A lecture given by Ilya Trojanow
Member of the ICORN Council of Writers and Experts
Every Saturday and Sunday, all over Europe, people from different walks of life come together to support their very own. They flock into the arenas, wearing the shirts of their heroes, eager to scream and shout for the better part of two hours. What do they sing in moments of joy and ecstasy? Which slogan unites them all, whether they are comfortably seated in the stadium of Anderlecht or quivering on their feet in Lüttich? Olé! Rhythmically repeated in a distinct, well-known cascade: olé ... olé olé olé. Probably most fans link this slogan with Spain. Maybe they associate it with toreros or with Don Juan. But how many of the fans that whip themselves into frenzy with unrelenting olés realize that they are actually repeating the Arab word for God. Time and again, every Saturday and Sunday, the soccer stadiums in Europe resonate with shouts of "Allah"!
In times of crisis the rhetoric of conflict blossoms. The ongoing, seemingly endless "War On Terror", powered by deliberately vague justifications, has metastasised into a clash of canons, cultures and civilizations. We are on the edge of disaster, we have to close ranks and defend our values and traditions. The foreign is an antagonistic force that has to be repelled. Thus we are asked, more often heatedly implored, to define our identity, to become aware of our own heritage, to defend our very own values.
But what if we are not defined by a homogenous, home-grown culture, because such a thing does not exist, has never existed? What if our identity is nothing but a snapshot of a dynamic process that we are caught up in, often without noticing? What if what we regard as alien is only the result of a momentary difference, a fleeting gesture of history? What if those that are claiming to defend the core of a certain nation, a certain tradition, a certain religion are fighting windmills while the reality of cultural dynamics is in the wind? For what if the values and cultural achievements of the so-called West were the result of awakenings and rebellions made possible by what we today regard as non-European sources, by movement and migration? What if core Western values, technologies and cultural expressions were decisively formed by confluences, by a intensive exchange between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, by a vibrant culture of debate amongst scholars working in Granada, Baghdad, Palermo, Damascus, Bologna, Paris, Venice and Cairo? What if all that we perceive as canonical and classical is a hybridity that we have forgotten? Or have been persuaded, encouraged, conditioned to forget?
