In The Name Of Identity

Identity has traditionally been conterminous with the concept of allegiance. Be it ethnicity, gender, culture, geography, et cetera, these allegiances are not equally and concurrently strong. They all shape our individual as well as collective personality. These “genes of the soul” (Maalouf 11), though not innate, form the basic plexus of our perception of ourselves and the world.
Identity is indeed a very complex concept. It is neither dictated nor conferred. It is relative, ever-changing, and subject to external as well as internal nuances. It is a “false friend” (32). What mostly justifies it is always misrepresentation. A misnomer of reality and a moot tribal notion of identity. Regrettably, this latter is still the one endorsed in most societies nowadays. The superiority of men over women, the irrational exploitation of nature by human beings, nuclear armaments, and racism, to say the least.
Ideas travel through time and space, making human beings frontier-dwellers. They live in material and intellectual borders. They live either as guests´-or-hosts. When theses borders become porous, either understanding´-or-conflict ensues. Understanding often comes from people who stand apart from traditionalist ideas. In a sense, belonging to a community is the most renowned definition of particularism-;- the most natural thing that give human beings a sense of belonging and followship. The remedy lies in an alternate regrouping where the human race becomes the ultimate group, the syncretism that will bring about an end to all forms of oppression. In other words, we should stop anathemizing one another and adopt a globalist view in which universal laws such as care, friendship, virtue, respect, and non-hierarchy reign. In In the Name of Identity, Amin Maalouf gives a subtle account of historical heritage. He believes that our most entrenched perceptions can be divided into two heritages:
In short, each one of us has two heritages, a ‘vertical’ one that comes to us from our ancestors, our religious community and our popular traditions, and a ‘horizontal’ one transmitted to us by our contemporaries and by the age we live in. It seems to me that the latter is the most influential of the two, and that it becomes more se every day. Yet this fact is not reflected in our perception of ourselves, and the inheritance we invoke most frequently is the vertical one. (102)
Globalizing and promoting ideas of a commoner and more just world reflect an embedded inclination to find a joint language of universality, not of uniformity, that will perforce bring closer human beings with the entire ecosphere.

Sources
Maalouf, Amin, and Barbara Bray. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Arcade Publishing, 2012.

Rate the article
Bad	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Very good
Result : 100%							Participated in the vote : 1