Culture vs. the Individual: Striking A Balance

Should culture come before the individual?

Does your culture define you or even own you?

Or as it has been put by someone (I'm not sure who, I read it in a piece by Peter Wood in Social Science and Modern Society) "you belong to your culture more than it belonged to you."

I know that culture has overcome me sometimes. My first visit to Italy left me with quite the moving impression. I went in ignorant of its culture and history came out wanting to know more.

I had no previous conscious attachment to it. All I knew was that Canada (the United States is different) told me I was an Italian-Canadian - which always struck me as odd. Sure, my upbringing was, for all intents and purposes, Italian (diet, language, mannerisms etc.) but it never led me to stake my claim as an Italian. To many people live vicariously through another country.

My older used to bitterly joke, "Italy was on the wrong side during WWII." It was a reactionary statement to identity politics and to my father I suppose. Now she speaks perfect Italian and appreicates the culture. My younger sister proclaimed one day that she was abstaining from tomato sauces for some reason. Needless to say, my mother (a second generation Canadian and a divine cook) stood motionless and speechless. "B-b-but..." The self-imposed ban and backlash did not last.

Yet, despite all these inner-conflicts it all changed when we visited Italy in 1990. We learned to separate North American Italians from European Italians.

A feeling of "ah, this is where I'm from" did pulsate through us. The nation seemed to speak to us on so many levels it simply blew our minds. It didn't take long for us to realize Italians were/are mad (and sad) geniuses. Later on, my younger cousin, who travelled the world and loved every aspect of it, experienced the same sense when his body entered Italy.

But is this a question of blood and culture? Does it mean we lost part of our individualism? I read somewhere years ago, that "Italy overwhelms those who resist it." Surely this was meant to include non-Italians too? I have known many "outsiders" who understood the Italian mind, language or culture far better than Italians who carried empty flags in their back pockets.

How do you define culture at that point? We've all met Anglo-philes, Franco-philes, Italo-philes, etc. People of different cultural backgrounds attaching themselves to a host culture. In a way, given our immigration history, are we not all de-facto Ameri-philes or Canadi-philes?

Which comes back to the question, are we slaves to culture?

In Quebec, culture comes first. Personally, the individual should always take precedence.