The question of identity is, nowadays, one of the most problematic issues. Recently, it became one of the main purposes of academia in general. The issue of identity engendered and was the reason behind the appearance and spread of many studies and departments around the world. Yet, the problem is still unresolved and many questions are still on the surface such as:
- Who are we? What are we?
- On what basis / by means of what criterion one identifies him/herself?
- Who is the other? .... and so on and so forth.
Starting from the assumption that one cannot, to some extent, identifies him/herself, the majority of recent studies concentrated on the last question of the early mentioned ones. However, the issue of “who is the other” represented and still represents the main aspect of post-colonial studies, the main theme of postcolonial literatures, and the main issue discussed inside media studios.
Through taking many shapes, the issue of identity has been discussed and studied by many theorists and intellectuals during the last half of the 20th century. Edward Said alongside with Homi Bhabha and Spivak are considered as the main leading figures of theories dealing with the issue. As a result, many thinkers, analysts and literary icons as well as a long list of jargons, concepts and publications are, today, studied in numerous departments established around the world, mainly during and after 1980s, for the same goal.
The question of the “fact” of identity is inquired as early as the appearance of Man; when, according to the bible, the sons of Adam fought and Cain killed Abel to win his twin sister. Cain was trying to emphasize his identity by getting the most beautiful one of the two ladies then existed. The early appearance of fighting empires, each one seeking dominance over the other around the Mediterranean sea, was one of the incidents that problematized the issue of identity and its relation to power in all its guises race, class and main importantly religion. Afterwards, religion was the reason, or let’s say the explicit reason, behind the conquest of the “Dark Continents” by western missionaries to enlighten the “Fine Animals” as Joseph Conrad named them in his Heart of Darkness. The rise and the spread of the British Empire was, arguably, the strongest adoption of the trinity gender, race and class as norms by means of which one is distinguished and identified not only between the west and the rest, but also within the western society itself. Quick examples of that are the exclusion of United States, Australia and Northern Ireland from the post-colonial countries list by means of race and economy; as well as the superiority of the white man, in the popular mentality, over the white women, the white woman over the black man, and the black man over the black woman and so on.
During the colonization of the 19th and 20th centuries, many theorists raised again the matter of identity on the light of the status quo. The colonization of southern Asia and the scramble of Africa between western forces mainly the two, then, powerful ones France and Britain, represent another field which will be the engine of later on studies on identity including Marxist, Feminist and Orientalist studies. One of the main objects of such studies is to problematize the concepts and jargons including the triology of “race”, “gender” and “class” and trying as well, to answer such question as:
- What is gender? And who determines one’s gender? Is it biological or constructed?
- What is race? And who is allowed to construct racial dimensions?
- What is class? And on what basis society is divided into classes?
And the most important question:
- Are they all enough to determine one’s identity?
As a result of these studies, theorists came with the following:
Since “gender” is not biological, as Simone de Beauvoir clarified, but rather, socially constructed by means of religious, economic, and social powers; and “class” and “race” are also conventional, for there is neither one “blackness” nor one “whiteness”, identity then itself, is constructed and formed.
Edward Said’s Orientalism as well as Bhabha’s theories of Hybridity and Third Space, Spivak’s notion of Subaltern and Marx Das Kapital are all, alongside with other literary writings by Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thingo, Hanif Kureishi, Virginia Woolf, Selman Rushdie ... etc, considered as reactions to the western construction of Identities.
According to Said, in his analysis of the post-colonial situation, the interaction of identities is untenable, and the characteristics of each one are different from the characteristics of the other. The same standpoint is maybe, tacitly, supported by Bernard Lewis and his pupil Samuel Hantington when it comes to religious, mainly Islamic, and non-religious identities. Whereas for Bhabha, the fusion of identities yields blur states of “neither in nor out”, “ white but not quite” and so on and so forth.
To be continued …
