culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

WALLOON AND FLEMISH PARADIGMS
OF THE BELGIAN CULTURAL IDENTITY
1919: “Sir, there is no such things as a Belgian nation, what we have are Flemish
and Walloon communities.”
Walloonia in its turn, though facing an obvious decline in its economy and
many other insuperable crises, seems to timidly reborn out of its ashes, not
without questioning both the prospects of a glorious future and of a loss of its
identity. The Manifesto for the Walloon Culture, which eighty Francophone
artist and intellectuals signed in 1983, was a plea for a regional decentering of
the Belgian culture, as well as for Walloonia becoming a Francophone cultural
pole, different from both Brussels and Paris. Taking Quebec as a model, its
signatories argued their claim on the basis of seemingly irreconcilable structures
governing the two mentalities and the two spiritualities, bearers of a Latin versus
German ancestry (Govaert 2000). From the standpoint of social anthropology,
the character traits of the two ethnical groups are not genetically prescribed, but
in a permanent change. Quite recently, a work like To Dare to Be a Walloon,
signed by prominent Walloon intellectuals, has provoked a huge media scandal
due to the fact that its authors irreverently displaced the official image of an elite
culture (favoured by Brussels) with that of a “popular” Walloon culture (Govaert
2000). Walloonia proves thus as prone to voicing a separate identity as does
Flanders.
Nevertheless, in both provinces the locals are highly familiar with their
neighbours, be they those from the next village or the next town. This makes the
poor knowledge of the other community seem even more glaring. The Belgian
press is exclusively monolingual. The television channels also contribute to
strengthen the divisions along identity markers. The Other becomes fit to turn
into a media subject as far as a symbolic or anecdotic case is involved, which
makes unavoidable the use of clichés and generalities. The private Flemish
television channel VTM, launched in 1999 and strongly committed to promoting
the Flemish culture, has helped consolidate a powerful sense of identity. In the
South of the country, the Francophone celebrities prefer to take the route to Paris
in search of media recognition. The attempt of building a local identity is
doomed to fail because of the challenge brought by well-established French
channels. (Bailly 2005)
Nowadays, when the European Union is trying to abolish ethnic and
cultural frontiers, the Belgians are inventing new ones for themselves: the
linguistic border between Walloonia and Flanders runs at times along the E40
motorway. The toponyms that change every 15 km are likely to bewilder the
foreign tourist. And such differences are not merely cultural: the Walloons seem
more generous even when it comes to regulating the speed limit.
It is true that these linguistic conflicts have never degenerated into deadly
violence between the two communities. Nevertheless, in October 2007 the first
victims have appeared. The supporters of a united Belgium have started to take a
civic stand, ostentatiously hoisting the national flag in the midst of Flemish
villages. This process of partition may, nevertheless, claim much earlier
beginnings: it was in 1968 that the French Department of the University of
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