Plural Identities

Digging for America

From the American novelist Anne Tyler (nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as the greatest novelist writing in English - and I think I agree)'s most recent novel, Digging to America:

Sami, born in America, of Iranian parents rants to his Iranian extended family and friends, all living the in the US, regarding:

The American craze for logic - "Logic's why they're always suing each other.  They believe that for every event there has to be a cause.  Surely somebody is to blame! they say...They feel personally outraged by bad luck"
American so-called openness - "So instantaneously chummy they are, so 'Hello, I love you,' so "how do you do, let me tell you my marital problems,' and yet, have any of them ever really truly let you into their lives?"

Modern, liberal America is embodied in Bitsy, who adopts a Korean and then a Chinese child, and tries to keep them connected to their 'ethnicity' by dressing them in native costume, whilst agonising about  organic food and excoriating Sami's wife, who has also adopted a Korean child, for going out to work two days a week.  Bitsy says, towards the end of this wonderful novel, about the Iranian woman's elegant, also Iranian mother-in-law - "what I really have against her is, she's elusive.  Oh I hate it that world finds elusiveness so attractive!  Elusive people are maddening!  Why doesn't anyone realise?"

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Mary Douglas

I remember reading Purity and Danger when I was a teenager and thinking it was fascinating.  Reading the obituary of the author of it, the anthropologist Mary Douglas, by Geoff Mulgan on Prospect's web exclusive section has made me feel I should re-read it, and other books of hers besides.  Going by Mulgan's summary of her cultural framework and its use by Michael Thompson and Marco Verweij in their book on public policy, I am struck by how much of an 'Individualist' ( as opposed to being egalitarian, hierarchical or fatalist) I am in terms of my views on climate change and immigration.  But I believe in a spot of hierarchical  intervention to tame individualists like me, a mix of policy approaches, which is also what Mulgan, Thompson and Verweij conclude.

I am also intrigued by her theory on enclaves and how this could affect strategies for dealing with terrorist cells.  It sounds very plausible that these enclaves are fragile, prone to splits and sectarianism, and strengthened by feeding off the hostility of outsiders to the enclave. So defeating terrorism may involve being less hostile to and not attacking enclaves head on with declarations of war, as this only strengthens their 'wall of virtue'.

Not separated at birth

Watching "Seven Ages of Rock" on BBC 2 last night, my husband suddenly blurted out "Don Letts, the black Adam Hart Davis" and had me weeping with laughter because it was so true and so insane at the same time.  The similarity of voice in the two of them is part of it too - a kind of barking, enthusiastic, insistency.

I think that's when you know you are in "non-racial" mode, I remember once seeing an elderly Japanese man in the meeting room coffee shop area of a major Japanese construction company and immediately exclaiming to myself "it's Svend!" (my Danish grandfather).  Or meeting a Karen tribe man in Mandalay, Burma, and having an instant flashback to my Scottish, archaeologist ex-boyfriend - same moustache, same Rayban sunglasses, same mannerisms.

 

Don Letts                                                                        Adam Hart Davis

Enthusiastic populariser of punk and reggae        Enthusiastic populariser of science