Anthony Licari
If one were to seek appreciation of a well-thought and worked out paper to read and defend during an academic event, one would perhaps include universities in the North West and South of France, Comenius University in Bratislava, the Council of Europe Language Centre (ECML) in Graz and the College of Communication and Business in Budapest - which is a brilliant composite endeavour. This choice of venues is not due to habit and tradition, but especially because, in these places, one comes across people enquiring of you dispassionate, objective opinions about your culture - inclusive of language - your attitude towards other cultures and the mentality regarding work and social emancipation in your and other countries. This does not mean that you may compose your paper with relaxing nonchalance, as your performance is also a source of pride for yourself and the country you represent. Pride is thus a necessary feature in individual and national personality build-up. Pride is also the opposite of complex.
At such events, the best people you may talk to are those who have an open mind about the relation between the geographical size of your country and aspirations of success in various fields. Some people you meet who have been tourists in Malta (incidentally some who have never been to Malta presumptively claim to know more about it than those who have been), may have the impression that there is here a massive obsession with entertainment as the major modus vivendi pushing us to look forward to living. This is a partial illusion and an example I sometimes come across is that entertainment in Malta is associated to any activity - which is basically a good thing. (Remember the idea of "Mathemematics is fun" though nobody I know does Maths instead of a good concert?). A Human Relations Officer tells me that the young people she interviews as prospective employees also like to ask about the entertaining initiatives the company organises. Let us not be too surprised at this for some writers over the generations, such as Emile Zola, have ages ago described picnics, parties and musical dinners that companies regularly organised for their employees with planned marriages discussed behind the bushes.
As a point of departure where discussion with other people is concerned, I tend to avoid those who talk mostly in criticism of their town, village or country. As I am not a confessor understanding the faults that exist around them in their places of origin and shoring them up courageously in atonement of their enjoyable sins, I prefer talking to those who smile - rather than weep - while describing failed or successful projects, solutions and innovations. Obviously those who believe that your area of origin in square kilometres is compatible with the limitations of thought and ideas you may possibly come up with, are to be avoided like strange creatures. These are people who suffer from a size complex considering you a surprising extraordinary exception to be Maltese and have an idea at the same time. If you have more than one idea, there is something terribly wrong with you as you are a living example of complexity and contradiction.
In the same manner, inviting people abroad to listen to your municipal and national doldrums, does not generally make you an interesting subject of conversation - except for psychologically charitable reasons. They may listen to your weeping, sadness and anxiety and you may think that these understanding individuals are expressing solidarity with your socio-geographical background, while the more probable reality is that they are showing solidarity with you personally and psychologically.
I have been abroad in seminars, workshops and conferences in different cities over several years. Whoever was in government in Malta at any time or another, I always spoke about "My Government, My Prime Minister" whether I had a personal ideological affinity or sympathy with the government or Prime Minister concerned. (Indeed I never had massive enthusiasm for any Prime Minister especially as they did not try hard enough to behave in imitation of me.) This is not for simple patriotic reasons, but rather because you may, basically, only impress the more emotional, less intellectual, foreign lovers of telenovelas with a nostalgia for colonialism which they do not recognise as a shameful adventure in exploitation more than anything else. Secondly, should your main subject of conversation be the pot holes in your pavements and the ennui of some parliamentary discussion back home or the waiting period at your health clinics, your interlocutor will probably be thinking "But who gives a damn about the litres of national tears this bloke is exporting for the benefit of our patient boredom?" Can't s/he possibly say something more clever like, for example, the dumping of bendy-buses on Malta - which profound reflection earned someone no less than the post of Foreign Minister!
Alternatively, you may be asked about what you personally, as an academic, have proposed municipally or nationally to the improvement of things. And this is where you feel respected and perhaps admired - obviously if you explain workable solutions. You will not be saying anything original if you state that some politicians frustrate you by staring at your suggestions for years and years. These things happen, though I am not specifically saying that politicians are things. Or only when they take advice from boring bureaucrats with well-ironed shirts and boorishly crumpled ties who repeatedly tell them - and convince them - that procedure has every right to block social progress!
Solutions are possible only with a positive attitude. No amount of weeping in foreign centres of discussion will produce positive results locally, as foreign listeners are more interested in their laundry and menus - apart from those busybodies with a natural inclination to enjoy telenovalas as their major source of intellectual satisfaction.
Dr Anthony Licari has an academic background of Human Sciences from various French Universities.