The "It" System

[imomus]

Giving an interview to iCat FM radio yesterday before my show at CCCB here in Barcelona, I found myself trying to sketch out the basic stuff that matters to me. "I've been accused of exoticism and orientalism, but the important thing to me is to have basic respect for otherness -- whether that means preserving the language of Catalan, or staying Japanese rather than slipping into some diluted form of Americanism. America seems multi-racial, but in fact it isn't, everybody there is green. They're united by an interest in money, and race and culture pales into insignificance next to that."



Today I went to FNAC to buy tickets for the Gutevolk show tonight. FNAC is a big culture store. It started in France, but now seems to be doing well in Portugal and Spain too. The atmosphere is markedly different from, say, a Virgin Megastore or Tower Records. FNAC presents itself as a one-stop culture store rather than a discount emporium. In other words, where Anglos would be thinking about saving money, the French, Spanish and Portugese would be thinking more in terms of saving cultures.

That preoccupation is particularly strong in Barcelona, the urban centre of a very self-conscious, sometimes separatist cultural bloc within Spain, and within the EU. Once persecuted, Catalan-speakers are now encouraged and subsidised. Banessa Pellisa, for instance, who organised my show at CCCB, has just published a novel in Catalan. "In Scotland we have a similar situation with Gaelic," I tell her. But Gaelic is more of a lost cause, with fewer speakers and less, um, purchase. Perhaps because to have a language as powerful as English as your rival is more devastating than being up against mere Spanish.

Anyway, doing my usual stock-check to see what Momus records they had at FNAC (answer: Oskar and Otto), I noticed an interesting (and possibly somewhat obvious) thing. Here in Barcelona, all things being equal, you'd expect English language music to be "national". To Barcelona people it's foreign, after all. But my record was filed in the "International" section. FNAC has various national music sections, but you won't find UK or US music listed as "national music". The UK and the US -- music in English, by English-speakers -- are "International". They are fundamentally different -- the nations without a nation. The invisible core of a global system.

So everyone else gets to be "national": the other. We get to be "international". The It System. But for how long? Surely not forever. One day English speakers too will be "national". We'll get to be the delicate other that needs to be preserved, subsidised by the government, held up against the international power system as a reproach. And visited by reverent culture tourists.

(When this entry was posted, the lead item on The Guardian's website was US and UK seek Iraq exit strategy. The international "it" system is seeking to withdraw from a particular national "other", having failed to impose itself on it. Perhaps that "one day" is closer than we think.)

Comments

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

I'm just not green. Am I un-American?

[bubs.livejournal.com]

Culture needs people, at different points in history different cultures have to put survival of its members before survival of its togetherness as a culture. When these events happen at different times in one place then yeah money does look like the most important interest.
On the other hand some societies put culture before people and then wonder hey there is no one left to carry out their traditions. For me this is evident in Wales where it is very difficult to get a decent job without Welsh and there is a huge amount of subsidy going into Welsh language events but no one thought to put anything aside to teach adults Welsh. Culture before people, but whats the point in that?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

America seems multi-racial, but in fact it isn't, everybody there is green. They're united by an interest in money, and race and culture pales into insignificance next to that.

Apparently, it's not appropriate to respect otherness if it's green.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I live in what the cultural conservatives keep referring to - with a hint of old European monarchist disapproval - as an extremely "Americanised" country. If that, in practice, means that I now use American software to communicate with a multitude of foreigners in English, sipping my American soft drinks and reading books printed in the USA... well, suprisingly enough, I'm not complaining.

FNAC in Brazil

[(Anonymous)]

In Sao Paulo/Brazil the "International" CD´s section of FNAC means English and American pop music and sometimes Spanish music that get Mainstream in USA. For others countries they usually have respective sections or "World Music". But you cannot find Momus records in FNAC. The discription you gave to FNAC Barcelona doesn´t apply to FNAC Brazil, here they´re mega stores popular for selling macintoshes and LCD television and expensive Taschen Books.

Great show at CCCB!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! My name's Lupe, I'm catalan -and proud to be- and I just want to congratulate you for yesterday's show at CCCB, It was faboulous! It was the first time i could see you playing and it was great seeing an artist enjoying what he's doing, and feeling happy on stage! Welcome to Catalonia anytime!
Que siguis molt feliç! (be very happy!)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, you must've missed this article, then.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq

Remember, "last throes" and "exit" are terms relative in time and do not necessarily mean what you think them to mean.

[wringham.livejournal.com]

"In Scotland we have a similar situation with Gaelic," I tell her. But Gaelic is more of a lost cause, with fewer speakers

Apparently there are 85 000 native Gaelic speakers in Scotland. Plus people who've learned or are learning.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

They're united by an interest in money, and race and culture pales into insignificance next to that.

That is their culture surely?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

It's a caricature.

[giggomachine.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps because to have a language as powerful as English as your rival is more devastating than being up against mere Spanish."

according to wikipedia, Spanish "was spoken by roughly 364 million people in the year 2000. Current estimation accounts up to 410 million, making Spanish the most widely spoken Romance language."
while "an estimated 354 million people speak English as their first language."
now obviously there is a difference in these statements, as wikipedia fails to tell us if those 410 million Spanish speakers use it as their first language.
however, another article on wikipedia (with disputed factual accuracy) claims that Spanish is the 3rd most widely spoken language in the world, beating English, in the 4th spot.

your "respect" seems more conspicuous than "basic."

[(Anonymous)]

How can you talk about having a "basic respect for otherness" when you cherry pick from all these cultures and mix them all up in your music, dress, etc.??

This surface connection to all these things is like a microcosm of America, where there is the flavour of everything, but the substance of nothing.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< America seems multi-racial, but in fact it isn't, everybody there is green. They're united by an interest in money, and race and culture pales into insignificance next to that >>

Oh, momus, how can you lob insults at your U.S. readers and not expect an indignant response?

Our quest for money reflects an industriousness, an efficiency first noted by deTocqueville in the 1840s (please don't think I'm educated because deTocqueville is the only forebear I can cite). We value industriousness and efficiency, and the dollar rewards us for that. (So much so that our love of efficiency has us taking our labor overseas.)

You take us to task for seeking a dollar, but our real problem is our smug presumption that democracy is the correct answer for the rest of the world. We are, even the liberals among us, imperialists. We think the rest of the world should be like us, with our misguided political systems. That is what you should criticize us for. Not our lust for the dollar.

It's tough, though, to be a self-despising U.S. citizen. Look at Brazil, with its zealotry to ape the U.S. Don't we expect Bangalore and Bejing to become more U.S.-like in the next decade? They seem to want what we have. But I admire you for disdaining it.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it Annibale Carracci who said that a good caricature, like every work of art, is more true to life than reality itself?

[robotar.livejournal.com]

"America seems multi-racial, but in fact it isn't, everybody there is green. They're united by an interest in money, and race and culture pales into insignificance next to that."

Since you obviously are not driven by the dollar, perhaps you should stop selling records and rather distribute them freely via the internet, momus. Or spending inordinate amounts of money on all the plane travel you do?

Also, thank you for perpetuating the awkwardness I encounter when I leave the United States.

I have to admit that I am highly dismayed that individuals on this board are actually defending America's interest "in the dollar," as though it is a real phenomenon. Now, I'm not saying that money is not a huge cultural influence in America. It is. But there are many of us who share your wanderlust and repulsion to capital and hope to live their lives escaping the trappings of consumerism and materialism. If you want to respect the otherness of America, then do yourself and me a favor and don't lump everyone in with your idea of what America is. You've rarely spent time in the states outside of New York City and as a resident of the South and Midwest both I can tell you the economic atmosphere is different.

I suppose there's no arguing with a Scotsman, though. We all know that the only thing that unites the Scottish is a love for haggis and bagpipes. You do love haggis and bagpipes, right?

[dzima.livejournal.com]

the French, Spanish and Portugese would be thinking more in terms of saving cultures.

This statement is the one that baffles me the most, after all didn't France, Spain and Portugal kill tens of millions of natives and slaves in their former colonies? And up until very recently, Portugal was in war with its colony Angola while France was throwing atom bombs in the Polynesia.

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Economics was largely invented by Scotsmen (John Law, Adam Smith). According to Wikipedia, Law "is said to be the father of finance, responsible for the adoption or use of paper money or bills in the world today." So if Americans worship the dollar, it's ultimately the Scots' fault!

One of my favourite Americans is Henry David Thoreau. He was a direct influence on Tolstoy, Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King and John Cage. I'm reading his Wikipedia entry an I find this:

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreau's endorsement of living alone in natural simplicity, apart from modern society to be a mark of effeminacy:
"...Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world."

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, Annibale Carracci probably said a lot of things. And possibly believed in astrology, too. I hear it was in vogue.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

No, I think Momus is on to something good there. (Though I would, of course, maintain that what he's doing is a silent song of praise to both capitalism and globalisation)

America has distinctive substance, and it is a substance created as much through a process of creative syncretism as that of any nation. America is simply younger and has the kinds of ingredients thrown in European cultural conservatives tend to loathe. It is an old noble prejudice that America should be Europe, because it has been settled and conquered by Europeans - and that as a nation of colonists, America has no identity or culture of its own. Whenever we see this argument, we usually also see the inevitable continuation about America being shallow, immoral, full of degenerate art and all that.

If you'll allow me to invoke a bad tool, these assertions reflect ancient elitist right-wing prejudices which have, in the last century quite neatly leaped over to the left-wing side of the fence because even the internationalist left loves opposing capitalism - and not for any other particularly compelling reason.

I'd also be moderately in favour of cherry-picking, because it's the vehicle through which cultures evolve and change. I'm a European who likes American literature and Lebanese food. The fact that I don't like Bush or Hizbollah should in no way be able to reduce my enjoyment of these things, teaching us, if anything else, that cultures are not massive monoliths to be adopted or rejected in toto.

When living in the Arabian Gulf, one adopts a pattern of not walking in the sun at midday, and white clothing, because it's practical. One may then go on and maybe buy some Persian literature. But one is certainly not guilty of a massive cultural hypocricy for not becoming a pious Shi'ite.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Well, at least she didn't believe in something completely incredible, like God or Jesus or vegetarianism. And I would expect she did say a lot of things. I hear speaking was in vogue too.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

It all just goes to show that the great ideas of authorities aren't always worth the paper they're printed on. (I mean, just look at that crotchety old coot, Plato.)

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

But I'm still jealous of Plato. What a bore!

[kingdoma.livejournal.com]

I agree with the above couple of statements re: The USA. I believe that one of the reasons why North Americans seem so obsessed with money is fundamental; without money, you are fucked. There is no welfare state to speak of, no government subsidized healthcare, no housing benefit, nothing. That lack of a socialized cushion forces people to work harder.

[palux-negro.livejournal.com]

Here in Catalunya when you make music in catalan idiom you are automatically putted into the rock box.

It's so hard to sing in catalan, If you are not singing rock it's like your where parodyng catalan rock in your rock-less music.

[nicholas-g.livejournal.com]

I think 'Anonymous' is getting at there being a lack of patient understanding and patient knowledge (to emphasise patience) instead of a hurried self-promotional co-optation of the shiniest bits that filter easiest through one's sensibilities. The final equation is supposedly a postmodern, creative outlook, and acceptance of "the other"; but 'Anonymous'is maybe levelling a criticism that there are things you can't pick up from a culture after simply walzting around in one of its cities for a few days, collecting a few habits like adopting "a pattern of not walking in the sun at midday", or wearing a weird hat, and then, presumably, bringing that practice home as a trinket of cultural acceptance. I'm only using your example and bringing it back to the West to show how thin and disingenuous some of these other co-optations can seem.

Learning a language other than English though, there's a nice way to learn about a culture. Persian, Catalan, Bulgarian, Cree, there are plenty out there. The ability to enter debates in a language other than English, so you can people other than English-speakers participate, seems a more patient way to express appreciation of otherness. But is that what's going on here? or are you being an apologist for exotic novelty and a sublimated need for British East India Company gew-gaws?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to say that a culture can be adopted in a day or two of walking around the sun. Quite the contrary. My criticism of Anyonymous arose specifically because s/he apparently expects us to give so much importance to real or imagined authenticity that we should somehow refuse ourselves the pleasure of adopting the smallest parts of an alien cultural jigsaw puzzle. America is not perpetrating a crime for being eclectic, for such is its culture. Neither are European countries. And neither is Momus as an individual. All are simply discerning customers at a very large marketplace of ideas. I do not have magical copyright to the tiny pieces of my particular culture, and neither do the spirits of my ancestors (or whatever nationalist sentiment happens to be popular this week) particularly compel me to protect them against everyone in the out-group.

A's perception of culture comes across as slightly blunt. Understandable, but blunt. It's as if s/he is arguing that cultures are very large monoliths blessed with some sort of inherent unchangeability, some mystical it, instead of being composed of a thousand different memetic bits that reflect continuing historical development and contact with other cultures. S/he is putting a great deal of weight on authenticity, but what that is exactly is certainly debatable.

I also think English, in general, is getting a bad rap from the broad Left. It has considerable utility that can actually facilitate cultural exchange far beyond the limits of what would otherwise be achievable. As an international academic and trade language, it facilitates the very sort of cultural evolution I'm talking about, the kind upon which the golden ages of history depend on to come about.

In fact, the central virtue of English is the utility it represents in these particular circumstances and in this historic context. It is an efficient and elegant tool, and I would argue it's continuing spread in many countries is not due to any coercive colonialism, but conscious adoption, and even the most stringest critics of America and Britain can hardly object to that.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

One day English speakers too will be "national". We'll get to be the delicate other that needs to be preserved,

that might happen to certain inflections (mid-western etc) meanwhile for most of the world english had become something of a protocol , like http or email, rather than a language.