Identity is a space
It's
quite interesting how hugely complex the subject of identity is. Who
are we? Who am I?
How
do I define it? How do I perceive it?
Name,
age, where I come from, my job. For some, it could even involve which
car I own or which shoes I wear.
But
descriptors fall short of explaining identity. Identity is rather
like a geometry, a space. In this sense, we are not only defined
by the space we occupy, but also by the limits of that space,
and even more the history of the space and its limits. It's a group
of yes and no (positives and negatives, female and male forces,
creation and castration).
Our identity cannot be scripted and cannot simply be described. It is only
discovered through exploration of life. What-I-am and what-I-am-not.
We could describe ourselves as "I am intelligent" but if we
added "I am not intellectual", we have a much better
understanding, a clearer picture of what's the space occupied.
The exploration of the positive, what we are, happens through our actions and achievements. Through the transformation of fear into desire and action. Here
the exploration becomes tricky when we try to fully understand which
desire is truly ours and
which is the desire of a mother/father figure we have identified and
delegated power to. But the discovery of ourselves will also involve
the exploration of the negative, the shadow, the space we don't occupy and the
spaces we are not aware we occupy, the one we don't recognise as ours. Here when I say negative, it does
not mean that it is a negative trait. Quite often we do not see
talents that for any reason we don't approve of (or our parents did
not approve of). We could explore the negative through mirrors (what we "see"
in others is normally what we "don't see" in ourselves)
but also in testing our limits. This exploration will only truly
happen in the moments of making decisions and taking things
to action, the moments when we are using our power.
With these two elements we build a
narrative and paint a picture of ourselves.
In
crisis, however, we question our own map and we feel forced to
revisit the history of it. We find ourselves wondering who we are in
reality and digging deeper into understanding if the image we had in
our minds is real and where it comes from.
A
crisis will happen every time that our habits change, for internal or
external reasons. It
can be as subtle as realising that a belief we held is untrue (and
our ego structure collapses) or as real as losing our job or someone
we love and we get in touch with our vulnerable side. When habits
change, we inevitably formulate new questions and have to make new decisions. Therefore we
have to re-test our limits, find a "truer" centre and
re-define the space we occupy whilst feeling quite naked - with all the
anxiety this triggers. In every crisis, we have to rediscover our
power. Crisis
are moments of rediscovery of our own identity.
At
a collective level, this process is lived in the same way. We can all
recognise that every
economical crisis is followed almost immediately by an national identity
crisis. With the economical crisis of
2008, there
were many economical and political beliefs that were discovered to be
untrue and almost every country entered into the exercise of
revisiting who they were (and are, as it has not finished yet) and
what do they believe in.Traditions,
flags, a surge of nationalist sentiment appeared everywhere. But
also the explorations of the "noes": the what-we-are-not,
rejection of immigration, regional separatism, and mistrust of
anything foreign. Every time we see an advertisement with a flag or
somehow exploiting the national codes, we should be thinking "oh-oh:
we have a problem".
Crisis
are moments of change,
which in turn switches on our fears and we may be tempted to go back
instead of going forwards. We attach ourselves to our old
view of
the "mother" nation, and our old
way of doing things, which
will be -almost inevitably- obsolete.
The
idea of nations, even if we have all been born in this as a
functioning reality, is quite recent in historical terms and is
evolving quite rapidly as well. National identity (through
cultural rituals) establishes the familiar, enabling trust and
therefore collaboration. Its borders are the borders of our fears,
the bigger our fears, the more the walls will take a physical form.
Inside I feel secured, I feel at home. Everything foreign deserves a
level of mistrust.
I worked for many years in many different
foreign countries. I had to learn many languages. But if I met
someone with whom I could speak in my language, we would immediately
switch to our mother tongue as something very natural. More than
once, however, I received complaints from colleagues about
this.
In the UK:
-I
don't understand what bothers you. It is a private conversation, why
do we have to speak in English- I
would investigate.
- But
I like to overhear your conversation and I cannot understand what you
are saying, you could be saying bad things about me. - was
the response, to my surprise.
In
Italy, another one said (this conversation occurred in Italian):
- If
you are in this country, you have to speak Italian, always.
and
I asked
-What
would you do, if you met another Italian in a foreign country?
really?
- I
would speak Italian - was
the unsurprising response as every country that received Italian
immigrants would know.
The rise of UKIP in the UK, the extreme
right in France, the separatist movements, etc are voicing (and
exploiting) these fears, a kind of populism from the right. The
political parties of the right (who are closer to the masculine thinking
and therefore to the what-we-are-not, the limits and the noes) are the ones normally leading this side of the debate and capturing
votes in the way. While
the left shies away from the exploration of the national
identity from the positive, first of all because it is a taboo. All debate about nationalism is bad, we have all learned that history has proven that nationalism comes with a superiority claim. It was quite interesting to see how in the UK all the Scottish sentiment had to be somehow branded as "civic nationalism" to make the debate acceptable and palatable. Secondly, because it is a much more complex process, more intuitive than
conscious. It'd
be the exploration of our desire. What we want to be. What's our project. But that would
imply rethinking
the state,
which under neoliberal doctrine was also a taboo. However -in my
opinion- that's what they should be doing instead of trying to
catch up with policies that are not theirs.
Opening the Pandora's box will always feel like a step into the abyss, into darkness. Even
if the position of most newspapers would say otherwise, and France is
"shocked" about the advanced of the far right. I
would argue that at some level it is a healthy exercise
as, in opening up to a new world, we can easily get lost in
adaptation. As an immigrant, I don't find their arguments positive and I deeply disagree with them. However, I rescue the fact that they are articulating
these fears which may help to better resolve them politically, as long as they use this voice in a pluralistic debate and don't raise to power to shut up everyone else.
It would be much worse -in my opinion- denying their existence as
they would imply a complete disconnection of the people and the
political class. It is scaring in moments of crisis, looking at the mirror. But ballots and public debate are always better than wars or street crashes to express these feelings, and these feelings will always find a way to express themselves. All debates about national identity are worth
having, even if clumsy, even if we touch the politically
incorrect, with all voices speaking and all tensions
shown. But for the debate to be complete, the reasons why the (economic) crisis happened in the first place have to be truly revisited and all the "other" voices have to be heard too. Otherwise, the other will never come alive as an equal, someone able to respond, to question and tell their side of the story.
A story that is kept untold becomes toxic.
A story that is kept untold becomes toxic.
Even if many intellectuals and politicians would prefer that
national sentiment did not exist: in an era where we haven't yet
resolved the separation with our mother/motherland (or any space in which our mother tongue creates an exo-uterus), they do. They are
attachments that exist and cannot be dissolved but rather resolved by
the people who sustain them. Catalunya, Scotland, the European Union,
what it means to be German or Italian. Opening this Pandora's box might not be about spreading evil, but rather to shed light over what's kept hidden and secret in order to resolve it, to heal it. Eventually, the worst arguments will start to collapse by the weight of their own irrelevance. I'd prefer people to explore
these subjects through debate and rather than with violence. From the negative (fears) and even more
importantly, from the missing positive. What we can create, what makes us similar rather than different, what we can share, what we can contribute, our common hopes.
The
"shock", "the earthquake" -as it was described-
that France or UK might be going through these days after the victory
of UKIP and the far right in European elections is not so much
because these countries are realising they have far right
tendencies... it is the realisation that they are vulnerable and afraid. "Rational
France afraid?" "Mighty United Kingdom vulnerable?". We
all are, in moments of crisis. Not so shocking, in fact.
AB - Originally posted May 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/26/labour-politics-hope-ukip-despair-nhs-ed-miliband
Marina Abramovic speaks about consciousness, the present and our mission
Mariana Mazzucato - Rethinking the state website
http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/rethinking-the-state/
Marina Abramovic speaks about consciousness, the present and our mission
Mariana Mazzucato - Rethinking the state website
http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/rethinking-the-state/
