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 CULTURE, GLOBALIZATION,
IDENTITY...
Tomasz Agatowski
I think that xenophobic people see in the so-called globalization a demon depriving the nation of its strength, sucking out nation’s blood, and tangling creative thought. Globalization is a matter of convention, but in practice it resembles a system of communicating vessels. If artists are to see in globalization a threat, one needs to ask a question – a threat to what and to what degree. Each situation of emergency should mobilize a search for an alternative exit door, which does necessarily have to be a fire escape but, possibly, an attack route. Such military terminology best represents contemporary dynamic competition for souls, careers, and recognition. We can talk about globalization in a range of contexts. I think that several synthesizing remarks will help throw some light on the problem.
Globalization is nothing new; it is not a discovery of the 20th or 21st centuries. Great movements of peoples of the world, and, with them, their possessions and experience, are the first examples of search and, often, conquest, subordination and domination. Contemporary globalization, both technological and cultural, substitutes new forms for old. It results from a characteristic human propensity to quick boredom with what is already known, from our curiosity and tendency to ask questions, our urge to discover and conquer. We seem to know about everything but still we are looking deeper for something else. Unnecessarily. Quite probably globalization (homogenization) is beneficial in many areas of technology, and that is why we can be rightly happy if a battery produced in Argentina can be applied to a torch made in Indonesia. Such standards make life easier and various facilities can be accessed by many people no matter where they live, as well as allow to limit a transport of indispensable things, for example in travel. We do not usually rebel when, through the global TV network we can watch programmes broadcast from all over the world. We do not seem to complain when we can purchase the same part of car’s equipment both in Estonia and in Madagascar.
We however become resilient when we see how foreign authors replace our in publishing houses and in bookshops. Are those writers, poets and thinkers more ingenious to us, Slavic artists? Or do their cultures have a long- and far-reaching support of their systems and governments, promoting thus their creativity? Out country still does not recognize the status of a writer. Creative forms got mixed and, through all kinds of compilations departed from pure, classical forms. Only few Polish writers, and those widely publicized for that matter, can count on editors, have got a chance of participating in book fairs, TV or radio features, not to mention awards. This state of affairs should be considered as urging mobilization of all artists’ associations to develop a strong intellectual lobby promoting setting up new publishing houses, supporting translation and interpretation schools, taking care of writers’ material status. The situation when writing becomes a third or fourth occupation in writer’s life, after other occupations securing material existence for him, cannot be considered anything but disastrous. The quite common model of being a doctor till midday, a taxi-driver during siesta, and a writer at night is good for a cabaret staging not for real life, as it in fact ruins the potential of talented people.
Globalization, then, is not so much a phenomenon concerning spirit and culture, as its impact is predominantly noticeable in the sphere of technology and economy. In the contemporary world, which means the contemporary system, the English language dominates, just as Greek, Latin, French or Spanish used to in the past, when, nevertheless, national literature was being created. Translation and circulation of this literature is quite another matter – it requires financial investment, development of cultural infrastructure and education, capable of disseminating national works of art abroad.
Such inventions as electricity, telegraph, steam engine, railway, car, airplane, and television – all began to bring individuals, groups and whole nations closer together. Horseback journeys seem to be today an utter exoticism. Hi-tech telecommunications allow making decisions in Australia so that they can be instantly executed in Canada. The pace of life is determined today by technical possibilities and excessive economization of the world, indeed close to sheer exploitation and racecourse. In the simplest of terms, it is a struggle for influence, profits, domination, in order to secure (for a group, a nation) prosperity and security. Domination is a form of enslavement and, since the time of slave-trade, nothing really changed in the matter, only the methods got more refined and „learning” is called, e.g., marketing.
Thanks to journals, radio, television, or the Internet, the time of learning about things, events, and facts has radically shrunk. Opinions and outlooks have undergone a visible process of homogenization – the unification of thought, when millions of people experience one event simultaneously, has become a landmark of contemporary reality. Mental territories of citizens (regardless of the language they speak) are being husbanded with images and contents manufactured in global informational or cultural centres. We cannot exclude as impossible a perspective of creating in our part of Europe an integrated centre of Slavic culture, which I would eagerly advocate – as an organization preparing ways to reach out to other cultures, and, simultaneously, disseminating outputs in local languages, such as Polish, Czech, Lithuanian and other.
Former, already classical forms of colonization, be it commercial or military, are nothing else but globalization in contemporary understanding. The same can be said about religious and philosophical systems, about science in general – why, then, should culture be an exception? In terms of styles of dressing the world has long been homogenized, and suits, dresses, or ties are a generally accepted norm. Conquests, migrations and emigrations had their deal in transporting rituals, worldviews, customs and new ideas across all imaginable borders.
We are aware today that all mental processes are largely accelerated today. Better educational standards and accessibility resulted in an increased number of writing people, although it does not imply by any means that many of them would conform to literary and artistic canons.
The contemporary process of disappearance of borders makes one think about the communities from before the Roman Empire or monarchy, that is why local values have now a better chance of resurfacing. Zygmunt Bauman, in his Globalization, reflecting on the worldly hierarchy of mobility, poses the following question: „what will become with the nation-state?”. In today’s world the soldier turned into money crossing state, cultural or other borders in a bloodless conquest. This is money, then, and the ideas that follow it on the route of conquest that colonize the minds, and turn a citizen into a consumer, a participant in cheap entertainment, and, in a distant perspective, a consumer of higher goods. Bauman also speaks about a new disinheritance, which means a phenomenon of a „disinherited state”. All of these situations, albeit psychologically difficult, can be beneficial, as they make travel, access to institutions, people, archives or artistic objects and exhibitions easier, enabling a representation of one’s artistic achievements on a large scale.
Global uniformization of many branches of commerce, law, medicine, technology, electronic communication, sea and air transportation, early warning systems, and in many other spheres – can make our lives remarkably safer and more flexible.
The state is being separated from economy, also in western countries. Economy is based on finances and investment-employment decisions, often conflicting with both social psychology and limits of expansion into natural environment. These are situations shaping personality and modeling behaviour. What areas should art penetrate then? Perhaps it should make a vanguard march with ideas, just as economy and its related branches are well ahead of politics. International economy and trade organizations got emancipated from the control of nation-state. Earlier it was achieved by religion, philosophy, arts and sciences. Literature has grown out of, or completed the mission, of contemplating and admiring the world as it is. I think that its role of documenting reality also terminates, as this particular role has been taken over by other media. The book will certainly survive, but its contents – e.g. the imaginary sphere – no longer suffice. It seems to me that the best chances are for literature, which penetrates deep into the very essence of man, deep down to the unfathomable and unknown layers of human potential. Literature and poetics identifying the author (and man in general) with the nation and its history, will probably retain only its cognitive value, shedding most of its educational and, especially, entertaining power. Would this all mean, within such a broad synthesis, that the role of literature is exhausted, just as is that of classical history? By any means no.
Centres of commanding states and nations are located at the beginning of 21st century in international economic, transport, telecommunications and cultural (film industry, media, publishing) corporations. Thinking, especially creative thought, becomes less and less a message, a carrier of spirituality, a mission, and has become a good, a product whose function is to satisfy spiritual and cognitive needs. Such functions of literature as patriotism seem to be today only archival, and the question about identity should be more identified with the genealogy of nations, excavating differences, rather than with description of everyday life, which is globally similar.
Nation-states of the beginning of 21st century are passing away. There is an open road for strong artistic and creative organizations, with publishing, circulation, translation and media structures. The help from the state (elected government) will be indeed indispensable. Most probably it will be literature, which will be largely responsible for building up moral values, stigmatize barbarous behaviour, as well as infantile aspects of mass culture. The idea of freedom helped lose control over a whole range of issues, and, with this, a certain type of a comprehensible world ordering likewise perished. In place of one goal a number of interests emerges, which in itself also requires some global ordering, but this is the problem and responsibility of politicians and diplomats or lawyers, and literature might have only some auxiliary function, drafting new visions of existing and co-existing.
I am also convinced that the traditional role of the state is being taken over by groups and individuals, themselves representing regional or universal values. A new situation and a new role. Power centres move into banks, trade, culture and places of worship, national and international organizations, while state governments act more as co-ordinators and intervening factors than mobilizing, supporting and care-taking agents.
What territories will the art of tomorrow occupy and if it will still remain an art cannot be determined at the end of 2001. It is an undeniable fact that the up-till-now world order is undergoing quick and devastating entropy, and such a situation abounds in new challenges which neither family, nor school or academy cannot properly face and deal with. The whole hoe, then, in writers, thinkers, brotherly circles, because these are these people who are able to design new routes and place signposts along.
Trans. Dorota Kołodziejczyk
TOMASZ AGATOWSKI – writer and essayist, reviewer, columnist, a researcher of cultures. Graduated from the Warsaw University. A thinker creating a poesiosophy of liberty, dialogue, co-existence in the spirit of humanitas. Lives in Wielkopolska. Considers nature the closes to him, works mainly in a pinewood hermitage on the lake in the virgin forest, without as much as electricity. The author of poetry volumes: „Są nieba większe” (There are grander skies); „Światlo Nemesis” (Nemesis light); „Białe modlitwy” (White prayers); „Jeśli wytrwasz” (If you will persevere); „Jaki byłby ogień” (What could fire be like); „Na początku było milczenie” (Silence was at the beginning); „Ja, mniejszy brat Słowa” (Myself, a minor brother of the Word); an orature „Perły i Chóry” (Pearls and Choirs). He is an author of over two thousand publications in various journals. A cultural activist. Since many years he has been publishing mini-essays of set formulas: „Między myślą a słowem” [Between thought and word] (Okolica poetow), „Myśli do wynajęcia” [Thoughts to hire] (Ogólnopolski magazyn twórców „Radostowa”), „Listy Tomasza” [Tomasz’s letters] (Radio Kujawy), „My, piąty żywioł” [We, the fifth element] (Nihil Novi). An author and moderator of meetings under the heading „Can we remember…”. At present he is collaborating with a historian-medievalist Prof. Gerard Labuda on a collection of historical and cultural analyses, which is to be published under the title „History and what next?”. A documentalist. Hobbyhorse – fishing, photography, peregrinations into cultures and civilizations. A member of Polish Writers’ Association, the Association of Journalists of the Polish Republic, and the Association of Authors ZAiKS.
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