Defining Culture and Transculturalism

Culture, in a general sense, is positively related to the accumulation of the past experiences of a community; it has a crucial role in defining the identity of a nation or a society. However, the very first meaning of the word ‘culture,’ derived from the Middle French word culture and the Latin word cultūra, is ‘the cultivation of land’ (OED). It has gained a more general meaning over time and is now used to describe every social manifestation. Even though it is not easy precisely to define culture, critics and scholars have elucidated it in different ways over the ages, and many of them have appreciated the concept in different perspectives. Raymond Williams, for example, traces the origin of the word and emphasises that it is difficult to define it. According to him, culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. This is so partly because of its intricate historical development, … but mainly because it has now come to be used for important concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and in several distinct and incompatible systems of thought (87). Williams avoids a strict definition, and

24

by focusing on the origin of the word, he posits that the term culture has different meanings in different times, which were shaped in accordance with the scientific, artistic, philosophical, or economic development of a society. On the other hand, the postcolonial theorist Edward Said defines culture in the light of Matthew Arnold’s views on culture;

for Arnold, culture has a refining and elevating element and covers up the brutalizing of the urban existence. In this sense, Edward Said concludes that people shape their intellectual base in accordance with what culture offers them; in other words, culture refines society. That is why Said regards culture as “a source of identity” (Culture and Imperialism xiii) and explicitly states that “all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (Culture and Imperialism xxv). As has been pointed out, culture can be interpreted from different perspectives; yet it is evident that culture is related to peoples and their historical and social backgrounds. For this reason, any interaction with other cultures contribute to the development of both. Since culture is the identity of a society or community, all contributions help this identity to create its own characteristics, and a transcultural identity appears as a consequence of those contributions that have been intermingled.

Since culture contains different products of a society, such as literature, philosophy, language, religion, customs and traditions, and the relationship between culture and people intrinsically causes the culture to interact with the systems or movements that people have developed over centuries, cultural studies has a multidimensional aspect in relation to other disciplines. As the German philosopher, Wolfgang Welsch states, “everything is strictly bound to its cultural context. We take all production, experience, and cognition to be fully determined by their cultural framework, hence as restricted to it” (13). The multifaceted aspects of culture and the interdisciplinarity of cultural studies pave the way for cross-cultural studies. As a

sub-25

discipline of culturalism, transculturalism, by benefiting from many other disciplines, centres upon how cultures are influenced by each other and tries to determine what the main reasons for this interaction are. Transcultural studies elucidates the idea that culture is established with the past and present, and in this field, it is emphasised that other cultures, which interact for a reason, contribute to the establishment of the culture itself.

For the transcultural process, any positive or negative transaction is essential because, as the medievalist, Albrecht Classen states, “transculturality begins when representatives of one culture react to elements of another culture, even when this happens in negative terms at first” (“Transcultural Experiences” 682). Therefore, in transculturalism, there is no limitation of time and place, since, in every period, people from different cultures have met in a way, which causes them to interact. Thus, transculturalism does not concentrate on a specific nation or a specific period; it studies multicultural aspects of society within the frame of other cultures and periods.

Some researchers restrict their cross-cultural studies to within the framework of postcolonial studies or the contemporary global world. However, cultural transaction unavoidably began even before the movement of colonisation, which was directed by the national consciousness of the powerful states for the purpose of development of their own countries. For cultural interaction, colonialism or globalisation is not the sine qua non, but they are the means of transculturality. To deal with every contribution in a culture causes transculturalism to be regarded as multiculturalism although it is rather different from multiculturalism. Lucia-Mihaela Grosu emphasises that cultural outcomes show the main difference between multiculturalism and transculturalism (107). In transculturalism, transaction among cultures is homogenous; different cultures are intertwined, and the separate characteristics of cultures are hardly identified. Unlike in transculturalism, in multiculturalism cultures keep their identifiable features, and strengthen the boundaries by keeping their discrete values. As Donald Cuccioletta explains, “contrary to

26

multiculturalism, which most experiences have shown re-enforces boundaries based on past cultural heritages, transculturalism is based on the breaking down of boundaries” (8).

Thus, transculturalism builds on a new cultural structure by crossing the boundaries of the present or past cultures; it asserts a new understanding of culture through commingling the cultural heritage of people, living together in the same land. Even though the perspectives of transculturalism, postcolonialism and multiculturalism are different and address different dimensions of a culture or society, transcultural studies is not entirely separated from the other two disciplines, but benefits from them. Arianna Dagnino investigates the position of transculturalism and states, “to a certain extent transcultural fiction flows out from those previous [postcolonial and multicultural]

domains/categorisations while still being permeated by them” (11). Within this context, postcolonial and multicultural materials provide multidimensional perspectives for transculturalism.

Even the first usage of the word “transculturation” emerged in a context which explains the cultural history and transformation of a nation, shaped by postcolonial and multicultural effects. The concept of transculturalism appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. In order to explain the cultural process in Cuba, Fernando Ortiz, the Cuban anthropologist, preferred to use the word “transculturation” because any other word related to culture would not convey his meaning. In his book, Cuban Counterpoint, he declares,

… the word transculturation better expresses the different phases of the process of transition from one culture to another because this does not consist merely in acquiring another culture, which is what the English word acculturation really implies, but the process also necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture, which could be defined as a deculturation (102)

27

With this neologism, he identifies that a new culture is created as a result of both the deculturation and neoculturation processes. After the loss of a culture, a new culture emerges; “he, [Ortiz] thus places emphasis on both the destruction of cultures and on the creativity of cultural unions” (Coronil xxvi). The term acculturation does not involve deculturation and expresses the one-way movement of culture; it is “used to describe the process of transition from one culture to another and its manifold social repercussions”

(Ortiz 98). In the acculturation process, the present culture is influenced by some elements of a dominant culture, and a new culture does not appear after this process; it points up the assimilation. For this reason, a new term was needed, and Ortiz coined the word transculturation to explain the loss and creation process of culture.

Moreover, Ortiz states that the individual is the smallest part in the process of creating a culture, and emphasises that culture is established with the combination of these small parts. In this context, transculturalism is regarded as a “melting pot” in which different cultures coalesce, and new identities and perspectives appear. In his article

“Cultural Diversity: It’s all about the Mainstream,” Roy L. Brooks focuses attention on the inevitable formation process of transculturalism, and states, “transculturalism creates a dilemma for groups thrown into the mix. These groups cannot escape cultural hegemony, as each group contributing to the new melting pot will have to surrender some (perhaps most) of its own identity as it assumes a new identity in the mainstream” (25).

As Brooks emphasises, some groups, communities, or identities cross their boundaries and, finally, some changes and interactions come into existence. Each group contributes some aspects of their cultural heritage to the new melting pot. However, the interplay in a melting pot cannot create a homogenous formation all the time. The cultures, developed in the same land, first of all, imitate each other. This assimilation process does not mean the diminish of the minority, yet sometimes, both primary and secondary cultures can assimilate and create new cultures and identities bearing the characteristics of both. The

28

new formulation is mainly provided with the cultural products from every period, which are carried with peoples.

The relationship between past and present leads some scholars back to the Middle Ages, and they associate transculturalism with that period by claiming that transcultural interactions date back to the medieval era. Transcultural interaction could undoubtedly be observed even before the Middle Ages; archaeological discoveries prove that different cultures and societies were in contact, and sometimes that affected their beliefs. However, in transcultural studies, the inadequacy in the amount of literary texts leads researchers to focus on the Middle Ages when observing the transactions between cultures. Classen, as one of those researchers, starts his transcultural researches from the Middle Ages, owing to the increasing amount of literary works in those periods, and he believes that medieval works are representative of the transformation of cultures:

… transculturality developed much earlier, particularly in the late Middle Ages, when writers and poets already explored the encounters of representatives of different cultures, religions, and languages by presenting their protagonists as traversing many lands and large bodies of water, meeting foreigners, engaging with them constructively, and reflecting on the commonalities connecting all people with each other irrespective of political or ideological oppositions.

(“Transcultural Experiences” 682)

Classen emphasises the importance of the texts in transculturation and suggests the medieval texts as the representatives of the cross-cultural process, due to the increasing number of travel writings and translations of the period. According to transcultural literary studies, the foreign, especially the Muslim characters and the main characters’

journeys to other countries, are only one way to determine transcultural exchanges in the medieval texts. For example, in the Alexander the Great romance, Alexander’s invasion

29

of Persia results in some cross-cultural influences; while the King starts wearing Persian, or, as it is stated in the story, “barbarian” clothes; he also brings Hellenistic hegemony to that land. In other romances, such as Floris and Blanchefleur and King Horn, the Saracens are an important element of the plots, and they present orient-centred stories.

Through these elements, the cultural interaction between the East and the West can be identified. In fact, literary works related to Muslims (under the name of Saracens) and the orient are more often seen after the West met the East in the Crusades. The influence of the Muslims in the Middle Ages was not based only on characters but also on the Muslim philosophy and literary traditions, which will be discussed in the following subheadings and the analyses of the given works. Therefore, even though Classen comments on the transcultural medieval period as limited, it is evident that the medieval texts present more than the relationship of the Orient and Occident.