Western Cultures. Loss Of Centerdness In The Early 20th Century - Essay Example

? The Western cultural invasion had created an identity crisis for non-western cultures wherever they were colonized by the Western world. It was one tool of self-justification for the colonizer to prove that the colonized were inferior to them so that they can justify their act of colonization. The political power exerted by the colonizer made it easy for them to establish that they were culturally superior as well. The establishment of the cultural superiority of the colonizer has been a step by stem process by which first of all, the colonizer’s culture is imposed, then the culture of the colonized is replaced with a new culture that is still inferior to, but imitative of the colonizer’s culture. The result of this phenomenon is that slowly the colonized cultures and people belonging to them loose their self-esteem and abandon their culture out of an inferiority complex. The tragedy of this situation is that even when colonization ends, this sense of inferiority of one’s own culture will remain for a long time in the minds of the colonized. Introduction Culture is a phenomenon that embeds all human being, gives meaning and purpose to their lives and provides them a sense of belonging and connection. Once culture is disintegrated, a whole society can also get disintegrated. In the history of humanity, nothing else than colonialism had made such an impact on specific cultures as to disintegrate them partially or completely. As the colonizers were mostly the westerners and the colonized being the non-western cultures, the result was an imposition of the cultural hegemony of all western values. The non-western cultures faced a complex identity crisis in the face of this cultural invasion. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, colonialism emerged as an extension of western political and cultural imperialism, to such an extent that “the self-proclaimed “superiority” of “Western culture”, functioned as the rationale and mandate for colonialism” (Narayan and Harding, 2000, p.83). The result was that whichever cultures colonized by the western world, began to feel themselves as inferior cultures to the western culture and lost their sense of centeredness. For example, David (2011) has investigated the colonial experience of Philippines and showed that the Americans settled in Philippines as part of the colonial legacy, still view Filipino culture as inferior to western and American culture (p.13). Sonnenburg (2003) has pointed to how the British colonization of Australia treated the indigenous people of Australia as some animal or cattle and forcefully separated children belonging to these aborigines from their mothers, “a practice that continued into the mid-twentieth century” (p.1). Similarly, the English colonial experience in Ireland resulted in the Anglicization of Ireland and suppression of Irish language and culture (Sonnenburg, 2003, p.280). All the colonized cultures had experienced this kind of cultural oppression and this experience was described as, “loss of centeredness,” by many scholars (Kebede, 2004;Sayre, 2012). What is meant by this expression is that the colonized cultures that were self-reliant and centered around their own culture were forced to feel that their cultures were no more the center of the universe they knew. Instead they began to feel that their cultures were inferior to the cultures that colonized them. The most serious consequence of this loss of centeredness has been that even after the colonial rule was withdrawn, the people continue to experience this loss of centerednedd (Kebede, 2004). Rightfully calling colonialism, “a cultural project of control”, Dirk (1992) has described the complex experience of colonialism from the point of view of culture (p.7). He (Dirk, 1992) has tried to describe this complexity by saying that “not only did colonial rulers align themselves with the universal and inexorable forces of science, progress, rationality and modernity, they displaced many of the disruptions and excesses of rule into institutions and cultures that were labeled as tradition” (p.7-8). Here, it has to be remembered that these traditions were in existence for thousands of years in these civilizations. The result of this displacement was that the colonized cultures lost their self-esteem and as a result those cultures disintegrated. The process that went into any of the colonial experiences as described by Gabbidon (2010), has three components culturally- “cultural imposition, cultural disintegration, and cultural recreation” (p.182). Gabbidon (2010) has further detailed this concept and said, “cultural imposition is the process whereby the colonizer' culture begins to supersede that of the colonized” (p.182). The next step being cultural disintegration, it can be explained as a change that “occurs when the colonizer purposely “constrains, transforms, or destroys the indigenous values, orientations, and ways of life”” (Gabbidon, 2010, p.183). In other words, it is because the colonizer dislikes the culture of the colonized that the colonizer tries to portray the culture of the colonized in a bad light (Gabbidon, 2010, p.183). This is also a necessity for the colonizers because in order to justify their domination, they need to prove that they are superior to the colonized. Hence “the colonizer negatively portrays the culture and history of the colonized, while at the same time reshaping native history to emphasize the history of the colonizer” (Gabbidon, 2010, p.183). As Sayre (2012) stated, in the west also, European colonization took its toll on culture and “western cultures suddenly found that they were defined as outposts of new colonial empires developed by Europeans, resulting in the weakening of traditional cultural practices, political leadership, and social systems that had been in place for centuries.” (Sayre, 2013, pp. 410-411). One such non-Western culture affected by colonial western culture has been the Native American culture.Tinker (1993) had called this cultural invasion by the term, “cultural genocide” (p.VIII). Tinker (1993) has further defined “cultural genocide” as: The effective destruction of a people by systematically or systemically (intentionally or unintentionally in order to achieve other goals) destroying, eroding, or undermining the integrity of the culture and system of values that defines a people and gives them life (p.6). The impact of such cultural invasion has been further delineated by Tinker (1993) as destruction of self-esteem and “the interrelationships that bind them together as a community” (p.6). This was exactly what happened with the Native American people when Europeans invaded. It has been revealed that the very “spiritual foundations” upon which the unity of the natives rested were undermined through the missionary activities in their area (Tinker, 1993, p.6). Tinker (1993) has called this the destruction of the “existing ceremonial and mythological sense of a community in relationship to the Sacred Other” (p.6). The result was that, “Indian people today still suffer a loss of self-esteem and a general level of self-deprecation that derive from the forced alienation of Indian people from their history, their culture, and their land” (p.6). Prior to the late nineteenth century, when this cultural invasion happened, the Native American culture was characterized by a deep knowledge about land and nature, unique music and art traditions and a profound sense of spirituality (Pritzker, 2000). The basis of Indian spirituality was the notion of “to be one with nature” (Pitzker, 2000, p.26). After the colonial establishment of power by Europeans, the children of native people were kidnapped and sent to schools established by European rulers and this amounted to a delinking of the children from their cultural roots as what was taught in these schools had nothing to do with their tradition or culture (Pitzker, 2000, p.32). The Native Americans thus became an inferior people in their own land. They had to learn anew all the customs and rules of the Europeans so that they could once again feel they are capable of a dignified life. The specific manifestations of the cultural invasion and destruction of Native Americans included, seeing Indian art performers as circus animals and making them perform in captivity, forced conversion into Christianity, dismissal of the rare abilities of the natives like the documented intuitive ability of the Lakota tribe to foretell future, the replacement of India medicinal system with the modern medicine system etc. (Bridger, 2002). The search for gold that prompted the colonization, the introduction of horses and weaponry, the infections caused by germs that were carried to the colonized from the bodies of the colonizers, and many other factors changed the life and culture of the native people. The result has been that non-western cultures still suffer from the loss of centeredness that they experienced in their past. References Bridger, P. (2002) Buffallo Bill and sitting bull: Inventing the wild west, Texas: University of Texas Press. David, E.J.R. (2011) Filipino-American postcolonial psychology: Oppression, colonial mentality and decolonization, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse. Dirks, N.B. (1992) Introduction: Colonialism and culture, In Nicholas B Dirks (Ed.), Colonialism Culture (pp.1-26). Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Gabbidon, S.L. (2010) Criminological perspectives on race and crime, London: Taylor & Francis. Kabede, M. (2004) Africa's quest for a philosophy of colonization, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Narayan, U. and Harding, S.G. (2000) Decentering the centre: Philosophy for a multicultural, postcolonial, and feminist world, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pitzer, B. (2000) A Native American encyclopedia: History, culture and peoples, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sayre, H. (2012) Discovering the Humanities. New Jersey: Pearson. Sonnenburg, P.M., (2003) Colonialism: An international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia, volume 1 Tinker, G.E. (1993) Missionary conquest: The Gospel and Native American cultural genocide, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Read More