A friend sent me the link to a video today that reminded
me of Amin Maalouf’s In The Name of
Identity.
Maalouf keeps
reiterating that we are not born but rather made - and that we make and remake
ourselves - in relation to the world in which we live and the choices that it
presents to us. It is a point that bears repeating, he says, because a failure
to recognize the fluidity, multiplicity and malleability of identity is not
only misguided but also dangerous. The danger is twofold. First, a failure to
recognize the complexity, the multi-dimensionality of the Other makes their
dehumanization easier. Second, imposing on the Other a rigid, singular (and
usually inferior) identity will provoke them, in anger and defiance, to pick up
arms to ‘assert their identity.’ This, he says, is how ordinary men are
“transformed into butchers.”
Amin Maalouf’s In The Name Of Identity, subtitled Violence And The Need To Belong has been
by translated from French into English by Barbara Bray and published by Penguin Books.
After seeing the video,
I looked up Moira Kelly (no, not the actress). To read more about her, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moira_Kelly_(humanitarian)
