"The West shall shake the East awake"
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I wasn't totally thrilled with Kwame Anthony Appiah's convocation lecture last tuesday, and it took me a little while to realize why that was. However, I should preface my explanation of my distaste with the fact that I am also aware that his discussion of the honor code can be very effective when applied to the local community.
That said, I know why I found some problems with what he said, or more specifically, the assumptions he seemed to make in his lecture. Fortunately, it applies well to McLuhan's idea of the global village and the media. It applies even better to the James Joyce McLuhan incorporates in his pages about globalization, "The West shall shake the East awake."
Who are "the west" and who are "the east?" in the interest of responding specifically to Appiah's lecture, I'm writing this with the understanding that "the west" refers to the north-west section of a standard, British Empire style map -- north america, and west europe. Relatively a small portion of Earth's land mass, even on a map that has been accused of depicting certain continents inaccurately.
To get to the point, my problem with Appiah's lecture was that he seemed to be speaking with the presumption that it is the job of the west to "shake the east awake" -- to determine what is right, and guide other nations based on our understanding. The examples he used (foot binding in China and genital cutting in parts of Africa) are not particularly morally ambigous ones; these acts both physically harmful to the woman involved and to the community of women who suffer such ongoing subjugation. However, there are examples of practices in "the East" that western civilization decries, yet are not necessarily harmful to anyone. It is necessary to ask where the line of western judgement should be drawn, and, more importantly, when it is necessary for the west to make a judgement at all.
These questions become more important than ever as the "global village" is increasingly connected, and it is increasingly easy to communicate accross continental borders. It is clear, as McLuhan argues, that there is no outside role in such an argument -- but that does not mean that our understanding of honor is the correct one, and it is not the duty of "the West" to impose its reality on "the East."
I agree. It is definitely not the job of "the West" to determine an honor code for countries in "the East," but many westerners seem to think it is. With the increasing connectedness the "global village" creates, we have more and more opportunities to respectfully communicate and work on issues of violence instead of imposing western ideals on other countries. It also took me a while to figure out how I felt about Appiah's lecture, and I thank our post-colonial writers class for helping me figure it out.
ReplyDeleteThis is very well put, and verbalized a lot of the issues I found in Appiah's presentation. Cultural relativism is a slippery slope, but bringing up the fact that the western world villainizes certain harmless practices just as much, and often more publicly, than the less morally grey issues of fgc and foot binding.
ReplyDeleteThis is very well put, and verbalized a lot of the issues I found in Appiah's presentation. Cultural relativism is a slippery slope, but bringing up the fact that the western world villainizes certain harmless practices just as much, and often more publicly, than the less morally grey issues of fgc and foot binding.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a political scholar or anything like that, and I'll admit I was nodding off a bit during the lecture because I was just really tired and bored by it, but Appiah wasn't really making an argument for western ideologies, rather an impersonal and comparative analysis of "honor" systems in diverse communities. He wrote a book in 2010 called The Honor Code, which he referenced at convocation, and that too was just an analysis of cultures. He doesn't really favor one over another and he does note faults in the "honor" systems he talks about. He brought up those examples of "foot-binding" and "genital cutting" because they bear a large influence over their respective countries and take away from basic human rights. He makes the point that some cultures still exist under such primitive and dehumanizing presets that it wouldn't be unreasonable to believe that western countries have comparably made far more progress, and since he himself lives in one of those progressive countries, he has no reason to deny there is something terribly backwards in the ethics governing third world countries. It's a mistake to expect those stricken countries to improve without some sort of impartial western influence, as proven by the work of health aid and human rights watch services by western organizations, and just stand by the belief that we "ignorant" western folks have no right to interfere in international conflicts. Yes, we have made mistakes in the past in wartime, but that doesn't deter from the fact we can still serve the best of human interest because we care about what happens to the world. There is the common phrase "actions speak louder than words" and that applies to this situation because the passive person can make a statement or file paperwork against a party and attempt to make peace talks with an uncooperative group that is obviously serving a negative impact on its people, rather than taking the active approach of imposing embargoes or sending in teams to research or assist in situations. People seem to forget that without western interference on many occasion in the past two decades, we would've seen the absolute collapse of several countries, and thankfully they are just barely surviving. Yes, western cultures are largely responsible for the assimilation and overall indoctrination of eastern countries that has historically unsettled them, but as we have read and seen time and time again from the news, there is really no way of undoing those mistakes just because of the dire shape that some of those countries are in. We shouldn't be governed by what we think the West "cannot" do, rather what it can do to help these countries. Like it or not, the United States is one of the most progressive countries in the world despite its problems, being of course in a forever imperfect world.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to add as a correction to one of the sentences in my statement that I am not only referring to third world countries, but also more progressive nations that still hold traditions that may be troubling to some. In this comment, I was taking more focus into the context of more troubled countries where violation of human rights is prevalent. That however shouldn't take away from the particular issues that Appiah personally brought up.
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