In a letter to von Kottwitz I wrote today

Atiq Rahimi in a RF interview (I have been listening a lot to RF lately, how much better it is than the BBC -- the BBC struggles to be middle brow, the RF struggles to be anything but that; or perhaps the French middle brow is considerably higher than the English?) surprised me with a tired old saw. The interviewer asked him whether he felt Afghan or French (how European of him); and he said -- duh -- "Afghan in France, French in Afghanistan". Poohlease. I used to say (and think) this kind of drivel when I was 18 -- before I set off on my Asian life (and all that's followed). Now, 20 years later, this strikes me as silly in the extreme. But that's just the thing: Atiq Rahimi is somewhat behind. He's merely bilingual.

I wonder, btw, whether Barthes -- such a specialist on culture -- was bilingual? (You were probably right to leave him at light petting stage).

Von Kottwitz is monolingual and his tri-cultural experience consists in having been born and raised in NY, educated in Indiana, and (briefly) employed in Houston. There are objective limitations to how far our discussion of culture can proceed.