Shakespeare's embrace
Carlin, David R. Jr.
of bomb shelters, of parents comforting terrified children and perhaps elsewhere, had we done nothing at all. Any theory that trying to reassure each other. Thinking about the air assault on tries...
...Yet refuted it needs to be...
...Perhaps as the out- idarity with the Kuwaitis resonated with my own sense of where comes and consequences of the war are more fully exposed, the weight of the argument fell...
...Shall we learn Gaelic...
...Time was when my forebears ruled nearly all of the European subcontinent...
...gooned into service, I thought about the numbing terror that For those who are not pacifists, as I am not, the use of force endless bombardment brings and its after-life in the dreams of and the turn to war require that we take some measure of our those who survive...
...For, nonsensical though it may be, it is a fashionable kind of nonsense, the kind that has wide appeal nowadays...
...and the more this culture is unleavened by culture in the high- er sense, the more complacent and even xenophobic it tends to be...
...Or go on pilgrimage to Stonehenge...
...Why would such lively youngsters want to return to the church when they had a whole town to roam...
...and every individual is just as cultured as every other--Billy Sunday and Reverend Ike no less than Erasmus and Thomas More...
...If we have not, those criteria its allies ever fired a shot...
...What shall our part be under the new dispensation...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr...
...But culture in the higher sense is univer- salistic, therefore indispensable for the cre- ation of a worldwide culture...
...My Celtic soul, I fear, lost its native hue somewhere in the labyrinthine ways of history, till now it is rinsed through and through with the deep and alien dyes of Judaism, Hellenism, Romanism, and Germanism...
...214: Commonweal It is not clear what cultural role is to be played by those of us descended from what might be called the vanquished races of Europe...
...Today, sad to say, the only remnant of our ancient glory is a basketball team in Boston...
...we are permitted to abandon the hard work that goes with maintaining cultural stan- dards and keeping an ancient heritage in good repair...
...That was our high-water mark...
...Anti-Eurocentrism is but the latest disguise worn by the children of darkness, who are now what they have always been, the enemies of humankind's enlightenment and emancipation...
...I can shut my eyes and see it as it was in my time...
...Alas...
...that other cultural traditions are rich better than one culture among many...
...Every loss is dispro- to have been wrong in warring against Iraq, just-war criteria portionate...
...It is only insofar as ordi- nary culture takes this criticism to heart and allows itself to be permeated by ele- ments of the higher culture that it rises somewhat above its merely local nature and takes on the flavor if not the full sub- stance of cosmopolitanism...
...Felix, their impress on the con- sciousness of generations of Catholics was deep...
...Equally crit- MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS ical, many human lives would have been lost in Kuwait, and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels is the editor of Commonweal...
...bodies and souls, and of the threat to other bodies and souls, of It makes us more suspect of the reasons our government goes Saudis, of Israelis, if Saddam Hussein had become the dominant to war and more critical about how that war is conducted...
...9 Abigail McCarthy A SACRED PLACE...STILL WHERE BABIES CRY & TODDLERS FUSS ould we go back and look at the church again...
...They are cool and dim, faintly redolent of the incense of decades, and reminiscent of encounters with the sacred...
...Despite its rhetoric of ecumeni- but for third-world individuals and groups rent crusade against cal understanding, of polycultural open- dwelling within the boundaries of the "Eurocentrism" has, I mindedness, its essential aim is to dethrone Western world, e.g., Algerians in France, suppose, certain merits...
...Practice Druidism per- haps...
...There is, of course, a political agenda from their own collective and immemorial that to study those competing traditions lurking behind this cultural program...
...This response is a far the White House in December to protest the momentum toward cry from Vietnam...
...If we prqve even one human life is tragic...
...This, of course, was the sound part of President was not sorry to see George Bush--inept though his treatment Bush's rejoinder to the challenge of Bishop Edmond Browning, was--turn to just-war theory or to hear military briefers voice presiding bishop of the Episcopal church, when Browning visited its prohibitions against civilian targets...
...He is right...
...Yet many human lives were lost before the U.S...
...the high tradition of European culture...
...Cultural hege- Shakespeare, it is certainly not in order that the constructive aspects of dynamite...
...it is a mistake of a particularly perverse type...
...The question, posed to their mother, surprised me...
...indeed, it is a far cry from World War II...
...Ecrasez l'inf6me...
...Where is the "fit" between these people and acquiescence in national policy...
...souls...
...And, like our St...
...Culture in the anthropological sense is by definition particularistic, therefore unsuited for the human race as a whole...
...There are many such neo-Gothic, steepled brick churches in old neighbor- hoods and small towns all across America...
...In the former sense of the word, every society is equally cultured--a forest tribe of New Guinea no less than Periclean Athens or Elizabethan England...
...But if you turn the tables, if you delegitimize the delegitimizers, then you advance the liberation SHAKESPEARE'S EMBRACE of the third world...
...we mean Africans and own tradition while helping us to deal better expansion European claims of cultural Native Americans whose forebears in with contemporaries who are heirs to those superiority have served to delegitimize recent centuries fell victim to Spanish lin- alternative cultural heritages...
...It is the sternest critic of ordinary culture...
...Anti-Eurocentfism is so foolish an enter- prise that it is difficult to know where to begin its refutation...
...By "Hispanics," of course, we do will help us to see the shortcomings of our During several centuries of Western not mean Spaniards...
...the missionary opened the of Cervantes...
...Culture in the anthropological sense is inevitably ethnocentric, subject to all the shortcomings of ethnocentrism: it is nar- row, prejudiced, chauvinistic, inclined to overrate itself and its people while under- rating the outside world...
...My own ancestry, for instance, is Celtic...
...It is the kind of mistake made by the men tied up in the dark Platonic cave, who so loved their darkness that they killed the liberator who was about to lead them to light...
...In fact, before OF SEVERAL MINDS Arnold hit upon the word "culture" he used the term "criticism" to designate essentially the same thing...
...war theory that will help us Americans look more soberly at In his briefing of February 28, as a cease fire was being the immensity of our military power and think more critically arranged, General Norman Schwarzkopf said that the loss of about when and how that power should be used...
...But just cause and just means and if the means are found disproportionate, it will be just- are different things...
...I regional power...
...But culture in the Arnoldian sense is the diametric oppo- site of this...
...Paul and Mozart because of the deficiencies of ordinary European culture, is not just a mistake...
...Later Julius Caesar gave u~- a terrible drubbing...
...Oppressed though I am by such Mediterranean types as Cicero, Leonardo, and Puccini, I'm not sure I am up to this species of liberation...
...Such indi- For instance, it is good to purpose is to reduce European culture from viduals are invited to shrug offthe burden be reminded that the European cultural the status of primacy it has claimed for itself of Plato and Dante and Greta Garbo, there- world is not the only one that has ever exist- to a status of equality, where it will be no by freeing themselves to get in touch with ed...
...This higher culture is broad, enlightened, and catholic...
...If European cultural THE VALUES OF EUROCENTRISM supremacy goes, can Western political supremacy be far behind...
...door for the conquistador...
...And yes, many Iraqi ones were lost and the appeal to them will have averted a disaster worse than when we finally did--but also Israeli and Saudi lives--and the one we now have before us...
...On the other hand is the Matthew Arnold notion, where "culture" means "the best that has been thought and said in the world...
...Just-war theory, paltry though just-war theory...
...their roots, enabling them to draw strength and richly deserve our care and attention...
...When we liberate these But to speak of the positive aspects of thus making those societies easy pickings poor souls from the forced embrace of anti-Eurocentrism is a bit like speaking of for Western imperialism...
...If we act quickly we may yet rescue the poor Patagonians from the poisons of cultural imperialism...
...Societies and individuals can be ranked in a hierarchy according to how much of this high culture they possess, most possessing very little...
...On the one hand is the anthropological notion, where "culture" means the way of life of a people: its language, religion, moral code, political system, etc...
...actions were Rather than a tool for supporting the war, just-war theory not otherwise compelling, but this uncharacteristic flash of sol- seemed to me one that helped to limit it...
...Moreover, this program of cultural-polit- ical liberation is intended not just for those people residing in third-world countries n its positive side the cur- movement...
...Then the Germans drove us out of all the good real estate in Britain...
...To confound these two concepts of cul- ture, to denounce St...
...Bush's efforts to explain and justify U.S...
...The crucifixion group 5 April 1991:215...
...Since birth they had been taken to worship in the mul- tipurpose halls and auditorium-like church- es of sprawling new parishes...
...But in the Arnold sense, culture is a rare and high achievement...
...and will force us to acknowledge that...
...native cultures in the non-European world, guistic imperialism...
...it seems, is one means that all citizens, religious or not, have The fit comes, I believe, when we begin to think of Kuwaiti available as such a measure as well as a goad to our consciences...
...But then I realized that they, chil- dren of suburbia, had never seen a church like the church of my childhood...
...Unlike the vile Eurocentrists, we are not bigots, we have not sinned against the light, we don't have the blood of Montezuma on our hands...
...and at the very moment we are indulging in this laziness and irrespon- sibility, we are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for having risen to a level of moral and intellectual superiority...
...my grandnephews asked after a family funeral in my hometown...
...One point of departure for a refutation is to note that the anti-Eurocentrists con- found two quite distinct notions of culture...
...Its blacks and Hispanics in the U.S...
...Wear a kilt...
...but the Celts are a lost cause...
...Thinking about the air assault on tries to draw moral limits and conditions can seem a shabby dug-in Iraqi troops, especially those who may have been dra- exercise in the face of the loss of even one human life...
...In the name of tolerance and open-minded- ness (who could oppose such virtues...
...The towering high altar in our century- old church, with its painted and gilded stat- ues carved of wood, the graphic Stations of the Cross marching along the walls, the stained glass windows, the vaulted ceiling, all were sources of wonder and curiosity to them...
...Anti- mony made straight the way for political they might throw themselves into the arms Eurocentrism is an essentially negative hegemony...
...American, British, French, and Egyptian lives too...
...Once we were even on the verge of seizing the Roman Capitol--until those damned sacred geese began honking...
Vol. 118 • April 1991 • No. 7
