In
this post I am going to talk about foreiggness.
I
really liked Can Candan's documentary Duvarlar. What about it?
As our professor suggested, he brings up an issue that I find really
interesting: when it is that a foreigner stops being a foreigner. Does him/her really? I
have been doing some thinking. First, let's start with a
question: What is foreiggness for you?
When
I was a little child, foreigner used to mean "immigrant".
The concept of foreigness was to me pretty straightforward: a
foreigner was someone coming to my country in search of a (better)
job. My criterion for deciding whether I liked him or not -- please
notice that I'm saying "him" because at the time the
only ''database'' of foreigners we could boast was filed by
darkish-skinned men, for women were imaginary creatures supposedly
kept hidden at home cooking meals for twelve kids or so-- was
based on whether he could speak my language or not.
Speaking
Italian meant ''good person'' and most likely involved a job. Not
speaking Italian meant some sort of a criminal, possibly a drunkyard
or a drug dealer. Simple as. Embarrassingly enough, the so-called
Boogeyman is translated into Italian as "Uomo nero", Black
man. Meaning that when kids do not behave well, they risk a black man
coming to their rooms and to kidnap them. No wonder little Italians
are quite distrustful of tanned people.
I
was only a kid, but the truth is, in most of my people's minds this
stereotype still exists. Of course, if, say, you foreigner hang out
with Italians, people are a little less suspicious. If you dress
stylishly, we are a little less suspicious. If at the pub you offer
your Italian friends their drinks, you're one of us.
Is
it all about it, then? Are things just "the way we see them"
or is there more? I will try to be more precise: are there only two
kinds of foreigners, the ones integrated and happy and the ones who
are not? I am talking about the space in-between, the tricky
place where some of us live. The examples are many (in this post
I am not going to talk about the so-called ''second generation'' of
foreigners, I will later on). If you all remember, towards the
end of Duvarlar, a Turkish man who went to Germany
looking for a job and who ended up staying there says: "I don't
belong here, and I don't belong in Turkey. When I spend much time
with Germans, I miss Turks. When I hang out with Turks, I miss
Germans. I am different than Germans, but if I went back to Turkey, I
would be different than them there too."
The
rapper Seyit Yakut ''C.it'' describes the same feelings though in a
very different style: ''Burda
zaten yabancılık çekiyorsun, kötü olan Türkiye’ye gidiyorsun
orda da yabancılık çekiyorsun. Hani şimdi nereye gidelim Marsa
mı?” (quote 8, in his Facebook page)
“Here
you already feel like a foreigner. The bad thing is you go to Turkey
and you feel like a foreigner there. So now where should I go, Mars?”
Let's
talk about students. Many Turks, like Can Candan, go to America for a Master or a
Ph.D, for example. They acquire a new language, probably even a new
name (normally when abroad hardly anyone is able to pronounce your
name properly. People tend to adapt it to the sounds they know).
Strange lands bring to estrangement, after all.
What
do all these Turks, students or not, become after a couple of years?
How much Turkishness will be left in them? Have they become anything
near to American? Or do they live in that two-faced space in-between,
not totally Americans yet no longer Turks, forever trapped between
two languages, two cultures, sometimes two religions? We should ask
them, perhaps. Perhaps everyone reacts to estrangement in totally
different ways. If you guys like novels and you're interested in this
topic, you might like Elif Şafak's The Saint of Incipient
Insanities, about Middle Eastern students in Boston dealing
with their ''foreignness status'' in totally different ways.
As
for me, I find this in-betweenness simply
fascinating. Does spending years abroad open your mind and make
you a citizen of the world, or does it confine you to an in-between
limbo, populated by those who no longer know what place to call
''home''? - I wonder. Perhaps estrangement and belonging are not related to one's passport or visa. How much can an ID tell about yourself really?
I
would like to listen to your opinions about it. Think about
this: even if you learn a second language perfectly, can you really
stop being a foreigner in a foreign land? Can you give up your
identity?
And
is it possible to be more of a foreigner after a lifetime in a
strange land than what you might end up becoming in your home country
once you have gone back?
Have a nice weekend
everyone ;)
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI think your questions about happiness and belonging are really important for this discussion. As your post suggests, being “integrated” (whatever that means!) doesn’t necessarily mean happiness. A feeling of belonging depends on someone else also agreeing that you belong. I think that’s the point of the quote you give from C-it, too. Related to this, you might also be interested in Julia Kristeva’s Strangers to Ourselves, in which she writes about the affective dimension of being a foreigner.
One of the things I like about Can Candan’s film is that the questions he asks make us think about our definitions. What’s the difference between an immigrant and a foreigner or an expat? And for the “second generation,” do any of these terms make sense? And for those of us living somewhere other than where we were born and raised, how do we apply those terms to ourselves?
But to come back to your idea of happiness, can we also think about the joys of being inbetween, of the “neither here, nor elsewhere,” as your blog title puts it?
Thanks for being the first student to post!
Aninne
ReplyDeleteI liked this "joy" thing. It would be nice to elaborate this idea.
I always perceived the in-beetweeners as people living in a spaceless space: there are the Foreigners, and there are the Locals. They both live in the same place. Then there is this other breed. They are never totally here or there.
Perhaps "immigrant", "foreigner" and "expat" are all synonims, but we cannot use them randomly. Perhaps it doesn't matter how long these people have been abroad, or whether they have a job. Maybe what makes someone a foreigner, an immigrant or an expat is how s/he feel about her/himself.
Or perhap it is the reflection of how others see you. Or it is the expectations you have from the new country. Am I foreigner gonna stay forever? Better to adapt and quicky, then. Am I going to spend there only some years and then I dream to go back home? Then I can totally keep identity. Up for debate!
As regards the second-generation, I can bring an example: my best friend is a Lebanese-German. She was born in Germany from Lebanese parents. She loves Lebanon, Lebanese kitchen, Namoura cake and she can also utter a very well pronounced "hello" in Arabic, but I think that's all about it. Her friends are German, at home she speaks German and I never heard her mentioning the word "Allah". She got a 100% integrated. But this is just one case.
There are other types of children, the ones in whose homes perhaps traditions are rooted more deeply. I remember reading a novel from Meera Syal, titled "Anita and Me". In the novel, Meera is a Pakistani girl who deals with being the only Paki in her village. She does a lot of thinking about her being "different", and in the end she concludes (not sure about the precise words, I don't have the novel here with me) " ...and I think, like many other people who have been deprived of history, I have always been a sucker for a good double entendre. The gap between what is said and what is thought, what is stated and what is implied, is a place where I have always found myself"
Likewise, in Hanif Kureishi's "The Buddha of Suburbia", young Hanif points out that "Perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me restless and easily bored".
So what can we say about them? Does their "status" make them richer/ wiser/ stronger/ more complete or just more vulnerable and sensitive? And does that change as they grow up?
Are they foreigners? I would say yes.
And I would say no.
Again, up for debate :)
See you all on Monday!
P.S. Thanks for suggesting "Strangers to Ourselves". I definitely want to read it.
ReplyDeleteP.P.S Sorry everyone, it doesnt make much difference, but in "Anita and Me", young Meera is a Punjabi girl, not Pakistani. Just to be precise :))
ReplyDeleteHi Laura,
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment on two aspects of your posts. First, if I understand you correctly, integration for you goes along with loosing one's identity. I for my part follow Stuart Hall's conception of identity as something fluent and constantly reconstructing itself as reaction to one's environment. Integrating oneself is then not a loss of identity, but rather a reformulation and maybe also an enrichment of one's identity (supposing that one is not forced to hide completely one's "former" identity, such as country of origin, language, etc).
The second aspect concerns the "inbetweenness". I agree, it can be fascinating and not only with people who share this "inbetweenness", but also with people who simple value it and see it as something positive. But I think, it can become a burden also, as soon as it is not regarded to be "good". The feeling of being on the one side, accepted and at home or on the other side, being a foreigner, thus, in my opinion, depends highly on the reactions one gets from one's environment.
Let me elaborate on this along the example of bilingualism. I came across an article a few weeks ago (it's a pity I don't remember which one..) differentiating between additive and subtractive bilingualism. Additive bilingualism, refers to the mother tongue being regarded as valuable, as a resource, and is thus further supported. Subtractive bilingualism means that the mother tongue is restricted and only the, let's say, official language is supported. I think the basic idea works also for cultural aspects and for identity.