L

eerssen, Joep. National identity and national stereotype.

http://cf.hum.uva.nl/images/info/leers.html

National identity and national stereotype

We know most foreign cultures, and much of our own culture, by reputation only. We have an
"image" of the Scottish, Belgian or Spanish national character even though we personally may
know at most only a handful of people from those countries, and have no way of assessing how
"typical" these persons are as representatives of their nation. Even so, we have no problem in
recognizing certain temperamental attributes as being "typical" for certain nations: the Scottish
reputation for stinginess, the Belgian reputation for stupidity, the Spanish reputation for pride,
are sufficiently well known for us to enjoy jokes or stories which invoke, and rely on a
knowledge of, those attributes.
There is a degree of vagueness as to the "truth" of these commonplaces concerning national
character. Many people will admit a curious sort of half-belief, stating that, yes, of course, they
are stereotypes and generalizations, but at the same time it cannot be denied that there are
significant differences between Scotsmen and Spaniards...
Ethnic or national stereotypes and commonplaces form the subject of an approach in literary
studies called "image studies" (imagologie in French, Dutch and German). Image studies starts
from the presupposition that the degree of truth of such commonplaces is not a necessary issue
in their scholarly analysis. Imagologists tend to be extremely sceptical concerning the objective
information value of such "images", and stress the incalculable amount of suffering that such
prejudices have caused (e.g. the treatment of Jews in various European countries throughout
history; the treatment of supposedly "inferior" and sub-human natives in various European
colonies), as opposed to their total lack of usefulness in concrete (political, economic or
practical) terms. However, an imagologist would see his/her business in similar terms to those of,
for instance, a historian who deals with witchcraft. It does not matter to such a historian whether
witchcraft really "worked" or not; nor does it matter whether it was morally right or wrong to
conjure up (effectively or ineffectively) occult forces. What matters is the belief that people
vested in witchcraft, and the historically REAL consequences of that belief.
In other words: even though the belief is irrational, the impact of that belief is anything but
unreal.
It is on this basis that imagologists maintains scientific hygiene when studying national
stereotypes: by refusing to enter into debates about the degree of objective "validity" and by
keeping a certain (necessary) amount of clinical, antiseptic distance.
In actual practice this means that, in studying national stereotypes and alleged "national
characters" or national reputations, an imagologist is not concerned with the question whether
that reputation is true, but how it has become recognizable. That interest (not in "truthfulness"
but in "recognizability") means that images are studied, not as items of information about reality,
but as properties of their context. If somewhere we read that the British are individualists, the
first question we ask is not: "is that true?"; rather, the questions are all about the (con)text, e.g.:

Who is saying this? What audience is the author addressing? Why is it important for this
author to make this point? What are the political circumstances at the time this text was
written? How does the author attempt to convince the reader of the validity of his claim?
How does this image of British individualism fit into the text as a whole -- and what sort
of text is it anyway: an essay, or a novel, or a poem?

Asking such questions has led to a number of important insights.

Texts that say something on national character frequently rely, not on a first-hand observation of
reality, but almost always on an existing reputation. Often, earlier authors are quoted or
mentioned; and if one looks up those earlier authors, one finds that they in turn depend on their
source-texts. In other words: the referential signification process in national stereotypes does not
take place between text and reality, but between text and text. National stereotypes are
intertextual constructs: the conventions and commonplaces inherited from a pre-existing textual
tradition fully overshadow the experience of reality. This, again, means that the historical force
of national stereotypes lies more in their recognition value than in their pretended truth value.
National stereotypes provoke something which in German is called an Aha!-Effekt: a
commonplace (stupid Belgians, proud Spaniards) sounds familiar, and the audience confuses the
sense of familiarity with a sense of validity.
The representation of alleged national characters, as a textual tradition, obeys built-in rules,
which are quite independent of the political and social reality of the moment. Thus, structural
similarities can be found in the representation of different countries.
Some of the structural constants in these representations may be listed as follows:

The north of any given country is more down-to-earth, more businesslike, more prosaic,
more individualist and more freedom-loving that the south of that country (which is more
idyllic, more easy-going, but less reliable or businesslike). That goes for the stereotyped
differences between the north and south of Holland, England, Germany, Italy, France etc.
etc. The fact that the South of Germany is to the "north" of the North of Italy is a shortcircuit which disproves this assumption but has not effaced its existence.
The periphery of any given area is more traditional, timeless, backward, "natural"; the
centre of that area is more cosmopolitan, modern, progressive, "cultural". Those values
may be seen in a positive or in a negative light, and the area in question may be a whole
country (Netherlands, with the "randstad" for a centre and Groningen, Drente ... Limburg,
Zeeland as a periphery; France; England); or a region within that country (Amsterdam,
with its "downtown" area central amidst the periphery of its suburbs and "satellietsteden";
Limburg, with Maastricht for a centre and the countryside as a periphery; or even "The
EC", with its industrialized centre in the area Ruhrgebiet-Birmingham-Paris-Munich and
it periphery consisting of the poorer, agricultural areas in the Mediterranean and Atlantic
seaboards). An extreme example is Eurocentric thought, with the "Third World" as a
global periphery. In all these examples (which, as in the previous case, are mutually
incompatible but nevertheless simultaneously existing) the aforementioned
temperamental attributes ascribed to the "centre" or the "periphery" are structurally
similar: changing development (for better or for worse) in the centre,
tradition/backwardness at the periphery.
Countries are always contradictory in a specific way: their most characteristic attribute
always involves its own opposite. Thus Frenchmen are either formal, rational, cool,
distanced (type: Giscard d'Estaing) or else excitable, sanguine, passionate (type: Louis de
Funs); the English are either tea-drinking, respectable and with a "stiff upper lip" (type:
Miss Marple or Phileas Fogg) or else robust, no-nonsense, nonconformist and easily

offended (type: Winston Churchill, John Bull); the Dutch are either fearless defenders of
tolerance and liberty, or else boring bourgeois obsessed with cleaning windows; etc. etc.
The ultimate clich that can be said of virtually any country is that it is "full of contrasts".
If one follows the development of an image through literary history, one sees how this
ambivalence is often caused by conflicting sources which are brought under the same
head. If author A says that the Irish are violent, and author B says that the Irish are
sentimental, then author C will reconcile A and B by saying that the Irish are
characterized by a "typical combination of violence and sentimentality". Which of these
two contradictory attributes is then most emphasized, depends on the political attitude of
the author, on the point he is trying to make.
Stereotypes can be positive or negative in their valorization, depending on the political
circumstances: countries which present a threat of political or economic rivalry are usually
described in negative terms, giving rise to xenophobia; countries which do not pose any threat
are represented in "cute" terms, giving rise to exoticism or "xenophilia".
Thus an image can shift along with changing political circumstances. As Spain became a smaller
power, its image become more positive and exoticist: from Alva and the Inquisition to "Carmen"
and serenades, flamenco, bullfights and castanets; conversely, when Germany developed in the
nineteenth century into an industrial, imperialist power, its image changed from romantic poets
and musicians (Schubert, Eichendorff) to Prussian officers and mad scientists. Of course,
flamenco and "romantic" trappings existed in Spain during the 17th century, and Alva found a
successor recently in the person of Franco -- the image changes, not because the alleged Spanish
national character changes, but because the attitude towards Spain changes, and people
accordingly note, emphasize and describe different aspects (selected and presented as "typically"
or "characteristically" Spanish).
All this illustrates that the imagologist studies, not only, the image of the nation in question, but
also the context, more importantly the attitude of the author. One of the basic insights in image
studies is that the mechanism of the representation of foreign nations can only be analysed
properly if we take the attitude of the author into account. A representation of Britain by a
Frenchman or by a Dutchman or by a German may differ because of the nationality of the
respective authors. For this reason the imagologist distinguishes between auto-images and
hetero-images: the attitudes one has towards ine own cultural values (self-image, auto-image)
and the attitude towards the other (hetero-image). Any representation of cultural relations is a
representation of a cultural confrontation; and the author's own cultural values and
presupposititions are inevitably involved in this confrontation. There is, in other words, always a
degree of subjectivity (auto-image) involved in the representation of another culture. This
unavoidable degree of subjectivity is one of the main differences between an "image" and
objective information.
The most important conclusion that can be drawn from the above is this: that nobody is in a
position to describe a cultural identity. What is described is always a cultural difference, a sense
in which one nation is perceived to be "different from the rest". This means that cross-nationally
common values are usually taken for granted, and that such representations are governed by the
implicit a priori presupposition that a nation is most itself in those aspects wherein it is most
unlike the others. This presupposition restricts identity to particularism and exoticism, and
precludes us from realizing that all our identities define us as part of, and not in contradistinction
to, humanity as a whole.

Joep Leerssen