'In the Name of Identity': Against the Politics of Victimization
For Maalouf, identity is usually deployed to create a false sense
of self. It does so by proclaiming that one of our many allegiances
is who we really are. This primary allegiance is not determined by
introspection but typically in relation to which allegiance is most
under attack. Our identity is thus often formed in relation to our
enemy: the groups we fear, hate or, most importantly, resent. One of
the driving forces in history is, in Maalouf's vision, the urge to
triumph over a narcissistic wound. Once a group feels humiliated, it
is possible for agitators to rise up and convince it that they
should come to understand themselves around this humiliation. In
this way, many of the group's other allegiances are suppressed, and
the way is open for lethal violence: ''Whether they are hotheads or cool schemers, their intransigent
speeches act as balm to their audience's wounds. They say one
shouldn't beg others for respect: respect is a due and must be
forced from those who would withhold it. They promise victory or
vengeance, they inflame men's minds, sometimes they use extreme
methods that some of their brothers may merely have dreamed of in
secret. The scene is now set and the war can begin. Whatever happens
'the others' will have deserved it.'' This book, smoothly translated from the French by Barbara Bray,
was written in Paris before the world changed, but it makes
compelling reading in America today. For it argues that a politics
of identity based on a sense of victimization -- which reduces
identity to a single affiliation -- facilitates the creation of
''identities that kill.'' It is not useful, Maalouf thinks, to ask whether a religion like
Islam or Christianity is really tolerant or intolerant. During much
of its history Christianity was strikingly intolerant; during its
period of political and cultural supremacy, Islam was remarkably
tolerant. The question that does concern Maalouf is why the
Christian West, which has a tradition of intolerance, has founded
societies that respect freedom of expression, while the Muslim
world, which has a tradition of tolerance, is now a stronghold of
fanaticism. Muslims attack the West, Maalouf thinks, not primarily
because they are Muslim but because they feel downtrodden or
derided. This sense of outrage is then taken up into a particular
interpretation of Islam that offers redress and revenge. Maalouf goes back to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign to inspect what
he thinks was a wrong turn in world history. In the aftermath,
intellectuals and politicians asked why the Arab world had been left
so far behind. For Muhammad Ali, the Turks' viceroy in Egypt, the
answer was to catch up. Ali invited European doctors to create a
faculty of medicine in Cairo, imported new agricultural and
industrial techniques -- and was eventually undermined by the
British for geopolitical reasons. ''From this episode the Arabs
concluded then and still conclude now that the West doesn't want the
rest of the world to be like it; it just wants them to obey it,''
Maalouf says. Who knew then that 200 years later we would still be
reaping the bitter fruit of the British desire to have an easy trade
route to India? With the undoing of the viceroy Muhammad Ali the question shifted
from ''How can we modernize?'' to ''How can we modernize without
losing our identity?'' In current circumstances, it is difficult to
see how this can be answered well. Maalouf sees Arab citizens as
forced to choose between Islamic fundamentalists and despotic
rulers. It's a horrible choice, and the pressures of globalization
are inclining them toward the former. Not only does globalization
reinforce a felt need for a sense of local identity, the Muslim
religion offers an alternative image of globalization. For from a
Muslim perspective what matters is not nation, race or tribe, but
that one acknowledge Allah as the one God and Muhammad as his
prophet. Maalouf's main point is that it is for historically
contingent reasons that the forces of globalization, as we know it,
have come to be experienced as Western, secular and anti-Muslim. If
we are going to escape catastrophe, this lineup must be undone. Maalouf's recommendations, while thoughtful, strike me as too
hopeful to be realistic. He ''dreams'' of a world in which there is
religion and spirituality but in which those impulses are no longer
attached to the need to belong to a group. ''It is not enough now to
separate church and state: what has to do with religion must be kept
apart from what has to do with identity.'' Which world could this
possibly be? Maalouf thinks we can and must find other ways to satisfy the
need for identity. As a writer, he thinks, not surprisingly, in
terms of languages. ''No one should be forced to become a mental
expatriate every time he opens a book, sits down in front of a
screen, enters into a discussion or thinks. People ought to be able
to make their own modernity instead of always feeling they are
borrowing it from others.'' Maalouf suggests that everyone should be
taught three languages: the first is the language of identity, the
third is English and the second is any other language, freely
chosen. In such a world, one could not easily get by without
English, but it would also be a handicap to know English only. His
hope is that by taking certain practical steps the world as a whole
can accomplish what America has been struggling to accomplish: to
embrace both diversity and unity. I don't think that Maalouf has here come to grips with human
impulses toward destruction, cruelty and envy or people's bottomless
capacity to feel wounded. But, strangely, I don't think this
detracts from the book. The genre is not that of a comprehensive
argument but of a conversation happened upon in a cafe. (It should
be read either with an espresso or a short, narrow tumbler of vin
rouge.) When one is engaged with a thoughtful, humane and passionate
interlocutor, the feeling that he has overlooked this or that
important point is part of the feeling of being in a real
conversation.
Jonathan Lear is a member of the Committee on Social Thought at
the University of Chicago and the author, most recently, of
''Happiness, Death and the Remainder of Life.''
f in
the aftermath of Sept. 11 we want to know more facts, we need
political analyses, but we are also hungry for general reflection on
what human beings are like. ''In the Name of Identity'' bridges
these concerns. Amin Maalouf is an Arab who is also a Christian, a
Frenchman who is also Lebanese. He lives in Paris now, where he is a
successful novelist -- indeed, he won the Prix Goncourt for ''The
Rock of Tanios'' -- but he was the editor of the Beirut newspaper An
Nahar. His book is a heartfelt meditation on identity that begins
inside his soul.
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