Fusion Stories - 7. Melting Pot by Guest Blogger: David Grey

David Grey is a filmmaker and former sociologist, psychotherapist and teacher. He is the founder of Village Film and the Dog and Hat Film Society, based in South London. He contributes this thought-provoking piece to the Fusion Stories series.

David writes:

This is a great project. What fascinates me is the assumption that people have “a” (sic) “culture from their country of origin” and that they can “live in another culture”. How does this apply to me?

I was born in (French-speaking) Senegal, first went to a (French) school in Finland. Grew up alternating between London and parts of France, where I was educated bilingually. I could have taken French nationality having been born in Senegal. “France” was of course a construct based on conquest and the repression of languages and cultures in Brittany, the Languedoc, Provence, and Corsica. Judging by my grandparents, I am 3/4 Welsh and 1/4 English, yet I think of myself as English, as in the Cricket Test.

English being a linguistic fusion of several different peoples speaking similar but different branches of the Germanic languages, themselves a branch of the Indo-European languages, linking peoples from India to the Atlantic in a common linguistic tradition. I grew up within a family divided between Lancashire and Yorkshire / Derbyshire parents. At school I was mocked for having a “northern accent”. When visiting relatives on Merseyside, I was mocked for being a “Cockney”. Whatever I “am” now, I also think of myself as a “South Londoner” and a “European”.

My son has me and an “English” mother. Her father was a Polish Jew who fled to Russia then London in the last war. Her mother is a Swiss of Germanic background, but also Jewish, and of intermediate Russian origin. And speaks French. And has dual UK / Swiss nationality, not to mention the right to settle in Israel via that country’s law of return. (As does my son and his mother)

Please can you tell me what is the “culture from my country of origin”? And am I or am I not “living in another culture”?

Ditto my son? As a Jew he is rooted in a 3,000 year old middle eastern culture. And would doubtless qualify for extermination in any future Nazi state. And he supports Chelsea and says “wicked!” and eats bacon ‘cos he likes it.

My conclusion: MOST if not ALL of us have “fusion” stories to tell.

During the Third Reich a large number of people were killed who had not even known they were “Jewish”, because grandparents or parents had converted and they had not been informed of their origin, hence a bit of a dual shock on the train to Auschwitz. Being inclusive, the Nazis exterminated people with a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, even though within the Jewish tradition that made them “goyim” or non-Jews.

“England” (formerly Wessex, Mercia etc.), “Great Britain” (formerly England, Scotland and Wales) and “United Kingdom” (GB + Northern Ireland - itself a fusion of Irish, Scots and British, with some Viking genes thrown in) are ALL fusion concepts, BEFORE anyone comes here from anyone else. And many Cornish people argue they do not belong in any of those constructs.

Then, to take you as an example, you don’t have to spend long studying “Chinese” history to discover that “Chinese” is also a fusion construct, even before people migrate to Malaysia etc., and on elsewhere. And which is your country of origin - China or Malaysia?

Did you know that Icelanders reveal overwhelming mitochondrial DNA (passed from the mother) with Scottish origin, indicating that the original Icelanders were made up of Norse men and Scottish women. But then “Scottish” is a concept that refers now to an alleged nation North of England, but originally “Scottii” was the Roman / Latin name given to a tribe from the Irish island who conquered what is now Argyll.

Humans have been a fusion species since we started wandering out of the Rift Valley. Palaeontologists are still arguing whether or not we used to mate with the Neanderthals!

Written by Fusion View Guest Blogger: David Grey

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You can view the 5 minute version of David’s film about political prisoners the Grenada 17, Here’s Some They Locked Up Earlier, at the Channel 4 documentary site:

http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/film/film-detail.jsp?id=8061