Nationality: A Case of Mistaken Identity Read online

mistake. As soon as we try to define a culture, we fail. It is clear right away that a culture is not something homogeneous. For instance, even if we try to characterize a culture as a religious one, we don’t expect everyone to be religious in the same way–we expect some to be casual believers, some to be devout, and some to see religion as central to their lives. But we also expect there to be people who are not religious at all, who either ignore religion, or criticise it in some way, and denounce it outright, depending on their courage and perceived sense of security. We no more expect people to share the same attitude towards religion than we expect all Canadians or Russians to share the same enthusiasm for hockey.

  In fact, we expect the opposite of this. We expect a culture to exhibit a wide variety of different perspectives, many of which will contradict other perspectives within the same culture. We expect variety rather than uniformity. And this is precisely what we find (unless, or course, we assume that national characteristics exist and it is our mission to discover what they are). We find variety. In the United States, in fact, variety is written into the constitution as far as religion is concerned. Freedom of religion means that there can be no correct answer to the question, “What religion is practised in American culture?” Variety is the rule; it is illegal to try to enforce a uniformity of religion.

  As well, the more free a society is, the less likely we are to find uniformity of thought, or action, or feelings. But freedom has consequences. Without uniformity, there can be no definition. We can’t say what a particular culture is, because the culture is many things. And if we can’t define the culture, we can’t ascribe characteristics to either it or its citizens.

  It might seem that a promising way around this dilemma would be to introduce the notion of subcultures. If different subcultures contradict each other, it doesn’t matter. We expect subcultures to be at odds with each other. The word subculture suggests something that belongs to a larger culture, but is interesting enough to talk about on its own. It also seems to dictate the existence of that culture; how can you have a subculture without the culture itself, the vast dome that acts as an umbrella for all the subcultures, somehow tying them together? But, as we have seen, cultures, especially free ones, tend towards variety rather than uniformity, and so tend not to exhibit either cohesion or coherence. The introduction of subcultures is therefore only a dodge. There is nothing that ties them together.

  So culture doesn’t generate national characteristics in a people. What then of their shared history? The problem is the same as it was with the idea of culture. Unless you truly have a people, you can’t have a shared history. A history can no more create a group than a culture can. The group must already exist. If it doesn’t, no shared history is possible.

  This too seems to explain why the very notion of a shared history seems so problematic. Given that every population divides between rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, the educated and uneducated, and so on, and often privileges one sex, one race and one religion over another, it is difficult to see how a shared history is ever possible. People in conflict do not share a history. The winners win, the losers lose, the winners’ story gains currency, and the losers’ story disappears, but there is never good grounds for talking about a shared history. If my side lost, why would I ever embrace a story that celebrated its defeat? Paradoxically, it is often true that those most interested in promoting the idea of a shared history are interested only in their own version of events and wish to exclude other dissenting versions.

  There is one case, on the other hand, when shared history is not only possible but likely. If a group is subject to discrimination, a bond is often created between members of that group that otherwise might never have existed. The fight to overcome a common enemy will make members of that group feel that they have a shared history with other members of the group. But this history is shared only as long as the struggle continues. And the history is in any case a strange one, as it is shared only with people of one’s own race, religion or sex, and comes into existence only because people of one’s own race, religion or sex are being discriminated against.

  What then of people sharing a language? Two paragraphs on, I will suggest that language does forge a real bond between people–it alters the way they experience the world, and so unites them in a way they may not even be aware of. But there are two arguments that show that language cannot be used to define a group of individuals as a cultural group.

  First, anyone can learn a language. So a person that no one would mistake for a member of the group can nevertheless learn the group’s language. But that would not make the person a member of the group. Both the group and the individual learning the group’s language would reject this. I may learn Japanese, but neither I nor the people of Japan will ever think that I am Japanese.

  Secondly, learning a language unites people in that it allows problems to be discussed and worked through meticulously in a way that is inconceivable without language. However, there is no reason to suppose that speaking a language will lead to more agreements than disagreements among people, and so there is no cogency to the idea that language promotes harmony among people, or acts as a glue that binds them together. While it is clear that not speaking the same language as another group may easily create tension between the two groups, I don’t think that speaking the same language automatically or even routinely dispels tension among people who share a language. People who speak the same language as each other do not necessarily “speak the same language” (agree with one another’s basic tenets).

  So national characteristics cannot be traced back to a shared culture, or history, or language, and the argument from geography is ridiculous. It therefore seems that to speak of national characteristics at all is just wrong. But many people, especially those who incline towards patriotism, might find this simpler to accept if it were possible to detect the error that led to the notion that national characteristics do in fact exist. Fortunately, it’s an easy error to unmask.

  It is hard, almost impossible, not to be an essentialist. An essentialist is someone who believes that everything in the world belongs to one group or another, and that each member of the group shares one or more common characteristics with other members of the group. In other words, the group has an essence that its members all share. So: a pencil is a wooden tube filled with graphite; it is used for writing. A penguin is a bird that swims rather than flies; its wings are really flippers and its toes are webbed. A pentagon is a five-sided polygon. If something doesn’t fit any of these criteria, then whatever else it is, it’s definitely not a pencil, a penguin or a pentagon.

  Dictionaries are good examples of essentialism at work. If the word is a noun, they tell us to use the word only if the thing being talked about has certain characteristics, which together form its essence. If the word is an adjective, they try to typify the quality (yellow is “like ripe lemons or egg yolks,”) to show us what to include and exclude when we use the word. If the word is a verb, they try to reify the action (murder is “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another”) to show how it should be categorized. Dictionaries give us definitions, and to define a word is to say what is essential about its use.

  But dictionaries are just the formal end-products of the fact we use language to talk about the world. It is language itself that foists essentialism upon us, because it transforms our experience from one of individual things into an experience of groups of essentially similar things. If I am trying to tell you exactly what tree or building or cloud I am talking about, I can point to it, and while I’m pointing, I can say “That one there,” but the fact remains that the thing I am pointing to is unique and individual only with respect to where it is, and almost never with respect to what it is. It is “the tree with the yellow leaves,” or “a building still under construction,” or “a cloud shaped like a lion.” We experience it as an example, as a member of a group. (E
ven things that people take to be unique are still members of a group, in some obvious sense. The Eiffel Tower is still a tower, Westminster Abbey is still an abbey, and the Empire State Building is still a building.)

  Now, there are things we can talk about that are not members of a group. When people talk about God, they are usually talking about the God they believe in, and will not think of this God as one amongst many, but rather as the one true God. However, to admit there are exceptions to the idea that the things we normally talk about are members of a group is not a strong counterargument. Most of the things we talk about are indeed members of groups.

  Still, this doesn’t commit us to essentialism. Many groups, even most groups, may be composed of members who share common characteristics, but this doesn’t have to be true of all groups. There is at least one group whose members are not meant to have any common characteristics, and that is a statistical sample. The idea behind random sampling is that any member of the greater population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample. The extent to which such a group