Virtual walk

Themes of the exhibition:
(All photos (except 2a and 4c images) of Krisztina Sarnyai. All rights reserved.)

1. The scandal of diversity
   The diversity of cultures dates back to the beginnings of mankind and is a notion deeply rooted in our mythology. In the biblical passage of the Tower of Babel, it was through divine intervention that languages came to be confused
   and that people were scattered over the face of the earth. Seeing humans combining their forces to build a tower that would reach the heavens, God (YHWH) decided to punish their presumption and to confuse their language so that
   they could no longer understand each other's speech. In Hebrew, Babel (or bavel) means "confusion." It is for this reason that the exhibition begins inside an unfinished and unsteady tower.

   

    

2. Ourselves, the only true human beings
   “Humanity is confined to the borders of the tribe, the linguistic group, or even, in some instances, to the village, so that many so-called primitive peoples describe themselves as 'the men' (or sometimes though hardly more discreetly as 'the good', 'the excellent', 'the well-achieved'), thus implying that the other tribes, groups or villages have no part in the human virtues or even in human nature, but that their members are, at best, 'bad', 'wicked', 'groundmonkeys', or 'lousy eggs.' ” (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 11)

   
    

3. We all are ethnocentric!
   Being ethnocentric means thinking that we are the only ones who know how to take care of ourselves, how to dress and eat properly, the only ones endowed with genuine knowledge, justice, true morality and civilized mores.
   However, ethnocentricity is by no means confined to Westerners. Foreigners, too, look with disapproval or rejection at certain of our own practices. This section illustrates in various ways how they view our society, our way of life or our habits. Discovering ourselves through the other’s eye can be as surprising as amusing.

   
    

4. The Other as monster?
   Whether because information was scanty or because direct contacts with people living in faraway lands was lacking, the European imagination projected onto these communities all sorts of fantastic visions, nurtured not only by legend and prejudice but also by disturbing realities, such as freaks of nature. Hence, cultural or racial differences came to be expressed in terms of moral or biological deformity.

   The monster is born from the misinterpretation of the Other, the mysteries around him, and the raising fear; as it is suggested by the atmosphere of the strange, dark forest. Besides, the Other – as a fantasy – is part of our ethnography, too. The monster lives on in the deformed faces of the Busó carnival masks, or in those of the Alpine tradition, in the ogres of our fairy stories or even in the popular stories of Frankenstein or Dracula, contemporary creatures of the movie industry that represent the ambivalent monster and continue to haunt the popular imagination

    
    

5. The Other as godless heathen?
   “In the Greater Antilles, a few years after the discovery of America, while the Spaniards were sending out Commissions of investigation to discover whether or not the natives had a soul, the latter spent their time drowning white prisoners in order to ascertain, by long observation, whether or not their bodies would decompose. […] By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most 'savage' or 'barbarous' of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes.” (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 11.)

    
    

6. The Indian today
   In spite of the cruelty of conquest and the new diseases brought in by colonizers, the Indians have not disappeared. Most South American countries keep the Indian heritage, and the Indian elements are important parts of national cultures. Many people are proud of their Indian origins, artists readily deal with the figure of the Indian, and even politicians talk about their Indian roots. The figure of the Indian, though representative of extreme – attractive as well as worrying – difference, survived the age of the conquest. It appeared and has become part of the local culture even in regions so far away and not much affected by the conquest of America as Central Europe

    
   
   

7. The Other as animal?
   With the emergence of physical anthropology, the approach to other peoples was rationalized and consolidated into a scientific discipline. Scientists began by comparing and classifying human beings according to their physical
   appearance and anatomical structure and related these to their level of social organization or degree of technological development. Thus, certain populations were placed on the same level as primates and monkeys, while the white
   European was set on a pedestal as the model of perfection.

    
    

8. The Other as primitive?
   A form of symbolic exploitation is when we show the Other as an object of sexual desire: the more impossible to acquire the more desirable it is. The quest for the exotic created the link between the “Hottentot Venus” – born with unusual physical characteristics, and “exhibited” in Paris and England at the beginning of the 19th century –; the popular black dancer, or the “Black Venus” a hundred years later; the representations of the odalisque in the harem of the East; and the young seducing Gypsy woman presented in many classics of Hungarian cinema.

    
    

9. The Other as the object of scientific inquiry?
   “The sense of gratitude and respect which each single member of a given culture can and should feel towards all others can only be based on the conviction that the other cultures differ from his own in countless ways, even if
   the ultimate essence of these differences eludes him or if, in spite of his best efforts, he can reach no more than an imperfect understanding of them.” (Lévi-Strauss 1952: 44.)

   The ethnographic texts on show here have been selected from the classic anthropological literature. They all focus on how institutions, rituals, myths, values and identity acquire meaning for the culture that produces them.

    
    

10. The Other living with us
    The increase in the flows of migration and the pace of exchanges between various regions of the world is making societies more permeable to outside influences, leaving a wider room for interactions, intermingling and multiculturalism. The other community no longer lives in a faraway land, isolated from the rest of the world.  Today, the other is our neighbour, our colleague, our partner. The contemporary heroes of the documentary films presented in the last room of the exhibition are recent or long-time immigrants who speak about their experiences concerning migration, the difficulties of adaptation, and their hopes. The films are intended to show how, in everyday practice, through discussion, negotiation or mediation, individuals are working to accommodate the specific problems raised by the ever increasing contacts between different communities.

    

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Bibliography:Claude Levi-Strauss (1952). Race and History. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).