Hegel and the Teaching of Culture

I just finished the 2017-18 academic year teaching Introduction to Communication Studies (COMS 252) at Northern Illinois University, a course on different research methodologies and epistemologies. Using this textbook, we covered Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Media Studies, and Inter-Cultural Communication.

In our final unit, we discussed Speech Codes Theory, developed by Gerry Philipsen, and Standpoint Theory, developed by Sandra Harding and Julia T. Wood. While grading the essays associated with this unit, on "inter-cultural contact," I noticed a pattern, which I shall explain with reference to Hegel's philosophy (a crucial part of Standpoint Theory) and future directions for thinking about the Teaching of Culture.

The difference between Speech Codes Theory and Standpoint Theory is the difference between equal and differential power relations in culture. Speech Codes Theory views a culture from within, "on its own terms," although this is necessarily refracted through the researcher who must have some necessary relationship to the culture. But its scope restricts itself to studying one culture at a time. Any reference to the "outside" of a culture remains at the border of the culture itself. Standpoint Theory views culture as a dialectical phenomenon--one "standpoint" always holds a position of "privilege," with the "other" as a negative reflection of the first, positive standpoint.

I designed a writing assignment for this inter-cultural unit, I suppose mostly thinking about the Speech Codes view -- each culture as a positive unit, which then can be "equated" as autonomous equals, similar to the autonomous individual imagined in the rational, Enlightenment vision of culture. Universal equality is easy to affirm in such a model, because there is really no basis of comparison between cultures. The impassive, indifferent observer has no reason to prefer or value one over the other; the mediating standard is an empty vacuum. Each culture is a positive term.

So I asked the students to write about two cultures, and what happens at their contact point. In my somewhat naive expectation, I imaged that they would describe each culture in positive terms, in due order, and then depict a clash, or situation of harmony, or whatever occurs when strange and alien forces meet. I found that in many, if not all cases (some were obvious), that the clash of cultures occurred in the students' minds before they got to the description. Almost none of the papers presented two equal, positive cultures on a common ground of indifference. One culture was most often portrayed in positive terms, the second in negative. When I say "negative," I don't mean to convey "bad" or "less," but rather the more grammatical "anti-." The second culture was precisely what the first culture was not. I'll give the two most striking examples, to me.

One was written by a young woman who compared the Quincinera celebration to the Sweet Sixteen. The former is attended with a religious ceremony, involves the family, entails certain rituals--described in positive terms with affection. The latter is not any of those things, but a chance to get a new car! The second example written by a young man was about the two sides of his family, father and mother. Father's family was religious, welcoming to outsiders, harmonious and reserved within itself. The mother's family was not these things, but divisive, suspicious if not hostile toward outsiders, cursed, smoked, drank. They modified their behavior toward the student's father only out of deference to him.

See how natural it is? It's the most spontaneous thing in the world to think in terms of difference. It's also important to understand that we are talking about concepts here, ways of thinking, viewing, and talking about culture. It is a mistake to over-literalize the categories. It is a mistake to label one culture "dominant" and another "marginalized." That's a destructive reduction. But one can easily label a standpoint "dominant" and another "marginalized."

Let's return to our positive "speech codes." Perhaps we can begin to see that every cultural "speech code" constructs itself as the "positive," or "dominant" standpoint. If it finds itself in a position of weakness, it rhetorically makes a strength of its weakness, and talks of it as a virtue. I don't think I need to provide any examples for you to confirm this, for it is ubiquitous enough. This is what the theorists mean when they state the presence of an "other" within every self, the "negative" within every positive unit.

The most interesting part, of course, is the contact. And I can't help but conclude that inter-cultural communication is based on the verbal struggle with each attempting to maintain and establish the dominant standpoint, in a linguistic-conceptual mode. I can't generalize the results of this contact beyond my sense that through it, each incorporates or internalizes some (negative) version of the "other." Whether or to what extent the distinctions ever blur or evaporate entirely, I can't say. Probably the most radical and enduring "innovation" in culture is the birth of a child. By virtue of having two parents, we all have a cultural "split" within us, and can never hope to disentangle the threads completely without perishing ourselves.

I want to avoid getting too pedantic (if I haven't already!), but if you are familiar with Hegel, you might see his influence in my thoughts on this. I like to read in Hegel from time to time, usually a few pages at a time (over a span of quite a few years). I used to rail against Hegel for polemical reasons, but my study of Kenneth Burke has led me to yield to Hegel eventually. Now I quite enjoy reading it. Hegel has the virtue, for me, of consistency in his thought process, and always with a sure command of the whole. It doesn't much matter if I'm reading about Quantity, Essence, the Notion--I value the process of his sentences, the "posited" and the "mediation" and the negative, in whatever he chooses to address. And so Hegel gives me a tool for thinking. He clearly did also for Sandra Harding and Julia Wood.

I wonder what could be the ethical goal of teaching inter-cultural communication in the classroom. One of my frequent quips as a teacher is that "We don't have to solve the problem, we just have to learn how to talk about it." I think my assignment was not a bad start--after all, it yielded the insights that moved me to write this blog entry, it provoked these questions in me. Perhaps we can take a warning from Hegel.

I like Hegel, but I am also a self-ish Emersonian. The absolute won't shake me from myself, even if it gives me a language for it. Hegel gives us a warning about the dangers of the self, the dangers and the traps of the positive, in grammar or culture. I wouldn't presume to say to what extent each of us should seek to positively impress ourselves onto the world and others, or defer and play the negative. And I'm not sure what moral evaluation to take from this tendency of cultures to "posit" themselves and "negate" others. I'm glad for the limited responsibilities of the classroom and rest in the domain of cognition or thinking. And I'm glad, also, for the opportunities the classroom affords to "express" such things.

Can the differences be resolved? Is there a transcendent unity beyond cultural division? Be careful of who tries to sell it to you. I am still enough a child of the 19th century that I believe such a unity does lie within each of our selves, and yet I constantly rely on texts, on other people, living and dead authors and artists of life. We are all artists of life, and are judged (by whomever) on our merits, good and bad, as artists. Then it is of the utmost importance to learn aesthetic skill, which may be a proxy term for the dominant standpoint after all.