Monthly Archives: March 2017

Theories of mixture II: Transculturation

Ortiz, Fernando & Millington, Mark. 

Reading Ortiz was interesting as it advocated for a liberated, more all encompassing perception on the social, cultural, historical and political aspects of colonisation in Latin America (more specifically Cuba) yet it still exhibits a ethnocentric perception.  This slight racism reflected the common thought in anthropology at the time which was sociocultural evolution. As a result of this context,  I felt slightly suspicious of Ortiz but not as bad as  with Vasconcelos. Ortiz refers to the palaeolithic Indian as having an “inability to adjust himself to the culture brought in by the Spaniards” (99) as well as referring to people as Mongoloids and Negroes and comparing their cultures as less  “advanced” in comparison to Indian and European.  But other than those contextual semantics, Ortiz was arguing for a more attentive perception! Ortiz vouches for a better, more respectful and aware way to address the convergence and collisions of culture throughout Latin America.

Although in theory and on paper this is a positive thing, as seen in Millington’s article it brings up much criticisms as well. Millington critiques Ortiz by bringing up the point that it is not possible to encompass the intricacies of culture in Latin America and instead it just becomes a generalised term, commonly used but not really understood in its historical, political, social and cultural contexts.

Transculturation

In his article, Ortiz focusses on the concept of transculturation in the context of Cuba’s political, economic and social history.

Cuban history is a history of ‘intermeshed transculturations’. All immigrants that arrived in Cuba were of diverse origins – Spaniards, Africans (Senegal, Guinea, Congo, Mozambique – each with from own cultures and social groups), Indians from the mainland, Mongolians, French, North Americans, Jews, etc – each torn and uprooted from their own cultures and native lands and transplanted to a New World, where everything, from nature, to people to customs, were new and where they had to readjust themselves to a ‘new syncretism of cultures’. Ortiz describes how almost every race/culture of origin paid a price for immigrating, but the price paid by the Africans far supersedes the others’. When the Indians of America “collided head-on” with the white Europeans, they got wiped off “as though struck by lightning”, but they died their native land, believing that they were passing over to the invisible regions of their own Cuba. However, the Africans were brought across the oceans against their will, by brutal force, and they “arrived deracinated, wounded, shattered, like the cane of the fields, and like it, they were ground and crushed to extract the juice of their labour”. Even in death, they bore the agony of separation from their ancestors and ancestral lands.

He then proposes that the word ‘acculturation’, defined as transition from one culture to another and the associated social consequences, does not adequately describe the process of transition that takes place in Cuba. In Cuba, the different populations not only acquired a new culture but were abruptly uprooted from and lost their previous culture (not a gradual transition). Therefore, the term ‘transculturation’ is more fitting. I agree with Ortiz here; the kind of cultural transition that took place in Cuba (accompanied by upheaval, violence, and subordination) is very different than the type of cultural transition that immigrants today go through in Canada/USA (gradual loss of native traditions and slow, peaceful assimilation into North American culture). Therefore, a distinction must be drawn between the two processes.

In response to Ortiz and other writers, Millington suggests that the term ‘transculturation’ needs to be more closely examined due to the recent overuse. According to Millington, any term that is overused “[degenerates]  into orthodoxy and so [produces] a devaluation, which may be but one step away from obsolescence. He dislikes the word hybridisation because of the ambiguity attached to the term (lacks a precise definition, carries the implication that “what went into the cultural mixing was in some way pure (or not already mixed)”, etc).

The reasons he doesn’t like the term ‘transculturation’ is because Ortiz bunched the terms ‘deculturation’ and ‘acculturation’ under one master term which lends further to the confusion regarding the precise definition of the term ‘transculturation’. His explanation of the term makes no mention of   ‘neoculturation’ (creation of new culture), and therefore no longer seems to to replace ‘acculturation’ but subsume it.

The most interesting point raised by Millington (quoting Beverly), however, is whether “the idea of transculturation expresses in both Ortiz and Rama a fantasy of class, gender and racial reconciliation”. I’m not sure how true this is, given that Ortiz does point out the violent history of how the transculturation process came out to be, making it seem no more than a ‘survival technique’. The natives that were perished and the Africans who were enslaved as a result of cultural collision likely do not see it “embracing” different cultures.

 

 

Transculturation

In his article, Ortiz focusses on the concept of transculturation in the context of Cuba’s political, economic and social history.

Cuban history is a history of ‘intermeshed transculturations’. All immigrants that arrived in Cuba were of diverse origins – Spaniards, Africans (Senegal, Guinea, Congo, Mozambique – each with from own cultures and social groups), Indians from the mainland, Mongolians, French, North Americans, Jews, etc – each torn and uprooted from their own cultures and native lands and transplanted to a New World, where everything, from nature, to people to customs, were new and where they had to readjust themselves to a ‘new syncretism of cultures’. Ortiz describes how almost every race/culture of origin paid a price for immigrating, but the price paid by the Africans far supersedes the others’. When the Indians of America “collided head-on” with the white Europeans, they got wiped off “as though struck by lightning”, but they died their native land, believing that they were passing over to the invisible regions of their own Cuba. However, the Africans were brought across the oceans against their will, by brutal force, and they “arrived deracinated, wounded, shattered, like the cane of the fields, and like it, they were ground and crushed to extract the juice of their labour”. Even in death, they bore the agony of separation from their ancestors and ancestral lands.

He then proposes that the word ‘acculturation’, defined as transition from one culture to another and the associated social consequences, does not adequately describe the process of transition that takes place in Cuba. In Cuba, the different populations not only acquired a new culture but were abruptly uprooted from and lost their previous culture (not a gradual transition). Therefore, the term ‘transculturation’ is more fitting. I agree with Ortiz here; the kind of cultural transition that took place in Cuba (accompanied by upheaval, violence, and subordination) is very different than the type of cultural transition that immigrants today go through in Canada/USA (gradual loss of native traditions and slow, peaceful assimilation into North American culture). Therefore, a distinction must be drawn between the two processes.

In response to Ortiz and other writers, Millington suggests that the term ‘transculturation’ needs to be more closely examined due to the recent overuse. According to Millington, any term that is overused “[degenerates]  into orthodoxy and so [produces] a devaluation, which may be but one step away from obsolescence. He dislikes the word hybridisation because of the ambiguity attached to the term (lacks a precise definition, carries the implication that “what went into the cultural mixing was in some way pure (or not already mixed)”, etc).

The reasons he doesn’t like the term ‘transculturation’ is because Ortiz bunched the terms ‘deculturation’ and ‘acculturation’ under one master term which lends further to the confusion regarding the precise definition of the term ‘transculturation’. His explanation of the term makes no mention of   ‘neoculturation’ (creation of new culture), and therefore no longer seems to to replace ‘acculturation’ but subsume it.

The most interesting point raised by Millington (quoting Beverly), however, is whether “the idea of transculturation expresses in both Ortiz and Rama a fantasy of class, gender and racial reconciliation”. I’m not sure how true this is, given that Ortiz does point out the violent history of how the transculturation process came out to be, making it seem no more than a ‘survival technique’. The natives that were perished and the Africans who were enslaved as a result of cultural collision likely do not see it “embracing” different cultures.

 

 

Transculturation

Both readings took on the term transculturation to further describe it and to challenge how it is commonly used. Both readings were rather pessimistic to their approach of their term, and seemed to consider that the white European culture that the Spaniards brought to Latin America won out over the local, indigenous cultures. The readings argued that acculturation was not the correct term to use when describing the culture in Latin America, but that transculturation was a better representation of the cultural effects of the Spaniards arrival to the Americas. As Millington points out, the cultural phenomena occurring in Latin America cannot be completely described by transculturation. It seems an easy conclusion to reach that the cultural processes that took place in Latin America were more complex than any one word can summarize. More than anything Millington seems to be saying that people should be more critical of the processes that took place in Latin America; this is a job that hopefully most people will complete when trying to describe Latin America.

It is difficult to argue against or agree with the depictions presented by Ortiz and Millington. Ortiz’s comparison of the black and indigenous people’s treatment seemed to be a strange thing to discuss—saying that black slaves suffered more than the tainos appears to be an unfair way to compare the black and taino experience. Both groups faced struggles and hardships by the white Europeans, but neither group’s suffering should be wiped away because they did not “suffer” the same amount as another group. After coming across this section, it became nearly impossible to continue an unbiased reading of Ortiz’s work.

It was refreshing to see that Millington did not rank two discriminated groups’ experiences, but it seemed clear that Millington was not convinced that the indigenous or black population was able to be more culturally influential than the Spanish. Through Millington’s writings it appeared that the white Europeans had won, and that the cultures of the indigenous and black people had been successfully tamped down. This seemed to be the reason why Millington had a problem with using transculturation; to Millington the term did not effectively capture the continued hegemonic structures that exist in the varying Latin American cultures. But I would argue that the very fact that people are discussing the effects of the Spanish on Latin American culture is proof that people do not consider transculturation lightly. The indigenous and black people have not been forgotten, and their presence in the public’s mind means that they were not completely pushed aside by the Europeans.

Transculturation

Both readings took on the term transculturation to further describe it and to challenge how it is commonly used. Both readings were rather pessimistic to their approach of their term, and seemed to consider that the white European culture that the Spaniards brought to Latin America won out over the local, indigenous cultures. The readings argued that acculturation was not the correct term to use when describing the culture in Latin America, but that transculturation was a better representation of the cultural effects of the Spaniards arrival to the Americas. As Millington points out, the cultural phenomena occurring in Latin America cannot be completely described by transculturation. It seems an easy conclusion to reach that the cultural processes that took place in Latin America were more complex than any one word can summarize. More than anything Millington seems to be saying that people should be more critical of the processes that took place in Latin America; this is a job that hopefully most people will complete when trying to describe Latin America.

It is difficult to argue against or agree with the depictions presented by Ortiz and Millington. Ortiz’s comparison of the black and indigenous people’s treatment seemed to be a strange thing to discuss—saying that black slaves suffered more than the tainos appears to be an unfair way to compare the black and taino experience. Both groups faced struggles and hardships by the white Europeans, but neither group’s suffering should be wiped away because they did not “suffer” the same amount as another group. After coming across this section, it became nearly impossible to continue an unbiased reading of Ortiz’s work.

It was refreshing to see that Millington did not rank two discriminated groups’ experiences, but it seemed clear that Millington was not convinced that the indigenous or black population was able to be more culturally influential than the Spanish. Through Millington’s writings it appeared that the white Europeans had won, and that the cultures of the indigenous and black people had been successfully tamped down. This seemed to be the reason why Millington had a problem with using transculturation; to Millington the term did not effectively capture the continued hegemonic structures that exist in the varying Latin American cultures. But I would argue that the very fact that people are discussing the effects of the Spanish on Latin American culture is proof that people do not consider transculturation lightly. The indigenous and black people have not been forgotten, and their presence in the public’s mind means that they were not completely pushed aside by the Europeans.

Ortiz and Millington (transculturation)

I read Ortiz and most of Millington but I just focus on Ortiz here because I have more coherent thoughts:

I did not know that Ortiz coined the term “transculturation”.  To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t totally sure what transculturation was explicitly supposed to mean until looking at this reading.  I thought that it was cool that we were looking at an examination of the word in the text in which it was first used by the person who created it since many words are assimilated into the English language over time and it can be difficult to identify their exact origins.  Ortiz defines transculturation as the process of transitioning from one culture to another that “necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture” (102).  I was intrigued by Ortiz’s analysis of the painful process of transculturation for Africans in Cuba.  While both black and native labourers were subjected to harsh treatment under the status of slaves and both experienced cultural oppression under the newly dominant Spanish culture, the “Indians suffered their fate in their native land, believing that when they died they passed over to the invisible regions of their own Cuban world” (102).  While being forced to adapt to a new culture would be difficult under any circumstance, for the Africans it would have been many times worse, having just been “torn from another continent” and facing the prospect of having to “recross it (the ocean) to be reunited with their lost ancestors” (102).

Ortiz also nuanced that “To a greater or lesser degree whites and Negros were in the same state of dissociation in Cuba” (102).  Regardless of status in the master-slave dynamic, the process of relocating and re-establishing one’s sense of identity in a new place can be a difficult and sometimes painful process.  Obviously, having had some form of conscious say in the decision to relocate would have made things easier for the Spaniard.  The fact that some brought their families with them also would have eased the transition.  But the bottom line is that uprooting and re-rooting in a new environment where one faces an intersection of culture(s) is hard.  To an extent, I feel like many university students face a similar challenge when first arriving at school, since for many people it represents their first time not living in their family home and many travel outside their province or country.  I live in the United States which is about as close of a country to Canada as you can get.  The independence and exposure I have gained within UBC’s diverse population has been one of my favorite parts of this year.  However, even coming from somewhere as close as America, I still occasionally felt a sense of cultural isolation in the first semester and resonated with what Ortiz described (thinking about it once over, I’m not totally sure if what I experienced was culturally related or just college angst??)

Theories of Mixture II

Part two of Theories of Mixture! So, in the first part, we talked about mestizaje and its implications. What it meant, how it was achieved and how it was important to Latin American culture. Now, in the second part, we are introduced to a somewhat new topic. Transculturation. We somewhat touched upon this topic in class in which we said transculturation was how two cultures (e.g. indigenous and Spanish) assimilated various elements of each other’s culture to make something fresh.

In Mark Millington’s readings, he mentioned how mestizaje has now become generally confined to discussions of racial mixing while transculturation and hybridization where more in favor nowadays. However, he drew a clear distinction on how while transculturation and hybridization are similar, they mean different things. Transculturation, he said had a distinct Latin American identity and was rarely employed outside that context. On the other hand, hybridization had a more global reference to it. Although I have yet to fully unpack the difference of the two meanings in a way that I can understand, I definitely find this area of topic interesting. Maybe because the length of the readings were a bit more manageable.

I found that this reading had a few similar ideas that Rowe & Schelling talked about in their “The Faces of Popular Culture”. For example, Rowe & Schelling talked about how Mexico had their process of acculturation be more complete. I will need to reread the two readings but this is what I have for now! Thanks for reading guys!

Reaction to Transculturation

I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: the chapter “On the Social Phenomenon of ‘Transculturation’ and its Importance in Cuba” from Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar by Fernando Ortiz; and “Transculturation: Contrapuntal Notes to Critical Orthodoxy” by Mark Millington, extracted from Bulletin of Latin American Research.

The first text is from Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban anthropologist from the first half of the twentieth century. He creates and justifies the new word “transculturation” (to replace the term “acculturation” that he believes is inadequate) and uses it to briefly summarize the history of Cuban culture. Transculturation describes the process of transition from one culture to another (with the loss of one’s original culture and the creation (instead of simple adoption) of another culture), with all the social repercussions associated. In Cuba, this process was undergone both by Spanish immigrants (Renaissance workers from poor background arriving in the island with high responsibility) and by African slaves (forcefully torn from their home culture to be used as labour in the new colony).

The second text takes place in the 21rst century. Now, the word “transculturation” is widely accepted, like the word “hybridisation”. The writer, Mark Millington, refers to the text of Ortiz. He criticizes the two words. He is harsher against “hybridisation” because it is conflicting with “hybridity”, its definition still remains imprecise and it has political connotations. Millington seems to agree more on transculturation, though he is not entirely convinced. Ortiz left some points unclear on the definition, such as the idea that transculturation can be experienced at different intensity (the migration of Spaniards / the enslavement of Africans). There is also some doubt about whether transculturation is completely separate from acculturation (movement into another culture). Other recent anthropologists have also argued that the word cannot fully explain the inequalities in Latin America, that it doesn’t offer a solution to this problem and it is hard to assess its relevance in today’s modern world, outside of only Latin America. Yet Millington admits the term transculturation, coined by Ortiz, does have its pros: it allows for an analysis that takes individual actions and realities, as well as local processes into account, so that the study does not remain abstract.