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In the tradition of Western contemporary art that
starts in the Renaissance and comes to our days, the autodefinition
of a cultural "self" passes through localizing and describing diverse
"others". It has already been said, repeatedly, that the "center"
defines itself by defining the "other". Thus, it's the exclusion
mechanisms that demarcate the domain of a cultural subject with
a hegemonic project. At a given historical point the West decontaminates
itself of otherness, which it deposits on another body in the peripheries
of the colonial dominions. Later, evolutionism provides the theoretical
space within which the center of power perceives itself as "developed
and technological" while the periphery is denoted "primitive and
original" (in the sense of origin or beginning).
Nowadays, this discourse has aged rapidly as the old hegemonic discourses
have lost stability.
In the concrete case of Latin America (a term I am forced to use
despite the sincere antipathy it raises in me), historically designated
as the Official Otherness of the West, we have today a group of
artists operating from other paradigms. This situation is perhaps
well described in what in anthropological terms is called the "crisis
of representation". As characterized by Jonathan Friedman:
... Ethnography renders the Other's identity
to ourselves and, via the conditions in which it is executed, back
to the Other. By speaking of him, or for him, we ultimately force
him to speak through our categories. This works adequately in conditions
of empire, or stable hegemony and a clear hierarchy of identities.
But where such conditions begin disintegrate, its correlative discourses
lose their authority, not only because we ourselves come to the
realization that we can no longer simply re-present them, but because
they will not let us do so. Their self-identification interferes
with our identification of them.1
Paraphrasing the Danish anthropologist Ann Knudsen, who says that
identity is what we assume we are plus what others write on our
body, we could talk of groups of people living their own way despite
the savage tattoos on their skin.
Let us also state that these "tattoos" have been the standard against
which the standards of authenticity of the "other" have been measured.
These "tattoos", today, in my personal case and with a good dose
of humor, function as the outfit in a short story by Ray Bradbury,
The man with the Rorschach shirt,2
who let other people read on his shirt the history each one of them
could produce, and which bore little or no relation to the history
of the man wearing it. Thus, when speaking about cultural identity
topics, it happens, sometimes, that my face is there to perform
the predictable function of a mirror.
But, as I said at the beginning, things have changed. The power
spaces are no longer the same; the one "represented" handles complex
levels of language and readings and the hegemonic space of the representor
is no longer the same.
Perhaps, instead of speaking exclusively of the old peripheries'
new strategies, it would be more interesting to reconsider the idea
that the Other is geographically localized outside the borders of
Europe. In the present situation, the center is in the periphery
as well as the periphery in the center. Another important consideration
would be to revise the notion of the West as a homogeneous and tangible
concept. At a certain point, an image of the West is generated that
answers to a certain hegemonic project. This hegemonic project not
only colonizes and collects the rest of the world, but also represses
and subordinates its own otherness.
The "other", in the so called Western culture, is neither far away
nor has a color of skin other than white. Today, alterity seems
to have returned to the body that denied it. The erosion of the
hegemonic discourse affects not only the old colonial dominions,
but also the center itself, and it is in this manner we should perceive
that which someone called "the assault of the barbarians to the
center". The "barbarians", alterity (defined now as a counterpoint
to the hegemonic project) does not have its permanent residence
in a mythical "south".
If there is a valid idea in the concept of "multiculturalism" employed
during the last years, this should be the notion that inside a modern
society, a certain polyphony of cultural projects is more necessary
than frightening. Homogeneity no longer defines us. The diversity
of cultural identity strategies we meet today is something we certainly
will have to count with in the future. To speak of this plurality
of strategies should not, today, produce a map traced from the old
one. At the bottom, none of us can but notice that our neighbour
has washed his shirt.
Carlos Capelán
Lund, March 1995
Text information
Delivered at The Marco Polo Syndrome. Problems of intercultural
communication in art theory and curatorship — the Latin American
example. International symposium at the Haus der Kulturen der
Welt, Berlin December 11-12, 1995. Panel participants: Nelson Aguilar,
Hans Belting, Carlos Capelán, Catherine David, Lorna Ferguson, Jan
Hoet, Sebastián López, Jean-Hubert Martin, Gerardo Mosquera. (back
to top)
Notes
1.
Friedman, J. 1992: "Narcissism, roots and postmodernity: the
constitution of selfhood in the global crisis." In Scott
Lash & Jonathan Friedman (eds.): Modernity and identity.
Blackwell, Oxford. p 332. (back
to text)
2.
Bradbury, R. 1969: "The man with the Rorschach shirt."
In: I Sing the Body Electric. Collected short stories.
(back to
text)
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