Genders 22. Ellen E. Berry
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of the East/West Bloc division which might make it possible to realize that negotiating the space of the “fircond” world, theoretically at least, means redefinition of both of its constitutive discourses.
In the third part of the essay, I look at the question about women in Yugoslavia in the context of the contemporary multicultural, fractured, and multifaceted — and yet interdependent — world. How do we make sense of this world? It seems that nothing can be said about it, until everything is rewritten. I propose a new kind of cultural and theoretical frame to contemplate it within, the transcultural. I suggest that the transcultural can be conceived of in three ways: (1) as a complex, and/or heterogeneous space in which all other cultural categories are immersed, and out of which they are sometimes molded; (2) as an aspect of everybody’s culture, and, potentially, as a culture all its own: a culture of people with complex, transcultural experiences and affiliations; and (3) finally, as a mode of interaction which works well among groups and people aware and accepting of cultural difference but not prepared to let that difference permanently divide them. I conclude by briefly looking at the context in which this essay appears in the American discourse. I see this as an example of the transcultural interaction mode.
I
The Cold War Paradigm and Normal Science. When I first came to Ohio, in 1986, Yugoslavia was not overwhelmingly represented in American popular discourse. Many people I came in contact with had only a vague idea where the country was (some did not even know it was in Europe), and a few thought its capital was Prague (the capital of, then, Czechoslovakia). Some people knew of Tito, Yugoslavia’s former “communist” president, and others had heard of Dubrovnik, a tourist city on the Adriatic coast (now in Croatia). As for such well-known people who did, originally, come from Yugoslavia (for example, tennis player Monica Seles or pianist Ivo Pogorelic, as well as some basketball players, film makers and scientists), even when Ohioans had heard of them, they were not, in their minds, always connected with Yugoslavia. An occasional joke about Yugo (the only Yugoslavian car on the American market), most frequently pejorative, was more or less all one could hear on a regular basis (although not even Yugo was always associated with Yugoslavia).
Practically without exception, however, everybody I met in the United States at the time classified Yugoslavia as an East European country (that is, as belonging to the Eastern bloc) and myself as East European. This came as a complete surprise, since this was not how we, in Yugoslavia, saw ourselves. I had expected, rather naively as it turns out, that Yugoslavia would be perceived by others the way it perceived itself. Yugoslavia had not been a member of the Warsaw Pact, and it had been a member of Cominform (an international communist information bureau set up by the USSR) only from 1947 to 1948. In 1948, Yugoslavian ties with the Soviet Union were severed.1 Since that time, Yugoslavia was precariously balanced between the blocs, and was one of the founding members (with Egypt and India) of the nonaligned movement. The first nonaligned nations’ summit conference was held in Belgrade, in 1961.2 Yugoslavian borders were open to visitors from both blocs, and Yugoslavian citizens easily traveled to both Warsaw Pact and NATO Pact countries. Furthermore, the country was full of Western popular culture and, it seemed to me, more West- than East-bloc-oriented. In fact, when I had traveled to the Soviet Union, many years previously, I had been labeled a “Westerner.”
In Bowling Green, Ohio, however, I was considered “East European.” With the label went a set of assumptions: closed borders, poverty, political and gender oppression, primitive living conditions, a need for guidance by more developed and more democratic nations. Although, as I said before, many people I met only vaguely knew where the country was located, they took these assumptions for granted. (Since all of the above assumptions were seen to uniformly apply to all “East European” countries, not only was I considered “East European,” I was also frequently asked to speak for the whole Eastern bloc.) Although people I met rather hungrily sought information about life in the Eastern bloc, however, they, at the time, rarely expected to hear anything that would contradict the image they had already formed of it. In other words, they never expected to be told that the above assumptions were incorrect, but, rather, they wanted more proof that they were correct. When I did happen to provide information which questioned dominant American views of Eastern Europe, I was, as a rule, disbelieved.
I could list pages of examples, but the following should suffice.
One of my frequent complaints about life in Ohio is that washing machines and/or washing detergents do not do as good a job as the ones “back home.” With some extremely rare exceptions, this statement always met with vehement opposition. This opposition ranged from attempts to explain this (to my opponents, obviously wrong) belief by my inability to use the machines correctly, to direct accusations of delusions or lying. In the words of one of my friends: “I find it hard to believe that any domestic appliance in Yugoslavia can be better than an American one.”
When, on one occasion, I was trying to impress upon one of my colleagues that Yugoslavia was not a member of the Eastern Bloc, he said: “Are you sure? I heard it on NBC last night.” I said that only proved that not everything said on television was true. He gave me an indulgent smile and refused further argument.
On the other hand, my stories about things I disliked in Yugoslavia, such as the absence of satisfactorily clean public bathrooms, or lack of tolerance in public discourse, were in Ohio met with instant belief. Nobody ever said (yet): “Oh, really? I never thought Yugoslavia would have dirty bathrooms!”
It might be useful to look at this situation in terms of what Thomas Kuhn calls “normal science.” According to Kuhn, “normal science” means research within a firmly established paradigm. He defines paradigms as “some accepted examples of actual scientific practice … [which] provide models from which spring particular traditions of scientific research.”3 These are taught to us in textbooks, and they “for a time define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.… The study of paradigms … is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community” (10–11).
According to Kuhn, normal science can be compared to jig-saw puzzle-solving. The picture is already known, we just have to put the pieces in the right place. “Perhaps the most striking feature of the normal research problems [writes Kuhn] … is how little they aim to produce major novelties, conceptual or phenomenal” (35). In other words, normal science does not, by definition, produce radically new knowledge. Rather, it produces the “steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge” (52). When nature violates “the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science (52),” when, in other words, a discovery does not fit the paradigm, it is treated as an anomaly. An anomaly does not automatically create a paradigm crisis. Scientists are aware that no paradigm is perfect, that all of them are approximations rather than accurate descriptions of reality. Anomaly is usually treated as a hint that the paradigm needs adjustment, not that it should be rejected. In fact, scientific communities are very resistant to paradigm change. According to Kuhn, this is good: it ensures that paradigms are not rejected easily, at the whim of a few impatient scientists.
Let us for the moment assume that, with respect to Eastern Europe, the cold-war picture of the world can be seen as the dominant American paradigm. This paradigm saw the Western bloc as the “free world” and the Eastern bloc as a dark communist world behind the Iron Curtain. It saw the Western bloc as good and the Eastern as bad, or, more precisely, it saw the Western bloc as progressive, enlightened, democratic, open to new ideas and committed to the equality of all people, and the Eastern bloc as lacking in all these areas. It also saw the Western bloc as affluent, colorful, and full of joy, and the Eastern bloc as gray, oppressive, poor, and joyless. In Kuhnian terms, stories about Eastern Europe can be seen as normal science when they can be easily told within and when they confirm this paradigm; and as anomalies when they cannot be contained or explained within it.
During the cold war this was the paradigm used by American popular culture to present Eastern Europe (particularly the Soviet Union) to American audiences. It was present in popular films, popular books, newspapers, and magazines, as well as in television news shows. This also seems to have been the