Hi Eugene and everybody,
Being bilingual by birth and having done translations from one language to
anotherfrom time to time, I have often experienced struggles of the sort you
describe today. I too have wondered if differences between terms reflect
differences in historical experiences of the communities, and I find your
comments very interesting, indeed..
I believe the the notion of "identity" is tied to the development of
"individualism" and the concept of the "self." A few years ago, I did some
research for a paper I wanted to write on cultural context, self and social
behavior, and I found some information that resonates, much like your
comments on identity.
For example, according to an anthropologist, the human self as considered in
Northern Cheyenne culture has four basic parts: "ametane" (living), "omotone
(soul); "mahta?sooma" (spirit), and mahtsehestah (heart, the center of the
individual). Individuation and consciousness of self are said to bring with
them what Cheyenne consider to be the universal human condition--loneliness.
But in Cheyenne culture, self-reliance implies intense involvement with those
who are "close" and entails a personal strategy for increasing the network of
"close" ones. In other words, individuality supports a tribal purpose, a
tribal identity. Indeed, without the tribe, there is no freedom, there is
only being lost.
Japanese demonstrate a fine sense of differentiation between the self as a
social participant (omote) and the self as a personal, internal consciousness
(ura), and are more aware of a dualistic orientation to the world (Doi, 1973).
In China, Confucian selfhood involves two interrelated assumptions: (a) the
self as a center of relationships, and (b) the self as a dynamic process of
spiritual development (Wei-ming, 1985).
In studying the Polynesian population of Kapingamarangi, Lieber (1990)
stresses the fact that Kapinga define the person as a locus of social
relationships, of shared biographies (personal histories of people's
relationaships with other people and things).
In describing Balinese personhood, Geertz (1973) pictures a world that
minimizes individualized selfhood. The Balinese have elaborate systems of
birth-order names, status names, and names that they acquire as parents or
grandparents of particular offsprings. Geertz says: "The most striking thing
about the culture patterns in which Balinese notions of personal identity are
embodied is the degree to which they depict virtually everyone--friends,
relatives, neighbors, and strangers; elders and gods; even the dead and
unborn--as stereotyped contemporaries, abstract and anonymous fellowmen. Each
of the symbolic orders of person definition, from concealed names to flaunted
titles, acts to strengthen the standardization, idealization, and
generalization implicit in the relation between individuals whose main
connection consists in the accident of their being alive at the same time to
mute or gloss over those implicit relations between ... persons intimately
involved in one another's biographies, or between predecessors and successors
... The illuminating paradox of Balinese formulations of personhood is that
they are--in our terms anyway--depersonalized (pp. 389-390).
Kavolis (1984) compares the English "self" with its equivalent in
Lithuanian--possibly the most archaic of the living Indo-European languages.
The Lithuanian word for "self," "pats," "pati," derives from the same root as
the Sanscrit "pat," "to be master, reign, govern, control, own, possess,
dispose of" and describes a kind of "householder self" which differs from the
English, more Christianized self by the absence of introspective elements:
"Whereas the literate English is "substantial" to the extent that it has
inherited the structure (or memory) of the soul, in Lithuanian, which may
express an older "peasant" stratum of the history of (Indo-) European
selfhood, the self draws its "substantiality" from its masterful
participation in the smallest operant unit of society. The civilized (or
esoteric) type of "self" is more likely to need an ideological foundation,
whereas the peasant (or exoteric) type of "self" needs social foundation to
keep it from dissolving--into an escalating "self-consciousness" without an
object in the first case, into a detail of earth-boundness in the second. The
psychological need for ideologies as confirmers of selfhood should increase
with any weakening of the social foundations of selfhood, specifically, with
the transition from "peasantry" to "civilization" (p. 141).
Pei-yi Wu (1984) describes the varieties of the Chinese self: "No single term
matches the English "self " in versatility and flexibility. As a separate,
freestanding noun, "chi" is equivalent to "self" in English, but "chi" is
seldom used as a prefix, nor does it always connote reflexivity in the rather
rare instances when it does appear as a suffix in a compound. "Tzu" resembles
"self-" in English or "auto" in Greek when it functions as a prefix: e.g.,
"tzu-ai," self-love ... Most Chinese pronouns of the first person singular
can be generalized to denote the "self," much in the same way as "moi" in
French does not even have a term comparable to the limited "chi" in Chinese.
Among such Chinese pronouns "wo" is most often pressed into this broader
service, whereas "wu" is used much less frequently in this manner. Another
distinction of the pronoun "wo" is its viability. It has survived in the
standard modern vernacular, whereas its synonyms have not. Perhaps even in
ancient times "wo" had already displayed too much vigor, for Confucius
assigned an additional meaning to it and denounced it as a moral defect to be
avoided. As he juxtaposed "wo" with "i,"
"willfullness," "pi" "arbitrariness," and "ku" "obstinacy," its new meaning
must have stood somewhere between "egotism" and "self-assertiveness." (p.
107).
Confucious must have been in Pascal's thoughts when, in the seventeenth
century, he vigorously proclamed: "Le moi est haissable" !
What do you think?
Doris.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 09:20:34 PDT