Finding a topic to focus this blog on was difficult. The first couple months of university have been such a whirlwind that there are countless topics that I could just monologue or even rant about. But one thing that I’ve been particularly keen to discuss is the idea of culture and cultural understanding. In particular, trying to explore my direct experiences of culture to examine my wider study of different cultures that I’ve just begun at university.

One of the reasons I’m interested in talking about culture and cultural understanding is because it’s being a playing on my mind recently as someone who has just moved over 7000 km from London to Vancouver. This isn’t the first time that I’ve lived abroad. I lived in Rwanda for six months when I was eleven, but being there with my family meant that I was still able to feel “at home” even though I was far away from where I grew up. This illustrated to me how much culture is tied to the people you are with not the place you are in, as it’s most commonly portrayed.

On the face of it then, moving from Britain to Canada should have been a piece of cake compared to moving to east Africa. I should have no problem at all. Yet, for some reason, this transition to university in Canada has been by the biggest shock of my life. I think partly that has been because without my family it has been much harder to find that sense of home and my culture over here. Also, I think it’s because on the surface living here is just like being at home. The weather is similar, the people are similar (London is just as diverse in population as Vancouver), the education is similar to the extent that I have 50 minute lessons and a fair amount of free periods to organize myself. Yet, there are seemingly minor differences that go a long way. The age when you’re considered an adult being 19, for example, is something that is seemingly so superficial that it shouldn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, I’ve come from a place where from 18 I could do anything I wanted to do and now that I can’t, I had to get parental consent to even get a phone contract, it feels like I’ve almost lost independence at university, when everyone around me is telling me I’m gaining it. The point to this story is not at all which parts of different cultures are good and which are bad, I’m in no position to make that judgement and I think it’s a frankly difficult and even damaging judgement for anyone to make. The point is my realization, coming here to Vancouver, that even in cultures that I think I know, small changes can make a big difference and it’s had made me realize I actually know very little about the real lived experience of people within different cultures.

Now, taking this idea and applying it to my studies within the Global Citizen stream of CAP (Coordinated Arts Program) here at UBC, I arrive at a very similar question to one the suggested for this blog by Dr Luger. If the reality of Canadian culture has been a shock to me, to what extent can I understand, appreciate and attempt to analyze a culture that I am even more unfamiliar with, for instance Iranian culture as expressed in Persepolis or Latin American culture through the Arts of Resistance exhibit I wrote about in the last blog. 

For example, one of the parts of Persepolis we discussed in class was the book’s interpretation of Islam. Whilst you can make statements like “I think the book interprets Islam in a negative way because Marji’s family is always at odds with the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in Iran”, in reality I can never fully understand Satrapi’s message on Islam because I haven’t lived her life or been part of a culture like that of Iran’s. Therefore, whilst the point might be valid on the surface level of reading her book, I must also accept there will be a fundamental gap between my understanding and Satrapi’s true position which will be so much more nuanced and refined by her experiences. The inexpressible nature of cultural and personal memory is made explicit within Persepolis in instances like the completely black and empty frame on page 142 after Marji realizes her friend Neda has died. It was a stark reminder to me that there is a limit to the phrase “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” and there are many instances where the cultural distance and lived experience is just too different from your own to understand it in any meaningful way. Similarly, the last blog I wrote was about the art of the Indigenous people of Ayacucho in Peru. I can try and empathize with their position and frame it in a global perspective, as I did, but in reality I have never experienced being a member of an indigenous community in a country and in a civil war that was imposed upon me without my consent. There are limitations to my understanding of the culture and that is something that must be accepted. 

But, I think is wrong to say that we can’t get anything from these art forms. There are similarities in experience across cultures that different people can relate to and I’m drawn towards the positivity of a common sense of humanity as proposed by philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre whereby there are human experiences that all humans can relate to. For instance, whilst we’ve discussed my separation both physically and psychologically from Marji in Persepolis, there are still extents to which I can connect with facets of her life and culture. For example, as I spoke about earlier, my time in Rwanda showed to me how much culture is determined by the people you are with rather than where you are and this can also be seen in Persepolis. Marji’s family culture, with their Thursday night parties and socialist beliefs are a stark contrast to the fundamental Islam that is, at least from the outside, seen as the defining culture of Iran. Though I can’t relate to the extreme secrecy her family had to practice their culture in, I can relate to wanting to maintain your own culture in a very different external environment. The important thing is to always recognize that these similarities have limits and never to try to claim insight on another person’s or culture’s story.  

In conclusion, I don’t think anyone should shy away from books like Persepolis just because the culture it comes from is so different from what they’re used to. Instead, what I think my move to Canada has really shown me is that I need to be aware that there will always be a gap between my outsider perception of what a culture is like and the true experience of living within a culture, even if I think I know a lot. This means that whilst it is possible to relate to certain parts of a book like Persepolis, that relation should always be acknowledged as having fundamental limitations and I should not force myself and my culture onto a narrative that doesn’t belong to me.