Friday, September 14, 2007

The Culture of "Non"

The only real requirement as a Fellow-in-Residence at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall, apart from a 15 minute research presentation, is the weekly tea.

Yesterday, we had our first featuring tea from the venerable Parisian tea shop Marriage Freres (we drank Marco Polo). We made our way around the table introducing ourselves and our research projects. It's an impressive group, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot by being here. The director
of the Institute, Dr. Danielle Haase-Dubosc, and one of the Research Coordinators, Dr. Mihaela Bacou, hosted the gathering, and engaged the group in a lively conversation about everyone's research. It was a warm welcome, both socially and intellectually.

When one of the other participants told us that she was having difficulty getting access to an archive in Dijon, Danielle told us something that we probably all knew from our experience, but I had never heard it put quite so well: the first response of most French people, she said, was to say "non."

According to her theory, the French are collectively stuck at that moment of the "terrible twos" that every child goes through when he or she learns to say "no," thereby beginning to establish a separate identity. According to Danielle, French culture had not gotten past this point of saying "no."

And there are many ways to say no: "Non." "Non, non, non." "C'est impossible!" "Ah, non." She quickly ticked off some of the ways. But, she said, persistence is the key, and usually you can get past the "non." These kinds of sweeping generalizations are dangerous, of course, and not always true. But everyone in the room, including Danielle and Mihaela, chuckled knowingly, memories of such incidents coming back to mind.

I purchased an international phone card to call the US, and I tried it for the first time today. After dialing a multitude of digits, the digitized voice on the other end of the line said that there were too many calls in the system to complete mine and that I should try back later. France Telecom was essentially saying, "Non, c'est impossible!" and shrugging its shoulders. I'll try again later, hoping that persistence will indeed pay off.

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