Define Your Own Success. With Jilly Traganou. Part III
This is the final part of my interview with Jilly Traganou. To view her background story and the first two parts, check Does Our English Accent Matter? and The Personal Boundaries In America.
Q: So apart from this, is there any other similar work that inspires you? Those that tease with identities.
J: There are these coming-of-age novels. I read some of them because my daughter was also reading them. For instance, this Marriage Plot by Greek American author Jeffrey Eugenides. He's also the author of Middlesex which is even more relevant to our conversation.
The Middlesex is about someone who discovers, in the middle of life, that she is he. This novel was written many years before the transgender questions became visible. I see Middlesex as a word pun because it is both the name of the place where they live and in reference to a gender identity that is experienced as middle sex. It starts with a very straightforward story: Detroit, a Greek American family, all the diasporic history it carries, starting with the grandparents coming to the U.S. from Asia Minor. And then at some point like in the middle of the novel, we realize this girl is entering adolescence and something is different for her. It takes us through all this kind of struggling in realizing that she belongs to a different gender than she is raised. Then she leaves her parents’ house, because the family continues living with “her” even though the doctor says differently. It’s a really good novel because it really addresses identity in all its complexity, ethnic identity, gender identity, and in many ways also class identity. It is a truly intersectional novel..
Q: That's what I found good about novels. It can carry so many questions without giving any singular answer.
J: Yeah, exactly.
Q: Because things like identities and what we just talked about, it is not something we can clearly conclude with “oh, this is good” or “this is bad”. It's not just one, two, three options and you pick one.
Street Message: Happy Halloween from a soldier of the Terracotta Army who’s dressed to be Santa Claus and Chanel
J: Yes. Definitely. What I found here in the US in this era of identity politics is that many people “sell” their identity in the way they really emphasize too much their ethnic background as something that defines who they are. They would really make an effort to make their work, for instance, appear as Greek or Japanese or Asian by replicating stereotypes, being minimalist for instance as a trademark of Japaneseness. This is always surprising to me especially when concerning people from communities that I know well, such as the Greeks. I am especially disappointed when I see people who had questioned or rebelled against Greek stereotypes and now accept and replicate them acritically. Suddenly they bring these things with them as if they are treasures. Of course, nostalgia plays a role, but also these very things start serving you here in a different way, they can appear as your point of difference from the others, as our selling point, while they might be the things that you escaped from. And they become like the trademarks of your brand. And I saw this happening, not only with Greek Americans, but also with other people. You see this in benign things such as the cuisine, but also books, literature which are products of these hyphenated identities. And sometimes it can be very genuine, like this author we mentioned before, but in many cases, I feel these identities are fabricated, for not to say pre-fabricated, as if they follow a recipe. It feels to me like selling your identity, by accepting the stereotype, following the easy route. We see this a lot in design, of course.
Q: Has the experience of being an immigrant affected your work or your study of the subject?
J: Yeah, I worked for a long time on the subject of post-national identity in design, for example in this book, questioning nationality not only when someone adopts an external point of view, but also from the perspective of the nation itself. When I started looking at design for the Olympics, that was my starting question: how design expresses identity, but not in a way that it only reflects and perpetuates the established identity of a given host country. But rather how the Olympics become or may become opportunities for exploring and questioning identity, and attempt to redefine identity in a way that would take into account the others. Both the external others and the internal ones whose identities have been suppressed by the established national narratives And at that moment in Greece, in 2004 with the Athens Olympics, there were many external others from those who wanted to invest in Greece to those who came as immigrants. But through my research I also discovered that there were many internal others too. Groups with different religions, or small ethnic minorities who were not even allowed to speak their own languages, etc. Identities that contradicted the idea that we, modern Greeks, come from the ancient Greeks and are a homogenous group.
Q: How do you feel about the idea that modern Greeks come from the ancient Greeks?
J: Of course this mythology is not true, even though Greece wanted to sell this idea to everyone both outside and inside the country, especially with the opportunity of the Olympic Games. This idea of ethnic purity and ancient origin was Greece’s selling point at the time, which we saw many Greeks also adopting individually. While you can say that in the US there is a license to have this kind of hyphen-identity, purity is not celebrated as in a country like Greece or Japan. You can be Chinese-American, Greek-American, you can celebrate your own distinct culture in your little ethnic enclave. But at the same time when it comes to when people are altogether, there is a dominant culture which is neither Greek-American nor Chinese-American. So yes, at your house or somewhere within confines, you're allowed to be Greek-American, and this is acceptable or even commodified. But it can never become the norm outside of this. The norm and the collective cultural code, the acceptable etiquette, is already established by the dominant white Anglo-saxon identity.
Olympic Games are opportunities for the host countries as well as for groups related to them to re-establish their identities. Here is a picture of the protest against Vancouver Olympic Games 2010
Q: Does this feel like belonging in a Subculture?
J: Yeah, in the sense that the hyphen-cultures are on the side or secondary to the main culture. So in that sense, even though in the beginning it seems that here there is more freedom to belong to such a subculture, at the same time, there's a hierarchy that sets the boundaries. That’s why there’s a “glass ceiling”. It’s transparent, but it’s a wall. It does separate and stop people. But a note to this: I don’t see anything subversive about this type of subculture (unlike the ones such as the punk movement that Hebdige who used the word subculture discusses in his book). They can be equally repressive and reactionary.
Q: I see very clearly here how power is in control, like the structure gives certain people more power than others. But one of my Chinese friends, he also lives here, said the other day, which I relate with, that this might be a country full of freedom. But it’s not the freedom of having things equally, it’s just a place that you have the freedom to fight for things you asked for. And that's It. Having things you want is not given. It could be very difficult.
J: Yes. Like the mythology that this country is full of business opportunities and social mobility. But that's not the case even for American-born people anymore. Because statistics show that as an American your future is determined by the zip code where you were born.
Q: Really?
J: Yeah, until perhaps the baby boomers there was evidence of social mobility in the U.S. and people could advance socially or make money even if they came from very poor areas or families. There were no class limits as in the old world, in Europe for instance. And there were many people who incarnated this kind of ideal. It was a reality for many, or at least a real possibility. But now this cannot easily happen anymore, there is very little social mobility, especially for men. I am not sure if there are any statistics about the social mobility of immigrants, vis-a-vis the status they had or they would have in their home countries, but from experience I see that things are very difficult for immigrants too, including cultural migrants.
So I am curious: how do you compare yourself with your US-born peers. Do you see that there are different opportunities between you, having been a foreign student in the US, and them? Do you see more opportunities for the majority of them after graduating?
Q: Yeah, because we have visa issues. I don't have any proof that others can feel easier, but it wasn't easy for me. I don't feel like I was discriminated. I don't have proof for it. I think what I’m doing right now is what I chose. And I’m happy about it.
J: Yeah. It seems to me that with your workshops you are developing something which is very helpful to people who are facing similar situations with you as immigrants. And it might be interesting to bring these people together even if they come from different backgrounds in order to exchange experiences and think together. And it will be very different if you mix with people who have not encountered language problems, for example. But what is very important for me is that participants in the workshops should be always aware of their own values, and that they should not always try to comply with the value systems they find in the new place they are.
There are ways of achieving your goals, of excelling, of being happy that are not visible in the outside world. And this is a very real place too, of which we should be reminded of when we think of what constitutes success or recognition or achievement.
IN SYNC panel discussion: Know Yourself
Q: Yeah, I think I get that, especially what you said about the value system. For example, it's not realistic to compare ourselves with our peers in the country where we're from and use them as part of the source of our peer pressure. Because we're going through such a different path, they got houses, cats, cars, but this is a different life. I think I've already past this stage, but this is the value that my work expresses. I know many people, especially women, who are well-educated but for visa they have to work at home or do a freelancing job and I feel I don't consider them less successful.
J: Absolutely. They face different situations and they cannot be directly compared either with people back home (in their own country) or with the people here who are local or come from other demographics.
You can't constantly think of what you haven’t achieved. If you just reverse the question, then you might only compare yourself with yourself, with your multiple selves as you mature and change. That's the most important thing to feel accomplishing what you're striving to do, rather than adopting other criteria, other agendas that come from other people's lives.
Q: So you have to take ownership of your own success. Right?
J: Yeah, exactly. You can't constantly think of what you haven’t achieved. If you just reverse the question, then you might only compare yourself with yourself, with your multiple selves as you mature and change. That's the most important thing to feel accomplishing what you're striving to do, rather than adopting other criteria, other agendas that come from other people's lives.
Q: But that takes time.
J: It takes time to get there. Because all the media around us present certain pathways of the “successful” ones. But there are also different pathways to thoughtful life that are not that visible.
Q: I just feel there is not enough agency to explore ourselves in some way.
J: We must find ways to understand ourselves not only based on what we're good at and what our strengths are, resume-kind of standards, but some other criteria, that derive from our own values and desires, which others might not see or recognize. And when you see where you are in comparison to others, it might seem unimportant, but if you look at it from your own value system, you see things that can make you feel really happy, or of course regretful, things that nobody can see in your CV or facebook page.
How can you stay true to yourself to your own process of becoming--which as you said, in the beginning, Adichie’s heroine manages to do so well--despite all the changes, is the question.