IN SEARCH OF THE NO CENTER

All my life I have been moving among places that are considered “centers” of idiosyncrasy. Since I was a little girl I paid close attention to the word “them”, and the word “us”. I grew up in the border between Mexico and the United States, where every month, when I travelled from one country to the other the “center” would change. The “here”, the “there” and the “other side” changed their side. What was common and correct in Mexico stopped being common and correct in Arizona and vice versa. First, I paid attention to practical issues like throwing trash through the car window or not, using the car safety belt or not. Later on, when I was a teenager, I paid attention to social reactions when women had sex before marriage, when somebody got a divorce, when interracial couples got together. Those last things were not “good” in the Mexican side, but same things were not “bad” in the United States side. For some, the “us” was the them; for others, the “them” was the us. But for me there were no “them” neither “us”, for Cristina Girl there was one only sea of fishes who could see no more than their own circumstantial fish school, and each fish school would continue its way even though they could hurt other fishes. I assumed then the solitude of who decides to be and independent observer, a fish with no fish school, with no first nor third person of the plural form.
Regarding the topic of “the future between West and East” or “the future of the relations between West and East”, what I read in economic and international relations magazines is that during the 2010s there will be a “shift of centre” from West to East. A transfer of decision-making centers. West banks, multinationals and thinkers will go to the East and from there the dialogue and negotiation will occur. The West centre will cease to be an immovable headquarter to which Asian must travel to and adapt to, linguistically and culturally, to negotiate and communicate. Now, it is said, the western will learn about Asia, he will move to that spot of the planet and from there he will observe and analyze common problems and situations. In other words, the “us” will visit the “them”, they will see the world of “them” from the world of “them”, they will see their own “us” from the point of view of “them”.
But, for me, skeptical before the concept of centre, the first thing that comes up when I hear such theory is: But, where is the East? Where is the West? What is East? What is West? And, above all, What is a centre? For a woman from the USA/Mexican border who has lived five years in Japan and five years in Austria, it is clear to me that for some, the “far away culture” could be at the same time “an immediate culture” and vice versa. After studying, working, falling in love and making friends in both sides of the planet, the “Here” and “There” seem deeply relative to me, more similar than dissimilar.
In Latin, East means in “where the sun rises” and West means “where the sun falls”. What would happen if the world is seen from outside of the world, say, like an astronaut, or from the obscure underworld say, like a miner? Aren´t we writers suppose to be like astronauts and miners? To doubt of all postures and centres? The center that humans decide fluctuates. That is a center that swings, like a pendulum. Any called “center of the world” is, thus, a movable place that changes every generation or political or economical crisis. A true “center of the world”, thus, does not exist. It is a mirage where time is the desert that contains it.
When, during my studies in Osaka, I learned that for Japan the center of the world map was Japan, I then realized that for Mexico the center of the world was Mexico, and I realize how blurry all that was. Furthermore, for the country of Mexico the center was Mexico City… a city most of my family had never seen. I guess each fragment of the planet uses a versatile world map. I understood then that I was not a part of any of those so called “centers”, not Japan, not Mexico, not Mexico City, not even the Sonora desert or Arizona, or the border line – another center. I realized I already grew up far away, both geographically and conceptually, from the centers others wanted to impose on me. When I was twenty years old I went to study to Japan. From there I travelled around Southeast Asia, China, Europe, an overall of seventeen countries during 1996 (Honk Kong was another stamp in my passport then). During that time I realized that: 1) the West thought they were the peak of the culture, 2) the East assumed itself marginal but with a culture just as valuable, and 3) the American continent was neither West neither East, and it didn´t know itself culturally. The American continent was chasing an occidental center that remained only half of its past. The other half of Latin America (or, may I say, of the American continent) is its Asian seed, I though, while taking myself a picture with a Chinese dragon very similar to Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec feathered-serpent god, while making Asian friends that had a body language so similar to my Mexican first nation´s acquaintances. The pre-hispanic world is the other half of the Latin American center, even though it has been segregated and minimized by those who consider “culture” purely western manifestations.
I remember I read once that when it comes to a citizen reaction before individual or social problems shown in the television (empathy for suffering or joy for achievements, and so on), the main factor was the geographical closeness of the event to the house of the spectator: an individual anguishes more if one old lady dies nearby his neighborhood than for a group of old people suddenly killed by a heat wave in another continent. Remoteness is insensitivity; geographical closeness is human connection.
Being that the case, I will be very happy if the so-called “shift of center” can approximate both cultures and have a close interaction and dialogue. But, in an aggregate level, ¿what would be the effect of this envisioned situation? Would this economic approximation have an effect on the world of literature, that is, how literature is approached, read, and written? And what about my inner world, half western half east?
To shift the eyes towards Asia during the present decade will affect also how other countries will relate with the rest of the world. South America, Africa, Middle East will see the world towards and from Asia as well. Surely, the relations between Asia and other continents will grow closer.
When a country achieves intensive economic growth all political, economic and cultural interests shift to that country. It is then that language courses, narrative and poetry translations are demanded, in order to learn about that country, to understand it, to communicate with “them”. This kind of perception is now towards China, India and the East in general. I think that should not be the reason to know and acknowledge the value of one culture. I believe all culture is precious; all language being a human treasure, apart from how many people speaks such language, their per capita income, gross domestic product, volume of exports and imports and so on. The fortune with the case of the economic potential of China and the East is that, culturally speaking; this new view removes the center that westerns and their descendants (America, Africa, and so on) believe as “the center”. The fortune for the rest of the world is that such millenary culture and language will be valued as an equal by the West, and, therefore, a shift of self-perception by colonial countries may occur. Such shift of center in the global world could be translated as a shift of center, or, at least, as a recognition of the other half of the center by colonial cultures fruit of syncretism.
I believe that such shift of balance will approximate the western reader to Chinese, for instance, one of the most ancient oral and written languages that is still used nowadays, intensively alive. It is full of explorations in tonality; it has picture-idea logic, like Egyptian and Maya. In the few years, very probably because of economic interests, an intensive and growing interest has been demonstrated in Chinese contemporary literature. Most translations are made, though, indirectly from English and in scarce cases from Chinese. Some publishing houses, mainly in Spain are taking solid steps into such literary universe. Spain publishing houses, like Kailas is now translating such authors like Wang Anyi, Mo Yan, and Han Shaogong. On the other hand, Japanese poetry and narrative have been extensively translated in the last decade, Tusquets publishing house specializing in novels, from authors like Murakami, Yoshimoto, among others and Hiperion publishing house in poetry, specially modern and classical one. Both publishing houses are from Spain. Indian literature, Malayan literature, and the rest of East authors are still to be widely discovered in the Hispanic world. Since Chinese, Korean and Japanese cinema has been very much appreciated in Latin America, and due to the similarities in the Latin American and Asian literary tradition, I am sure literature would be happily welcome, if only we had more direct translators, and, for that, more language education centers and Asian literature university programs located in Latin America.
It would be very interesting to see how both worlds, East and West, will influence each other in the malleable forms of Art and Literature. So far, several Latin Americna authors have experimented with the Japanese form of haiku, being Nobel Prize Octavio Paz from Mexico and Argentinean renowned author Jorge Luis Borges, some of the authors experimenting such genre. Some narrators are also taking themes and forms from literature from China and Japan, like “Verde Shanghai (Green Shanghai)” by Rivera Garza from Mexico, “Tan cerca de la vida (So close to life)” by Rocangoglio from Peru and my own narrative, like the short story book “Hanami (To see the flowers)”, just to quote some examples, but the list is wide long. Asia has been an attractive source of inspiration in Latin America for some decades. How interesting would be to know if Latin American literature has influenced in theme and form some Asian Authors.
As Mexican, I would like to integrate my Asian part in what I believe is a fragmented identity. In my continent´s countries, when some cultural manifestation comes from Europe is strongly worshipped. But, the beauty and aesthetic proposals of pre Hispanic cultural manifestations are generally under appreciated. Maybe governmental programs, NGOs and proactive artists do integrate pre Hispanic art and first nation´s literature to the mainstream, but an average Mexican does not know such culture. If he does know it, he doesn´t believe first nations’ cultures are as valid as the western ones. An average Latin American has no clear center to look to. That is our self-negation, our permanent sense of mislaying.
From my own swinging between fleeting centers since my childhood, I found it questionable when a culture believes it is itself the center. Or when a culture believes its customs and art manifestations are more valid than others. When this happens the culture that believes itself better, or simply official, names the rest “peripheral”. But I believe all cultures can be center and marginal at the same time, or by sequential periods. It´s part of its process. As humans can be both center and peripheral as well. To be a country contained by its frontiers, that change. To be a frontier contained by its surrounding countries, that change. To be a center with peripheral cultures, those also change.
So, when I am asked about the future of East and West, I first think of the planet on which we live, where north and south, west and east, seen from any point in the universe, do not exist. Then I think of my internal planet, which swings between my East fragment and my West part, shouldn´t it be a planet with no cardinal points? I recall my personal and literary search and I realize mine is the search of no-center. No Here and No There. No Us and No Them.
To be a girl with no rules, with no fish school, shifting from one desert to the other, from one ocean to the other, to be a miner and an astronaut. From Sonora desert to Arizona desert. To write. To ask myself what is to be Mexican, what is the center, what peripheral, what is there of West, what is there non West: to write from a There. To go to Japan, to forget my language: to write, hybrid, from an Other There. To work in Austria, to know South America from a nostalgic Diaspora: to write with No Here. To go to China: to search the no center in the midst of the shift: to write from the Search.
Cristina Rascón Castro.
Culiacán, Sinaloa, México.
August, 2011.