I am reading a book written by Julia Kristeva, a French philosopher of
Bulgarian descent. The book is called Strangers
to Ourselves (Étrangers à nous-mêmes),
and discusses the topic of ‘strangers’ – or ‘foreigners’ – in European history.
Kristeva looks at the history of institutionalised xenophobia as well as
cosmopolitanism, from the Hellenistic polis
to the medieval feudal system to the modern nation state, and raises a number
of important questions regarding citizenship, political rights, and belonging. Drawing on
Freud's ideas of the individual subconsciousness, she argues that, ultimately, every single
one of us is a stranger to her- or himself. According to Kristeva, a
realisation of this existential alienation of the self may provide a basis for
an inclusive ethics (and law) that no longer perceives the presence of foreigners
as a potential threat, but rather as a reminder of the fact that, in the end, all
of us are in the same boat. She writes:
Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. By recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself. A symptom that precisely turns ‘we’ into a problem, perhaps makes it impossible, the foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities.
The problem of classical multiculturalism, as represented by the works of Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor, is not that it is idealistic – there is nothing wrong with idealism in politics and political philosophy, as long as it does not turn into utopianism – nor that it challenges the narrow-mindedness of popular nationalism – which, arguably, is not challenged enough in contemporary political discourse. The problem is that it is too communitarian. That is, it reifies communities and minorities; it reduces individual actors to the ‘ethnic group’ or ‘subculture’ to which they supposedly belong; and by doing so, it denies ‘members of minority groups’ their individuality. However, as Kristeva makes clear, if we recognise the foreigner in ourselves, we realise that strangeness is fundamentally an individual, existential condition. The stranger has no real home, no real community. Minority communities do exist, but they are largely artificial constructions, made for political purposes such as legal recognition and economical support.
The Dutch language makes an interesting distinction between two types of
‘homeless’ people: those who do not have a place to live (daklozen, ‘roofless’) and those who do not have a place where they
are at home (thuislozen). While a
foreigner may have a place to live (i.e., he is not ‘roofless’), he will find
it difficult to find a place where he can be at home. He may be one of those
who say optimistically, ‘I can feel at home anywhere’, ‘I don’t care where I
live, home is where the heart is’, but that comes down to the same thing: he
has no physical place, no locale
where he is at home. The former homeland, provided there has been any, has long
ceased to be ‘home’; the new land, however, will always remain a mystery
somehow, and will always make him feel that he does not fully belong because he
is ‘different’, either in subtle or in not-so-subtle ways. The foreigner is
uprooted, inevitably and irreversibly. And while some are capable of
re-appropriating this uprootedness, and turn their individual hybridity into
something empowering, many lack the power and resources to do so.
If a tree is uprooted, he will find it difficult to remain well-nourished.
There is a reason why immigrants so often get health problems. Physical and
mental belonging, personal identity, the power to express oneself verbally –
things that most people do not usually reflect upon – are problematised
continuously by daily-life encounters. Access to subsidies, tax deductions, immigration
agencies, proper health care, education, phone help-desks and the
thousand-and-one bureaucratic institutions one has to negotiate in order to
survive modern society provide the immigrant constantly with new challenges and
stress, and limit his opportunities. Of course, ‘the autochtonous population’
has to deal with and complains about some of these things as well, but they are
socialised in the system and have learned how to negotiate it. People who have
never lived abroad have little understanding of the fact that bureaucratic,
medical and legal systems function completely differently in different
countries (even within Europe). Moreover, people who have never had to deal
with residence permits, long-term visas, citizenship tests, naturalisation
procedures and so on have no idea how totally nontransparent, frustrating and humiliating
the rules are. No matter how liberal the rhetoric, in any modern country the
system guarantees that immigrants remain strangers, frustrated in their
attempts to ‘feel at home’ by institutions that refuse to grant them that
simple privilege. And I am only talking about so-called ‘legal’ migrants here –
the situation of the millions of people around the world who live and work as ‘illegal’
migrants is much worse, as they do not have access to medical care, legal
protection or education whatsoever, thus constituting an easy prey for those
exploiting them.
The other day, I read my brother’s MA thesis. He had studied elderly
Dutch ‘immigrants’ (question: why do we still use the word ‘immigrant’ when we
talk about people who have lived in a single place for nearly sixty years?) in
New Zealand, and looked at ways in which they shape and negotiate their hybrid
identities through everyday practices, such as home-making and recreational
activities. The thesis was well-written, and I particularly liked the ways in
which he applied his theoretical framework to an analysis of the ethnographic
data. Reading the thesis made me realise two things. First, while
discriminatory structures, personal identity struggles, nostalgia for a home
country that no longer exists, and a lack of understanding of the written and unwritten
rules of a society can lead to frustration and powerlessness, those who learn
to juggle their different identities and negotiate the societal structures in
the new country often live a life that is more colourful, diverse and, perhaps,
exciting than those who only know one
place and one culture. In other words, for those who learn how to play with
their existential ‘being different’, hybridity
can become empowering. As Stuart Hall wrote:
[They] have succeeded in remaking themselves and fashioning new kinds of cultural identity by, consciously or unconsciously, drawing on more than one cultural repertoire. (…) They are people who belong to more than one world, speak more than one language (literally and metaphorically), inhabit more than one identity, have more than one home; who have learned to negotiate and translate between cultures, and who, because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures, have learned to live with, and indeed to speak from, difference. They speak from the ‘in-between’ of different cultures, always unsettling the assumptions of one culture from the perspective of another, and thus finding ways of being both the same as and at the same time different from the others amongst whom they live.
According to this view, it would be possible to overcome the existential homelessness that comes with being a stranger; to re-appropriate the strangeness, and re-establish multiple homes. This is a rather optimistic, if not idealistic, view of the migration experience; yet, it is valuable as it challenges popular views of identity and belonging as singular and static, and shows us the potential virtues of having multiple identities.
Second, the thesis’ focus on the objects and practices of everyday life
(drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau) made me look at my personal
strangeness and cultural hybridity from a new perspective. (For those of you
who believe in synchronicity: it is perhaps no coincidence that I came across
Kristeva’s book in a second-hand bookshop while I was about to read my brother’s
thesis, at a time when questions regarding my personal ‘home’ and cultural
identity were resurfacing.) Rather than approaching migration from a communitarian
perspective, as the multiculturalists do – an approach I have never been able to subscribe
to, as it does not correspond to my personal migration experiences, which are
characterised by a lack of any sense of ‘community’ – my brother looked at the
practices and stories through which individuals,
often subconsciously, construct (ils bricolent)
their identity through home-making and other activities. I liked the
particularism inherent in this approach, as it does justice to the simple fact
that all migrants deal differently with their different situations, narratives
and backgrounds. Even people living in the same country and sharing the same
country of origin may have a very different background, and different ways of
negotiating their identities.
When I look around, I see that our house is a patchwork, full of objects
from all over the world. The hybridity is well-illustrated by our gods’ corner –
our altar, where we usually pray – which has a variety of religious objects from
Vietnam, Laos, the Netherlands, Japan, India, Slovakia and Egypt, representing
a variety of buddhas and bodhisattvas, as well as Hindu deities, the Holy
Virgin, and two wooden crosses (Franciscan and Coptic). The same applies to our
eating habits: for breakfast, this morning, I had knekkebrød with pindakaas
and cà phê sữa
đá. Last night, for dinner, we had a nice mix
of leftovers: rice with salad, bánh bèo,
gyōza
and ovenschotel with
potatoes. While I am quite happy with cereals for breakfast, for lunch I
usually have curry, fried rice or phở. I
would not want it to be any different.
Yet,
the question ‘what/where is my home’ occasionally pops up. For some reason,
recently, it has been on my mind a lot. I like to be free, I like to be able to
move from one country to another, and I am glad I am able to live fairly
happily in different countries. But as I am spending a third of my salary on a tiny
basement apartment, the desire to have a single place (that is, a physical
location) that I consider mine is growing. House, home and place are intimately
connected; as are home, society, culture and country. I am glad and grateful I
have lived in five different countries, in many different cities – but the
older I get, the more I look forward to finding (choosing?) the one place where
I belong. Perhaps the wish is a natural consequence of growing older. Perhaps
it is an illusion, and I will never be able to fully overcome that feeling of
uprootedness and spatial alienation. But I believe it exists, somewhere out
there; all we have to do is find it.
I grew up in
the Netherlands, in a small village not too far away from the city of
Groningen. Surrounded by countryside, it is a city that desperately tries to be
urban, in which it succeeds remarkably well. Full of theaters, restaurants, art,
nightlife and academic activities, Groningen is as interesting as the
surrounding areas are boring. Nevertheless, when I was eighteen, I wanted to
move somewhere more exciting; hence, I went to study in Leiden, while living in Amsterdam, the
only more-or-less cosmopolitan-oriented city in the Netherlands. I enjoyed the
years I spent in Amsterdam and Leiden, but I did not want to stay there. Having
studied Japanese language and culture for several years, I spent a year as an undergraduate
student in Tokyo; later, I went to London for my MA. After my studies, I
travelled in Southeast Asia for a while, after which I lived in Vietnam for
about a year and a half. In 2010, my wife and I moved to Oslo, where I was
going to do my PhD – doing research on (and, partly, in) Japan. Right now, I
feel that I belong to at least four countries – the Netherlands, where I grew
up; Vietnam, where my wife is from; Norway, where we live; and Japan, which I
study. Yet I also feel that I do not completely belong to any of these countries.
When the glass is half full, I have four places I can call ‘home’; when it is
half empty, I have none.
In the
Netherlands, I know how most things work. I know where to buy cheap household
appliances or smart yet affordable clothes. I know how to buy train and tram tickets
(or at least I did; they changed the system, a few years ago, and now I feel
much less self-confident when it comes to finding the right ticket). I speak
the language. I do not feel shy when I order drinks in a bar. I support the national
football team (and tend to convert to tribalism during important international
tournaments). However, I detest the popular xenophobia, spread by mass
media and opportunistic politicians, that has characterised Dutch political
discourse in the last decade, and the strict immigration rules that have been
implemented. I cannot stand the
arrogance and unfriendliness displayed by some people in the public sphere
(mainly in the western part of the country, it must be said). Whenever I visit
the country, I feel an odd mixture of nostalgia and alienation telling me that,
the longer I am away, the stranger I become.
Vietnam is the
country of my wife. It is the place where she grew up, where her family lives, where
we got married. I love the Vietnamese climate, the food, the cafe culture. I
love riding my motorbike through the rice paddies. I enjoy watching the dynamics
of social and economical (alas, not political) change; I admire the ambitious
students I have had the privilege of teaching, as they work so hard to fulfill
their dreams. Yet, having experienced corruption, institutional discrimination
and xenophobic violence, as well as pollution and noise, I do not think I would
want to live in Vietnam permanently. Moreover, an academic career in my field
is simply not possible there; not only because of economical concerns, but also
because there is no such thing as freedom of expression. Many Vietnamese
scholars have had works confiscated and banned.
I love being in
Japan. I love Japanese food, I love visiting sacred places, I love the natural
landscapes. Unlike Vietnamese, my Japanese language skills are sufficient for
negotiating daily life. That is, I can book a business hotel online, manage a
phone call or open a bank account – I am not sure about dealing with tax or
immigration issues. However, while one should never say never, I do not think
we will go live in Japan for a longer period of time. Japanese society is
discriminatory – not so much towards white immigrants, and not so much towards
men, but an Asian woman who does not speak the language will find it difficult to
deal with practical matters, let alone find a good job.
But we do not
live in the Netherlands, Vietnam, or Japan. We live in Norway. Life in Norway
is good: I get paid to write my PhD dissertation; Oslo is a pleasant city to
live in; people hardly ever get rude or aggressive, even when they are drunk;
bus drivers usually wait for you when they see you running to catch the bus; and
the city is surrounded by beautiful natural landscapes. But while I love spring
and summer (short yet beautiful), the long and dark winters continue to be
a challenge. And after almost two years of living here, I still get shocked
when I see the prices of a mediocre restaurant, and cannot get used to
the fact that I cannot buy a simple bottle of wine at the supermarket. I also fail to
comprehend why I pay a significant percentage of my salary to be included in
the national health insurance scheme, yet have to pay whenever I visit my GP or
get medicines – more importantly, I do not understand why half of the
medical sector has been privatised, and clinics not covered by national health
insurance can charge huge amounts of money. And while I am grateful we can live
here, and my wife can study without having to pay tuition fees, I am troubled
by the fact that she is denied some of the basic rights that other immigrants
do have, because she came here as the spouse of a non-Norwegian-yet-EU citizen.
Institutionalised discrimination, that few people here are aware of.
Finally, what I
miss most of my time in, basically, any other country I have lived previously,
are spontaneous visits to bars with friends or colleagues. Or anything
spontaneous, for that matter. Alas, the stereotype that says Norwegians are only
able to act spontaneously when they get drunk (on a planned-in-advance party, on
Saturday night, of course) corresponds quite well to my experiences. I have many
nice Norwegian acquaintances, know many kind people – but for some reason, it seems
to take an eternity for an acquaintance to become a friend. People are
generally friendly, yet shy and distant, unless drunk. I find myself copying this
behaviour, and have become less outgoing than I used to be.
We do not have
to choose yet. We will stay in Norway for another two years, at least – with the
possible exception of a few months spent in Vietnam or Japan. So there is no
need to decide now. In the end, our choice will of course depend on career
opportunities, as much as other material and immaterial factors. I just hope
that, in about five years’ time, I will be able to invite guests to our house,
wherever it is, and say: ‘Welcome. This is our home’ – after which I serve them
a fusion kitchen dinner in the garden. To be able to, somehow, domesticise that
existential strangeness Kristeva wrote about. To celebrate our hybrid life, at
a place called home.
