Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny

This book along with Appiah's Cosmopolitanism heavily shaped my opinions regarding identity. Sen's argument basically rests on two pillars. 1) Human beings do not have a singular identity but overlapping, contrasting and plural identities. 2) Identity is not discovered, immutable natural fact, but the choice of people. To the first point, Sen points to the conceptional errors of categorizing people in one box (he has a lot to say about Huntington's Clash of the Civilizations). He argues that these boxes almost always reduce the diversity found within cultures and do not adequately account for the historical ebb and flow of cultures mingling and adapting to each other. Singular identity classifications are inadequate in describing show more people. More importantly this singular identity thesis lends itself to sectarian violence. Intriguers take emphasize one identity in order to foment violence against other groups, who lose their shared identities. Sen argues that both intriguers and good intentioned scholars fall into this trap and perpetuate this conception and dangerous idea. He applies this to post colonial anti-west rhetoric, Islamic fundamentalism, and well intentioned government programs seeking to "grow" federated communities. Secondly, Sen argues that identity is choice, we may be constrained by factors beyond our control, but ultimately we choose what identity to partake in (that of culture, profession, religion..) and what weight to put on each identity. He argues that we should have the freedom to choose our identities rather than be forced to allow anyone's choice be stifled in name of tradition or cultural "diversity". With any luck, Sen's ideas will be influential and change our ways of seeing identity. Definitely theoretical, but hints at the world we can become. show less

This book is interested in the question of human identity, its inherent multiplicity, and the choices that we make in regard to aligning ourselves with certain identities over others. We all have multiple identities, which Sen repeatedly points out. For example, he says of himself that "I can be, at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, and a non-believer in an after-life" (p. 19). To what extent do these show more identities compete with one another? And in which ways are our senses of self and community vitiated when, instead of recognizing the fullness of all of these aspects, we recognize just one or two (for example, religion or nationality)?

Seeing the world as just sets of different religions imposes a "divisive power of classificatory priority" on the world which distorts and misshapes understanding of the people in it. When we point out that a terrorist is Muslim (or overemphasize that aspect of their identity), we fall into a trap of identify someone by just one identity - often the most inflammatory, controversial one. Suggesting that "not all Muslims are violent," which sounds like a helpful corrective measure, commits the same fallacy of associating one aspect of someone's identity - their religion - with their behavior. This is one of the fundamental mistakes that Samuel Huntingdon makes in his influential book "Clash of Civilizations." In referring to various regions as "the Christian world," "the Muslim world," or "the Hindu world," his conclusions are largely drawn from skewed perceptions of one aspect of a community's identity.

While Sen hardly touches on this explicitly, it is obvious that this can have important consequences for how the media covers news. In a time where even the most important stories get only a few minutes of coverage on a national broadcast, it is easy to see how the complexities of both individuals and communities are ignored. Historical misunderstanding can result just as frequently, as when the tradition of democracy, or religious toleration, is identified solely with Europe or the Occident. Sen discusses some of these just before the book starts to go into an irrelevant tailspin at approximately its halfway point.

These ideas are important. However, there isn't a lot here that most intelligent people who have considered these things couldn't have concluded for themselves. It's already more than a little obvious how detrimental this for people who consume a lot of news - which is what probably spurred many thoughtful people to think about this issue in the first place. Also, this book is about twice as long as it needs to be. The last sections of the book, about globalization and multiculturalism, are tangentially related to the book's thesis but really need another book of their own. Sen said early on in the book that he would emphasize the role of choice-making in the book, so more on social choice theory would have been appreciated, instead of the aimless wandering from topic to topic that is all the second half of the book provides. This would have been a good, if uncontroversial, article aimed at a more scholarly audience. There was no practical use in doubling its length to make a book. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common trait in Norton's "Issues of Our Time" series, as Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Cosmopolitanism" suffers from similar shortcomings. show less

Una delle "cose" più importanti, in questo mondo sempre più globalizzato, una "cosa" che unisce e allo stesso tempo divide, è quel misterioso, ma non tanto, sentimento che va sotto il nome di "identità". Sentimento di varia natura ed origine. Può essere religioso, nazionale, politico, linguistico, sociale, culturale, razziale, etnico, comunitario, maschile, femminile. Insomma, tutti quegli elementi e quelle occasioni che gli uomini sono pronti ad escogitare per distinguersi l'uno dall'altro. Man mano che la "globalità" cresce e le società diventano sempre più cosmopolite, l'aderenza ad una presunta, propria identità cresce.

In prima fila sembra esserci l'identità religiosa. Prendiamo ad esempio l'idea di chi vuole avere una show more identità mussulmana. Questo desiderio è legato alla tendenza ad indossare alcuni vestiti che provano l'appartenenza a quella fede. Stesso discorso vale per gli ebrei, i cristiani, i buddisti e via discorrendo. Dal sacro passiamo al profano, ricordando i segni e i simboli legati allo sport ed ai vari colori che caratterizzano queste attività. Del resto, ai colori sono legati anche i partiti politici i quali, nel corso dei secoli, ne hanno fatti di tutti i colori, è il caso di dire. Simboli, colori, disegni, stili ed apparenze che tendono a differenziare, generando diversità, con inevitabili contrasti e conflitti. Tutto questo per dire che l'identità, invece di unire, divide. Questa considerazione può essere vera ed accettabile, ma solo fino ad un certo punto.

Lo studioso indiano, premio Nobel per l'economia Amartya Sen, in questo suo libro intitolato "Identità e Violenza" (leggetelo in formato pdf, gratuitamente anche in rete!) sostiene che questo pensiero è del tutto negativo e sbagliato. Egli dice che una persona, prima di essere una "cosa", deve rendersi conto di essere anche "altre cose". Io, secondo lui, non sarei solo un essere umano di razza bianca. Prima di questo sono anche un figlio, un genitore, un amico, un insegnante, un giocatore di pallone, un italiano, un nipote, un liberale ... Una entità umana multipla e complessa, quindi, che la prassi comune mi riporta ad una sola, singola identità e mi riduce ad un simbolo vuoto, collocandomi in una nicchia, in una casella, in uno schema chiuso.

Lo studioso afferma che si tende ad ignorare la realtà di queste identità diverse di cui la gente ha preso coscienza soltanto in epoca recente, in forma consapevole e responsabile. Per secoli, questi vari modi per identificarsi, sono stati chiamati clichès, stereotipi, modelli. Alcuni sopravvivono anche in questo mondo diventato improvvisamente piatto e globale. In questa nuova realtà la somma di queste singole identità concorre a formare la personalità umana che codifica in maniera sempre più completa il soggetto umano, rendendolo unico nella sua totalità. Arriviamo così ad essere tutti identici nelle nostre diversità. Arrivati a questo punto, la domanda è:

"Come si può proporre un'idea comune di convivenza, condivisione e comprensione che possa essere accettata da tutti?"

Sembra essere pura utopia! Una possibile risposta potrebbe essere: soltanto affermando il senso di una "identità umana comune". In mancanza di un confronto diretto con realtà extra-terrestri ed extra-umane, non ci resta che ripiegare, ancora una volta su noi stessi, sulla nostra innata consapevolezza di esseri umani.

Come fare? Io lo faccio in un modo che forse a qualcuno potrà sembrare strano o stupido: quando il gatto del mio vicino, che si chiama "Coffee", ci visita e resta con noi per gran parte del tempo. Lui, miagolando fuori si fa aprire la porta, conosce le nostre abitudini, mangia qualcosa che sappiamo gli piace, continua a miagolare, gironzola un pò per casa, poi trova il suo solito posto su una sedia e si mette a dormire, dopo di averci osservato in quello che facciamo.

Seduti in salotto davanti alla tv, viene a sedersi sulle mie gambe o su quelle di mia moglie. Con un discreto miagolìo, ci guarda, salta sulle ginocchia e comincia a fare le fusa. Passa da una parte all'altra, sempre col preannuncio di un miagolìo, fissa per un pò lo schermo e poi si addormenta. A volte ci guarda negli occhi, miagola ancora, gli chiedo come va, lui "risponde", sempre miagolando. In questa vicinanza diretta e significativa, mi rendo conto di essere in contatto con un'altra specie vivente e mi riconosco come "essere umano". Guardo l'essere vivente connotato come animale, che cerca di comunicare, interagisco con lui, lo riconosco come "Coffee", (nero assoluto come il caffè!).

Lui non mi conosce come "Antonio". Quando mi vede e mi incontra nelle scale e mi miagola, mi riconosce come "essere umano". A dire il vero non mi identifica come italiano, blogger, bianco o cristiano, e nemmeno come "umano". Sa, però, che sono un essere vivente come lui, e sa che ho una "identità" che lui "conosce" e "riconosce". Quando vede mia moglie, la identifica come essere umano alla stessa maniera, ma non come "donna", "casalinga" o "professoressa". In quel preciso momento, sia io che mia moglie, ci identifichiamo, quindi, come "esseri umani", riconoscendo la nostra identità, perchè la ritroviamo ogni volta che ci confrontiamo con "altri". "Coffee" ci dà la dignità di "umani".

Ecco. Quando, gli esseri umani, tutti gli abitanti di questo splendido pianeta Terra, si riconosceranno tali, cioè Esseri Umani, allo stesso modo, allora potremo tutti dirci di avere una sola Identità.

P.S. Poco tempo dopo la stesura di questo post, purtroppo "Coffee" ci ha lasciato. Ne sentiamo la mancanza ... show less

Sen's point is that conflict is reduced when we recognize that individuals can hold multiple identities. It's a good point, but rather obvious in today's world of large scale immigration. Unfortunately, Sen does not pursue his idea very far so the book is pretty uninteresting.

The title of Mr. Sen's book is a concise thought of what is inside and the most understandable of the whole work . What follows inside is not always clear to me. Philosophy has always been a weakness of mine. This is all too bad for how we/society comes to violence and how to minimize it is certainly a most important and basic topic. One of Mr. Sen's, a Nobel Prize winner, in Economics, major themes is that we take the variousness and possibilities away from other people/peoples and put them into a box which greatly aids the following violence. My guess is that Sen is so very strong in his thinking on the economics and the poor...less so in this particular endeavor.

Quotes: (page 91) “...non-Western people today tend to think of show more themselves as quintessentially 'the other' as Akeel Bilgrami, the philosopher, has beautifully discussed in a paper called 'What is a Muslim?' They are led by their identity primarily in terms of being different from Western people. Something of this 'otherness' can be seen in the emergence of various self definitions that characterize cultural and political nationalism, and even in the contribution this reactive view makes to fundamentalism.”

(pages 104 and 105) “Such theories are, often enough, not just harmless fun. For example, cultural prejudice did play a role in the treatment Ireland received from the Brtish government, and had a part even in the nonprevention of the famines of the 1840s. Among the influences that had an affect on London's treatment of Irish economic problems, cultural alienation did count. While poverty in Britain was typically attributed to economic change and fluctuations, Irish poverty was widely viewed in England (as Richard Ned Lebrow, the political analyst, has argued) as being caused by laziness, indifference, and ineptitude, so that 'British mission' was not seen as one 'to alleviate Irish distress but to civilize her people and act like human beings.'

(page 172) ...“as I try to recollect the deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in the 1940s, it is hard to convince myself that those terrible things did actually happen. But even though the communal riots in Bengal were entirely transitory and ephemeral (and the few cases in which riots have been fostered later on in other parts of India do not compare in size and reach with the events of the 1940s), they left in their wake thousands upon thousands of dead Hindus and Muslims. The political instigators who urged the killing (on behalf of what they respectively called 'our people' managed to persuade many otherwise peaceable people of both communities to turn into dedicated thugs. They were made to think of themselves only as Hindus or only as Muslims (who must unleash vengeance on 'on the other community' and as absolutely nothing else: not Indians, not subcontinentals, not Asians, not members of a shared human race.”

(page 185) “There is a compelling need in the contemporary world to ask questions not only about the economics and politics of globalization, but also about the values, ethics, and sense of belonging that shape our conception of the global world. In a nonsolitarst understanding of human identity, improvement of such issues need not demand that our national allegiances and local loyalties be altogether replaced by a global sense of belonging, to be reflected in the working of a colossal 'world state.' In fact, global identity can begin to receive its due without eliminating our other loyalties.” show less

Still my hero, though he tends to repeat himself quite a bit. But hey, repetition is the key to learning.

Mooi boek