11 Zones of Interculturality in Identity Performance: Tales of Ladino from Sephardic Jews in...
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Transcript of 11 Zones of Interculturality in Identity Performance: Tales of Ladino from Sephardic Jews in...
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Leah Davcheva & Richard Fay
11th IALIC International Conference
Intercultural Dialogue: Current Challenges/Future Directions
(1) The research 1. the researched context
the complex multilingual / intercultural worlds of: ---- C20th and C21st Bulgaria---- the ‘endangered’ Ladino-speaking worlds of the Sephardim
the research context storytellers
fieldwork in Bulgaria and desk work also in Manchester
the researcher(s) context
intercultural and multilingual collaboration(s)
the research text
representation for different audiences, in different languages
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The researched context: Bulgarian intercultural and multilingual complexities […] people of the most varied backgrounds lived there
[Ruschuk], on any one day you could hear seven or eight languages. Aside from the Bulgarians, who often came from the countryside, there were many Turks, who lived in their own neighbourhood, and next to it was the neigbourhood of the Sephardim, the Spanish Jews – our neighbourhood. There were Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, Gypsies. From the opposite side of the Danube came Rumanians, there were also Russians here and there. [...] To each other, my parents spoke German, which I was not allowed to understand. To us children and to all relatives and friends, they spoke Ladino. That was the true vernacular, albeit an ancient Spanish, I often heard it later on and I've never forgotten it. The peasant girls at home knew only Bulgarian, and I must have learned it with them. All events of those first years were in Ladino or Bulgarian. (Elias Canetti, 1979: 6-10)
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The researched context: Ladino
Me llamo Reina Lidji y este es el nombre de mi vava que se llamava tambien Reina. Ella no sabia el bulgaro y por eso me hizo ambezar le djudeo-español par a poder avlar con mi. Me gusta muncho esta lingva por que grasias a ella pude conocer muncha gente de America Latina y de España, nuestra patria de antes quientientos años.
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The research context: storytellers & research processes
the Sephardimmiddle-aged and elderly Sephardic Jews – interviewed
in Bulgaria
fieldwork in Bulgaria - largely in Bulgariandata transcription and restorying – Bulgarian and
Englishdata analysis – Bulgarian and Englishresearcher discussions - in Englishresearch dissemination – in Bulgarian and English (and
Spanish?)5
The researcher context
Leah – Bulgarian, Sephardic, Ladino-memories from childhood, largely field-based, ‘insider’, experience of doing research multilingually
Richard – non-Bulgarian, non-Jewish, no Ladino memories, ‘outsider’, largely desk-based research experience
Shared – intercultural expertise, narrative research experience, Balkan interests (incl. history, music, culture, politics), and a history of collaborative research
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(2) Some methodological aspectsNarrative methodology (involving e.g. restorying)Collaborative , intercultural (involving differing
researchers)Reflexive (reciprocal reflexivity managed through
research stories)Multilingual – research about one language (Ladino),
through stories told largely in another (Bulgarian) as analysed and (re)presented in a third (English)
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(3) The data
14 interview transcriptions in Bulgarian14 stories restoried in Bulgarianthen translated into English
Corpus of portraits and photographs
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(4) Data analysis processto allow these voices to be heard [content-
holistic]to analyse them [content-categorical]‘Language death’ ….….. identity and intercultural dialogue
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Identity performanceNarrative Performance
narratives as meaning-making ‘performances’ situated in time, purpose, and audience
“Culture as a verb” (Street, 1993) gender and identity also as verbs –(e.g. Johnson, 1997)
Identity-work / identity performance “every social occasion is an opportunity for identity work” (Brittan, 1989:36) performativity (Butler, 1990) – gender / identity is not something we have but something we do (through language/narration)
Narratives as identity-work/performance (e.g. Block, 2006) narrative occasions in which the time, purpose, and audience ‘anchors’ help situate that identity-work/performance 10
Five zones of identity performancethe (intra-)personal --- a zone of internal dialogue;the domestic --- a zone for the family (especially relevant
during childhood, upbringing etc);the local --- a zone for the Sephardic community in Bulgaria;the diasporic --- a zone for the wider Sephardic Jewish
community (including mediated modes of communication through literature, newspapers, and journals); and
the international --- the international community of Spanish-users.
As set against the historically-, politically-, culturally-, and societally- changing Bulgarian Sephardic Jewish Ladino-oriented context(s)
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Sites of / opportunities for intercultural dialogue
the researched context the research context the researcher(s) context the research text
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Ladino and intercultural dialogueThis Ladino case study exemplifies the way in which we, as interculturalists, recognise and value the ever-changing cultural complexity of individuals, contexts, and eras. Whenever we do so, a vast vista of identity–performance opens up before us in which language and identity constantly interact. Such identity-performance is both individualised and contextualised. Its dynamics reflect and contribute to the situations in which the individuals are located. For example, whilst our storytellers’ Ladino informed identity-performance is now quite muted in Bulgaria, it opens up self-affirming possibilities in the international sphere.
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