Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time)

many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity

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.

Unfortunately, many well-intentioned attempts to stop such violence are also handicapped by the perceived absence of choice about our identities, and this can seriously damage our ability to defeat violence. When the prospects of good relations among different human beings are seen (as they increasingly are) primarily in terms of “amity among civilizations,” or “dialogue between religious groups,” or “friendly relations between different communities” (ignoring the great many different ways in which people relate to each other), a serious miniaturization of human beings precedes the devised programs for peace.

Civilizational or religious partitioning of the world population yields a “solitarist” approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group (in this case defined by civilization or religion, in contrast with earlier reliance on nationalities and classes)

Indeed, the world is increasingly seen, if only implicitly, as a federation of religions or of civilizations, thereby ignoring all the other ways in which people see themselves.

identity can be a complicated matter. There is, of course, no great difficulty in persuading ourselves that an object is identical to itself. Wittgenstein, the great philosopher, once remarked that “there is no finer example of a useless proposition” than saying that something is identical to itself, but he went on to argue that the proposition, though completely useless, is nevertheless “connected with a certain play of the imagination.”
When we shift our attention from the notion of being identical to oneself to that of sharing an identity with others of a particular group (which is the form the idea of social identity very often takes), the complexity increases further