|
There are no translations available.
Kim Yong-Bock
Languages, their interactions and interrelationships are the key to cultural diversity in North East Asia. The following article argues that this is not a matter of simply teaching language skills as tools. Language must be understood as a way of life embodying the wisdom of life. It is also a matter of how all living beings – not just human beings – live side by side.
Persons travelling on Korean transportation (trains, limousine buses and airlines) can hear travel information announced in four languages: Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English. The subway system announces such information in Korean and English. With the purpose of creating a friendly atmosphere for international travellers in Korea, the Korean transport system has been made multilingual.
This phenomenon of multilingual communication is a sort of cultural interaction. That does not mean, however, that the Korean people are multilingual. Far from it. One main purpose of the Advanced Institute for Integral Study of Life, therefore, is to engage in learning to be a multilingual community, where each member will speak and understand at least three or four languages at an advanced level. Korean people have a natural cultural advantage in learning Japanese and Chinese, both of which are closely related to Korean; and since English has become a global language it is also imperative to learn it.
There is a further necessity for Koreans to learn these languages due to geopolitical, political and economic reasons. The Korean people must deal with the big powers that surround the peninsula. For obvious reasons, North Koreans have learned Russian. Historically, the powers around the Korean peninsula – and their cultures – have had a great impact, whether Koreans welcomed it or not. At the same time, it has been the destiny of the Korean people to overcome outside domination and to maintain peace for life in and around their land.
It is against this background that we are developing language policy as a way for creative cultural interaction and cultural evolution in and around the Korean peninsula.
What is culture?
In the social sciences, differentiation has generally been made between ‘cultural’ and ‘natural’: the cultural and the natural have been viewed as mutually exclusive. The differentiation, however, is ambiguous and therefore problematic; it is difficult to make a sharp demarcation between the natural and the cultural. Rather, there is a close ‘interface between the cultural and the natural.’ The cultural influences the natural and vice versa, for culture is the interaction of human beings with nature as well as with all living beings. This interaction is both human and natural, and therefore is both cultural and natural.
Of course, human beings regard themselves as ‘special’ living beings, different from others, and therefore understand culture as a special human creation. Is this so? With just a bit of questioning, we can realize that culture is a dynamic, interactive process in which all living bodies participate, in the theatre of the universe. When we discuss cultural identity, cultural diversity and cultural interaction, we need to account also for the natural within the cultural. When we discuss the issue of cultural diversity and identity, it is necessary to understand culture as a dynamic process of interaction with nature as well as with other cultures, and none of these are static objects.
Therefore, culture is not to be objectified in a simple manner. It involves the cultural subjecthood of all living beings and their interactions. In this sense, it would be more accurate to say that culture is ‘communication among living beings’. Culture is not a simple accumulation of cultural artefacts, but a dynamic process of interactions among all living beings in the universe. It is the spirit embodied in the cultural process, and the subject embodied in the interactive process.
Diverse languages and cultural interaction as communication
With these preliminary observations, I would like to propose a language policy for our graduate school in North East Asia.1 The policy is for our academic and research community of scholars to learn at least five languages for communication for life and peace.2 Our region has a long history of interaction among many peoples and living beings. Some people tend to reduce East Asian culture to the Confucian civilization. This is certainly an over-simplification of the cultural history and life of the peoples in this region.
In the first place, our peoples have a wide linguistic diversity and these languages have interacted among themselves, generating rich confluences. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Russian, and now English and other Western and Asian languages have interacted through the history of the North East Asian region. It is a truism to say that our languages are diverse. Linguistic diversity is one of the bases of cultural diversity.
The history of cultural interactions has several distinct features. Different cultures have interpenetrated and interacted with each other, a classical example being the transmission of Buddhism and its culture from India to China, to Korea and to Japan.3 Buddhism has transformed the cultures of East Asian peoples, just as the cultures of East Asian peoples have transformed Buddhism. Buddhism has manifested itself in diverse ways in East Asia. Similarly Chinese linguistic characters have transformed the languages of the Korean and Japanese peoples.
This interaction has been very creative and transformative in the cultural life of the peoples. The communication of Buddhist teachings and life has been realized through translations and interpretations, an intensive linguistic and cultural relationship. When the Buddhist scriptures were translated into Chinese, Korean and Japanese from the original language, a process of cultural and religious evolution took place as they interacted with the diverse linguistic and cultural environments.
Modern Western culture has penetrated Asian civilization during the past several centuries, making a great impact upon the cultural life of Asian peoples. The first feature of this impact has been cultural corrosion.4 The second appears to be a homogenization into Westernization on the one hand (technocracy) and a cultural marginalization of Asian cultures on the other.
In the context of cultural domination by the political and economic powers, the cultural, religious and linguistic diversities of different peoples have not been duly respected. This tendency is clear in the recent history of North East Asia as well as in its past. The first instance of this phenomenon has been the cultural domination and impositions by powerful kingdoms, nations and empires. For example, the Chinese empire imposed its cultural hegemony upon peoples living in nearby countries, including Korea.
As a colonial power Japan imposed its own culture upon the Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese peoples. Later the global empire imposed US culture upon the people of South Korea and Japan, both of which were occupied by the US military after WW II. Now, in the context of globalization, (capitalist) global market culture and technocracy, the diversity of Asian cultures, along with their creative and transformative interactions, is being undermined. Cultural identity and diversity are threatened, sometimes to the point of extinction, especially the cultures of minority peoples.
Based mainly in the economic and political powers, communications structures and the media have been used for cultural domination, producing alienation, oppression and ‘desertification.’ The initial response to cultural domination is to turn to traditional cultural resources for identity. In this context of cultural domination and homogenization, respect for cultural identity and diversity is important, so that the cultural life of the people may not be destroyed or eroded.
But the global cultural situation is not so simple as to allow cultural identity and diversity to continue in static, traditionalistic ways. Already various forms of cultural interaction are taking place under the influence of the global market and global empire. There are processes of cultural ‘hybridization’ and cultural fusion in the vortex of cultural interactions. The current situation demands cultural resistance and cultural liberation as well as cultural identity, diversity and cultural tolerance in the midst of dynamic cultural interactions. What we need is a creative cultural evolution for resistance and liberation as well as identity and diversity.
Dynamic understanding of cultural life
The cultural diversity of our peoples in North East Asia should be understood beyond national, ethnic and geopolitical boundaries. In particular the cultures of the people must not be understood in nation-state terms, for in such a situation cultural minorities would be suppressed. Diverse cultural identities are to be understood without the boundaries imposed upon people by external forces.
Cultural identity is formed in the context of diverse people’s interactions; it is a product of those interactions. No identity is formed in an isolated situation, but rather it is a moment in the process of interaction. Identity is a manifest form of the subjecthood of people in a particular historical and social context. Therefore, when identity is denied, the subjecthood of the people is denied. Recognition of the diversity of the culture is an affirmation of the identity and subjecthood of the people. When identity is a dynamic reality of interactions among diverse cultures, diversity is also a dynamic reality in the midst of the cultural interactions.
With this preliminary understanding of cultural identity and diversity, we propose a language policy for international graduate schools, particularly for the Asia Pacific Graduate School for the Study of Life. The school is planning to establish a cultural centre where the participants will become familiar with five languages: Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese and Russian. The Korean people have had to live in interaction with the four other nations and their cultures for geopolitical, political and economic reasons as well as geographical and cultural influences. Korea has been the pivot where all four of the other cultures met.
Understanding the Korean people cannot be pursued in isolation from the reality of their interaction with these four cultural universes. While the Korean culture is unique, with its own identity, yet it is a product of its interaction with the diverse cultures of China, Japan, Russia and the USA. This does not mean that Korean culture did not need to interact with other cultures. It means that any interaction of Korean culture involves its interaction with the four other cultures. Therefore the cultural centre must consciously be a community of interactions of at least five cultures.
In this centre there will be three-pronged programme focus: 1) A historical study of nteractions among the five cultures, seeking to understand the history of life among the peoples in North East Asia. 2) A study of the five languages and their cultural manifestations for interactive relations. 3) A study of interactive modes for transformation toward a new identity and a new diversity for integral life on earth.
The basic rationale of the centre and its language policy is not exceptional. Throughout history, cultural interactions have been a normal process among peoples; and through such interactions there has been a dynamic process of cultural evolution or revolution.4 The question is how to enhance cultural interaction among peoples for authentic cultural identity, creative and enriching cultural diversity. It can be compared to a feast or a festival, where the senses are pleased by different foods with unique tastes, and there emerges a creative mixture of different foods for enhanced tastes and nutritional and aesthetic values. Such cultural feasts have been taking place in villages around the globe throughout history.
Recent history in North East Asia has not shown the region to be an ideal place for creative and fruitful cultural action. The political and geopolitical rivalries among the powers and the dominance of the global empire have created a detrimental situation. Now the regime of the global market has created a market-oriented cultural process. This situation calls attention to the urgent need for new cultural life among the peoples of North East Asia.
Unfortunately, however, most cultural and educational institutions around the world are busy serving the political powers of nation states, the global empire, and the powers of the global market, rather than fulfilling their responsibility to serve true, integral, just, peaceful and convivial life on earth. The need is for alterative languages and cultural policies. Our graduate school is seeking to respond to this need.
Counter-posed to the destructive and deadly cultural processes bestowed by globalization, the world’s peoples need a movement for new culture, for fullness of life on earth. The questions of subjecthood, identity, diversity, interaction and evolution of cultural life on earth are all at stake in our cultural and educational institutions and processes. Our centre for languages and cultures will attempt to start addressing these important questions.
The task of overcoming cultural hegemony, cultural suppression, cultural alienation, cultural conflict and cultural desertification is closely associated with creativity, identity and diversity of cultural life. Our centre seeks wisdom for cultural liberation and creativity through the modalities of cultural interaction. It will provide the opportunity to learn languages and cultures for cultural interaction – what may be called ‘cultural communication for life’. It is not a matter of simply teaching language skills as tools, but of understanding language as a way of life and the wisdom of life. It is a matter of conviviality for all living beings, not just human beings.
Learning languages is a basic step for intercultural communication and interaction toward creative cultural evolution. This has profound implications for the formation of an order of life in justice and peace for all living beings on earth and in the universe. Communication in a multi-lingual manner can never be contained within modern mono-cultural mathematics. It can expand infinitely to include the rich contents of all cultures and languages. It has power as a liberating process of creative interaction.
Since culture is a dynamic process of interaction and communication with all living beings on earth, cultural interaction will create an order of life for conviviality of all living beings. For example, East Asian languages will provide a strong cultural foundation for the common life of all living beings. Therefore, our language centre affirms its core values as being a place for and a process of multi-cultural interaction.
Notes
1. Asia Pacific Graduate School for the Study of Life
2. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and English.
3. Nakamura, Eastern Ways of Thinking
4. Arnold Toynbee, The World and the West
5. Toynbee’s theory of civilisational encounter is a good example.
Kim Yong-Bock (PhD) is chancellor of the Advanced Institute for Integral Study of Life, part of the Asia Pacific Graduate School for the Study of Life, JeonNam, Korea.
|
