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The mother of all stereotypes
Walter Rathenau, captain of industry and statesman, used these words in 1933 to summarise one of the guiding ideas of racist thought: that of a fertilising and civilising North, a real moral and spiritual force of mankind. Rathenau’s view can hardly be considered an isolated one, born from nothing and flowing into nothing, the fruit of a personal elaboration or of personal convictions. On the contrary, Rathenau expressed an image of the world that was, in various ways, very widespread and deeply rooted in one of the most resilient and powerful myths of western culture – the Myth of the North. When this myth was created and when it took root is difficult to say with any certainty. It probably dates back to the late eighteenth century, at the end of that complex process leading to the creation of the modern European states (states which, in order to create an internal cohesion, needed a negative image of what lay “outside” them). One thing is certain, however: for about two hundred years, the Myth of the North flowed like a river across a large part of western thought, to then reach its zenith in Nazi ideology around the mid-twentieth century.Manifestations of this myth lie in the views, for example, that Jules Michelet expressed in the mid-nineteenth century (Michelet, 1848) on the primacy of the German race: «The character of this race, which would mix with many others, is the easy abnegation. […] This dedication, without interest and without conditions, derided by the peoples of the south, has in any case determined the greatness of the Germanic race». Geography as viewed by the Nord develops along a system of well-defined categories and of claimed scientific value. As the British ethnologist R. Keane (1886) asserted, at the heart of the world is the white race, the only bearer of civilisation, and articulated in three broad families: homo europaeus, tall, fair-skinned, fair-haired and with light-coloured eyes; homo alpinus, of medium height and a less fair-skinned etc. than homo europaeus; and homo meridionalis, irreparably short and dark in all his features. One need hardly say that only the first of the three racial families, one, was recognised as the producer and bearer of civilisation. The Celts, Slavs, southern French and northern Italians, who all belong to the second family, do not possess these qualities, but are still receptive to the civilising waves coming from the North. The Mediterranean peoples, belonging to the third family, are instead placed at the fringe of the European cradle. As Ludwig Woltmann (1903) wrote, «In conclusion, the taller men with a larger skull, with a frontal dolychocephaly and light pigmentation, and thus that of the Germanic north-European race (the homo europaeus of Ammon, Lapouge, etc.), are the prefect representatives of human kind and constitute the highest product of evolution». The racial hierarchy, then, according to this Myth, coincides with the one dictated by a geography that proceeds systematically from North to South, and which is associated to a hierarchy of colours (from light to dark) and moral features (from rationality to irrationality, from the capacity for self-determination to the incapacity for self-control, and so on); a hierarchy that certainly does not stop at the northern coasts of the Mediterranean. In a book with a significant title Le règne animal (1917), Alphonse Cuvier observed
The views of Menzel and Trémaux may appear naïve, and yet the conviction of the existence of an unshakable bond between “Nordic-ness” and freedom was shared by a great many writers. Auguste Comte, the founder of sociology, claimed that the primacy of western European peoples derived from their very capacity of emancipation (1842). The British historian Edward August Freeman, like many of his countrymen, thought that England owed its democratic institutions to its Anglo-Saxon roots (Mosse, 1986). Max Muller, in turn, felt that the superiority of the North Europeans was connected to their sense of independence and to their capacity for self-government (Mosse, 1986). One could think that the Myth of the North had foundered together with its maximum and most devastating historical concretisation – Nazism. Yet, there are many signs that say otherwise. The Myth, every myth, as cultural anthropology teaches us, is not a mere theory but a cognitive matrix on which are built the very categories we use for interpreting reality. Although it is essential in order to give shape to a vision of the world, mythical thought may therefore also constitute a danger, because it encourages the production of axioms and representations that tend to escape critical conscience, appearing in the form of “obviousness”, of the already known, the taken for granted. The Myth of the North is no exception. It in fact generates mental oppositions that do not at all need to be expressed in complete explicit theses, such as those of a Michelet, a Menzel or a Trémaux. On the contrary, they are inclined to creep into the folds of language, in clichés or in common sense forms, wedging themselves also in the more heartfelt, honest and documented analyses. It is certainly still active in Europe, as witnessed by the fact that the North-South dichotomy, meant as the opposition between different degrees of culture and civilisation, is widely held in many European countries, such as Germany, France and, above all, Italy, where, in the name of a Nordic-ness, there is even a political movement that is currently part of the coalition government. The main target of the Myth of the North remains, however, the African continent. It is seen, for example, behind the many theses on the “lack of self-government” of Africa that suspiciously continue to appear in the western media. In a short but rich essay, the Ghanaian historiographer Ama Biney (1999), shows some particularly significant evidence in this regard. In an article appearing in the British news daily Independent on Sunday in 1991, we read, for example: Africa is so much without hope that it is difficult to believe that it can help itself. If western countries had the will, they could re-colonise the continent which they left in such haste. The Japanese and the Germans could run Africa, using the British, as professional ex-colonists, as their official agents. This is echoed in the pages of the US Spectator by journalist Paul Johnson, in an article of 1993: What the third world needs is a new form of imperialism: altruistic, internationally supervised, efficient and tough-minded […] the factors which will permit the revival of colonialism are in place. These views fully match the idea of a civilising North, even though, in this case, armed with the most noble of intentions. Extreme views, perhaps; but, more likely, explicit forms of ideas and mental categories implicit in many theses, ideas and representations found in the West. A document of the organisation African Action, for example (APIC, 1997), highlights the way western media and observers insistently resort to the concept of “tribalism”, as opposed to “civilisation”, to interpret many of the political events characterising the African continent. The authors of the document particularly note that: The idea of tribe particularly shapes Western views of ethnicity and ethnic conflict in Africa, which has been highly visible in recent years. Over and over again, conflicts are interpreted as "ancient tribal rivalries," atavistic eruptions of irrational violence which have always characterized Africa. Similar observations have been put forward by other authors as well. The Cameroonian sociologist Jean-Marc Ela (1998), for example, notes how in the West, Africa is by now caught in a general paradigm – that of the “failure of development” – that is also fed by the powerful idea of African societies’ “resistance” to modernisation. Therefore, if things go wrong, this must be put down to unspecified “cultural obstacles” rooted in a substantial rejection of civilisation and in the irrationality of traditional beliefs. The economist Serge Latouche (undated) in turn highlights how many western experts base their analyses on the assumption of the irrationality of non-western economic systems, even going as far as proposing measures that are detrimental for local economies, and suggest ruinous forms of rationalisation of the informal sector whose functioning they do not really understand.The same mechanism is denounced by Achille Mbembe (1991), who notes how everything that is not understood by economic analysts is derubricato as “African irrationality”, that leads one to even look benevolently and understandingly on phenomena like corruption and the clientele system. On another front, Mathieu Thévenin (2002) underlines how representations on the
Tribalism, irrationality and lack of self-control also emerge in apparently more neutral descriptions of Africa. In this regard, Melissa Wall, lecturer in journalism at a Californian university, wonders why the Washington Post described the jubilant crowds welcoming President Clinton in South Africa, during his 1998 trip, as a «mass of swarming humanity, croaking and dripping with sweat» or why Newsweek talked of the civil war in Rwanda as an «orgy of tribal massacre». The answer, in Wall’s view, is that these descriptions are easier and more immediate, in line with the still shared idea of African irrationality, so dear to the theorists of colonialism. These few examples would seem to suggest that, if the Myth of the North – in its more explicit forms – is no longer proposed, the binomial opposites it has generated are still very much alive. The categories of irrationality, of the incapacity to produce a civilisation, of the lack of self-government, continue to be re-proposed as short-cuts to cover gaps in knowledge, perhaps garnished with more politically correct expressions such as “cultural obstacle”, “social resistance” or “tribal conflict”. The substance, however, remains the same: even today, for many westerners, the south is a concentration point of negative values. The Myth of the North, therefore, still appears to have many unconscious adepts, and its uprooting from our visions of reality is no easy task. Translation: Franco Amodeo |
THE MYTH OF THE SOUTH
As an instance, here follows a brief outline of the contents of a book on the classification of nations written in 1068 by Said Ibn Ahmad, cadi of Toledo, and a book by Moslem geographer Masu'udi, dating back to the 10th century. This is worth reporting, if only to show the extent to which – in intercultural relations – the human mind is able to produce very different interpretations, building on the same essential and factual elements. The other populations included in this human group – those who have never shown an interest in science – are more akin to beasts than to man. For those who live in the extreme North, between the last of the seven climates and the margins of the inhabited world, the excessive distance between the sun and the zenith causes the air to be particularly cold and the sky to be thick with clouds; as a result, they have an insensitive nature, an uncouth character, a protruding belly, a pale complexion, long and lifeless hair. Thus, they are endowed with neither acumen nor vigorous
mind and are a prey to ignorance, apathy, lack of judgement and stupidity. L.d'A.
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