Page 146 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE OTHER CULTURE 139

undeniable. The problem is then to overcome this isolation, this
sovereignty, and to reach out to a meaningful alterity.
With regard to a culture, such a claim to sovereignty within its own
domain is precisely what is deeply questionable. There is a surface level
otherness—one speaks of German culture and Indian culture as being
different—^which is always questionable beyond a certain limit. If the
identity of a culture consists in its unique historical development, what
guarantee is there, as we go back to historical and prehistorical origins,
that there are not discernible common ancestors and mingling of diverse
routes of influence?
Are Q and Q different cultures? When is a C a "foreign" culture?
Shall we say, as Husserl seems to have held, Q and Q are "mutually"
foreign, when they have different "generative" histories? But what assures,
in any given case, that Q and Q do not, at some point in their
generative histories , have a common stem, a common path before
branching out? Surely, that Q and Q are different linguistic groups does
not determine the answer. How different languages should be—up to the
point of being "untranslatable"—so that they can be regarded as being
mutually "foreign"? What could "untranslatabiUty" mean in view of
Davidson's radical critique? Shall we say that there is just no absolutely
"foreign" culture, but rather that there are only different degrees of
foreignness? But the idea of degrees of foreignness itself is ambiguous,
depending upon what cultural trait one is focusing upon. A culture that
is "more" foreign with regard to a trait a may indeed be "less" foreign
with regard to another trait B.
Undoubtedly, one speaks, and is justified in speaking, of the home
culture, as one speaks of the native language. But such locutions, despite
their legitimacy within limits, should not blind us to the following
disruptive considerations. In the first place, the home culture may
contain—and one cannot be too sure that it does not—elements from a
foreign culture (foreign words in the home language, for example). The
home culture, in the second place, is not itself a monoUthic structure. It
rather contains strata, that are "foreign" to each other. Consider what is
called Indian, or even Hindu culture. It contains behefs, rituals, prac-
tices—not to speak of languages, art forms, musics—^which are "foreign"
to some natives. Thus the other belongs to it, and is not simply outside.
You can avoid this consequence by looking for a subculture that is
homogenous. You never find it.