Chicago’s Challenge to Henry’s Universal Understanding of Foreigners

In “The Beggar’s Play: Poverty, Coercion, and Performance in Shenyang, China” (2009), Eric Henry investigates the Shenyang beggars “theatrical” interaction with foreigners, specifically a foreign English teacher named John, and urban Shenyang residents. More specifically, Henry looks at how experience shapes the script beggars take up and residents are forced to act out at the prodding of the beggars. Throughout the article, Henry revisits the disclaimer that the strategies that beggars invoke in Shenyang are effective for reasons pertaining specifically to Shenyang, that they are not universal. However, while he draws attention to the beggar’s side of the equation in regards to universalities, his article is written in such a way that it seems like the foreigners who interact with the beggars share a sort of universal understanding. However, based upon my observations in Chicago Illinois, I do not think his universal understanding and treatment of beggars is true.

Henry draws a distinction between the Chinese’s treatment of beggars and foreigners treatment of beggars. He writes, "Ignoring a beggar both recognizes and reinforces an ideology of difference, where Chinese can position themselves as distinctly and irreducibly Confucian in the face of the foreigner’s gaze—a counterpoint to the foreigner’s presumably universalist Kantian ethics" (2009: 15). In other words, Kantian ethics act as, in Brooks (1951) words, a “seamless garment” (23) that cause “all” foreigners to feel apathetic towards beggars. I placed the word all in quotation marks because the word “presumably” acts as a slight disclaimer to foreigners’ “universalist Kantian ethics.” However, the rest of the article progresses under the “universalist” farce. While this may have been done for simplicity of argument, I find it too neat and dangerous.

I primarily find Henry’s “universalist” claim troubling because Henry only draws on John’s experience with the beggar girl as his support for the claim and because the discussion surrounding John’s narrative to stand in contradiction of my own observations of Chicagoans callus treatment of beggars. More specifically, Chicagoans are not prone to help or give money to beggars. Growing up in Chicago, my friends and I were taught never to make eye contact with beggars and to ignore their presence even when they follow and talk to you. We were told that if you give money to beggars that they would just go and spend the money on drugs and alcohol rather than essentials such as food. We were also told that even if you gave money to a beggar once, it would not solve the beggar’s problem because the beggar develops reliance on the gifts and will not ever try to get a job. Walking down the streets of Chicago, I can tell that this message sunk into many Chicagoans mentality as they pull out cell phones and pretend to text or call someone in order to avoid eye contact and conversation with a beggar. As a such, I think it is rather hasty to say that all foreigners, Chicagoans are considered foreigners in this context, have apathy for beggars.

Brooks, Cleanth. 1951. The Formalist Critics. In Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. 22 – 27. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Henry, Eric. 2009. The Beggar’s Play: Poverty, Coercion, and Performance in Shenyang, China.