speeches
Keynote address by U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker at the International Conference on Contemporary American Literature, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan
09/01/2005(As prepared for delivery)
Brigadier Aziz Ahmed Khan, Rector, National University of Modern Languages, Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, Chairman, Higher Education Commission, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen….
It is a pleasure and an honor for me to be here with you this afternoon to represent my government, and thereby signify the great importance we attach to this event. This kind of intellectual and cultural interchange plays a crucial role in fostering international understanding. The work of diplomats and officials is, of course, essential to maintaining peaceful relations among states. But in this age of democracy and modern communications, that work cannot succeed in the absence of empathy and understanding among peoples.
There are many ways in which this understanding can be fostered and enhanced, but literature is one of the most effective. The news media can inform us of events, and provide analysis and opinion. But it is through the vastly more nuanced and complex medium of arts and letters that we come to know one another as people. Art and literature have a special capacity to allow us to relive another’s thoughts, feelings, experiences; another’s truth, if you will. They can transport us to other times, cultures, and realities and allow us to see and feel them through eyes and sensibilities other than our own. This is a powerful form of communication, a kind of interpersonal diplomacy. In an age when the lives of people all over the world are more and more densely interwoven, such communication is crucial.
American literature, like the rest of American culture, has always seemed to me to be marked by a special dynamism and diversity, born of the creative – sometimes tumultuous – encounter with the unfamiliar. Those who came from the Old World to the New were, I have to think, a self-selected group. Whatever they were seeking – land, riches, freedom from political, religious or social oppression – they were the ones ready and willing to leave behind all they had known to make a new start on a vast, largely unexplored continent. Today, we would probably characterize most of them as having an especially high risk tolerance. At the time, many of those who stayed behind seem to have considered them either foolhardy or desperate. History has richly vindicated those who went in search of the new.
These first immigrants to America naturally brought with them Old World institutions, habits of mind, ways of doing things. Some would prove useful, others, like slavery, would prove tragically pernicious. But in all cases, the necessity of adapting these habits and institutions to the unfamiliar conditions meant that something new would be made of that inheritance. It was, however, more than just material necessity that from the outset drove the process of change and innovation in American culture. There was a broadly shared awareness that the new land offered the opportunity to realize the aspirations of the European Enlightenment; to create a new kind of human society, freed from the weight of history. In America, it was believed, rigid social hierarchy, oppressive government, dynastic politics and religious intolerance would have no place. All the evils of the Old World might be left behind, and mankind’s natural goodness could be allowed to flourish, drawing upon what seemed at the time to be the limitless resources of the new continent. No thoughtful person even then believed that realizing these ideals would be easy, and it has, as we all know, proven to be quite a struggle, with the work still in progress.
So there was a sense – a determination even – that whatever America would become, it would be different; something not previously known in history. This optimism and sense of difference has been at the core of our national identity, our national Mythos. The American commitment to democracy, individual freedom, and tolerance, as well as our love affair with change, are all tied to some extent to this sense of newness and difference. Allied to this is the belief that, in spite of inevitable lapses and abuses, people governed by institutions of their own making will, in the end, produce a just society ensuring the greatest common good. There are many days when that belief is challenged, but it has remained unshaken down the centuries of our history.
The search for a distinctive literary "voice" that would in some form convey that "American Difference" has itself been a long, complex and fascinating affair, and the last I checked, it was still going on. At least there seems still to be a lot of discussion about whether any such thing exists and what its essential traits might be. That’s your job. For my part, whatever other characteristics an "American Voice" might have, ever-increasing diversity must be somewhere near the top of the list. As people from all over the world have come to our shores to confront the challenges of making their place in the new land, they have become part of the "American Difference," and added their own distinctive voices, their own truth, to the changing mix.
You are gathered here today to exchange ideas about the American literature of our own time. By doing so, you make an important contribution to our understanding of what America is, what it might become, and what that may mean to the global community. That might make my job easier, or it might make it more complicated. But either way, it will measurably enhance the likelihood that all of us together will succeed in bringing about a just, peaceful and prosperous world. And for that, I thank you.