Vuvuzelas: Deconstructing Postcolonial Legos

Today UEFA banned the vuvuzelas. Uefa’s argued that the “buzzing” sound drowned out the crowd’s emotional response to the match. This background “noise” diluted “the culture and tradition of Europe.” And no. The President of UEFA is French and his last name starts with P, but he not Le Pen.

Now if you will briefly indulge me, let’s go hunting for Huntington.

I have two fundamental theses: culture is dynamic and amorphous. And vuvuzelas are annoying. For those unfamiliar with Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” paper, he basically asserted that in the post-Cold War era major conflicts would swell from the clash of 7 or 8 major “cultural identities.” He used this explanation as a call to arms – the Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalist democracy could no longer assume univeralism, but must fight battles and philosophies to justify its existence.

Often, though, the mask of univeralism belies a specific motive. France banned all religious symbols in public schools, but really targeted the hijab. FIFA, though, targeted a specific item, the vuvuzela, and made no attempt to hide its explanation – the preservation of “culture.” What culture?

Platini has failed to adequately describe the European football culture. I’m not so sure the atmosphere at matches in Spain and England can be compared, let alone equated as one collective identity. I also have a problem with the notion of a static identity – thousands of Africans immigrate to Europe each year. Do they not form a part of the European identity?

So, in sum, the culture argument is so amorphous that it can be used to mask underlying racist assumptions and prejudices. In this case, I don’t believe that’s true. However, the arguments we form and adopt should be judged as equally as the goals we hope to achieve.

The vuvuzela annoys me. Uefa should have banned the plastic apparatus because of the public/private nuisance of the noise decibels. While I’m sure culture plays a part in my disdain for the buzzzzzzzz, an example from my daily life comes to mind.

As a Mexican American/Hispanic with neighbors that occasionally blast “Machucando” at 2 in the morning, we should not allow “culture” to be an excuse or explanation for actions that violate certain norms. I do not feel a twinge of Latin solidarity with my Puerto Rican brethren when I have to assist the world’s greatest footballer in going to sleep for a second time.

So, on a certain level, I disagree with Huntingon and Platini for the same reason – the rejection of universalism and acceptance of “culture/relativism” puts us at the whims of sociology professors. Yikes.

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