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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 August 2000 Issue No. 495 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 August 2000 Issue No. 495
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I have just received an interesting report of a Conference organised by the British Council and the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. The conference, "Looking into England," examined the current state of affairs against a background of "devolution and re-emerging Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities." Attended by speakers from around the world, the conference focused on issues of English identity, English culture, English constitutional issues -- in a word, what it means to be English.
The event was directed by Susan Bassnet, the founder of the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies and chairwoman of the British Council's British Studies Committee. Professor Bassnet opened the conference. Her paper, "Discovering England," was profoundly enjoyable -- not only was she frank, but she managed to underline the myopic outlook characterising much recent research on England.
The 1990s saw the publication of a great number of books about England, each of which, Bassnet commented, looked at England in a different way. Notes from a Small Island, by Nick Danziger, dealt with underprivileged England. Peter Vansittart's In Memory of England, on the other hand, was a novelist's reflection on being English. Besides which there were travel books, books on character and identity, on language and history, as well as dozens of articles in the national press.
One of the issues discussed in the conference was the difference between Britishness and Englishness. One of the speakers from Wales claimed that Britishness is "another word for Englishness; it is a political word which arose from the existence of the British state and which extends Englishness over the lives of the Welsh and Scots and Irish."
Professor Bassnet went on to say that ideas of Englishness have gone through transformations, and a variety of stereotypes have developed over time. She referred to the essays of George Orwell on England, which illustrate the power of stereotypes and also make important points about another important issue, the class system. Bassnet suggested that many of the issues that Orwell raised in his essays which -- were written in the 1940s -- are "just as relevant today, including the dominance of London and sharp divisions in English life, between the rich and the poor, north and south, urban and rural."
Many speakers stressed the continuing significance of regional divisions that have survived over thousands of years. Here I find similarities with Egypt, where there is a marked division between the north -- that is the Delta, and the south -- or Upper Egypt. This division, mentioned in many 18th and 19th century books, remains glaringly obvious even today.
For those well versed in English literature Professor Bassnet's references to literary texts that express an old ideal of Englishness were quite interesting. She mentioned King Henry's speech from Shakespeare's Henry V. In that speech the idea of fighting and playing is linked. Bassnet quoted, "they are good women, whose limbs were made in England."
She then went on to quote John of Gaunt's speech from Shakespeare's Richard II, in which he develops the image of the island as England's powerful myth. England is seen as a land somehow blessed by nature, "a fortress" and a "precious stone," surrounded by the sea that serves it like a moat or a wall against "the envy of less happier lands."
Again we find Robert Browning evoking the image of the beauty of rural England, introducing the pastoral element into a number of English literary texts. To know England, Professor Bassnet concluded, "one has to leave it, for in absence is the knowing." I could not have agreed more. From my own personal experience my real knowledge of Egypt came from being away from it for 12 years, during which I worked in England as cultural attaché. And during those years the knowledge I acquired from reading about my country and pondering over it exceeded the knowledge I was born with or developed in my early years.
