3) Contrapositions

As regards the danger represented by the absolutisation of cultural identity, Sen expresses the following observations:

“With suitable instigation, a fostered sense of identity with one group of people can be made into a powerful weapon to brutalize another.
Indeed, many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity. The art of constructing hatred takes the form of invoking the magical power of some allegedly predominant identity that drowns other affiliations, and in a conveniently bellicose form can also overpower any human sympathy or natural kindness that we may normally have. The result can be homespun elemental violence, or globally artful violence and terrorism.”
–Amartya Sen, (2006), Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny, p. xv

In this passage, we can see the roots of violence. Sen is aware of the dangers of the absolutisation of cultural identity. For the absolute concept of cultural identity, there is one and only one identity for each person. In this view, every person belongs to a culture: first comes the culture, then comes the person; the individual is subordinated to his culture. Moreover, every person belongs to a culture and only to a culture. Every person has exclusively one cultural identity. Cultural identities are isolated systems. The person does not choose her identity; on the contrary, the person is possessed by her identity. There is no freedom as regards the relations of the individual to his cultural identity: the individual is bound to his identity. No identity can be chosen. Cultural identity is formed, constituted, and given once and for all. It builds the mind of any individual that belongs to it: Cultural identity is, in the absolute view of cultural identity, the very structure of the individual mind [1]: therefore. no individual can step out of it or distance himself from it.

In the absolute view of identity, identity is presented as something original: it is not the composition of different elements, and it is not the evolution of different elements; it is not the result of developments, changes, or absorption of elements. Every cultural identity forms an entity which is isolated from the other identities: it exists along the other identities as something isolated from them. There are no exchanges between cultural identities: they constitute mutually isolated systems. Any exchange whatsoever would be, in the view of those who plead for the rigid conception of identity, contamination and degeneration of the purity of the cultural identity.
In the view of those who plead for this interpretation of identity, the individual ought to discover or re-discover his identity, he ought to go back to his roots, he should be faithful to his identity and refuse any form of contamination from other identities. In this interpretation of identity, the individual is possessed by his identity, even though he does not know it and has no awareness of it. The individual can but recognise his identity and his dependence on it. To discover one’s identity is to acknowledge one’s being bound to one’s identity. Moreover, to give up or to refuse one’s identity would be regarded as a betrayal. If identity is contaminated with heterogeneous elements, it is destroyed. The purity of the cultural identity ought to be defended. An atmosphere of hostility against all other cultural forms is promoted: the purity of the cultural identity is presented as being under siege from all other cultural forms.

[1] Cultural identity is in this view the individual mind itself since it the content of the mind.

The characters connected to the absolute identity are the following:

• Individuals are determined by their cultural identity.
• Cultural identities determine the historical development of individuals and groups.
• Historical developments of countries are to be explained as the realisation of the culture to which the countries belong; cultures determine the historical evolvements of a country.
• Individuals cannot go out from their identity; cultural identity is a kind of second nature.
• Individuals are the property of traditions and groups.
• Individuals are as such dissolved into communities that control them.

Every society is made up of parallel groups/communities. The communities are parallel to each other since they have little communication or no communication at all with each other.
In the view of those who plead for this interpretation of identity, individuals are divided into groups which culturally have nothing to do or at least not very much to do with each other[2]
Sen resolutely opposes this interpretation of cultural identity. Sen believes that the interpretation of human beings as bearing only one cultural identity within themselves is wrong.

[2] Cultural identity is in this view the individual mind itself since it the content of the mind.

The correct interpretation of identity is, in Sen’s view, that everyone has in himself a plurality of cultural components, i.e., a plurality of cultural identities. The main aspects of Sen’s position are the following:

• Cultures do not determine. There is no cultural determinism as regards the historical or economic development of individuals, groups, people, and countries. Cultures have several aspects: they cannot be considered as systems which influence an individual in only one direction. There can be no cultural determinism since every culture is made up of different components.
• Cultural identity does not consist in an absolutely original system; culture is not something which is born and grows up as an isolated system. Every culture takes elements from other cultures, it derives from pre-existing cultures, it is born from preceding cultures, and it gives elements to other cultures. There is an interchange between cultures. A cultural form changes. The idea of the purity of a culture proves to be, on closer inspection, a myth (besides being a danger).
• Cultures experience modifications, changes, additions, and losses. There is no culture which is born and exists as an isolated system.
• Cultures are not made and are not determined once and for all. Cultures have a development.
• Individuals possess a composition of diverse cultures: they have mutually different cultural identities.
• All attempts to convince the individual that he has only a cultural identity, that this cultural identity ought to be defended against contaminations from outside, that all other components are irrelevant, that he ought to discover or re-discover his cultural roots, that he ought to go back to his true origins, are, on closer inspections, attempts to manipulate the individual, to imprison the individual in a group, to let the individual disappear as individual. They correspond to the strategy of secluding the individual into a specific group, of isolating this individual from other groups, and of excluding from this specific group all individuals who do not have a specific cultural identity.
• The individuals may not be dissolved into groups. The centre of society is the individual. Groups come thereafter.
• The absolutisation of the cultural identity aims to dissolve the individual into the group, into the nation, into the community, and into the state by contending that the individual has no relevance in comparison with the cultural identity.
• The individual can choose between the different components of his identity. He has the responsibility too for the choice which he makes as regards his cultural components, i.e., for the choice which he makes as regards the cultural component to which he wants to give more importance.
• The individual may not become the prisoner of an element of his identity, nor may be the prisoner of his identity. He may not be interpreted as being one with his identity.
• The individual can be manipulated to believe that he has only a cultural identity.
• No individual may be reduced to a single scheme, i.e., to a monodimensional identity; no individual is absorbed by a single tradition (unless the individual is manipulated).

In Sen’s view, every cultural identity proves, on closer inspection, to consist of numerous components. Every cultural identity turns out to be a plurality of identities since it consists of many elements. Every cultural identity is composed of multiple parts and has evolved from numerous components: it continually incorporates and absorbs new elements. It is not something original since it is always the composition of pre-existing elements. The cultural identity of the individual is not made once and for all. It is not something uncompounded and is not something unchanging. Cultural identities are systems which continuously change. Cultural identities are dynamic systems. This aspect holds for the individual too: the specific cultural identity consists in a plurality of cultural components. Moreover, the cultural identity of the individual changes depending on the experiences and the life of the individual: i.e., the cultural identity of an individual is not static: both generally and individually, cultural identities change. Hence, all positions pleading for the concept of the original character of culture, which ought not to be contaminated with heterogeneous elements, do not have any authentic foundation or legitimation: their model of cultural identity does not correspond to the authentic essence of cultural identities. These positions correspond to the intention of manipulating individuals. At the basis of the insistence on the purity of a culture, on the necessity of coming back to the authentic roots of a culture, and on avoiding any kind of contamination from other cultures, there is the aim of manipulating the individual and trapping him into specific mental schemes which are functional to precise political strategies. The individual disappears behind a too narrowly defined concept of cultural identity (the aim of those who plead for this interpretation of cultural identity is precisely to annihilate the individual in his autonomy to the advantage of the cultural identity).

Because of this conception of identity, the individual risks subordinating himself or having to subordinate himself to a larger organisation (e.g., group, nation, state, community) since, in this interpretation of identity, the individual is his cultural identity, which is rigidly monovalent. In the absolutising interpretation of the cultural identity, the cultural identity absorbs the individual, who is nothing without it. The individual ought to recognise his inferiority to the culture and to the group to which he belongs. The individual ought to submit to the culture and to the group to which he belongs; he should obey the group. In this view, cultural identity is the authentic centre of society. Individuals live for their cultural identity and for the group to which they belong; they are inferior to their culture, they ought to recognise their subalternity to their cultural identity, and they should sacrifice their person and their autonomy to their cultural identity. They ought not to contaminate themselves with heterogeneous elements. An attitude of hostility against all those who do not belong to a specific culture and against all other cultures is pleaded for. This cultural identity, with which Sen disagrees, has a double goal since it is a model of identity built, at the same time, for the exclusion of individuals from a group to which this specific identity is referred and for the elimination of dissension within the same group: exclusion and seclusion, marginalisation and incarceration are the aims and the consequences of this interpretation of cultural identity.

On closer inspection, an absolutised view of identity proves to be an artificially built instrument for the annihilation of the individual in his specificity as being individual: the rigid identity closes and secludes the individual into a culture. The individual disappears in this artificial model of culture. Sen defines this condition as the incarceration of the individual in the cultural identity. The rigid cultural identity serves to the inclusion and seclusion of individuals in isolated groups: individuals are absorbed and annulled in the group. The rigid interpretation of cultural identity serves to the exclusion of all individuals who have a different culture: it answers to the aims of both including/imprisoning some people and marginalising other people. It is functional to a programme of homogenisation of certain groups and to the spread of exclusion, hostility, and intolerance[3].

[3] An individual who has a cultural identity without being able to distance himself from that identity would be an individual held hostage by his identity (see Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny, especially pp. 174–176 and 178–179).

4) Complexity

In Sen’s view, the nature of the individual does not correspond to the interpretation which those who plead for the rigid identity maintain:

“Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification – in terms of religion, or community, or culture, or nation, or civilization (treating each as uniquely powerful in the context of that particular approach to war and peace). The uniquely partitioned world is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse categories that shape the world in which we live. It goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that “we human beings are all much the same” (which tends to be ridiculed these days – not entirely without reason – as much too softheaded), but also against the less discussed but much more plausible understanding that we are diversely different. The hope of harmony in the contemporary world lies to a great extent in a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity, and in the appreciation that they cut across each other and work against a sharp separation along one single hardened line of impenetrable division.”
–Amartya Sen, (2006), Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny, pp. xiii–xiv

The shared humanity is annulled through the manipulation strategy of those who plead for the absolutisation of cultural identity. In Sen’s view, every individual is always the result of different components. Moreover, every individual is evolving during his life. Every individual has had a development, every individual has a development, and every individual will have a development. All individuals are a plurality of components even though they perceive themselves and want to be perceived as monodimensional systems. Individuals are not static systems.
The monodimensionality does not exist in individuals. The assertion that only one identity exists for an individual is functional to the aim of manipulating the individual. Sen criticises different views such as:

• All individuals have one and only one identity, i.e., one and only one culture.
• All individuals must be classified on the basis of one and only one cultural affiliation.
• All individuals recognise (therefore, they do not choose, create, or modify) their identities and cannot distance themselves from those identities (in this view, identities constitute a kind of second nature for the individuals; the individuals are their identities and nothing but their identities; individuals belong to their cultural identities, are subordinated to their cultural identities).

Sen firmly believes that all individuals are a multiplicity in themselves. The individual as such is a plurality of cultural components. Every individual is the result of the additions of different traditions[4] : he is the result of numerous cultural layers. Therefore, every individual has a plurality of cultural identities within himself, even though he is not aware of this condition.

The individual can choose which identity is the most important for him in a specific phase of his life. Cultural identity is not a destiny but arises from an act of will and from a specific choice.

Likewise, the culture under which an individual could/should be classified is not destiny, i.e., a specific culture does not represent, for the individual, a second nature to which the individual is inseparably bound. The individual can, at least in a certain measure, distance himself from his identity.

[4] Every historical phenomenon always arises from a plurality of components: there is no absolute originality of a particular culture. Every culture always consists of different components. Every culture is, on closer inspection, many cultures since it arises from different previous cultural components and evolves through the changes of its different cultural components. Every form of culture always comes from different components; all individuals live in a milieu which, despite the appearance of uniformity and singularity, always contains within itself a multiplicity and a plurality of cultural components.

The cultural identity which all individuals bring with themselves does not constitute a discovery of a nature that dominates and determines the individual. Every cultural form that an individual has within himself influences the individual without determining the individual. There is a range of cultural components which the individual possesses: the individual can choose between the different components which he has in himself and can decide to which cultural component he gives a greater weight[5]. Moreover, the choice is not definitive: the individual can, in another period of life, decide to confer greater importance to another cultural component. The range of the cultural components is limited, but the relevance of the different components is flexible: the identity of a person can change within this range.

Sen’s aim consists in showing that the process of absolutising an identity to the detriment of all other forms of culture that every individual possesses has a potential for violence; the instrumentalisation of identity serves to dominate people and to lead them to determined dispositions towards other groups. The cultural identity separates the individuals of the diverse groups from each other and at the same time dominates within a group.

Individuals are not all different in an identical way; people are different in many ways, in the sense that they can at the same time be assigned to diverse groups because of the plurality of their characteristics: they are diversely different in the sense that the differences between them are innumerable. Correspondingly, there is no uniform group which has the same difference from all the other entities: every individual is different from any other individual. Identity means identities since a specific cultural identity is always the result of many cultural components: hence, an individual can always be assigned to a plurality of groups at the same time. He can be identical to some individuals due to some components of his cultural identity, and he can be at the same time different from the same individuals due to other components of his cultural identity.

The dangers of absolute identity can be remedied by the power of multiple identities: if a person understands that she has a plurality of identities, this understanding can prevent any external attempt to absolutise identity. Therewith the dangers connected to absolute identity can be prevented.

[5] It depends on the individual to decide to which component the individual wants to give greater importance. The decision depends on the individual; the determination of which component is more important arises from the free choice of the individual. Sen expresses the following reflections:
“Belonging to each one of the membership groups can be quite important, depending on the particular context. When they compete for attention and priority over each other (they need not always, since there may be no conflict between the demands of different loyalties), the person has to decide on the relative importance to attach to the respective identities, which will, again, depend on the exact context. There are two distinct issues here. First, the recognition that identities are robustly plural, and that the importance of one identity need not obliterate the importance of others. Second, a person has to make choices – explicitly or by implication – about what relative importance to attach, in a particular context, to the divergent loyalties and priorities that may compete for precedence.”
–Amartya Sen, (2006), Identity and Violence. The Illusion of Destiny, p. 19.

Like all forms of cultural identity, religious identities can be used to exclude or marginalise people; they can be used to incite hatred against people. A way of interpreting religions as an absolute system, which is isolated and must remain isolated from all other religions, would bring about a reciprocally hostile disposition between religions which would be always ready to explode.

As mentioned, in Sen’s view, there is a precise responsibility of the individual as regards the disposition which the individual has in relation to his cultural components. The question is whether the individual aims to privilege an element of his components or whether he is ready to acknowledge himself as a being composed of different elements. This difference means, for the individuals, different ways of living their own culture: the first individual absolutises a component of his cultural identity to the detriment of all others (he denies that his identity has different components). The other individual relativises all components since he recognises that his cultural identity has many components and is the result of development. The individual’s responsibility cannot be forgotten: the individual is responsible for the way in which he lives and chooses to live his identity.

Autori: Kathrin Bouvot – Gianluigi Segalerba