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the national identity thing
So, one time my dad was in Timor Leste, in a meeting that ran inordinately long because they had to translate everything from Portuguese to English. (The official languages in Timor Leste are Portuguese and Tetum.) "And after the meeting, we started chatting," said my dad. "And you know what language we were chatting in? Indonesian!"
The guy reckons that in five years or so, everyone in Timor Leste will be speaking Portuguese and most people won't even know Indonesian. The translator said, "Naw, man, the kids'll know Indonesian. How'll they watch their sinetron otherwise?" (Sinetron are like narmy Indonesian telenovelas with a lot of tears and screaming.)
Which is hilariously unsurprising but also not hilarious at all.
East Timor never really got the chance to develop a national identity. It was Portuguese for 300 years, and Timorese for like 10 seconds before we swooped in going, "MINE MINE MINE." Thirty years later, they can't get enough of our soap operas.
When Portugal granted East Timor its independence in 1975, it had a weak coalition government, and we totally took advantage of that. Before the Timorese knew it, they were Indonesian (or so we said). That is, if they weren't already one of the tens of thousands dead from violence, deprivation, and disease. And 1975 isn't so long ago. It's not even two generations ago. It was just roughly a decade before I was born, but I didn't know anything about this growing up. I didn't grow up in Indonesia, so it wasn't like I was subjected to its propaganda machine, but sometimes the best propaganda is no propaganda, is silence.
One time I was YouTubing Indonesia and came across this 1993 commercial and was really confused. Why the hell would Portugal care? Why was it picking on us? Well, Portugal was by far the strongest foreign supporter of Timorese independence. The Timorese cause was popular enough in Portugal that politicians would bandy it about to win public favor. As for the attitudes of other Western countries, well. East Timor had had a strong leftist party when Portugal left in 1975, and the Western neoliberal powers - fearful of a communist domino effect in Southeast Asia - supported the violent subjugation of East Timor by Indonesia. To whom they did pretty much the same thing 30 fucking years ago.
Timor Leste, here's to you making narmy telenovelas (or... something better) of your very own someday.
On an unrelated note: am I probably going to use part of my $25 iTunes gift-card to buy this?? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT.
INSTAVIDREC: Merlin/Will set to Telepopmusik's "Close" fsnkjfksajflkjsdflkjdfd I don't usually do vids, okay, but I am warming to them, especially if they're gonna be ABOUT MERLIN AND WILL BEING HEARTBREAKING. omg. Watch it, guys.
The guy reckons that in five years or so, everyone in Timor Leste will be speaking Portuguese and most people won't even know Indonesian. The translator said, "Naw, man, the kids'll know Indonesian. How'll they watch their sinetron otherwise?" (Sinetron are like narmy Indonesian telenovelas with a lot of tears and screaming.)
Which is hilariously unsurprising but also not hilarious at all.
East Timor never really got the chance to develop a national identity. It was Portuguese for 300 years, and Timorese for like 10 seconds before we swooped in going, "MINE MINE MINE." Thirty years later, they can't get enough of our soap operas.
When Portugal granted East Timor its independence in 1975, it had a weak coalition government, and we totally took advantage of that. Before the Timorese knew it, they were Indonesian (or so we said). That is, if they weren't already one of the tens of thousands dead from violence, deprivation, and disease. And 1975 isn't so long ago. It's not even two generations ago. It was just roughly a decade before I was born, but I didn't know anything about this growing up. I didn't grow up in Indonesia, so it wasn't like I was subjected to its propaganda machine, but sometimes the best propaganda is no propaganda, is silence.
One time I was YouTubing Indonesia and came across this 1993 commercial and was really confused. Why the hell would Portugal care? Why was it picking on us? Well, Portugal was by far the strongest foreign supporter of Timorese independence. The Timorese cause was popular enough in Portugal that politicians would bandy it about to win public favor. As for the attitudes of other Western countries, well. East Timor had had a strong leftist party when Portugal left in 1975, and the Western neoliberal powers - fearful of a communist domino effect in Southeast Asia - supported the violent subjugation of East Timor by Indonesia. To whom they did pretty much the same thing 30 fucking years ago.
Timor Leste, here's to you making narmy telenovelas (or... something better) of your very own someday.
On an unrelated note: am I probably going to use part of my $25 iTunes gift-card to buy this?? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT.
INSTAVIDREC: Merlin/Will set to Telepopmusik's "Close" fsnkjfksajflkjsdflkjdfd I don't usually do vids, okay, but I am warming to them, especially if they're gonna be ABOUT MERLIN AND WILL BEING HEARTBREAKING. omg. Watch it, guys.
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Uh. I need to sleep. Really, really sleep. But what you said got in my head a bit. Oh dear, oh well.
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+1
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One can't escape one's context, sure. One's personal paradigm can handle a lot of contradictions. But this context isn't necessarily delineated by national borders anymore. Not that national borders have become obsolete, FAR FROM IT, but we have to account for the fact that an individual isn't necessarily going to be stationary in the country they're born in, or that sometimes an individual is going to stationary in a country they're not born in. That their centers might be halfway across the world, like how Tamil and Darfurian refugees in London are directing political movements in their home territories. In this sense, having cultural adaptability is not a luxury, but a defense and a survival strategy. They have to make use of London's resources to fight for their homes.
I'm reminded of the saying "those who are close to everyone are close to none". Because you are equally comfortable everywhere, you are truly comfortable nowhere. It's interesting that you focus on the strength of identity in that context, because I think it's just as easy to have a weak sense of self, overwhelmed by multiple contexts, and somehow failing to become more than the sum of your parts.
Yes, saleable side of culture! Have you read Aihwa Ong's spiel about symbolic capital and habitus? Okay, Bordieu's ideas, but she uses them well for her purposes.
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Yes, I, er, do know that people move around. I was thinking of people who can't see their identity because they're in the middle of it -- vague thoughts of stuff like 'the English only become English when they meet Americans'. But in a way I'm the wrong person to try to talk about this, because I've never had to. I do believe that one's ideas only began to have proper shape and strength after one has spent a lot of time expressing them and exposing them and letting them get beaten around a bit.
I suspect people are probably only equally comfortable everywhere if they have a lot of power. Unless it's having learnt by necessity to have to adapt to everything, which isn't what I first think of as comfort.
No, my goodness, I've barely read any theory, and what I have, not in a long time. I spent a certain amount of time in my late teens around -- er, I suppose you'd call them Chinese intellectuals, although that (incorrectly) sounds awfully exciting. There was someone who'd published a bestseller in English, and someone who wrote poems in Chinese, and then they were good friends with an artist whose family still lived in China but who'd gained some recognition in France (I think), and so on and so forth, so you can probably imagine the kind of conversation I was suddenly exposed to. And when I started thinking about buying and selling. And then, I suppose I was also devouring a lot of postcolonialist crit and flicking through everything that looked interesting in a big academic bookshop I used to visit. But now I just have directions for enquiry, a headache, and whatever I've caught on the World Service. And, uh, apparently, a fearsome ability to make stuff All About Me. Oh dear.
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'the English only become English when they meet Americans'
Yes that! It's like my family telling me I'm Americanized because I didn't act like what they thought an Indonesian should act like, but I still got culture shock adjusting to the US. Perhaps doubly so because I hadn't expected to feel out of place, because I bought it when everyone was telling me how American I was, but then I arrive and discover I'm still pretty damn Indonesian.
which isn't what I first think of as comfort.
This also! Empty and full glasses! 'Cos equally comfortable everywhere can also mean equally UNcomfortable everywhere. What if nowhere is home?
I received your email, girl, wow. Downloading as we speak.
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COME BACK TO ME, OH SHOW MY SHOW
muchas thanks!