Culture : ‘essentialism and Narratives’ or worldview and what people tell us (IEREST Educational resources for Erasmus Students)

Essentialism “Essentialism presents people’s individual behaviour as entirely defined and constrained by the cultures in which they live so that the stereotype becomes the essence of who they are” (Holliday, 2011, p. 4) “By essentialist we mean presuming that there is a universal essence, homogeneity and unity in a particular culture” (Holliday et al., 2010, p. 1) “Essentialism is the ‘easy’ answer for culture” (Holliday et al., 2010, p. 2)

Essentialism (Holliday et al., 2010, p. 3) Essentialist view of culture Non-essentialist view of culture ‘A culture’ has a physical entity, as though it is a place, which people can visit. It is homogeneous in that perceived traits are spread evenly, giving the sense of a simple society Culture is a social force which is evident where it is significant. Society is complex, which characteristics which are difficult to pin down It is associated with a country and a language, which has an onion-skin relationship with larger continental, religious, ethnic or racial cultures, and smaller subcultures It is associated with a value, and can relate equally to any type or size of group for any period of time, and can be characterized by a discourse as much as by a language The world is divided into mutually exclusive national cultures. People in one culture are essentially different from people in another Cultures can flow, change, intermingle, cut across and through each other, regardless of national frontiers, and have blurred boundaries 3

Essentialism (Holliday et al., 2010, pp. 3-4) Essentialist view of culture Non-essentialist view of culture People belong exclusively to one national culture and one language People can belong to and move through a complex multiplicity of cultures both within and across societies ‘A culture’ behaves like a single-minded person with a specific, exclusive personality. People’s behaviour is defined and constrained by the culture in which they live People are influenced by or make use of a multiplicity of cultural forms To communicate with someone who is foreigner or different we must first understand the details, or stereotype, of their culture To communicate with anyone who belongs to a group with whom we are unfamiliar, we have to understand the complexity of who she is 4

What are narratives? Narratives can take many forms: life histories, diaries, autobiographies, story-telling, etc. Narratives “recount a process of the construction of the self, the evolution of subjectivity […] they also provide a vital entry point in interaction between the individual and society” (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, p. 6) “We understand ourselves and know ourselves insofar as we construct narratives of and for ourselves which develop over time” (Rapport, 2007, p. 321) “To begin with, all life story narratives, oral or written, are shaped by historic, social and cultural conventions of the time and place in which they are produced” (Pavlenko, 2001, p. 320) 5

Narratives (Barthes, 1977, p. 79) “The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances – as though any material were fit to receive man’s stories. Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula), stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation. Moreover, under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative. All classes, all human groups, have their narratives, enjoyment of which is very often shared by men with different, even opposing, cultural backgrounds. Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself” 6

Narrative voice Narrative voice refers to the subjective, dynamic, and open-ended characteristics of narratives. Narratives are not just stories because they are defined by an individual perspective on the world; a narrative gives voice to the subjectivity of the individual having a certain experience. Narratives are dynamic in that an essential condition for any narrative is the subjective unpacking or telling of a certain experience; they require that one actively take up a standpoint on an experience, by symbolically framing it in one fashion or another. Narratives are also open-ended in that they are never completed. Something can always be added to them or subtracted from them, changing their shape and meaning, and even their beginning point may turn out to be a construction amenable to change and reframing. 7

Narrative community The concept of narrative community emphasizes the participatory and transferable traits of narratives. Narratives are not just shared in the sense that every narrative requires a (passive) listener. Rather, they are participatory in the sense that every active unpacking of telling of an experience through narrative correlates with an equally active unpacking of the narrative on the part of the listener, thereby creating a new version of the speaker’s narrative if not a whole new narrative in its own right. Narratives are transferable in that the sharing of a narrative allows the recipient, and not just its creator, to lay claim to it. Sharing narratives is much about the being dispossessed of a narrative as it is about the right to lay claim to a certain telling of an experience in the first place. 8

Narrative power ‘Narrative power’ highlights the dialectical, influential, and seductive aspects of narratives. Narratives may in the first place be dialectical in that they are subject to political and historical values and fashions, meaning they come to be either dominant (valorized) or subordinated (devalorized) through their sharing within and between communities. Narratives are influential because they can either reinforce or subvert either their own dominance/ subordination or that of other narratives through the act of being shared and re-shared within communities. Narratives are lastly seductive in that they can be more or less appealing to individuals, allowing their impact and influence, once shared, to be harder to avoid in decisive ways. 9