Being A Responsible Citizen of the Floating World

How do we choose to be a responsible citizen of the floating world in out lives despite being surrounded by hope and despair? For those not familiar with the “floating world”, it is referred to as “a still point between briefly held earthly pleasures and spiritual immutability” in Rob Burton’s book Artists of the Floating World.  Burton provides some great answers to this question in this book. After reading Artists of the Floating World, the answers to this question seem to stand out from four different viewpoints of the four very different authors talked about in Burton’s book. These authors are Bessie Head, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and Bharati Mukherjee.  Each author has a different writing style, has a different culture background, and was raised with different traditions. Kazuo Ishiguro is the first artist I would like to look at.

An excerpt from Burton’s book: “Firstly, to be a citizen of the floating world is to recognize and acknowledge the narratives that constitute our identity…”  This seems to sum up Ishiguro’s book in a nutshell and how it relates to this topic. The book in which I am referring to is An Artist of the Floating World. Masuji Ono is the main character in this book leading us (the reader) to believe he is this good individual with no flaws. As we find out later on, he has many secrets which are revealed and he turns out not to be all he has lead us on to be. Ono often finds himself on the “bridge of hesitation” in the novel, contemplating what he is going to reveal to us and his past decisions in his life. As Burton puts it in his book, we must recognize our past and live with it. It is a part of our identity that defines who we are and it may not always necessarily be good, but we cannot run away from it or deny it. Burton provides a good view in this excerpt from his book Artists of the Floating World:

“…we like to believe the choices we make in life can afford us a sense of dignity and honor; it is only when we learn how to stand out side ourselves, literally seeing ourselves as a character in a novel, that we come to realize the extent to which our choices are compromised both by values consciously or unconsciously adopted by ourselves and by the communities to which we belong.”

I would like to share this except from Burton’s book: “Secondly, to be a citizen of the floating world is to make ethical choices when framing our understanding of the world…”  The next author I would like to look at is Bessie Head and her book A Question of Power.  Bessie is usually considered Botswana's most important writer. She was born in South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. Her mother was apparently mentally ill.  She moved to Botswana in 1964 as a refugee when she was old enough to. It took 15 years before Head was given Botswana citizenship.  This book lets you experience a mental breakdown of the character Elizabeth, which could be argued that Bessie suffered as well. This book is almost written as a biography of Bessie Head, the main character, Elizabeth, is undergoing similar events. The character in the book is battling personal “demons” and imaginary characters as she is trying to find where she belongs in this world.  She is desperately trying to find a frame (of reference, maybe) that she could model her life to and define herself in the world.  Bessie seemed to live in a frameless life with no real direction on which to lead her.  Burton provides some good insight of this in this excerpt from his book:

“… to be aware that while a frame can afford an important structuring device for understanding of the world, it can also prove to be severely limiting and restrictive….How we position ourselves to see the world, to interact with it, is important.”

 “Thirdly, to be a citizen of the floating world is to be attentive to the subaltern voices that circulate widely in a media-saturated world.” This is the next supportive topic that seems to be apparent in this short discussion.  “Two Ways to Belong in America” is another good resource to look at when discussing this as well.  Bharati Mukherjee takes on the topic in her book Jasmine.  In this book, the main character Jasmine is suddenly widowed at seventeen and it seems fated that she will live a life of quiet isolation in the small Indian village where she was born.  Not content with this, her desires take her into a larger, more dangerous, and life giving world, the United States.  There she moves from place to place, changing her identity as she moves on. She becomes Jane Ripplemeyer, pregnant by a middle-aged Iowa banker in the story at some point. She seems to undergo a metamorphosis into the making of an American mind.  This story seems to depict the shifting contours of an American being transformed by her and others like her.  So are the subaltern voices in this story being heard by Jasmine or by the reader? Is this what Jasmine is modeling her life after in the story? Subaltern voices can be a number of things from everyday people, corporate sized messages impressed onto us, or even media based messages passed on through technology.  It can be seen that we all are listening to these voices unconsciously and don’t realize it.  As Burton puts it in his book:

“A citizen of the floating world recognizes and acknowledges that the subaltern is actually a part of themselves, that when they are listening and talking to the subaltern, they are actually listening and talking to parts of themselves that may have been ignored for a long time.”

“Finally, to be a citizen of the floating world is to heed the lesson learned from “the Salman Rushdie affair.”  As you would figure, Salman Rushdie is the last author I would like to talk about.  He had to resort to years of hiding after a price was put on his head when publishing his book The Sanatic Verses. Salman Rushdie’s book East,West is filled with satire and secular words that he is so renown for. This is a collection of short stories can be viewed to have cultural meaning, real meaning, or even looked at from a religious viewpoint. He seems to take his First Amendment rights to the extreme in his work.  Two short stories in the book, “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” and “The Prophet’s Hair”, contain a good amount of satire that must be interpreted in a good manner.  But we must all be careful when doing this sort of writing and take a lesson from Rushdie so that we undergo the same circumstances or worse that he experienced.  Burton explains this very well in this excerpt from his book:

“Whether one believes in the sanctity of God’s Word or the secularity of human words, it is important to recognize the importance of words as carriers of cultural meaning.  Despite the often-invoked privilege of freedom of speech sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution, it is also true that when we use words, we have a responsibility to do so with care and precision.  Misunderstandings or misinterpreting the meaning and intention of words can literally mean the difference between life and death in certain circumstances.”

So when addressing the question again, we can look at these points to guide us in being a responsible citizen of the floating world.  Just being a well structured, confident person with guiding morals seems to be an overview answer to this question.  I feel that I personally was raised to have this principles ingrained into my mind when going out into the world with school and all my decisions so far in life and will continue to guide me as I approach my professional life with my career.  I believe that I am a responsible citizen of the floating world.