Identity: Donning Our Many Hats

In The Name Of Identity (Violence And The Need To Belong), a slim but ambitious book by author Amin Maalouf, may create a bit of a dilemma for a librarian attempting to categorize it.  Bits of history, anthropology, religion, philosophy and politics are interwoven in Maalouf's long essay about "identity."  His informed and open minded treatise is not hard to understand, appreciate and to agree with. What may be much more difficult is to expect to see his vision translated into reality in a world currently racked and riven by clashing "identities."

"A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous. "Identity" is one of those false friends. ... It has been the fundamental question of philosophy from Socrates' "know thyself!" through countless masters down to Freud," begins Maalouf. Although he modestly claims to lack the ability to redefine "identity," that is precisely what he does in this book. And he does it rather splendidly. He points out that among our many selves are those that are products of our birth and early upbringing - race, gender, ethnicity, language and religion. Other identities we acquire of our own choosing - our philosophy, politics and choice of job and home. Our identity is not just the label with which we get tagged by others but also what we ourselves want to assert or "identify" with.  Moreover, identity is fluid, often determined by the time and place we are in and what our life experiences have been. Our allegiances may be the result of ambition, pride, expediency, anger, humiliation and even the desperation for survival. As I pointed out in my post on "home,"   identity too is not fixed at birth but made and remade through a journey lasting a lifetime.

Maalouf, a French-Lebanese author born in Lebanon and living in France, begins with his own case. Maalouf is an Arab Christian and as such shares his ethnic / linguistic identity with several million Arabs, most of whom don't share his religious faith. His religious identity is shared by a couple of billion Christians, the majority of whom do not speak his language. In either of the two above cases, he is a member of a large global community. But as an Arab and a Christian, he belongs to a tiny minority group anywhere in the world. Which of these groups must he pledge allegiance to?  Also, where is his real home? Lebanon, where he was born or France, where he chooses to live?  Do any or all of these "identities" define Maalouf fully as a human being?  What about his politics, his gender, his sexual preference? Or whether he is a doctor, writer, florist or a soldier? Or even by what his tastes in food and music are or which soccer team he roots for? By the time we cover the entire intricate woven tapestry of a person's identity, he or she may have more in common with a total stranger than can be first imagined by taking into account only the most visible or obvious facets of identity. "Six Degrees of Separation" in the current global milieu is more than a parlor game or catchy cliché.

The author believes that redefining identity to include all our roles in the world, is likely to reduce cultural and political strife among groups. He sees globalization as a beneficial engine towards that goal due to the inevitable give and take that occurs in opening ourselves up to newer cultures. Yet, he also worries that the same force that may some day eradicate suspicions and violence among disparate communities, could also become responsible for wholesale obliteration of "weaker" cultures.  He worries mostly about the linguistic hegemony of more advanced societies whose grip on the language of science and technology could one day wipe out other less technologically developed languages. There are many sides to this debate - I am not wholly in agreement with the author on this one. Red flags about cultural preservation are raised all the time. Progress and civilization have their own momentum. Some aspects of human history get lost before the juggernaut of another more powerful force while others survive despite thousands of years of oppression, coercion and bullying.

The main focus of Maalouf's ruminations on identity is the violence human beings have unleashed upon each other through history based on narrow and self serving allegiances. The author focuses generally on religious conflicts through the ages and the current Islamic politics of violence in particular. He is very cautious to distinguish between Islam as a faith and Islam as a political ideology although as far as I am concerned, when faith is used as a blunt instrument of violent political identity, it is a useless distinction. According to Maalouf, the single biggest contributor to identity based violence is "humiliation." When a group feels threatened, marginalized or humiliated, the identity that was nominal before, becomes the dominant defining characteristic. Humiliation, he argues is the most reliable indicator of the rise of fanaticism.  He says the following about Islamic fanaticism and violence in Europe, particularly in France:

"You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot."

Interesting thought and correct to a large degree in this particular case. But it is only partially correct because history is replete with more instances of human atrocities directly fueled by greed and arrogance based on identity than on humiliation. 

Maalouf deftly asks sharp and thought provoking questions and certainly doesn't claim to have the answers. Instead he offers his own ideas and suggestions on how to reduce conflict based on our (often spurious) sense of identity. Between Maalouf's "enlightened" hope of commonality of human identities and Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis' "clash of civilizations," it is too early to say which of the two views will shape the future. Meanwhile, the blood curdling "us vs them" rhetoric of the terrorists and the neo-cons alike, continue unabated on the world scene. The Name Of Identity was written in the late 1990s when the memory of the violence and devastation in the author's native Lebanon was still fresh in his mind. The book also addresses the various bloody conflicts that had flared up in different parts of the world around that time - Israel-Palestine, Yugoslavia and Rwanda to name just a few. 9/11/2001 was still in the future. But the book could have served as an alarm bell for that event. Now, in the context of 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Gaza, the West Bank, London, Mumbai, Madrid and Bali, (and who knows where else in the future?) Maalouf's questions are even more urgent and the answers, sadly still elusive.

Note: This book was recommended to me by my co-blogger, Anna Levine.  (Cross posted at Shunya's Notes)

Comments

[Anna]

It seems like such a long while ago that I read that Maalouf book, though a search for his name in my email (oh, that handy Google-y gmail, so convenient, until the FBI comes and hauls us all away...) suggests it was only about a year and a half ago, maybe early February 2006. This is what I wrote you at the time, Ruchira, an apology (as usual), for not posting:

"I also keep meaning to write something about a terrific short book I read recently, with the bland title, 'On Identity' (the original French title, 'Les Identites Meurtrieres,' or 'Killer Identities,' is better), by the novelist Amin Maalouf. Maalouf, a Lebanese Catholic living in France, argues from personal experience, and as a matter of political philosophy, for a more particularized and fluid conception of identity. Descriptively, the book makes a number of salient points, though prescriptively, it's somewhat abstract and idealistic. That may be the best approach for a novelist to take when approaching such a subject."

I think you capture all these brief thoughts, better fleshed out, above. Interestingly, in light of your binary contrast between Maalouf and Huntington and Lewis (and Hitchens, you could have added), to another friend to whom I recommended the book around the same time, I added the following note, "In any event, I found it a welcome antidote to all the essentializing, 'Clash of Civilizations' background noise in our culture these days."

I think that background noise is part of the reason that the book's personal, anecdotal quality combined with schematic idealism appealed to me and the red flags that, as you note and I agree, are either dubious or incoherent with the general argument for "enlightened" commonality didn't bother me too much. I remember very much enjoying the engaging, writerly quality of the book, a "public intellectual" mode, neither crushingly analytic nor vapidly bombastic, a balance which can be hard to find in American writers, with exceptions, of course. I also remember appreciating the political stance (if something so amorphous can be called that), anxious but hopeful, in the best mode of the Left.

Also of note on this, the 4th of July, is the context of my recommendation of the Maalouf book to the friend to whom I added the "clash of civilizations" comment, since the context highlights the relevance of these questions in American domestic politics. The friend, who is Vietnamese American, had written to ask me to contribute to an Asian-American Political Action Committee with which he is very involved, and which raises money for Asian-American political candidates. My friend had written, "Diversity has to me become more important over time, especially the understanding that we must still fight, and fight very hard to ensure that the backgrounds and experiences--and yes, the faces--of those in power mirror those of our citizens."

In response, I wrote:

"I'm with you so long as the faces you want to represent your face are Democrats: Hubert Vo, not Viet Dinh. Reaching out to and organizing Asian voters through a Democratic PAC seems like a good idea, though my more general thoughts on this issue are complicated. Though there has been a general shift, see http://perso.wanadoo.fr/patrick.guenin/cantho/vnnews/democra.htm
five or ten years ago, promoting the most exact representation of the backgrounds, experiences as well as faces of the Orange County Vietnamese community would have meant asking me to pay to increase the power of the Republican Party. I can hear my father's voice saying that this would have furthered the interests of true diversity more than a hypocritical Liberal like me is willing to support. Similarly, while I feel Daniel Inouye represents my interests in Congress, I'm sure [a mutual, Japanese American friend's] mother, an ardent Bush supporter and Fox News viewer does not. And don't get me started on the Wolfowitzs of the world."

"Still, I support the importance of diversity even in its most dishonest forms: I think that there is exemplary value in having Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, even if he was chosen as the African-American jurist whose thinking is most like that of a white conservative. And particularly given the nature of the stereotypes and racism that Asian Americans face-- foreign and therefore untrustworthy (see Wen Ho Lee, the Thai Temple scandal, etc.)--representation in politics seems like a particularly important goal."

"Anyway, I'll give you money, since you're my friend, have politics similar to mine, and this is an issue that is clearly important to you. But, the policy choices related to promoting ethnic diversity remain open questions in my mind."

All this cut and paste should probably be another post (it's really a very lazy effort to avoid having to think of more to say about Maalouf). But I do think for the many of us with complicated identities, and for the whole of us who ought to think about how we approach assimilation and particularity in a increasingly close-knit and consistently violent world, the Maalouf book is a worthwhile read.

[Namit Arora]

I enjoyed reading your review, Ruchira. Maalouf's book seems strikingly similar to Amartya Sen's most recent book, Identity and Violence. I haven't read it but I have read other stuff by Sen, so this short and reasonable review resonated with me. The crux of it is this:

The strength of Sen's argument lies in its intuitive nature: "In our normal lives we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups." Its weakness lies in its failure to explain why, at critical junctures, we disown that knowledge.

Sounds like Maalouf doesn't attempt an explanation either, or does he? That would be a tall order.

[Ruchira Paul]

Anna:
Yeah, you were supposed to have written this review :-) But that's okay, as long as you brought the book to my attention and I found it interesting enough to review. Thanks for buttressing it with a substantive comment.

Like you, I too have a problem with voting for "diversity" candidates if their ideology doesn't move me. I agree with your dad that a smorgasbord of ideologies in the public sphere too is "diversity." But some of the conservative minority candidates are so far out on the other side (the zeal of a new convert to outdo the old hands?) of the political spectrum, that I prefer in some cases to vote for the " bland white male" whose vision is more palatable to me. And as Maalouf says, identity is not just "faces like ours" but also "minds like ours." And incidentally, I too have on more than one occasion, written large parts of a blog post by "cutttin and pasting" from old e-mails!

Namit:
Amartya Sen's book is indeed on the same subject. (I wonder if Sen had read Maalouf's book) I too haven't read Sen's book but did turn a few pages. Much of what he says is very similar to Maalouf and also, as you pointed out what he has said elsewhere. I considered making a mention of Identity and Violence in the review above but left it out in the end for the sake of focus and brevity. From the little browsing I did of Sen's version, I must say that I found Maalouf's passion a bit more engaging.

As for Sen's book, I was struck by a scathing review of it by Fouad Ajami. A brief excerpt:

"Over this discursive little book lies the shadow of Sen's formidable Harvard colleague, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, with his celebrated theory of the "clash of civilizations." Sen has assigned himself the role of the anti-Huntington: Sen sees Huntington's thesis of cultural conflict yielding a one-dimensional approach to human identity -- and leading to the "civilizational and religious partitioning of the world," which can only occasion greater global disorder. .... Sen's faith in the multiplicity of claims on human loyalty is admirable, but it can hardly stand up to the fury of the true believers. In our combustible world today, Huntington's outlook has much greater power."

So, Ajami sides with Huntington, which is very interesting. Ajami has for some time, aligned himself with the neo-cons and is now their brainy and erudite "Arab" mouthpiece on middle east affairs. This of course is doubly interesting because Ajami is a Lebanese Shia of Iranian descent (his last name means something like "foreigner" or "Persian" in Arabic), who grew up as an "ousider" in his Arab birth place. I wonder why he would be such a hardliner on identity. But then why do the "oppressed" turn to oppression once they themselves are liberated? Another question for the ages. (BTW, I just posted the review at Shunya's Notes)

[Namit Arora]

Yes, for a while now, my orientation towards the "clash of civilizations" theorists has been one of boredom and disdain. They take a rather narrow view of the motive forces of recent history. Clashes between civilizations are evident enough, but they're far less significant compared to, say, how much closer and interconnected and communicative the world has become in recent decades, not to mention the big clashes that happen within individual civilizations.

Today, a far bigger global dialectic than "clash" is "integration", but the former is more racy and exciting and therefore more newsworthy. Meanwhile, vast changes continue to occur in much of the world's knowledge, lifestyles, and ideas of self and human potential (which of course create their own, new clashes, centered on shifting dynamics of power and identity). Taking a 30,000 ft. view, I see today's clashes between civilizations as yet another byproduct (collateral damage, to use that lovely phrase) of a larger "integration" and change, a byproduct nowhere near as bad as it has frequently been in recent centuries (using proportion of humans dying from it as a metric).

As Percy Julian noted, the story of human beings is not only a story of meanness and stupidity and tears, but also of kindness and nobility and laughter. Seems to me that by focusing on "clash" alone, too many theorists miss the other, larger human story.

[Amin Maalouf Website]

Amin Maalouf Website

http://aminmaalouf.narod.ru

Have a nice visit!