In today’s Levant, despite the scarcity of serious debate, "identity" often rears its head in conversations of our affairs. The highly patriotic, as well as the ardent humanists, might claim that this matter is altogether trivial, primitive, or reactionary. Everything that makes us human should elevate us above sub-identities, while patriotism should resist the pull of subnational identities, be they religious, ethnic, or sectarian.
It may well be true, in principle, that these identities shrink the patriot and humanist within us, granting symbols, rituals, and formalities the upper hand over the grand concepts introduced by the Enlightenment, the unity of humankind and the singularity of our humanity chief among them.
Those who uphold identity, in this sense, see the world as rigid borders that grab the spirit by the collar and capture every particle within it. Technology cannot traverse these borders, nor can ideas, interests, experiences, or moods. At the core of this worldview is the assumption that we are nothing but reflections of the mountains, rivers, and deserts which we believe have forged us and will continue to forge us until the end of time.
Binding oneself to identity, as submission to nature, reflects a deeply pessimistic view of humanity; it implies that our agency and influence are limited, and that nothing consequential can result from individual purists.
Suffering from an inflated identity, moreover, impoverishes the individual and denies them their many dimensions, keeping in mind that every human being is multi-dimensional, reducing them to their whiteness or blackness, Islam or Christianity - 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is all they are, and nothing else; they must constantly feel this way, and vigilantly and zealously, tirelessly strive to live by this ordained impulse.
Since ancient times, long before modernity, the biblical "Book of Judges" offered us material with which to mock the symbolism and rituals of identity, as well as their destructive repercussions. The tribe of Ephraim was exposed because its members mispronounced the Hebrew term "shibboleth" as "sibboleth," leading the Gilead tribe to slaughter 42,000 of them for their omission of a single letter.
A dark joke told shortly after the Lebanese civil war erupted illustrated this schism that can turn saying (the Arabic word for tomato) "banadura," and not "bandura," into a cause of death.
What applies to identity could also be true for womanhood as Simone de Beauvoir famously defined it: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." That is, social and cultural factors shape and determine a woman’s roles far more than fixed, predetermined biology. This conception of gender elucidates the distinction between being biologically female and the social constructs that engender her social role and function, that make her a "woman."
However, such conceptions solve few real problems, just as the theory of "social constructivism" offers neither consolation to anyone nor help make anyone’s problem easier to resolve or overcome in any way. Thus, absolute denial of identity often entails giving homilies that are often naive. It reflects simplistic optimism about humanity and its capacity to tame nature and culture.
We should always remain mindful (and there are dozens of examples to this effect right under our noses) that current conditions are highly conducive not only for generating identities, but also for saturating them with animosity and belligerence. These same conditions - the discrimination and subjugation that define our present - are behind the atrophy of our sense of patriotism and humanity, and their efforts have been successful. It is our reality that is planting within us this evil seed that makes each of us see the other as the embodiment of evil, and, here too, it is succeeding. Moreover, that is happening in a region where "national identity" and its state have been bankrupted, and where the frameworks of national politics have cracked.
It is becoming clear that, at least in the Levant, several rival nations live under the cloak of a single nation. The modern ideologies (nationalism, socialism, and others) under which rival groups once took shade are withering away, with communal identification and the community’s ideology becoming one and the same.
It would be absurd and flippant to ask communities threatened with death or genocide to respond by proclaiming their devotion to their national or human identity, and to demand that they refuse to engage with the "enemy of the homeland" even as the latter saves them from the mortal threat posed by their so-called "brothers" in humanity or nationality.
Taking a position that would become among her most memorable, Hannah Arendt asked a Jew who is attacked as a Jew to "defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man." The same maxim, of course, is equally applicable to the Palestinian attacked as a Palestinian, and for the Muslim, the Christian, the Kurd, the Alawite, the Druze, and anyone else.
Recognizing oppressed identities and satisfying their appetites would probably do the job far better than denying their existence or looking down on them. Quelling identities’ hunger would make it possible to push for containing their absolutism and insularity, and to reduce the centrality of a particular era - the most tense and terrifying period it has undergone - in communities’ reading of history. Feeding identities until they are full also reduces the degree to which groups see themselves as an indivisible rock and the world as perpetual war.
Until further notice, manufacturing identities, both the victimizer and the victimized, will remain our leading industry. And it is neither useful nor appropriate to fancy oneself to be standing over silk as one stands over thorns.
