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Perception, Meaning & Identity Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access At the Interface Series Editors DrRobert Fisher DrDaniel Riha AdvisoryBoard DrAlejandroCervantes-Carson DrPeterMarioKreuter ProfessorMargaretChatterjee MartinMcGoldrick DrWayneCristaudo RevdStephenMorris MiraCrouch ProfessorJohnParry DrPhilFitzsimmons PaulReynolds ProfessorAsaKasher ProfessorPeterTwohig OwenKelly ProfessorSRamVemuri RevdDrKennethWilson,O.B.E AnAttheInterfaceresearchandpublicationsproject. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/ TheDiversityandRecognitionHub ‘Interculturalism,Meaning,Identity’ 2010 Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access Perception, Meaning & Identity Edited by Irena C. Veljanova Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access © Inter-DisciplinaryPress 2010 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permissionofInter-DisciplinaryPress. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire.OX298HR,UnitedKingdom. +44(0)1993882087 ISBN:978-1-84888-042-9 FirstpublishedintheUnitedKingdomineBookformatin2010.FirstEdition. Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access Tableof Contents Introduction vii IrenaC.Veljanova PartI InterculturalSpaceandOtherness ImmigrationandLiminalityinRawiHage’sCockroach 3 JesseHutchison RefusingtobetheOther:Interculturalityas‘Belgitude’ 13 inGerman-SpeakingMinorityLiteratureinBelgium ArviSepp PartII MediatingInterculturalChallenges: PolicyConsiderations PreservingArabCultureintheKingdomofBahrain 25 MagdalenaKarolak In-EffectDissociativePoliciesinAustralia: 35 MacedonianEthnicityandEmptyShelledSlav- MacedonianEthnicity IrenaC.Veljanova PartIII CollectiveIdentities:ConstructionandProjection Identity,DiscourseandU.S.ForeignPolicy:The 49 WritingofaPuritanNationalIdentity inThe WaronTerror EricaSimoneAlmeidaResende PuertoRico:ArtandIdentityPolicies 59 DialitzaColónPérez TheInfluenceofCulturalDivisiononCountryImage: 71 TheBelgiumCase:Flandersvs.Wallonia Lavinia Cincă & Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie PartIV FragmentedIdentities FragmentedIdentitiesinDoronRabinovici’s 83 NovelOhnehin AnabelaValenteSimões Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access Introduction:Perception,Meaningand Identity IrenaC.Veljanova This eBook contains a selection of papers presented at the Third Global Conference of Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity held in Salzburg, Austria, between the 10th and 12th of November 2009. The conference, which was part of TheDiversityandRecognitionProjectbytheglobalnetworkfordynamicresearch and publishing Inter-Disciplinary.Net, facilitated a multidisciplinary dialogue between authors within and beyond Academe. Each of the participating authors provided a constructive contribution towards advancing the dialogue on interculturalism, meaning and identity. The conference attracted authors from various areas of the globe and from various scholarly disciplines, each sharing a flavour of the latest scientific developments in the respective fields of their expertise.FromBahraintoCanada,fromBelgiumto Australia,andfromRomania toBrazil,thecentralthemeoftheconferencewasfoundtobeinneedofimmediate address. From discussions on intercultural space in multicultural environments, critical assessments of the other, discussions on collective identity constructions and projections and fragmented identities to discussions on mediation of intercultural challenges, this volume addresses a plethora of sub-themes that are inextricablyrelatedtothemainconferencetheme. Withitsstarkfocusoninterculturality,andagainsttheauthors’expertise,this volume closely examines and problematises perceived threats to cultural sustainability at the national level and challenges the perceptions of intercultural spaceasdismalandnon-generativeforthesocialagentpositionedwithin.Aswell, it captures various sets of meanings that are collectively and individually interpreted in the respective identity constructions and projections. Finally, it includes discussions centring upon various identities such as ethnic identity, national identity, transgenerational identity, contested identity and regional- European identity. In an informative and representative fashion, this volume is titledPerception,MeaningandIdentity. Perception, Meaning and Identity contains eight papers organised in four distinctsections.ThefirstsectiontitledInterculturalSpaceandOthernesscontains two papers - Jesse Hutchison’s Immigration and Liminality in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach and Arvi Sepp’s Refusing to be the Other: Interculturality as ‘Belgitude’ in German-Speaking Minority Literature in Belgium. Both of these authors have explored the cultural periphery, intercultural space, challenging the preconceptionsoftheirdismalcharacters. Focusing on the Canadian immigrant experience as featured in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, Hutchison argues that the in-between spaces, i.e., the liminal spaces, are not spaces of limited possibilities; rather, they are the opposite. He further argues that as generative, these liminal spaces can provide for a comfortable existence of the immigrant as the latter can effectively ‘resist categorisation and Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access viii Introduction:Perception,MeaningandIdentity __________________________________________________________________ simultaneously criticise the social order from within’. Considering Rawi Hage’s literary accomplishment in Cockroach, Hutchison suggests that literary texts can also operate as effective spaces of possibility but not without a ‘great deal of ... ‘post-modernirony’. In similar fashion, Arvi Sepp challenges the ‘discourse that locates minority literatureasmarginal’vis-a-viswhatisperceivedasmainstream/majorityliterature in a particular country. In doing so, he provides a case study of the minority literature of the German-speaking community in East Belgium. A propos of the territorial and historical specificity of the German-speaking minority in East Belgium, Sepp argues that ‘the overlapping of the own and the alien [i.e., the Francophone, Flemish and German literature from the Federal Republic of Germany] creates a powerful and expressive literary material’ which is by no meansmarginalorother. The second section of this volume, Mediating Intercultural Challenges: PolicyConsiderationscontainstwopapers.Inthefirst,PreservingArabCulturein the Kingdom of Bahrain, Magdalena Karolak assesses the Government’s efforts towards preservation of the Arab culture in Bahrain, initiated in response to the intercultural challenges to multicultural [in a descriptive sense] Bahrain. These challenges are perceived as threats to the collective Arab-Islamic identity of Bahrain due to the ever-growing cultural influence of the country’s culturally diverse, economic migrants. As Karolak argues: ‘While Islamisation of Bahraini society could prove a ready-made solution to stopping identity loss, is it the right solution?’. Inthesecondpaperofthissection,In-EffectDissociativePoliciesinAustralia: Macedonian Ethnicity and Empty Shelled Slav-Macedonian Ethnicity, Irena C. Veljanova discusses the establishment of a specific ethnicity focused in-effect dissociativepoliciesinAustralia.InthesamewayasKarolak,theestablishmentof those policies is seen as a response to the intercultural challenges in multicultural Australia. And, while a common denominator of these policy responses is the consideration of individual ethno-cultural identity vis-a-vis mainstream cultural identity in respect to their capacity for full civic participation, Australia moved towardsre-namingtheMacedoniancommunityinAustralia‘Slav-Macedonian’for purposes of official government administration. Veljanova observes that an unfavourable precedent in policy response to challenges of ethnically diverse societies wasestablished wherebyanethno-culture wasofficiallydissociated from itsrespectiveethno-nationalitybymeansofofficialadministrationofanewethno- national category, irrespective of the opposition mounted by the ethno community affectedbyit. The next section, titled Collective Identities: Construction and Projection, contains three papers. While all three discuss matters related to collective identities, the first two focus on collective identityconstruction. The third focuses on collective identity projection, i.e., nation/country image. In her paper America, Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access IrenaC.Veljanova ix __________________________________________________________________ Americannessand Puritanism: The Writing ofa Puritan NationalIdentity through U.S. Foreign Policy Practices, Erica Simone Almeida Resende uncovers Puritan discursive elements which, through the course of informing the U.S. Foreign Policy practices, construct a very Puritan American identity. Resende maintains that ‘the discourse of ‘Americanness’ [...] seeks to impose the Puritan ideologyas the very meaning of ‘Americanness’. And, while Resende maintains her focus on America and Americanness, Dialitza Colón Pérez focuses on the construction of PuertoRicanness.InherpaperPuertoRico:ArtandIdentityPolicies,Pérezargues thattheartisticworksofthePuertoRicandiaspora‘canfacilitatethereconstruction of the wider cultural and public sphere and provoke new ways of narrating Puerto Rican art and identity’. In her examination of the capacity of Puerto Rican diasporicartforcollectiveidentityconstruction,shefocusesonthreeartists:Pepón Osorio, Miguel Luciano and Osvaldo Budet. Pérez concludes that the works of these artists announce a new era in Puerto Rican art: ‘a more serious art socially andaesthetically’ whichsignificantlyinfluencesthere-conceptualisationofPuerto Ricanness. The last paper in this section, titled The Influence of Cultural Division on Country Image. The Belgium Case: Flanders vs. Wallonia, is co-authored by Lavinia Cincă and Dumitriţa Dorina Hîrtie. In general, this paper engages with the concept of national/country image; in particular, it engages with the national/country image of Belgium amidst times of financial crisis and cultural division. Cincă and Hîrtie conclude that the cultural division between Belgium’s two main language communities, the Francophone and the Dutch, has consequences for the image of the country. Hence, promoting European civic dutiesandEuropeanidentitycouldproveafavourablesolution. The last section of this volume is devoted to Fragmented Identities. The section title is borrowed from the title of the sole paper included in this section authored by Anabela Valente Simões - Fragmented Identities in Doron Rabinovici’s Novel Ohnehin. Analysing the identities represented in Ohnehin, Simões arrives at an understanding that the identities of the victims of the transgenerational trauma related to the events of the Holocaust are, in fact, fragmented identities. Set in Vienna, the narrative is ‘a metaphor for the generalised social amnesia which [Rabinovici] observed in the Viennese society’. Like the other papers in this volume, this paper exposes the challenges of multicultural environments and the necessity for intercultural dialogue. Simões states: ‘Individuals are at risk’; hence, being relegated to the periphery is not a favourablesolution. As the editor of this volume, it gives me great pleasure to present the papers to the readership in an attempt to further the dialogue beyond the conference milieu. I would like to express my appreciation to the Inter-Disciplinary.net for making the publication of this volume possible. I would also like to acknowledge theeffortsofthecontributorstothisvolumefortheirsupportoftheprojectoverall. Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access Irena C. Veljanova - 978-1-84888-042-9 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 12:07:38PM via free access
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