.In his
argument,the moral dilemmas arising from culturaldiversity are insis-
tently representedthroughspatial metaphorsthat constitute"puzzles of
judgement.""[I]ll-definedexpanses,""social spaces whose edges are un-
fixed,"uneventerrains,"dangerouspassages,"clefts, andcontours-these
are offered as the ethnographicconditions for a new culturalepisteme.
Geertz'sbrilliantspatializationof the contingent,incompletetemporali-
ties of ethical-politicalenunciationas a landscapeof juxtaposedterrains
of knowledge installs him in an Archimedian position from which he
meditates,"[T]heworldis coming at each of its local points to look more
like a Kuwaitibazaarthan like an English gentlemen'sclub (to instance
what, to my mind-perhaps because I have never been in either one of
them-are the polarcases)"(121).
In a response to Geertz'slecture, RichardRorty largely assents to the
idea of diversity as a collage of juxtaposed differences and admits that
"[l]ike Geertz,[he has] neverbeen in a Kuwaitibazaar(norin an English
gentleman'sclub)"(533). From the perspectiveof these resolutely post-
modern savants, the "irremovablestrangenesses"of diversity suddenly
becomes everydayliberal proceduralism."Wecan urge the construction
of a world orderwhose model is a bazaarsurroundedby lots and lots of
exclusive privateclubs,"Rorty suggests, as he envisages the postmodern
bourgeois liberal ambling between the equivocations of the bazaarand
the moral equivalences of the club, "encouragingthe diversity of doc-
trines and the plurality of conflicting and, indeed, incommensurable
conceptionsof the good"(533, 532).
As a postcolonial native who learned his morals in an Indianbazaar
and picked up literaturein what some (too hastily) consider an English
gentlemen'sclub (Oxford),I see the relationbetweenbazaarand club as
more agonisticand ambivalent.Between them lies the anxiouspassage-
"overlapwithout equivalence:fort:da"-to be traversedin the search
for truthresiding in the encounterbetween the ontological culturalim-
pulse and the memory of the displacementsthat make nationalcultures
possible. I take my lesson fromA Passage to India, perhapsthe greatest
of all novels about the complications between orientalbazaarsand En-
glish clubs:

Thereis no paintingandscarcelyanycarvingin thebazaars.Theverywood

seemsmadeof mud,the inhabitants of mudmoving.So abased,so monoto-
nousis everythingthatmeetsthe eye, thatwhenthe Gangescomesdownit
Four ViewsonEthnicit 37

mightbe expectedto washtheexcrescencebackintothesoil. Housesdo fall,

peoplearedrownedandrotting....
... Onthe secondrise is laidoutthe littlecivil station,andviewedhence
Chandrapore appearsto be a totallydifferentplace.It is a cityof gardens....
Thetoddypalmsandneemtreesandmangoesandpepulthatwerehiddenbe-
hindthe bazaarsnowbecomevisibleandin theirturnhidethebazaars...
[T]heysoarabovethelowerdepositto greetone anotherwithbranchesand
beckoningleaves,andto builda city forthebirds.Especiallyaftertherains
do theyscreenwhatpassesbelow,butat all times... theyglorifythecityto
the Englishpeoplewho inhabitthe rise, so thatnew-comerscannotbelieve
it to be as meagreas it is described,andhaveto be drivendownto acquire
disillusionment. (Forster4-5)

Forster seems to guide the eye from the lowly bazaarto the European
club, the civilization on the rise in the city of gardens.But just as he es-
tablishesthe self-containednessof cultures,the readerbecomes awareof
the overlapping,oscillating energies of the Ganges that drive everything
down and the bird-filled trees that act as a lofty screen for the bazaar.
The alienation and anxiety is inscribed in the hidden line of trees that
become visible and in turnhide the bazaars.The trees form a boundary
that establishes and then displaces the cultural ontopology, screening
and revealing, enclosing and disclosing. At the same time they provide
an essential passage throughthe culturaldivide, standingbetween oppo-
sitions and sowing confusion.These are"thefear tree[s]"of "nakedroots
and secret twigs. / Not geometric"like parabolas.
Between bazaarand club, the fear tree casts each site of differenceas
incomplete and thereforemakes possible the colonial dialectic of mas-
tery and misrecognition,sexuality and power that creates the narrative.
The proceduresof "rationalist"rationality(a clarificationthat Bernard
Williamsurges) and due process breakdown irretrievablyin both bazaar
and club, in courtroomand civil station-the anxious echo of Forster's
MarabarCaves ensuresthat.But havingovercomethe anxietyof cultural
designationand alienation,the ethical relationseems to returnto the pri-
vate and protected realm. Aziz reconstructshis personal life at home,
writing illogical poems on oriental womanhood(althoughin one poem
he bypasses motherhoodand motherlandand goes "straightto interna-
tionality" [Forster329]). Adela learns the lesson on the surface of her
body as a servant removes cactus thorns. In her anxious-some call it
hysterical-delirium, she repeats endlessly, "In space things touch, in
time things part"(214).
If anxiety reveals a negotiation with the "irremovablestrangenesses"
of culturaldifference, what role do violence, reparation,and historical
agency play in the fate of culturaldifference within colonial space and
historicaltemporality?FrantzFanon has famously said in TheWretched
of the Earththat"thezone wherethe nativeslive is not complementaryto
the zone inhabitedby the settlers.The two zones are opposed, but not in
the service of a higherunity"(38). Fanonprovidesan accountof colonial
38 Four VIewsonEthnicit

ontopology in which there is an "overlapwithoutequivalence:fort:da."

He then derives a revolutionaryand reparativeethical position through
the strategicaffect of psychic and social anxiety.From the splittingand
disintegratingof the personality subject to mental illness, he produces
some of his notions of social transformationand historicaltrauma.Psy-
chotic and projective mechanisms that inform the everyday life of the
colonized are transmutedinto the agency of subalternactionby "lay(ing)
hold of this violence which is changing direction"(58). "The native's
challenge to the colonial world is not simply a rationalconfrontation,"
Fanonwrites;"it is not a treatiseon the universal,but the untidyaffirma-
tion of an originalidea"(41).
Fanon affirms his ethics of agency by acknowledging the desire for
land-for ontopological belonging-as the most "concrete symbol of
breadand dignity"(44). But in the performativeprocess of revolutionas
action and agency-the search for equality and freedom-natives dis-
cover that their life, breath,and beating hearts are the same as those of
settlers:"TheNegro is not. Any more thanthe white man"(Fanon,Black
Skins 231). This ethical-politicalproximityis antagonisticto the Mani-
chaeancompartmentsof the racialdivide and sets the scene for the ethics
of revolution.In Fanon'srevolutionarycreed, "thething which has been
colonized becomes man duringthe same processby which it frees itself"
(Wretched36-37). However,this "thing"is not simply the colonizer and
the colonized. It is the historicalrelationality,the interstitialin-between
that defines and divides them into antagonisticsubjects. (Fromthis per-
spectiveit would be possible to elaboratethe issues of genderand sexual-
ity thatFanonfails to articulate.)The "thing"representsthe takingup of
a position,as EmmanuelLevinaswould say, beyond the ontologicalcon-
sciousness of difference,in relationto the anxiety of a liberatoryhistory
whose object remainsto be fulfilled. As Fanonexplains, decolonization
starts for the native with a blank first page on which is inscribed the
complete disorderof the desire for decolonizationand the continuitiesof
historicaltransformationof which it is a part.For the colonizer,the pos-
sibility of change is also experiencedas a terrifyingfuture.The anxious
struggle for the historical consciousness of freedom that eschews tran-
scendence-or a higherunity-derives from violence an ethics thattakes
responsibilityfor the otherin the transformationof the "thing."
In "OnViolence" Fanon insists that the native's moralityis concrete:
"it is to silence the settler'sdefiance,to breakhis flauntingviolence-in
a word to put him out of the picture"(Wretched44). But this does not
representFanon's final position or his sense of ethical reparation.Levi-
nas capturesthe anxiety of proximity:an ethical relationcan exist where
subjectsare unitedneitherby a syntheticunderstandingnor by a subject-
object relation but where one subject concerns or is meaningful to the
other(116).
In the final chapterof The Wretchedof the Earth, Fanon produces a
credo for the nationaland internationalrelation:
Four V/ewsonEthnicity 39

Fromthemomentyouandyourlikeareliquidated likeso manydogsyouhave

to retainyourimportance....Youmustthereforeweighas heavilyas youcan
uponthebodyof yourtorturer in orderthathis soul,lostin somebyway,may
finditself oncemore.... Andthenthereis thatoverwhelming silence-but
of coursethebodycriesout-that silencethatoverwhelms thetorturer.(295)

Is this plot of proximity a vindication of violence? I do not believe so.

But Fanonis suggestingthathumansubjectscan and must wage wars of
recognition in the knowledge that historical freedom and cultural sur-
vival exist in the midst of antagonism.Overwhelmthe torturer'ssilence,
andheed the body's cry! The proximityof bodies at the edge of waterand
skin and in the transferof ethical weight from the white man'seyes to the
torturedblack man's body marks the possibility of a kind of freedom.
This is a freedomthatdoes not demanduniversalframesor synchronous
knowledges but that will allow the silence to inscribe the raveling and
unravelingbetween the psychic body and its political weight.

WorksCited
Derrida,Jacques. The Post Card: FromSocrates and Beyond.Trans.Alan Bass. Chicago:
U of Chicago P, 1987.
. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Workof Mourning,and the New In-
ternational.Trans.Peggy Kamuf.New York:Routledge, 1994.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, WhiteMasks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann.New York:
Grove, 1967.
. TheWretchedof the Earth.Trans.ConstanceFarrington.New York:Grove, 1991.
Forster,E. M. A Passage to India. New York:Harcourt,1952.
Freud, Sigmund. Inhibitions, Symptoms,and Anxiety. Trans. Alix Strachey.New York:
Norton, 1989.
Geertz,Clifford."TheUses of Diversity."Michigan QuarterlyReview25 (1986): 105-23.
Levinas,Emmanuel.Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans.Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht:
Nijhoff, 1987.
Ramanujan.A. K. Selected Poems. Delhi: OxfordUP, 1976.
Rorty,Richard."OnEthnocentrism:A Reply to CliffordGeertz."Michigan QuarterlyRe-
view 25 (1986): 525-34.
Williams,Bernard.Shameand Necessity. Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1993.
40
DANIEL BOYARIN,the Taub-
man Professor of Talmudic
Culture at the University of
California, Berkeley, is the au-
thor of Intertextuality and the
Reading of Midrash (1990),
Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in
Talmudic Culture (1993), A
Radical Jew: Paul and the Poli-
tics of Identity(1994), and Un-
heroic Conduct: The Rise of
Heterosexualityand the Inven-
tion of the Jewish Man (1997),
all published by the University
of California Press. He is at
work on two books, Midrashor
the Mutilation of the Phallus
and Esau's Heel: ChristianOr-
thodoxy and the Foundationof
RabbinicJudaism.
Four ViewsonEthnicity
Daniel Boyarin
Jewish Cricket
G. BOSE, an early disciple of Freud and the founder of psychoanalysis
in India, once sent Freud a depiction of an English gentleman, remark-
ing that he imagined Freud resembled the image.' Freud responded that
this comment ignored certain "racial" differences between him and the
English. Freud's origins as an Ostjude crossed his aspirations as a bour-
geois European. He was both the object and the subject of racism at the
same time. From the perspective of the colonized, Freud might look like
a white man; from his own perspective, as from the dominating white
Christian's, he was a Jew, every bit as racially marked as an Indian.
Many critics, however, miss the pathos and desperation of Freud's colo-
nial mimicry.
At the end of Moses and Monotheism, immediately after the discourse
on the great man as Aryan father, Freud makes the following statement:
Why the people of Israel,however,clung more and more submissivelyto their
God the worse they were treatedby him-that is a problemwhich for the mo-
ment we must leave on one side. It may encourageus to enquirewhetherthe
religion of Moses broughtthe people nothingelse besides an enhancementof
theirself-esteem owing to theirconsciousnessof havingbeen chosen. And in-
deed anotherfactorcan easily be found. Thatreligion also broughtthe Jews a
far granderconceptionof God, or, as we might put it more modestly,the con-
ception of a granderGod. Anyone who believed in this God had some kind of
sharein his greatness,might feel exalted himself. For an unbelieverthis is not
entirely self-evident; but we may perhapsmake it easier to understandif we
point to the sense of superiorityfelt by a Briton in a foreign country which
has been made insecureowing to an insurrection-a feeling thatis completely
absentin a citizen of any small continentalstate. For the Britoncounts on the
fact thathis Governmentwill send along a warshipif a hairof his head is hurt,
and that the rebels understandthat very well-whereas the small state pos-
sesses no warshipat all. Thus, pridein the greatnessof the BritishEmpirehas
a root as well in the consciousness of the greatersecurity-the protection-
enjoyed by the individual Briton. This may resemble the conception of a
grandGod. (112)
The Jew is the epitome of the citizen of the small state with no warships
and indeed "he" is not a citizen of any particular state. Freud is arguing
that the Jews' "grander [more sublime] conception of God" as their sub-
limation (masculinization) of physicality and desire provides them with an
alternative to the warships and state power that they do not possess. After
this encomium to imperial power, Freud invokes the prohibition against
making images of God as a sign of the "triumph of Geistigkeit over sen-
suality, or, strictly speaking, an instinctual renunciation" (112)-charac-
teristics encoded as sublime, male, and Protestant in Freud's cultural
Four ViewsonEthnicity 41

world (see Boyarin 244-70). Symptomatically,Freud goes on to write

of "ourchildren,adults who are neurotic,and primitivepeoples" and of
the succession of the matriarchalsocial orderby the patriarchalone. The
connectionsbetweenthese expressionsare clear,but it is vital to remem-
ber that it was the Jews who were brandedas neurotic in fin de siecle
centralEurope.
Freud'sclaims for the superiorityof the Jews are closely relatedto his
recoding of submissivenessas masculineratherthan feminine. By read-
ing the "inclinationto intellectualinterests"as a resultof the dematerial-
ization or sublimation of God, Freudbrilliantly asserts that the Jewish
male, by circumcisionand by devotionto interior,"feminine"studies, is
more masculinethanthe muscularGreek,who is less restrained,less able
to "renounceinstincts"(115, 116), and thus paradoxicallyis less "male"
thanthe Jew.
This masculinity is bolstered by the infamous analogy that Freud
draws between "declaring that our God is the greatest and mightiest,
althoughhe is invisible like a gale of wind or like the soul,"and "decid-
ing that paternityis more importantthan maternity,althoughit cannot,
like the latter,be establishedby the evidence of the senses" (118). Freud
thus seeks to reinvest the Jews with the phallus in an almost pathetic
quest for the "self-regard"(116) that the nineteenth-century"emanci-
pated"Jew of Austro-Germanylacked. Like otherJews of his time and
place, Freudcompensatesfor the absence of an asset prohibitedto Jews.
In a recent readingof this passage, GayatriSpivak confounds Jewish
desire for the Europeanphalluswith Jewishpossession of it. In a section
of her essay entitled somewhat ominously "Arabsand Jews" (54), she
establishesa binaryoppositionbetween the MaghrebiwriterAbdelkebir
Khatibi (the Arab) and the French Lacanian Daniel Sibony (the Jew).
Ultimately, however,the Jew is Sigmund Freudand thus in some sense
Moses, the originator of monotheistic universal cultural imperialism,
and in Spivak's text Sibony, the French Lacanian, is only his stand-in.
The Jew, for Spivak, is simply the same as the Europeanwhite man, the
colonialist, and indeed in a sense the progenitorof his predation.2
The crucial move in Spivak's argumentis her characterizationof Si-
bony as "shiftingthe lines fromtwo Peoples of the Book to an opposition
which reflects the vicissitudes of the long losing streak of the by-now
lesser team: Arabagainst French."Thus Spivak binds Sibony "theJew-
ish Franco-Maghrebin"with MartineMedejel, "a Gauloise marriedto a
Moroccan"(55). Both Sibony and Medejel indeed representthemselves
as French vis-a-vis a non-French other, yet Sibony, who was born in
NorthAfrica and who bears a distinctlyNorthAfricanand Jewishname,
is no more French than Medejel's husband. Nevertheless, in Spivak's
discussionof the treatmentin France(allegedlyby Sibony) of an aphonic
three-year-oldboy of NorthAfricanMuslim origin, "Sibonyis the well-
placed male migranthelping cure the problemsof underclassmigrants.
His hold on the Frenchness of French society may be minimally more
42 Four ViewsonEthnicity

secure because of his Jewishness,althoughthere are plenty of historical

ironies behind this claim" (56). There are more than historical ironies
here,for althoughSibony is certainlya "well-placedmale migrant,"many
NorthAfricanJews in Franceare not male or well-placed, and there are
North African Muslims in France who are as well placed as Sibony is
(andjust as male).SpivakassumesthatSibonyis indeedthe "well-placed"
Jewish therapistwho treatsthe underclassArabboy. Sibony,however,is
not the therapist; he is commenting on the work of "un therapeutede
langue arabe"'an Arabic-speakingtherapist'who treatedthe boy "etfort
bien" 'and very well' (Sibony 83). Howeverfamiliar,the oppositionbe-
tween Araband Jew that Spivaksets up is false. Sibony has just as much
rightto the identificationArabas the patientdoes (see Alkalay). A bit of
"fieldwork"in Belleville would make my point betterthanwordswill.
To be sure, the rhetoricof Sibony's essay seems to identify him with
Frenchness,a move redolentof Freud'sassumptionof Englishness. In-
sofar as Sibony himself insists that the contact is between Arabic and
French,rejects the possibility of hybridity,and insists that his own Ara-
bic identitybe left behind,he engages in the same processof self-erasure,
of mimicry, as Freud does in his attemptsto appropriatethe universal
phallus for Jews and to make them full membersof the brotherhoodof
the universal spirit. Spivak forecloses the possibility of Sibony's and
Freud'spain and dislocation,of a postcolonial anguishas vivid in its re-
pressionas Khatibi'sor her own:3

Sibonyseemsnotto carethatthe so-calledcountryof originhasa different

modeof existencetoday,elsewhere;It is notsimplyhispast andthepast of
his patients.He seemsto ignorethatthecuttingof thegraftis alsothedeath
of thehost,theloss of a language,thatif the"countryof origin"is considered
as alibibutnotin illo tempore,circumcision is notsublatinga prehistoric
cas-
trationin thesecases. (56)

Another misreadingoccurs when Spivak comments on Sibony's de-

scriptionof his boyhood in a djamad,an Islamic school, in the Maghreb.
The teacherrefers to the "Sacrificeof Ishmael"as a radicalact, and Si-
bony commentsthathe ignores the fact thatthis is "unemodulationinte-
ressantede sa version originale dite sacrificed'Isaac et ecrite 15 siecles
plus tot" 'an interesting modulation of the original version, which is
called the sacrificeof Isaac and which was writtenfifteen centuriesear-
lier' (88). For Spivakthis commentis a sign of Sibony's"visibletie with
the universalizing Fatherwho is the Subject of Science"-that is, with
Freud.But the struggle over the sacrifice of Isaac or Ishmael is not be-
tween universalizing subjects of science and natives but between Arab
Jews and Muslims-both very particularnatives. (For Frenchmenit is
irrelevant.)Sibony is not the Frenchmanhere but the NorthAfricanJew.
And although the language of the scientific is a markerof a desire for
universality,the subject(sujet)markshimself as of the Maghreb.
Four ViewsonEthnicity 43

Circumcision is not merely a "male bond" between Sibony and the

boy (Spivak 58) but a graftbetween Jew and Muslim and a cut between
both of them and France.As JonathanBoyarinhas noted (58-59), in Al-
bert Memmi's autobiographicalnovel The Pillar of Salt, the narrator,a
Jew growingup in Tunisin the 1930s, describesbeing on a streetcarwith
variouscharacters-a Bedouin, a Frenchwoman,a "Mohammedan"and
his two-and-a-half-year-oldson, and a Djerbangrocer.The grocerbegins
a socially accepted form of teasing, asking the little boy whetherhe has
been circumcisedyet and offering successively higherbids for his "little
animal,"eventuallysnatchingat the child's groin in mock frustrationand
provokingthe boy's real terror.This episode brings the narratorback to
a rememberedscene in his kouttabschool (the NorthAfricancounterpart
of the East Europeanheder).In the teacher'sabsence, the class followed
an anarchic impulse: the students "felt that [they] needed one another
and discoveredthat [they] were a crowd ... [then] soon returnedto an-
cestraltraditionsand decided to play, like adults,at circumcision."They
chose one of the youngerboys as the victim and carriedout a mock cir-
cumcision, acting the roles of their fathersand their futureselves, until
the victim burstout crying and they all collapsed into helpless laughter.
The scene from his school, in which the narratorsimultaneouslyidenti-
fied with the victim and was thrilledto be partof the crowd performing
the sacrifice, allows him an imaginativeidentificationwith the Muslim
child in the trolley who, unlike a Jewish infant, will in fact be aware of
the cut to be made on his body. The sentences that link the two partsof
the chapterconfirmthis association:"CanI ever forget the Orient?It is
deeply rooted in my flesh and blood, and I need but touch my own body
to feel how I have been markedfor all time by it. As thoughit were all a
mere matterof culturesand of elective affinities!"(169). Memmi is both
postulating an Orientfrom a position outside it and identifying with it.
He is assertingas a link to fellow "Orientals"what is usually takento be
exclusively Jewish, rendering the ironies in Sibony's situation all the
more palpable.
Spivak's misreadingof Sibony generatesor is generatedby her mis-
takingof Freud.Sibony,like Freud,is in between.He also, less eloquently
thanMemmi andcertainlythanKhatibi,evokes an Orientfroma position
outsideit andsimultaneouslyidentifieswith it. Spivakproducesa brilliant
metaphorin her discussion of Frenchcricket, an appropriationby colo-
nized childrenof the English game. Both girls and boys can play French
cricket, and "the wickets [are] stable, usually subtropical trees" (60).
Frenchcricket is a peculiarset of parodic,shifting appropriationsof the
cultureof the metropolis.However,like Memmi,Jews havealwaysplayed
their own forms of Frenchcricket,inhabitingthe intersticesbetweenthe
colonizer and the colonized and seen by both as the other.Memmi plays
Jewishcricket.Spivak,who misreadsFreud(andSibony) like a latter-day
Bose, discountsthe "racialdifference"betweenthe Jew andthe European,
even when the Jew is an ArabJew seeking his own Frenchness.
44 Four ViewsonEthnicity

Insteadof being universal,the Jews once were-maybe still are-try-

ing to become universalaftermillenniaof standingfor difference,of be-
ing embarrassinglyvisible. Freud'sother ethnological texts, Totemand
Taboo (1912-13) and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(1921), can be read as symptomatic of his desire for an unambivalent
whiteness, not as the transparentsignifierof such whiteness. Like many
other symptoms,they are unpleasantindeed. Readingthese texts symp-
tomatically does not defuse or excuse their racist import but may help
bracketit within a criticalevaluationof what remainsuseful for projects
of culturaltherapeutics.This perspectivedoes not explain away or deny
the triumphalismor racism, but it does help to framethem in a different
historicalcontext. Defense and apologetic as types of mimicry are dan-
gerously close to triumphalism,and identification with oppressors al-
ways produces oppression. However, the observationthat the terms of
the apologetic are drawnfrom the value system of a dominatingculture,
a system internalizedby the dominated,is profoundlyrelevantto an un-
derstandingof textual and historicalprocesses.
"Freudhad certainlyassumed an implicit identity for the analyst as a
white Europeanman,"KalpanaSeshadri-Crookswrites (194), an asser-
tion with which I can only agree.I would interpretthis sentence,however,
in a sense thatwas perhapsunintendedby its authorbut thatnevertheless
residesin the syntax:Freudcertainlyassumed(puton) an identity(mask)
for the analyst(himself, cast as off-white, Jewish,effeminate)as a white
Europeanman. It is not difficult to see why victims of British imperial-
ism (such as Spivak)-the "rebels"-might readthis passage differently.
Freud sought to escape the characterizationof his people as feminine
and accomplishedthis aim by stigmatizingothers.To dodge the stigma-
tization of Jews as weak and submissive, Freudinsisted that Judaismis
masculine and aggressive. And when Spivak remarkssomewhatacerbi-
cally, "Transcendentalimperialismby this Freudianaccount is a Jewish
game accidentally played by the British"(60), she recognizes that this
Freudianclaim is a form of colonial mimicry,since she is explicitly al-
luding to Ashis Nandy's remark"Cricketis an Indiangame accidentally
discoveredby the English"(1). And yet Spivak leaves a tantalizingam-
biguity aboutwhetheror not she accepts Freud'sargumenthere.4For the
Jews no more invented"transcendentalimperialism"thanthe Indiansor
the Jamaicansinventedcricket.

Notes
'Seshadri-Crooks185. On Bose in general, Seshadri-Crooksis illuminating.
2WhenI questionedSpivakaboutusing Khatibiand Sibony as stand-insfor theirrespec-
tive peoples, she denied that allegorizationwas her intent. I continue to find it difficult to
Four ViewsonEthnicity 45

interprether text any other way. In the narrativeone Arab (Khatibi) interactswith a Jew
(Freud),and one Jew (Sibony) interactswith an Arab boy; thus the title "Arabsand Jews"
certainlyseems to give an archetypalstatusto these interactionsif not quite to theiractors.
3Spivakwrites thatthese feelings are anointedwith a "differenthybridity"while Sibony
gets only the dubiousdistinctionof "a privilegedaccess to a secure Frenchness"(67).
4In Spivak's terms, do Jews play English or Frenchcricket?A note suggests that she in
fact agrees with Freud:"This is not an argumentfor a similaritybetween the British and
the Jews. (The two are not, of course, mutuallyexclusive.) It is an analogybetweenthe en-
during spirit of Imperialismof the EighteenthDynasty of Egypt, carriedforwardby the
Jews' contactto the cultureof thatimperialismthroughMoses's governorshipand the spirit
of the BritishEmpire.As we shall see in the case of Fanon,it is an argumentfor cricketers"
(72n55). But what is the point of this analogy if the Freudianaccountis only a fiction?The
notion in the Freudianaccountthatuniversalismis a productof imperialistpower seems to
me sound, or at any rate plausible.However,ancientHebrewmonotheismis not transcen-
dental or universalist in its claims; it assumes those traits only when temporal power is
addedto the mix in the latest avatarsof the RomanEmpire(Boyarinand Boyarin).

WorksCited
Alkalay,Ammiel.AfterJews and Arabs:TheRemakingof LevantineCulture.Minneapolis:
U of MinnesotaP, 1992.
Boyarin, Daniel. Unheroic Conduct:The Rise of Heterosexualityand the Inventionof the
JewishMan.Contraversions:Studiesin JewishLiterature,Culture,and Society. Berke-
ley: U of CaliforniaP, 1997.
Boyarin, Daniel, and JonathanBoyarin. "Diaspora:Generationand the Groundof Jewish
Identity."Identities. Ed. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Chi-
cago: U of Chicago P, 1995. 305-37.
Boyarin,Jonathan.Thinkingin Jewish. Chicago:U of Chicago P, 1996.
Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism: ThreeEssays. 1939. The StandardEdition of
the CompletePsychological Worksof SigmundFreud.Ed. and trans.James Strachey
with Anna Freud, Alix Strachey,and Alan Tyson. Vol. 23. London: Hogarth, 1955.
3-317.
Memmi, Albert.ThePillar of Salt. 1955. Trans.EdouardRoditi. Boston: Beacon, 1992.
Nandy, Ashis. The Tao of Cricket:On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games. New
Delhi: Penguin, 1989.
Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana. "The Primitive as Analyst." Cultural Critique 28 (1994):
175-218.
Sibony, Daniel. "Effets d'entre-deux-langueset exils d'origine." Cahiers intersignes 1.1
(1990): 81-90.
Spivak, GayatriChakravorty."Psychoanalysisin Left Field and Fieldworking:Examples
to Fit the Title."Speculationsafter Freud:Psychoanalysis,Philosophy,and Culture.
Ed. Sonu Shamdasaniand Michael Munchow.New York:Routledge, 1994. 41-76.
46
SABINEI. GOLZ,associatepro-
fessor of comparativeliterature
and Germanat the Universityof
Iowa, is the author of The Split
Scene of Reading: Nietzsche/
Derrida/Kafka/Bachmannand
of articles on Ilse Aichinger,In-
geborgBachmann,JurekBecker,
Paul Celan, Jacques Derrida,
and Esther Dischereit. She is
workingon a book-lengthproj-
ect on Karoline von Ginder-
rode's readingnotes.
Four Views on Ethnicity
Sabine
I. GbCl
How Ethnic Am I?
Jemandmu3fteJosef K. verleumdethaben, denn ohne daJ3er etwas Boses getan
hdtte,wurdeer eines Morgensverhaftet.
Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything
wronghe was arrestedonefine morning.
FranzKafka,Der Procefi (The Trial)
ONE FINE MORNING I found myself called on to confess my "Ger-
man" ethnicity. My response, naturally, was to go looking for an exit. Yet
such escapes, as one learns from reading Kafka, are not easy to come by.
Could I deny the charge, dispute its presuppositions, have someone tes-
tify in my favor, or-extravagant hope-even produce an alibi? Of
course, I could argue that my ancestors were not so much German as
Swabian, Prussian, Danish, and even (yet more distantly and legendarily)
Italian and Spanish. Or I could seek refuge in, for instance, Jacques Rou-
baud's efficient deconstruction of provable ethnic origin in "Is Le Pen
French?" Roubaud considers the implications of Jean-Marie Le Pen's
definition of a French person as someone whose parents are both French:
Si Le Pen etait frangais, selon la d6finition de Le Pen, cela voudraitdire
que, selon la definitionde Le Pen, la mere de Le Pen et le pere de Le Pen au-
raientete eux-memes francaisselon la definitionde Le Pen, ce qui signifierait
que, selon la definitionde Le Pen, la mere de la mere de Le Pen, ainsi que le
pere de la mere de Le Pen ainsi que la mere du pere de Le Pen, sans oublierle
pere du pere de Le Pen auraientete, selon la definitionde Le Pen, francaiset
par cons6quent la mere de la mere de la mere de Le Pen, ainsi que celle du
pere de la merede Le Pen ainsi que celle de la mere du pere de Le Pen, et celle
du pere du pere de Le Pen auraientete francais selon la d6finitionde Le Pen
et de la meme maniereet pour la meme raison le pere de la mere de la mere
de Le Pen, ainsi que celui du pere de la mere de Le Pen ainsi que celui de la
mere du pere de Le Pen, et que celui du pere du pere de Le Pen auraientete
francais,toujoursselon la meme definition,celle de Le Pen
d'oiuon deduirasans peine et sans l'aide de Le Pen en poursuivantle rai-
sonnement
ou bien qu'il y a une infinitede francaisqui sont n6s francaisselon la defi-
nition de Le Pen, ont vecu et sont mortsfrancaisselon la definitionde Le Pen
depuis l'aube du commencementdes temps ou bien
que Le Pen n'est pas francaisselon la definitionde Le Pen. (15-16)
If Le Pen were French according to the definition of Le Pen, this would
mean,accordingto the definitionof Le Pen, thatLe Pen's motherandLe Pen's
father would themselves have been French according to the definition of Le
Pen, which would mean, accordingto the definitionof Le Pen, that Le Pen's
mother's mother, as well as Le Pen's mother's father and Le Pen's father's
mother,without forgettingLe Pen's father'sfather,would have been French,
Four ViewsonEthnicity 47

according to thedefinitionof Le Pen,andconsequentlythemotherof Le Pen's

mother'smother,as well as thatof Le Pen'smother'sfather,as well as thatof
Le Pen'sfather'smotherandthatof Le Pen'sfather'sfather,alsowouldhave
beenFrenchaccordingto thedefinitionof Le Pen,andin the samewayand
forthesamereasonsthefatherof Le Pen'smother'smother,as wellas thatof
Le Pen'smother'sfather,as well as thatof Le Pen'sfather'smotherandthat
of LePen'sfather'sfather,wouldhavebeenFrench,stillaccording to thesame
definition,theoneby Le Pen
fromwhich,by continuingthereasoning,one maydeducewithouttrouble
andwithoutthehelpof Le Pen
eitherthatthereis aninfinityof Frenchpeoplewho sincethedawnof the
beginningof timewerebornFrenchaccordingto the definitionof Le Pen,
livedanddiedFrenchaccordingto thedefinitionof Le Pen,orelse
thatLe Penis notFrenchaccordingto thedefinitionof Le Pen.'

But even if Roubaudwere authoritativeas a witness and even if I could

temporarilygain some ground with his help, wouldn't my motives for
trying to make an escape be questioned?Wouldn'tthe very impulse to
escape be takento confirmmy guilt?
In postwar(West) Germany,"being German"was not somethingone
went arounddoing in public. The proclamationand elaborationof na-
tional, racial, or ethnic identity in general-and of Germannessin par-
ticular-had all the wrong associations.Any categorizationof people by
such means was taintedand deeply suspectboth politically and ethically.
On the basis of such evidence, I could now expect my very hesitationto
perform"as a German"to be diagnosedas the most quintessentiallyGer-
man thing aboutme. My continuedresistancewould merely suggest that
the guilt might be even greaterthan at firstsuspected.
In the postdeconstructivecontext of the 1990s, the practiceof elabo-
ratingethnic and other sorts of culturaland group identitieshas become
popularonce again. And yet afterdeconstruction,ethnicitycan no longer
be a truth.It mustbe somethingconstructed,potentiallymultiple,hybrid-
ized, and interstitial.WernerSollors's use of the word inventionin the ti-
tle of his book TheInventionof Ethnicityindicatesthis change:

By callingethnicity-thatis, belongingandbeingperceivedby othersas be-

longingto anethnicgroup-an "invention," one signalsaninterpretation
in a
modemanda postmodercontext. (xiii)

If I am uncomfortable under ethnic "arrest,"Sollors's relation to the

"postmoderncontext" seems not altogether untroubledeither: he per-
ceives it as an "assault":

Is it possible to take the postmodernassaultseriouslyand yet to adhere

to somenotionof historyandof individualandcollectivelife in the mod-
em world? (xi)

In the absence of a credible theory that would uphold the claims of

referentiality, the meaning of these inventions slips and threatens to
48 Four ViewsonEthnicit

disappear.In response to this problem, Sollors offers a redefined con-

ception of ethnicity:

[E]thnicityis notso mucha deep-seatedforcesurvivingfromthehistorical

past,butratherthemodemandmodernizing featureof a contrasting
strategy.
... It marksanacquiredmoder senseof belongingthatreplacesvisible,con-
cretecommunities....It is nota thingbuta process-andit requiresconstant
detectiveworkfromreaders. (xiv-xv)

Sollors shifts the meaningfrom actualcommunitiesthatconstructionsof

ethnicity could still designate to the activity of subjects who desire to
belong to such communities. Ethnicity is transformedfrom something
one is into somethingone does.
But what if one had acquirednot a "modernsense of belonging"but
rathera desire not to belong-or at least a desire to keep open the possi-
bility of not belonging as an emergency exit throughwhich one could
give the (always potentially overeager)detectives the slip? The idea of
ethnicity would move from a model of acknowledgmentor denial of a
(more or less obvious) truthto a choice between two modes of and two
desires in reading. Sollors's redefinition thus also makes room for the
possibility of choosing not to belong-an option I consider indispens-
able. For only the option of doing otherwise can preventthe invention
from becoming essentially indistinguishablefrom the old notion of in-
escapabletruthwith all its attendanthorrors.
The experienceof being at home has as its uneasy but necessarycom-
plementthe experienceof being a foreigner.2In 1977, as an undergradu-
ate, I spent my first year abroad,at a universityin Ohio. Many students
there casually mentionedthat they were "German"too. Yet I also knew
that I was the only student from Germany on that campus of fourteen
thousand.When I attendedin close succession a readingby Elie Wiesel
and a studentperformanceof Cabaret,my sense of my strangesingular-
ity intensified.Both events seemed to single me out from the whole large
audienceas theiruniqueaddressee.I suddenlysaw myself as an isolated,
spotlighted point in a darkenedroom filled with a mass of people that
seemed inertand unreal.
If this was a moment of essentialism, accordingto which I felt that I
was the only "genuineGerman"among the studentson thatcampusand
the only addressee of those performances, the sensation was hardly a
comfortableone. Nor was it one that made me feel in any way at home
in a community. If one interpretsthat moment as one that founded an
identity,that identity was the exact opposite of a collective one. And if
the momentwas aboutbeing "German,"it was not aboutbeing ethnically
so. At such a moment, rather,one is beyond language-both utterlyex-
posed and completely invisible, both central to significance and mute,
fallen out of any signifyingorder.One is simultaneouslythe only accused
and the only judge. The works of FranzKafkaand IngeborgBachmann
bear tracesof events of this sort.
Four I/ews onEthnicity 49

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

[H]ier im Halbschlafmischten sich alle, er vergaBdann ... die grol3eArbeit

des Gerichtes,ihm war als sei er der einzige Angeklagteund alle anderngien-
gen durcheinanderwie Beamte und Juristenauf den Gangen eines Gerichts-
gebaudes, noch die stumpfsinnigstenhatten das Kinn zur Brust gesenkt, die
Lippenaufgestiilptund den starrenBlick verantwortungsvollen Nachdenkens.
(348-49)

Here in this half sleep they all got mixed up: he forgot the great work of the
court;he felt as if he were the only accused and all others were mingling like
the officials and lawyers in the corridorsof a courthouse;even the dullest had
their chins lowered to their chests, their lips pursed, and wore the rigid gaze
of responsiblethought.

The neglect of the necessary distinctions leads Joseph K. from the feeling
that he is "the only accused" to a "breakthrough" in which he suddenly
emerges on the side of the judges. The side of the judges, however, is a
forbidden place for Joseph K. The Trial could not have continued with
Joseph K. in the role of a judge. Thus Kafka censored the passage, re-
established the distinction, and rescued his novel.3
Whereas Kafka's novel maintains the perspective of the accused,
Bachmann's story "Ein Wildermuth" explores the situation of a judge
obliged to try a murderer whose last name is the same as his own. As the
trial proceeds, the judge grows increasingly restless "weil er seinen Na-
men immer wieder lesen muBte als den eines Fremden" 'because he had
to read his name again and again as that of a stranger' (217-18):

Und sein Name warhier in einem iiblen Marchen.... Die Vorkommnisse,die

in die Aktengeschriebenwaren,hattenihn sonst nie derartbewegt. Nie jeden-
falls hatteer gefragt,wie zu einem Namen ein Mord,ein zertriimmertesAuto,
eine Unterschlagung,ein Ehebruchkamen.Es warihm selbstverstandlich,da3
NamendavonKundegabenunddaBVorfallesich mitjenen Namenzusammen-
taten,an denen man Angeklagteund Zeugen erkennenkonnte. (218-19)

And here his name was partof a nasty tale .... The incidentswritteninto the
files had neverbefore moved him like this. Never,at any rate,had he wondered
how a name came to be associated with a murder,a smashed car, an embez-
zlement, an adultery.It was self-evident to him that names gave information
about such things and that incidents got together with those names by which
one could recognize defendantsand witnesses.

As in Kafka's fragmented chapter, the difference between the accused

and the judges collapses, and with it crumbles the self-evidence of
names, the possibility of articulating truth by means of language and thus
50 Four ViewsonEthnicity

of reachinga definitiveand intelligible verdict.In the course of the trial,

the murderertries too hardto confess-and succeeds only in makingthe
story more and more untellable.Finally the prosecutorcalls the lost as-
sembly back to reality "mit seiner schneidendenStimme" 'with his cut-
ting voice' (225). At that moment the judge screams, and from then on
he is unfitto practicehis profession.

Er las die BerichteundStellungnahmen, kanntesie baldauswendig,ver-

die Geschichtein sichzu erzeugenunddannin
suchte,wie ein Unbeteiligter,
sichzu zerschlagen,die manfurdie Offentlichkeit ausdemVorfallgemacht
hatte.EralleinwuBteja, daBkeineGeschichtesichausdenElementenfiigen
undkeinSinnzusammenhang sichvorzeigenliel3,sonderndaBnureinmalein
sichtbarer wordenwardurchdenEinschlagdes Geistesin
Unfallverursacht
seinenGeist,dernichttaugte,mehranzurichtenin derWeltals eine kurze
kopfloseVerwirrung. (215)
He readthereportsandopinions,soonknewthemby heart,triedas if he were
uninvolved to createinsidehimselfandthento smashto piecesinsidehimself
the storythathadbeenmadeof the eventfor thepublic.He alone,afterall,
knewthatno storycouldbe forgedandno meaningfulconnectiondemon-
stratedbutthata visibleaccidenthadbeencausedonlyoncethroughtheim-
pactof thespiriton his spirit,whichwasnotfitto causeanygreaterhavocin
theworldthana short,panickedconfusion.

What happensto the judge yields no story and no judgment.His silence

merely marksthe site of an impact, a place where something has fallen
out of language, where something defies any attempt to forge a story
aboutit.
In the eventsthatdisruptKafka'snovel andthatoccasion the silence of
Bachmann'sjudge, a momentof self-reflexivitymakesa hole in language.
Kafka's novel reasserts itself against that event, whereas Bachmann's
story insists on it. After the incident,the judge-accusedlives with and in
those moments of incommensurabilitythat defy language's referential
grip.This is a subjectthat maintainsnot the distinctionsbut the exit, the
kind of subjectJulia Kristevaadvocatesin "Women'sTime":

This process could be summarizedas an interiorizationof thefounding sepa-

rationof the socio-symboliccontract,as an introductionof its cuttingedge into
the veryinteriorof everyidentitywhethersubjective,sexual,ideological,or
so forth.Thisin sucha waythatthehabitualandincreasingly explicitattempt
to fabricatea scapegoatvictimas foundressof a societyor a counter-society
maybe replacedby the analysisof the potentialitiesof victim/executioner
whichcharacterize eachidentity,eachsubject,eachsex. (210)

The potentialitiesof this victim-executioneror judge-accused are those

of a subjectthatknows it will not be able to confess its identityin a name.

Names that signal ethnicity (like all other names and like languagein
general)acquireor fail to acquiresignificance-casually, ironically,cat-
Four ViewsonEthnicity 51

astrophically-depending on whetheror not (and how) people read one

anotherand themselvesin termsof such names. The comfortnames pro-
vide for some and the dangersthey pose for others grow proportionally
with the "self-evident"faith "thatnames [give] information... and that
incidents [get] togetherwith those names by which one [can] recognize
defendantsand witnesses."Inversely,inventionsof ethnicitycan be more
cheerfullyindulgedthe less seriouslythey take themselves.However,the
scene of the crime, of mortificationand arrest,is located elsewhere.And
elsewhere,too, is the potentialfor laughterand for makinga getaway.
"Yes, I am Germantoo,"those studentsin Ohio used to say. And I too
am happy to say these words occasionally. But in those moments, they
mean almost nothing. An English translationof the Latin alibi is "else-
where."I have found my alibi.

Notes
'I would like to thankJean-JacquesPoucel for helping me locate and translatethis text.
All othertranslationsare my own.
2See Rosi Braidottion this issue: "Culturalidentitybeing externaland retrospective,the
most immediateeffect of the Australianexperience was to make me discover the depth of
my Europeanness,which was far from a simple notionor a single experience.Not only was
I a white immigrant,when comparedto the aboriginesbut also I was off-white (a 'wog,' or
a 'dago') when comparedto the Anglo-Australianminoritywho ran the country.... It was
by opposition to the antipodeanpsyche and culturalidentity that I found out, often at my
own expense, that I am, indeed, a European.I often wonderwhetherthis awarenesswould
have been so acute had I not experienced the loss of Europeanroots through migration.
Can culturalidentity emerge from an internaldynamic, or is it always external, that is to
say oppositional?"(9).
3Fora more detailed reading along these lines of The Trial as well as The Castle, see
Golz, chs. 4 and 5.

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Bachmann,Ingeborg.Werke.Ed. ChristineKoschel, Inge von Weidenbaum,and Clemens
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Golz, Sabine. The Split Scene of Reading: Nietzsche/Derrida/Kafka/Bachmann.Atlantic
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Kafka, Franz. Der Procefi. Roman in der Fassung der Handschrift.Ed. Malcolm Pasley.
Frankfurt:Fischer, 1990.
Kristeva,Julia. "Women'sTime." The KristevaReader.Ed. TorilMoi. New York:Colum-
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Roubaud,Jacques.Poesie, etcetera:Menage. Paris:Stock, 1995.
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