Each of us should be encouraged to accept his own diversity, to see his identity as the sum of all his various affliations, instead of as only one of them raised to the status of the most important, made into an instrument of exclusion and sometimes into a weapon of war. (p. 159)
In the same way, societies themselves need to accept the many affiliations that have forged each of their collective identities in the course of history, and that are shaping them still. (p. 160)
In the Name of Identity by Amin Maalouf is one of those reasonable books that seems obvious once read. A short book that makes a simple point about how identity is complex and we should beware how it is manipulated. Maalouf, who was born in Lebanon and now lives (and writes) in France, is particularly good on what it is like to be born elsewhere. “You can’t divide it (identity) into halves or thirds or any other separate segments.” (p. 2).
The other book is Persepolis 2, a graphic (comic) book about a young Irani woman who returns to Iran after studying in Austria (a story told in Persepolis 1). The work gently mocks both European and Irani culture. The book is partly autobiographical as the author, Marjane Satrapi, is Irani born, living in France.
For a review of the Maalouf essay, see a review by Sandra J. Badin, In the Name of Identity. I have written before about him in this blog, see One good and one bad book and Amin Maalouf: Books I forgot were good.
Marjane Satrapi Persepolis 2 New York: Pantheon, 2004.
Amin Maalouf In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong New York: Penguin Books, 2003.