Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

And, of course, there is the seventh anthology of modern writing, a publication of which the Council is just proud. What is really interesting about the anthology is the fact that every issue has different editors, which guarantees a diversity of material. I know how difficult it is to select material for publication and also the dilemma of choosing between already established writers and the up and coming ones.

This anthology contains a number of new writers who clearly have talent and who will, in all, probability figure in future anthologies. In fact New Writing serves as some a testing ground for new talent.

But the publication I found really fascinating is British Studies Now, which is described as the British Council's international magazine for everyone involved in teaching and interpreting new trends in British culture by non-Britishers. The current issue, Into the Future, deals with cultural manifestations in such areas as Bohemia in the Czech Republic, Moscow, Romania and other European countries where the British Council is active.

The introduction to this issue tries to explain what is happening to culture. It finds that "culture has gone plural; it refuses to fit the grid or stay still on the map." With the constant process of migration new identities are taking shape across cultures. The editorial claims, and quite rightly, that there is more than just one Britain. This means that British studies differ from place to place. There are so many, often contradictory, views of Britain held in different parts of the world. What the Egyptians think of Britain, for instance, differs from what the Indians or the Nigerians do. These diverse views are the result of both historical memories and present contacts.

In an article entitled "What is British Cultural Studies Anyway?" Martin Montgomery, of the University of Strathclyde, explains why people are saying such terrible things about British culture. He believes that divisions between fields of knowledge can be profound and "include disputes about the boundaries between one discipline and another, about the precise nature of the object of study, about the methodological procedures that constitute it, about evidential practices and about satisfactory modes of arguments."

The writer proposes a number of primary questions before any discussion of the issue of British studies. The first is What is Culture? He answers thus: "The shaping, constraining and reproduction of human behaviour through the interaction of the symbolic and material orders." What is being studied in British culture is "the cultures of Britain in all their heterogeneity and diversity, with greater emphasis being given to their current disposition."

There is no doubt that the opening up of countries so far closed to Western, and especially British culture, necessitated a new approach to the subject. It seems that British cultural studies has become a curriculum subject. This reflects the worldwide interest in learning English and, as a result, in learning about the societies and cultures in which English is a long-settled language. The writer then proposes a number of items which reflect the aim of cultural studies. They are: to enrich learning of the language; alert students to cultural differences; introduce them to theories of culture; provide them with techniques for describing, analysing and also for comparing cultures, and for negotiating the distance between their own culture and that of others and, finally, theories and trace points of articulation between major cultural institutions.