INTRODUCTION
As an artist and second-generation citizen of the United States I am fascinated with the subtle limitations and more overt exclusions contained in the construction of a national "American" (read: United States) identity. In this essay I would like to begin exploring, through language and image, the construction of national identity.
I do not speak Spanish, or Portuguese, the other languages of the Encuentro. Or Arabic, the original language of my family. I only speak English. As a teenager I reductively (and somewhat melodramatically) viewed the loss of the original language of my family as a violent act, an amputation. My view has changed as I have tried to understand the choices my family made in relationship to assimilation. The questions that arise from a more balanced reading of these choices describe a terrain of inquiry: What is assimilation? Is it invisibility or becoming? Do we become the words we use to describe ourselves, that are used to describe us? What is the text of difference? Who speaks it?
Cultural Assimilation, in United States military terminology represents an ‘up’ or ‘out’ model: Either immigrants bring themselves ‘up’ to the standards of the majority or they risk living outside the "charmed circle" of the national culture. (Salinas, 1997) Belonging to the majority group is desirable because of scale effects, even on a national level, where hegemony has been shown to improve the economic performance of a country. (Hall and Jones, 1996) "There are not two worlds anymore or two possibilities or two contending opposing forces. There is…only one world…of global capital."(Bey, 1998) So we can see that in capitalism sameness equals efficiency. And cultural assimilation favors monophony, "the sound of a single voice speaking…always comprehensible and…faithful to the…rhythm and intonation of the language." (Chalmers, 1997)
The historical movement of immigrant assimilation in the United States began with the adoption of the national language: English. " For the overwhelming majority…learning English was the first and most crucial step to becoming ‘American’." (Chavez, 1992) Those who oppose bilingualism as it relates to cultural identity today argue that using bilingual education to inculcate children in their native cultures separates them from the majority, to their detriment. (Chavez, 1997) However framing arguments based on a static model of assimilation leads to a politicized reading of the uses of language in the creation of national identity. (K’ona, 2002) Invoking a "hard working" immigrant archetype obscures the complexities inherent in any discussion of cultural identity. In fact many immigrants arrived in the United States with a de facto bilingual education in their countries of origin. Shifts in the United States economy strengthening the relationship between success at school and at work in the last half of the twentieth century make a compelling case for learning in the most efficient way possible. (Krashen, 1997) Therefore a dynamic model of assimilation takes into account that different strategies work at different times based on a constellation of factors. (K’ona, 2002)
At the Encuentro I marveled at the translator’s ability to hold two languages at once. To contain and redirect patterns of thought and rhetorical arguments, channeling them from one set of word-forms into another. Even more amazing to me was his ability to do this simultaneously. As I listened to his whispered English I became conscious that he was expressing thoughts that were uttered originally in Spanish (or Portuguese) a moment before. And, even as he was translating them into English he was listening to the Spanish/Portuguese thoughts that followed them. Therefore the translator was not only relating rhetorical arguments across different word-forms but across time.
For Leda Martins, time and space become mirrored through oratic power, the word inscribing the "performance of the body." In her phrase, "the memory that rides on the body is recorded and transmitted" through language. (Martins, 2003)Therefore communication is embodiment and the way we understand the world is structured by our verbal system. Each breath we take becomes a bridge between the inside and outside of the body. The breath is liminal and spoken language (breath-with-sound) is a "dialogue between mutation and identity." (Paz, 1997)
Some immigrant families use language to create two worlds, one at home through the language of origin and one with the outside world through the language of the dominant culture. But when my grandparents came to the United States from Lebanon they forbade their U.S.-born children-my Father, his brother and sisters-from speaking any Arabic at all. It was as if they were trying to match their insides to the outside world of the United States. In the sense that their home was the "inside" of my family and also the insides of their bodies, as containers for vibration. (Linklater, 1976)
There is no question that, for my family in the 1930’s, adopting an unambiguous national identity was beneficial, even necessary. By speaking only English my father’s generation met the world outside of their home, "America" (the United States), with a vibration that signaled their belonging. My own English, articulate, educated and un-accented, continues to serve me in the same way. However, I acknowledge longing for a mode of expression that cannot be communicated in American English: A vibration that would connect me with my family through the sound of our insides. I assert that English, as it is spoken in the United States, contains the vibration of all that has been lost in the pursuit of a homogenous United States identity.
Accents, turns of phrase and syntax that signify "foreign-ness" are comically or erotically suggestive (as in stock broad stereotypes "Latin Lover", "Arab Cab Driver"etc.). The suggestive power in these stereotypes is borne out of the anxiety with and inherent danger in their otherness. Slavery in the United States and its aftermath, the black/white polarity upon which these stereotypes draw, haunts the interstices of cultural interaction in the U.S. However the events of September 11th have de-centered (perhaps forever) the uses of signifying "otherness" as a binary.
In faultlessly performing the tropes of everyday "American" life before their destruction of the Twin Towers, the terrorists shake our presumptions about otherness.(Baudrillard, 2002) Despite efforts to frame the images of the September 11th terrorists as "others" their destructive power lay in the very fact of their belonging, a radical inversion of the benign familiarity aspired to by immigrants in the United States since the turn of the last century. Their cultural assimilation an alarming preface to the literal disappearance of their exploding bodies.
In The Sprit of Terrorism the theorist Jean Baudrillard writes "the faultless mastery of this clandestine style of operation is almost as terroristic as the spectacular act of September 11th, since it casts suspicion on any and every individual. Might not any inoffensive person be a potential terrorist?" This assertion is amplified by the violent, retaliatory confusion in which so many unrelated people of color (Sikhs, Latinos, East Indians, Pakistanis and others) were caught because they were thought to signify "Arab" in the aftermath of the terror attack. This violence, both actual and symbolic, tells the story of their skins: All people of color are a metaphor for one another, performing their difference and absence simultaneously.
As an Arab-American I am constantly aware of the growing space between the ways in which I am perceived and the ways I feel. This widening space is filled with language. Ironically, since I was a child people have said to me "but you don’t look like an Arab." In reality I look exactly like what I am: a hazel–eyed, fair skinned person of Lebanese descent. Strangers often have no idea about my ethnicity until they hear my name. If they are well-intentioned people they often become worried that they have said something, at some point, which might have offended me. Others have viewed me with blatant suspicion, as if I’d tried to deceive them. Either way they struggle to place me within the language that they use to describe "Arab" to themselves. Most often this language is alienating and does not describe my experience or me. As you might imagine, since 9/11 this process, sometimes amusing, sometimes irritating, sometimes hurtful, has become much more dangerous. My name, which I love because it connects me to my family, has become a sign that represents the fears and anger of people I do not even know. The name I love makes me afraid.