SYMBOLIC CODES IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
David N. Power
The efficaciousness and tenacity of symbolic codes in giving adherents a common identity and worldview is much affected by what is vaguely called globalization. The process known by that name is geared mostly to economic interdependence across the globe and to the spread of far-reaching systems of communication, so that more profound cultural factors in the exchange between peoples are undermined. To this, there seem to be two sorts of reaction.
First, despite much necessary interaction on a global level, and much migration, peoples often retain a sense of national or ethnic identity and have divergent views of the world and the transcendent, so that communication and the pursuit of common interests is difficult.
Second, in an opposite direction, other persons, societies or communities, are less prone to adhere to traditional symbolic codes, and share in some sort of ill-defined mass culture, so that one may also speak of social and cultural disintegration. The more established symbols and rituals of public life and religion during periods of cultural and social change seem to fail or lose their persuasive power. The diminishing participation in religious rituals in some churches reflects either disaffection for what is ritualized, or the failure of the ritual to persuade, or of the parent community to hold people’s allegiance. Civil rituals also decline in importance, including the ritual of casting votes in elections, many not thinking this a matter of great import.
Thirdly, however, new kinds of ritual activity emerge, of a more open and fluid character. Various forms of Pentecostalism are on the upsurge around the world. In the USA, the Nation of Islam draws a following because it holds out a promise of solidarity and of strength in solidarity, of brother and the values of mutual concern, drawing on the remembrance of an African past. New Age Spirituality with its own forms of symbol and rite continues to develop in the USA, because of its simultaneous accent on the individual person and on community.
Rather than see all this disintegration and counter-ritual as purely negative, one can look at the possibilities offered to communion within pluralism in a society whose culture is increasingly affected by economic interaction, the spread of systems of communication, and frequent migration of peoples. For this to be realized, religions, societies and communities have to become more conscious of the ongoing process of interpretation and change within their own symbolic worlds. The tradition of symbolic codes is something within which peoples constantly operate and express meanings, values, relations, and aspirations. Even when something new emerges, nothing is created out of nothing. Symbolic creation cannot be totally arbitrary. No person or persons can simply create new symbols and codes at will. However consciously or unconsciously, they draw on symbolic heritages even to say something new. The astute however will be more conscious of the process at work, in the past as in the present. As philosophers would say, a hermeneutical turn is needed when situations and identities are fluid, and somehow all adherents of a code need to be caught up, at different levels of consciousness, in this process and without using such a technical term. When communities and their members are more conscious of themselves as speaking subjects or agents, they are more ready for dialogue with others, for a living and mutually enriching encounter.
This time of globalization is a time to seek to bring into being a genuine humanity, when while differences enrich interaction and perception all can work together towards what by hope and dialogue they gradually formulate the common good. It has to be remarked that this process requires a special sensitivity to those peoples and groups who are less wealthy in material and industrial resources, and as result lose their place in the overall scheme of things. With the globalization of the economy, they are often forced to forsake their accustomed relation to land, water, environment and ancestors. They migrate to cities where they are physically and culturally dislocated and lose something as elemental as their language. Bringing them in as partners in the making of a world, seeing them as speaking subjects, is not properly based on a Hegelian dialectic of development or a structuralist anthropology. Though they may be poor in resources, it is the richness of their humanity which is to be allowed expression. It is not a time to indulge aspirations of cultural victory in the meeting of cultures, all being subjected to the desire for economic development.
DESCRIBING THE SYMBOLIC
How is one then to perceive the functioning of symbolic codes? Do they retain their capacity to give identity and meaning in the midst of change, do they possess a dynamic which persuades their adherents to be open to cultural interchange (including religious) where differences are not denied and yet the pursuit of common interests of a global nature is made more convincing.
Rather than work with the definition of a symbol as that which represents something other than itself, or that which is a means of living encounter with another or others, we do better to work with a broader description that sees the action of a symbolic code as the action of a people or community, within a historically given and changing world, so that through it they relate with meaning and affect to this world. We expect to find how allegiance to such codes relate adherents and practitioners to matters of life and death, to some working judgment on what is good and evil, to social virtues and community relations, and to past and present. Metaphysical speculation tells us that the symbolic has roots in the desire for being, for modes of being, for truth and beauty, and for the perfection of the human in the sublime. That however is a second level observation, always needing to be put to the test.
Thus a symbolic code, with rituals playing a key part, is a complex of significant things, of gestures, sounds, images and words that invite participation in the reality represented and given expression. In other terms, the symbolic universe itself, or the symbolic code as it may be called, is quite complex, but it is not to be seen “in itself” but as the language given to a speaking subject, inherited and transmitted across time, so that we are attentive to that which is done through it by the speaking subject. From this perspective, it becomes apparent that as the common language of any human grouping, symbolic codes are constantly changing, both in their functioning and in the intuitive meanings assigned to them.
While often enough it is asked what meaning symbols express, or what cognitive elements it contains, in fact the cognitive is embedded in imaginary, sensory and affective forms, and cannot be explained apart from them. Hence rather than appeal to a faculty psychology which attributes some actions to the senses, others to the imagination, others to reason, others to higher faculties of the mind, we do better to consider operations in which the whole person, as a whole person, and the corporate body as a body, is participatory. In that way, for example, we can see the senses do not hinder the mind’s activity, nor simply provide images, that the imagination does not simply present images to the intellect for insight, nor serve to bring affect into line with reason. On the contrary, the positioning of the body in symbolic action and the working of the imagination are creative, imaginary and felt constructs, suggestive of meaning and potent forces for opening up the possibilities of action to community and members.
With this perception of the symbolic in mind, we can say that symbolic action is both participation and mediation, so that if we speak of symbolic mediation we touch on the key role of the symbolic in human life. It invites participation in what it represents, and in mediates this participation. For example, in a meal ritual relations to earth, to the past, to community, to the social, to the divine, are both expressed and mediated, and the relations of adherents to each other are mediated within this commonly held worldview. In this sense, the symbolic meets the meaning of the Greek word, symbolon, to bring together.
ELEMENTS OF SYMBOLIC CODES
Semiotics teaches us that each sign or symbol has to be seen within the whole, even as it and its interpretation is operatively subjected to the point of view, the practical interest, of participants. Because of its complexity, some of the elements at work in symbolic codes may be helpfully delineated.
In fact, in examining symbolic codes, semioticians often start with visual symbols which express a relation to the body, to the universe, and to the subconscious, seeking as it were some root for the symbolic in the place of the human in the world and in familial relations. Thus historians of religion and culture write of oneiric, bodily and cosmic symbols. These of course never stand alone, outside the larger symbolic code, but attending to such non-verbal elements in systems allows the interpreter to query how the tradition relates adherents to modes of being in relation to body, cosmos, environment and the subconscious. In their movements, these elements also readily allow for upward, downward, sideways, forward and backward movements. In this way they may say something about transcendent relations.
Bodily actions, such as eating and drinking, washing, anointing, prostrating, standing, sitting, etc., are also integral to meanings, the bodily intuition being completed by verbal expression. Gifts are offered, but with incantations, invocations, praises and prayers. Food is shared but with words of salutation.
However, the ongoing construction, action and renewal of symbolic codes is motivated by underlying narratives, recalled either explicitly or by reference. In some cases, mythic narratives are dominant, in others hero myths or stories, in others historical memory, and indeed oftentimes there is an admixture of all three types of narrative. It is by reference to these narratives that communities find common meaning and identity and their place in space and time. While one may always look for some pristine story, in fact the narrative constantly changes or is modified as people adapt to new events and new conditions of living, or seek to harmonize symbolic thinking with other forms of acquired knowledge and functioning in the universe they inhabit. Another reason for change is that countergroups within the parent group demand that their narrative be given place in the whole, while challenging some of the assumptions of the major or dominant form of the story inherited and transmitted.
Some examples are appropriate. In Britain now people are asking how to bring together old Anglo-Saxon narratives, the narratives of Norman conquest, the Celtic narratives of Scotland and Wales, all seen as necessary to cultural and national identity. Furthermore with the large influx of immigrant populations from former colonies, their story too has to be woven into the cultural fabric. By way of another example, among Jewish people in many countries, who keep their own identity while living among others, the ancient story of the Covenant has to accommodate the destruction of the Temple and now the remembrance of the Shoah.
Closely associated with foundational narratives is the mapping of space, but this too undergoes modification. How the sense of being in space and place is affected by the dissolution of story is neatly expressed in the title of one of Umberto Eco’s novels, The Island of the Day Before, with its suggestion of the confusion experienced as past and present seem to claim differing loyalties of offer different meanings.
In religious traditions and symbolic codes, the primary way of representing a sense of space is through places of religious worship, such as the Hindu temple, the Jewish synagogue, the Islamic mosque, the Catholic church. However, their relation to the surrounding space differs, and so the sense of belonging of those who convene their. In the story of Christian Churches, we know that Church buildings often dominated the landscape, or with large courtyards even became centers of hospitality, commerce and the burial of the dead. While in Washington, DC, the National Cathedral and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception still attempt dominance, in the downtown places of worship are absorbed into the common mass of buildings. In the building of a new Catholic Cathedral in Los Angeles, the side of the building visible to the commercial and entertainment quarter was made to look like any such building, while inside its courtyard space commerce still flourishes in cafeteria and gift-shop. Immigrant groups of other religions also have to choose how to construct and where to place their buildings, and to be attentive to how these relate them to their new cultural milieu.
As far as national identities are concerned, there is a spacing of public and commemorative buildings which bespeak common memory, identity and aspiration, and recall the common stories with all their vicissitudes. Thus in the city of Washington, converging in the same area are the George Washington Memorial Obelisque, the Lincoln Memorial Monument, and the Vietnam commemorative Wall. Because of the memory of Martin Luther King, the Lincoln memorial now stands not only as a monument to the freeing of slaves and the memory of the Civil War, but also as a memorial to the ongoing search for Civil Rights. In London, Trafalgar Square has become the place for daily recreation, festive gatherings and protest rallies, thus locating in one place different aspects of national memory and shared aspiration. In Australia, rather than choosing on of the great cities associate with British Rule, the country built Canberra as a deliberately postcolonial capital. In Dublin, change has been expressed by turning the old Parliament building into a commercial bank, while retaining the residence of the Regal Viceroy as the residence of the President of the Republic.
SOCIAL ORDERING OR ACTION AND SYMBOLIC HERITAGE
People’s symbolic heritage and their social order and action intersect but do not converge so as to make them indistinguishable. The cultural and symbolic heritage is greater than the social order that prevails. It carries a surplus of meaning that can be drawn upon either to corroborate or to challenge the order. If often happens that social and political orders are dominated by special interests or influenced by ideologies that have some quite specific future in mind. Even them symbols that seem familiar are used to affirm the conduct of government, politics, judiciary and commerce. Within the cultural heritage however other aspirations and ideals are contained that create a tension between prevailing systems and cultural hopes. There will be those who in such situations draw revolutionary inspiration from the tradition. The revolution may be suppressed or it may come about through violence or through peaceful means. But its leaders know that to be efficacious it needs not only organs of government and policies, but also symbolic expression. There has to be sufficient interaction between social order and its institutions on the one hand, and recognizable symbolic expression on the other, for change to be effective. In fact, during times of oppression it is the poets, the artists, the story-tellers, the cineasts, who keep hope alive with their ability to draw from deeper wells of symbolic inheritance.
METAPHORIC KEY TO MEANING AND CREATIVITY
Metaphor, verbal and performative, provides the key to meaning and the possibilities of creativity within symbolic codes. While metaphor, the positing of likenesses, has often been thought of as a stylistic device or an exercise in persuasive rhetoric, as described by Paul Ricoeur creative metaphor occurs through making unlikely conjunctions of words, images, events, persons. While he examines it in utterances, it can also be found in visual conjunctions, as in art and cinema, or in ritual transgressions. An ethnic and national example of such metaphoric usage on a large scale is found in the idea espoused in England by immigrants from the Caribbean, “English is Blackness.” Thus these people lay claim to the heritage of the Magna Carta and a parliamentary tradition, even as they transform the configurations of national identity byt their colour, their idiom of speech, their music and their poetry.
Under the Soviet domination of Russia, the director Andrei Tarkovski found a way of expressing a peaceful hope in the film Andrei Rublov through the image of the horse. Throughout the film the horse appears as a symbol of invasion, oppression, war and carnage, but in the last frame, when Rublov has again taken up painting and his young companion the casting of bells, the viewer sees horses peacefully grazinf beside the water in green pastures.
There are also abundant examples of religious metaphorical creativity. Going back to some Russian writers in the nineteenth century, especially Mikhail Tareev, the image of kenosis has been offered to suffering peoples as a metaphor of hope. As a key metaphor, what it does is to associate the slave and the lord in the one person of Christ and make this unlikely conjunction a symbol of hope for the deliverance from bondage. In Asia, among some interested in dialogue between Judaism, Islam and Christian, an unexpected meeting-point is found in a common embrace of the sense of religious ecology among Asian peoples. A togetherness is offered through the embrace of that which at first brush seems most alien.
In biblical tradition, metaphoric conjunction makes the most abjured foreigner neighbour. Subsequently, in the history of Christian churches this has at times been affirmed though just a often in practice negated. But it is always there in the tradition to be evoked.
An example or metaphoric ritual transgression is found in marriage practices among the Filipino peoples of Northern Luzon, and maybe among other peoples as well. In the festive marriage celebration, the young couple omit the accustomed visit to the homes of parents. In this way they express and make a different mode of relating to families, they claim a freedom from traditional constraints.
These few examples may bring our attention to what it is in metaphor that expresses meaning, appealing to a tradition but transforming ideals. In looking back over traditions we are helped if we can find or catch metaphors at the point of their invention, before they may have become dead metaphors or simple illustrations. We can also be constantly on the look-out for metaphoric utterances and performances. These do not usually occur in the first place in the observance of public symbols and rituals, but as it were at the margins, in the work of artists of all kinds and in the practices of social groups who are said to practice forms of “popular culture.”
CRITICAL EXAMINATION
The public and official structuring of the use of symbolic codes while expressing a sense of common identity for people has often been quite oppressive of some members, even if they were not consciously aware of this, fitting in with what was expected of them. Much of this has come to life when we see how symbol systems fostered class distinctions or placed women in inferior and subordinate roles. Religions appear to be particularly susceptible to such ideological escapades because of the hierarchies to which they gave a divine significance. Those who want to continue to live from the power of their traditions need then to establish a critique which does not break symbolic continuity. This is more readily then when symbolic does are taken as the locution of speaking subjects. Taking the symbolic as a living language and not a static form, we can see how some persons have spoken within it, as it were on the periphery.
The work of Julia Kristeva could be taken as one important key to how this is done. While her particular interest is the study of Chinese traditions and Judeo-Christian traditions, and her particular concern is with womens’ well-being and emancipation, her approach is more broadly suggestive. While she has learned from Freud and Lacan that the only avenue to human consciousness is through language, she does not adopt their theories of the sexual or of masculine/feminine relations. For her this is more fluent and open and is to be found in listening to the voices of women. What she shows is that women have often failed to give open expression to their lives and desires because of social constraints, but many have expressed themselves outside the circle in images drawn from the symbolic tradition. The public symbolic ordering and the marginal voices draw on the same heritage but in different ways. One way of bringing about change is to permit what has been excluded into the movements of symbolic ordering. If the speaking subject of community admits new voices, it becomes more internally dialogical.
This is a way of critical inquiry and reconstruction which is open to many cultures and societies. For example, in India more attention is given among some to the symbolic voice of the dalit. In Africa, women ask why and how African customs and rituals often favour male domination. In both cases, the issues may be raised within the symbolic traditions expressive of people and culture.
In the speech and social and symbolic expression of global interaction, Stuart Hall has pointed to the need to hear marginal groups and what is said and done at the local level. In the interests of a humanity in which all are to be partners, there has to be the intersection of many stories, many musics, many rhythms, many artistic forms. All are to be allowed to be speaking subjects, free from dominant interests. May we be preserved from “global culture” to become a living dialogue of cultural communities.
SYMBOLIC AND HISTORY
Like any other historical movement, the process of globalization needs historical narratives as its underpinning. At its best, this will have to mean the interaction of varied historical memories, out of which participants draw the inspiration and the creative freedom needed to take part in the process. People and communities have to be able to narrate their own memories in ways that touch on present realities, finding how purpose and identity may be invested in a dialogical global process.
One approach to historical narrative, exemplified by Braudel, is to say that if we know the economic, political and military structures of a period we know its essential history. For those who believe that history has to be an account of peoples, persons and events, there no single school of thought. Some see it as an account of events, to be as accurate as possible, from which we can derive the motivations and causes of events. It is however increasingly brought out that historical narrative is interpretive and an effort to relate it to the meanings and aspirations of peoples’ lives today, even as the accuracy of evidence needs to be respected. To make the link, it draws on the symbolical, the visual, imaginative, poetic expressions of meaning found in their heritage. It is through this means that current realities can be submitted to discernment and incorporated into the historical horizon of the future.
Besides particular histories, there has always been European history, African history, Asian history, world history, in as much as peoples and nations are seen to interact and act upon each other. With the kind of convergence and interlocking of peoples that goes on today, history needs to be rewritten. This does not mean that the true nature of past events is camouflaged, but they may need to be seen in a new light, painful though this may be. Much that was kept undercover in the approved historical narrative has to be brought to light.
As but one example, we know that the Catholic Church has to rewrite the story of its presence in Africa and Asia. In secular history, much of the current writing of the history of North America is revisionist. This is necessitated if the rights and interests of all the nation’s constituent peoples are to be respected. Though there was for long a tension between Southern States and Northern States on the meaning of the Civil War as a key historical moment, by and large people were collectively inspired by the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, the trek to the west, and the American War of Independence with its constitutional resolution, events to which they gave quasi-mythical status. The trouble however with prevailing narratives was that many people were left out or made marginal to the main story. This includes Native Americans, the African American population and Hispanics. How from their perspective are events to be remembered and narrated and made an integral of the nation’s historical narrative ?
The opening to this new narration is created by some revisionist history within the approved main narrative. It is more openly recorded that the Fathers of the War of Independence and of the American Constitution kept slaves and severely limited democratic voting rights among the white population. Their inspiration was that of an elite government, according to the model of the ancient Greek Republic. When the story is thus broken open, there is one hopes a greater capacity to hear other stories. In a mythical way, it is said that everybody may aspire to the American dream. In a way that is more inclusive in its historical memory, the dream may be changing so that it is more inclusive of other ways of being a people. One can call this either a clash of civilizations or a civil colloquy, dependent on which symbol one wishes to draw.
It was mentioned earlier that the identity and history of the English is changing as it is perceived to include many hitherto excluded groups with their memories and their symbolic heritage. Peoples who have emerged from under Soviet domination to establish themselves as partners on the world stage have to narrate their history, as well as write their poetry, create their music and recall their myths. Peoples who have been freed from colonial dominion know that a postcolonial future is not possible without a symbolic heritage and the narration of history with postcolonial imagination. The people of the Republic of South Africa began their own distinctive life with the activity of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This was to allow truth emerge, memories be healed, reconciliation effected. At the heart of the matter was the telling of stories, stories of persons, of families, of prisoners, of executioners and executed, of villages, of townships, of dorps. Out of the many such stories there may emerge the story of the People who are by constitution a Rainbow Coalition. In this, the African capacity to tell stories and to sing praise poems is playing its part.
RELIGION
A brief word about religions and religious communities is needed ti complete the picture. Often on the world stage religious adherents have played a coercive and violent role, making the secularization of Europe for example something to be devoutly wished. When true to their roots, as to the Gospel in the case of Christianity, the Law and the Prophets in the case of Judaism, the Koran in the case of Islam, they may still be able to contribute to a movement towards true freedom and peaceful relations. At present, the practice of religion develops in ways hitherto unknown and is too many times a force of resistance to change and openness. A deep freedom of persons may be served within religious communities only if they are open to an internal change that purifies past memories and engages with new events and realities.
As practitioners follow their religious rituals and practices, and find meaning in their symbols, they are transformed within the horizons of their faith and beliefs. If the neighbour is respected and loved within this horizon, if justice is inspired, if hope is engendered, they could also be a force for transformation in society. This does not mean calling on others to be of their persuasion or imposing their point of view in the public domain, given its plurality. It does means being able to bring their perspectives on humanity and the human project into respectful public debate.
At the best of times, by reason of their own beliefs, values and trust, religious groups are alert to the dangers of the arrogance that belittles others. They perceive with clarity what is demeaning in human relations. They are attentive to the call of the poor and needy of the world and of all those unjustly treated. These concerns they can bring into the public forum and seek to express their way of seeing the human in a persuasive way, so that society may gear its workings to a justice that is mindful of all, and mostly of the weak and the marginalized. Without however finding such resources in their own symbolic codes, they will live a self-centred and closed world, resistant to the other’s truth.
BY WAY OF CONCLUSION
The disintegration of symbolic cultural identity and symbolic exchange is typical of a period of social and cultural change. Formal rituals tend to be replaced by distinctive patterns of behaviour that carry in a less formal way the power and authority of the common or normative, though in their own way they appeal to symbolic heritages. The process of social reconstruction after the disintegration of monolithic hierarchies and cultural systems requires various forms of public expression, inclusive of public ritual, but this may be more varied, more suggestive of a plurality within unity.
In the meeting between peoples, cultures, civilizations resulting from global economics, mass communication and migration, peoples have to work together with understanding and with a sense of engagement in a common enterprise. A peaceful and just future depends on being able to understand and respect each other. What Paul Ricoeur described as the situation forty years is ago is still largely true. The world has seen the end of political domination of some nations by others, and there are fewer dictatorship or internally oppressive regimes than in the past. To take part in an international enterprise, each people is pressed to know its own identity, to understand its own culture, to find creativity and resources within its own heritage. Only with this sense of self, is it possible to allow oneself be face by the other and to be enriched by the other. Because the end to conflict and the need to preserve peace is urgent, this kind of dialogue seems necessary. Yet the peoples of the world are far from being able to undertake it with any depth. Hence, much intercultural dialogue and inter-religious dialogue focuses on ethics and the clarification of values and this brings some results. How far this can last, it is hard to tell, for it is far from giving deep understandings of each other and does not allow for a grasp of the other’s view of the world and of reality. Behind metaphysics there is always myth, behind epistemology ritual, behind ethics trust in the future. In these areas, cultures are quite diverse and at the present juncture of world affairs often quite insecure. Beyond an immediate ethic and values clarification, it is necessary for peoples to meet each other in these areas of cultural heritage.
Some of this may sound more utopian than an account of what actually happens, but utopias have always played a creative symbolic part in opening up the imagination of the impossible and the creative capacity to make it possible.