Is your daily paper transvaluing values?

[imomus]

As 2009 dawned, I found myself rearranging my newspaper bookmarks. The website of UK newspaper The Guardian has been my main -- almost exclusive -- newspaper site for years; I hit the front page several times a day. But this year, for various reasons, I've felt the need to see whether I can replace The Guardian with something else. I turned to two rather odd newspapers, The International Herald Tribune and the Japan Times.



These papers are odd because they're, in some way, parachuted into the cities they're based in, Paris and Tokyo. They're both English-language papers in non-English-speaking capitals, and there's a blurriness and precariousness in their identity which I find, actually, very valuable, and which matches something in my own. I also like a certain quietness and restraint in their manner. Until fairly recently, the culture section of the Japan Times, for instance, was dominated by a column on yakimono pottery.

The International Herald Tribune (the only newspaper I've ever heard David Bowie endorse, incidentally) may speak English, but its outlook is cosmopolitan. It's linked with Monocle magazine and The New York Times. But it also covers Paris rather well; there's an interesting video story today (very much in the style of the video reports on the Monocle site) about the progress of new Paris art centre Le CentQuatre. The lead story on the paper's front page this morning was a style story: In the lap of luxury, Paris squirms. The focus was on how the recession is impacting luxury fashion brands, but I liked the way writer Elaine Sciolino presented this: "The recession brings anxiety to France but also a welcomed values debate on the French way of life."

"Only in France is the recession lauded for posing a crisis in values," writes Sciolino. "There is... an underlying satisfaction here that an era of sometimes vulgar high living is over and that a more bedrock French way of life will emerge. Some French intellectuals want to go much further, calling for the death of the entire luxury industry as a sort of national ritual of purification. "Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

This is a post-materialist message, and it's something I don't find much of in the Anglo papers, even The Guardian. On the front page of The Guardian today we had Dan Black, one of the paper's music tips for 2009 -- a somewhat annoying young man who sounds like an estate agent doing karaoke versions of Britney Spears numbers -- telling the paper that in ten years time "I'll either be swimming in a swimming pool full of champagne and diamonds or crying in a gutter trying to get ten pounds to buy a bag of skag." Black, like Britain, is still oriented to America, to consumerism as a selfish "guilty pleasure", to money-as-drugs, to bling. His vision of his future in Britain is a parody of a high Gini coefficient; he'll either be massively wealthy or homeless.

The cultural coverage in the Japan Times is much more to my taste. In the art section we have Donald Eubank on Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and his work with Brazil's catadores, people who recycle rubbish for a living: "An estimated 3,000-5,000 people live in the dump, 15,000 derive their income from activities related to it, and some that Muniz met in Jardim Gramacho come from families that had been working there for three generations. "These people are at the other end of consumer culture," he says. "I was expecting to see people who were beaten and broken, but they were survivors." His aim — besides the creative challenge — was to see... if the experience of creating art could change people".

There's a sense in both The International Herald Tribune and The Japan Times that the papers know what time it is; that they realise a "transvaluation of all values" (in Nietzsche's phrase) is necessary at this point. Even while it reports David Miliband's important public recognition that the War on Terror was a mistake, The Guardian doesn't seem to have taken this transvaluation thing on board. For instance, a story about a minister who said she saw "green shoots" in the UK economy basically takes for granted that green shoots mean economic growth, and that that's good, and its absence bad. There's no actual green perspective in the green shoots story -- it lacks the angle Sciolino wrote into her IHT story about how economic downturn is an opportunity to rethink priorities.

Another Japan Times story I love today is Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people. Here, Gregory Clark plugs -- without mentioning him by name -- the ridiculous Debito Arudou (David Aldwinckle), who has plagued his host country with lawsuits alleging discrimination against foreigners (in, for instance, barring him from certain bathing houses frequented by troublesome Russian sailors). Clark boldly says something I've long believed too: "Japan girai — dislike of Japan — is an allergy that seems to afflict many Westerners here... It is time we admitted that at times the Japanese have the right to discriminate against some foreigners. If they do not, and Japan ends up like our padlocked, mutually suspicious Western societies, we will all be the losers."

What I enjoy here is that an article by a foreigner in a foreign newspaper takes the side of Japanese against foreigners. That seems to express very well the complexity and ambivalence of these cuckoo newspapers, and the awareness, typical of sensitive foreigners, of one's own fragility and awkwardness. This guilt, for me, is at the root of consideration for others. It transcends selfishness, and to achieve it you have to be slightly decentred, as these odd expat papers are. I think their willingness to transvalue values is all tied up with these newspapers' transplanted, lateral, parallax positions in foreign cities.

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"In America, to enforce multiculturalism is to enforce American-ness, because America is a multicultural nation."

Some people argue that America was founded by white Europeans, built up by them, and that true American heritage is linked to the the culture of the European forefathers. Why do you think so many right wing Americans have an issue with the mexicans population growing at such a fast rate? its because they see America as White, Protestant and English speaking, not Hispanic, Catholic and Spanish speaking.

However, America on the whole has taken a stand and said "we want an inclusive society because we believe it's right".

"We're actually creating a double standard, by which all nations, regardless of their ethnic demographic makeups are expected to conform to a socio-judicial model that may not even answer any of their national or local concerns."

Hypothetically, If the majority of Americans had an issue with the Mexicans coming over and growing in size, displacing their English speaking, unique variation of European culture, would you support it?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

"America" does seem to have been founded by white Europeans (notwithstanding the natives who either sold us their land or had it taken through conflict), but we opened our doors, quite knowingly, to everybody, and America is, by the objective facts, settled by a diverse population as a result. The reason why some people object to the growing population of Hispanics is because their "America," contrary to the objective facts, is a monoculture. But this is a monoculture that has, quite literally, never existed in the history of the nation. It was never a monoculture.

The reason why multiculturalism has won in America is because America is a multicultural nation. Do you honestly believe that, if America had been white English people for thousands of years, with a tiny percentage of foreigners among the population, a multicultural mindset would have taken root? By what magic would such a thing have occurred? Because white Englishmen are somehow more prone to such a thing? This multiculturalism is built into the foundation of the country, from the get-go. Early on, it was multiculturalism based on religion that drove the ideal. It took hundreds of years to get where America is at now, and even now it's not perfect. I mean, the Irish and Italians were treated like crap when they came over initially, and they were, at least as policy was considered, "white." People were complaining about them just like the right-wing nationalist types complain about Hispanics now. It's a matter of some people not having a broad enough perspective to see that this is all inevitable anyway, under the American banner.

But is it any real surprise, given that Japan's history is nothing like this, that it doesn't so easily take on this multicultural aspect in every layer of policy? And how fair is it to expect that such a transition, one that is and must be both political and cultural, would occur literally overnight? And how sane is it to treat trespasses of the sort that Abadou notes as though they have anywhere near the same urgency as the American Civil Rights Movement? He has been able to legally obtain Japanese citizenship, when it could easily have been withheld. He has been able to obtain and retain honest work (at a university, if I'm not mistaken), even though he is publicly outspoken against certain aspects of Japanese culture. We're not dealing with a scenario in which doing the right thing can be demonstrated to result in crippling retribution, yet Abadou acts as though all complaints such as his warrant American-style hard-nosery. There is a vast difference here, and it's sad that your obsession with blunt "consistency" prevents you from seeing it.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

""America" does seem to have been founded by white Europeans (notwithstanding the natives who either sold us their land or had it taken through conflict), but we opened our doors, quite knowingly, to everybody, and America is, by the objective facts, settled by a diverse population as a result. The reason why some people object to the growing population of Hispanics is because their "America," contrary to the objective facts, is a monoculture. But this is a monoculture that has, quite literally, never existed in the history of the nation. It was never a monoculture.

Then let me put it this way -- Japan gave up its "right" to be racist when it wanted to be part of the UN. they signed an agreement and they agreed to rules. That's why when the onsen situation happened the onsen owner lost.

The Americans opened their doors and let foreigners in, now they cant expect to stay white and English speaking, thats what you're saying. Then I would argue that the japanese wanted to be part of the UN, they signed an agreement that they'd abide by its laws. If they want to have good relations with the world (thier entire economy relies on exports) then they have to live by the rules the UN deems to be important. Thats exactly why the Onsen owner lost the case.

More importantly, even though America has opened up its gates to "foreigners", whats to stop it from throwing those foreigners out and going back to its "roots"? Would you support that? No because it's morally repunant for exactly the same reason refusing to serve people based on skin colour is morally regunant -- its the principle. i cant believe how intellectually dishonest some of you are being.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

What I was saying about America is that it has never been "all white." The settlers lived among the natives when they got here (at least the "friendly" ones), and of course, early waves of settlers came from different places in Europe. So America was, quite literally, never a monoculture, even in its earliest colonial iteration. Once the country became independent, the open-door system continued as a matter of policy via lax immigration, furthering its multicultural growth. Hence, there are no monocultural "roots" to get back to. The right-wing loonies who dream for that are delusional.

I never disputed the (now proven) legal right Debito has to patronize any onsen he pleases. That is not where I'm taking exception. He decided he wanted that to be his battle. He fought it and won. But what I'm lobbying for is the idea that perhaps he could have shown compassion and understanding, rather than dishonestly lumping the owner's policy together with Jim Crow. It is clear that the owner was attempting to tackle a local problem with the new policy, otherwise why would he, at any point, have allowed foreigners on the premises? Obviously he was not doing this out of racism, but in an attempt to salvage his business, which was being ruined by rowdy local foreigners. Again, it's like a man trying to integrate an all-female college. You can and probably will win, if that's the battle you want to fight. But at the end of the day, what do you gain from it, other than the scoring of a cheap intellectual point?