School of Humanities Language Education for Refugees and Migrants
Postgraduate Dissertation Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Vasileios Tirchas Supervisor: Theodora Zampaki
photo by Yannis Bechrakis
Patras, Greece, March 2020
Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
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Thesis II Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Vasileios Tirchas
Supervising Committee Supervisor: Co-Supervisor: Theodora Zampaki Stavroula Kitsiou Hellenic Open University Hellenic Open University
Patras, Greece, March 2020
Thesis III Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Dedicated to my daughters
Rea and Thelma, who are my two goddesses,
and to my parents
Symeon and Athanasia, whom I very recently lost
Acknowledgements
I wish to offer my special thanks to my supervisor Dr Theodora Zampaki for her useful feedback, her support and her guidance that provided me during the preparation of this thesis. It would be an oversight on my part if I failed to thank my very good friend Christina, who, without a second thought, offered me her advice.
Thesis IV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
“My identity is what makes me not be identical with anyone else”.
In A. Maalouf‟s “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” (1998).
Abstract
In this postgraduate thesis the issues of globalization and of the construction of identity are investigated, through the analysis of characteristic book excerpts by the, much-loved in Greece and par excellence diasporic, French- Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, intending to decompose these concepts into their components, that is, into their main features.
Maalouf raises the question under what conditions a person can choose one of his/her identities -the national, the linguistic, the class, possibly the religious, the sexual but also a number of others in relation to his/her preferences in politics, culture, music, soccer, etc.-, resort to violence and kill or be killed for that identity. And this is intensified when we refer to the identities and place of the subject being between two languages and two cultures, particularly in a hard world, in a world of contradictory developments, that is, in the age of globalization.
Keywords globalization, identity, national identity
Thesis V Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Περίληψη
ε απηήλ ηε κεηαπηπρηαθή δηαηξηβή εμεηάδνληαη ηα δεηήκαηα ηεο παγθνζκηνπνίεζεο θαη ηεο νηθνδόκεζεο ηεο ηαπηόηεηαο, κέζσ ηεο αλάιπζεο ραξαθηεξηζηηθώλ απνζπαζκάησλ βηβιίσλ ηνπ, πνιύ αγαπεηνύ ζηελ Διιάδα θαη θαη‟ εμνρήλ δηαζπνξηθνύ, Γαιινιηβαλέδνπ ζπγγξαθέα Ακίλ Μααινύθ, κε ζηόρν λα αλαιπζνύλ απηέο νη έλλνηεο ζηα ζπζηαηηθά ηνπο, δειαδή ζηα θύξηα γλσξίζκαηά ηνπο.
Ο Μααινύθ ζέηεη ην εξώηεκα θάησ από πνηεο ζπλζήθεο έλαο άλζξσπνο κπνξεί λα επηιέμεη κία από ηηο ηαπηόηεηέο ηνπ -ηελ εζληθή, ηε γισζζηθή, ηελ ηαμηθή, ελδερόκελα ηε ζξεζθεπηηθή, ηε ζεμνπαιηθή αιιά θαη πιήζνο άιιεο ζρεηηθέο κε ηηο πξνηηκήζεηο ηνπ σο πξνο ηελ πνιηηηθή, ηνλ πνιηηηζκό, ηε κνπζηθή, ην πνδόζθαηξν θιπ-, λα θαηαθύγεη ζηε βία θαη λα ζθνηώζεη ή λα ζθνησζεί γηα απηήλ ηελ ηαπηόηεηα. Καη ηνύην επηηείλεηαη όηαλ αλαθεξόκαζηε ζηηο ηαπηόηεηεο θαη ζηε ζέζε ηνπ ππνθεηκέλνπ πνπ βξίζθεηαη αλάκεζα ζε δύν γιώζζεο θαη ζε δύν θνπιηνύξεο, ηδηαίηεξα ζε έλαλ ζθιεξό θόζκν, ζε έλαλ θόζκν αληηθαηηθώλ εμειίμεσλ, δειαδή ζηελ επνρή ηεο παγθνζκηνπνίεζεο.
Λέξεις - κλειδιά
παγθνζκηνπνίεζε, ηαπηόηεηα, εζληθή ηαπηόηεηα
Thesis VI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Table of contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………………………….IV
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………………………V
Πεξίιεςε...... VI
Table of contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………...VII
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………….IX
2. Objectives of the research…………………………………………………………………………………………X
3. Methodology……………………………………………………………………………………………………...XI
4. Steps of the research process……………………………………………………………………………………XIII
5. Literature review
5.1 What is globalization?...... XIV
5.2 Identification and identity…………………………………………………………………………...... XX
5.3 Globalization and identity in the Arab world………………………………………………………...XXII
5.4 Nation, national identity, nationalism………………………………………………………………..XXV
6. The unified world and the differences, the connection to one place and globalization through Amin Maalouf‟s case
6.1 The issues of globalization and identity through Maalouf‟s non-fiction books…………………...... XXX
6.1.1 The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983)…………………………………………………XXXI
6.1.2 In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1998)……………………..XXXVI
6.1.3 Origins: A Memoir (2004)………………………………………………………………… XLV
6.1.4 Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century (2009)………...XLVIII
6.2 The issues of globalization and identity through Maalouf‟s fiction books………………………...... LIII
6.2.1 Leo Africanus (1986)……………………………………………………………………...... LIV
6.2.2 Les désorientés (2012)……………………………………………………………………..LVIII
6.3 The intractable complexity of phenomena and relations between globalization and identity through the spirit of Maalouf‟s works that have been studied………………………………………………………….LXI
Thesis VII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
7. Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………………………………..LXVI
References……………………………………………………………………………………………………...LXXIII
Thesis VIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
1. Introduction
The thesis begins with a description of the objectives of the research, of the methodology and of the steps of the research process, continues with an overview of the relevant literature and focuses on the analysis of Amin Maalouf‟s work, with an emphasis on the issues that interest us (globalization, identity). Through his works Maalouf makes a serious effort to make the issue of globalization, that is, of this historical development that has been observed over the last decades, leading to ever-increasing and directed interdependence between the countries of the Earth at an initially economic and then technological and cultural level (Papageorgiou, 2001), understood. At the cultural level, the problem of identities also emerges, in the sense that it is widespread the fear that globalization is threatening to level cultural particularities and is aiming at imposing a single form of culture on a global scale. I followed a qualitative approach to analyze textual content so as to examine the meanings, perceptions, processes and contexts of the concepts of globalization and identity.
Why, then, does Maalouf choose the words globalization and identity, while someone else might use, possibly, the words “imperialism” and “ego” instead? Critical Discourse Analysis attempts to answer this question and that‟s the reason why it has been applied, on the grounds that it relates to an attempt to approach the context that underlines the role of ideology in shaping the relationship between linguistic and social structures and practices, in other words, it seeks to reveal how language, society, and ideology are linked. In that sense, the micro-analysis of Maalouf‟s writings is combined with the macro-analysis of the social structures and power relations with which his writings are involved, that is, the analysis is tried to reach a point that can explain Maalouf‟s constitution, within the specific historical context, although it stands to reason that nothing that was not in the author‟s intentions could have been inserted into his writings. Nevertheless, in my opinion, his books do not seek to be understood as an expression of the life of Maalouf‟s subjectivity, so one of my purposes was the approach of his books through the reconstruction of the context, that is, of the characteristics of our time, in which they were produced. Lastly, the understanding of the socio-political phenomenon of globalization through the comparison of the various situations in which it occurs is being attempted.
The thesis finishes with the conclusions, by summarizing the main points of the analysis of the topic in question, and the reflections on the subject. The type of research is bibliographical.
Thesis IX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
2. Objectives of the research
The main research objective is to develop the notion of identity formation, based on theories, as a conceptual framework. I consider this notion to be an appropriate focus of analysis for understanding contemporary relationships between the Western and Arab peoples. The identity formation framework allows me to demonstrate how globalization processes occur relationally through discourses of personal and social identities, and nation. I will further try to address the question of whether postcolonial lenses allow or do not lead to encounters between West and non-West occurring under globalization as a series of events at the locus of identity formation. As such, my dissertation will also seek to offer ideas that have been formulated around globalization in the Arab world area of research. Concerning the identity development, which becomes a more complex process that may follow plural developmental pathways, another objective is to look at the consequences of exposure to diverse cultures. It is my intention the strengthening of the defence of diversity, the contact and interaction, in more ways, with a multicultural approach and our world more generally, with a wider tolerance and respect to different, to every other cultural tradition and perception of life, which form an international spiritual invitation of creative nature. On the contrary, the spreading and prevalence of a unilateral Americanized perception cannot function creatively. The generalization of the one, that is, the inherent unilateralism of the one at the expense of the pluralism of the many, cannot work creatively. An objective of the research is also to answer questions through the search of bibliographical sources, researches and published scientific articles that are directly or indirectly related to the issue under consideration. A presentation of data and information obtained from the above valid sources will be carried out, while at the same time a critical approach to these will be made, to point out controversial points and identify those that merit further or future research.
Also, I am concerned about contributing, through the content of the work of the French-speaking writer Amin Maalouf, whose theoretical background and simple literary writing illuminates many important aspects of language and identity in multilingual environments, to the removal of the prejudices prevailing within the now blended Greek society, to the better treatment and highlighting of multiculturalism at the social level, to the transfer of the ideal of a multiple identity liberated from fanaticism.
The specific research questions raised in the research process are: how racial, gender, etc. stereotypes about identity are adopted and how can be overcome, to what extent does globalization affect our identity, how does globalization affect Islam and how Islamophobia has changed after September 11, what is the influence of globalization for mankind at each level, whether globalization is a new phenomenon or just a long-standing feature of capitalist development, what is the impact of globalization on distinctive traditional cultures.
Maalouf‟s works that were studied were “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes” (1983), “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” (1998), “Origins: A Memoir” (2004), “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century” (2009), “Leo Africanus” (1986), “Les désorientés” (2012), because they are his most representative, and clearly signify his stances, on the topic under consideration. Any research has a dynamic nature, because the whole effort is trying to discover the unknown. I considered that the books selected serve therefore my purpose best, in order to support my argument and any counterarguments.
Thesis X Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
3. Methodology
I am using a qualitative approach to analyze textual content, because it offers ways of understanding patterns of globalization and responses to the human identity problem. According to Willing (2001), qualitative research is a research which lays emphasis and focuses on the meaning. Although qualitative research does not have the lustre of the large samples and is negatively heterodefined, in relation to quantitative research, simply because of the absence of numbers and mathematical calculations, does not mean that is not attractive, but, on the contrary, it is sensitive to hint and has the ability to investigate in depth.
The methodology to be followed is a Critical Discourse Analysis and an analytical and comparative research. Critical Discourse Analysis as a theory in qualitative research is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse. While pure quality research is confined to the specified framework of the matter being investigated, Critical Discourse Analysis goes beyond these limitations insofar as texts can be traced back to the social source that produces them -actions, ideas etc.-, following the traces that are imprinted on the text, searches for meaning in the message behind the text, seeking to find out in this the latent content or what is meant without explicitly being mentioned and, furthermore, to link the text to the social contexts that produce it, since every communicative practice, that is, every text, is not just words on paper, but specific ideological positions (Huckin, 1997), as it involves ways of being in the world, ways of signifying specific and recognizable identities (Gee, 1990). Critical Discourse Analysis sees language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways in which social and political domination are reproduced through oral and textual discourse (Fairclough & Holes, 1995). Critical Discourse Analysis has been used as a method of multidisciplinary analysis in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences (Fairclough, 2001). It does not restrict itself exclusively to the method, although the common opinion of the critics of discourse analysis is that language and power are linked. Comparative research is the attempt to understand a social phenomenon through the comparison of the various situations in which it occurs (Tilly, 1984). Comparative research thus observes the phenomena, systematizes the similarities, the differences, and the relationships between them. Based on the process, research design will follow analytical research design. Analytical research design by posing research questions tries to explain the whys and the hows. It concerns cause-and-effect relationships between variables. According to analytical research design, the researcher is trying to analyze the situation and make a critical evaluation. Analytical research design is the in-depth research and evaluation of information available in order to interpret complex phenomena. It‟s a situated activity, which places the researcher in the world, trying to give meaning or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings that people give to them. It consists of a set of interpretative and material practices that make the world visible, they are transforming the world into a series of representations of the self. At this level, it involves an interpretative, naturalistic approach to the world. Of course, it‟s subjective writing, because it expresses the researcher‟s opinion or evaluation of a text, by breaking down and studying the parts of texts. And this because it‟s based on data that is not discrete and measurable, it approaches phenomena through narrative type data whose analysis includes their coding and synthesis, through inductive process (Savin-Baden & Major, 2010). In particular, historical and philosophical types of analytical research design will be followed. Historical deals with events that have already happened, it is aimed at discovering aspects and information that may interpret or alter the existing interpretation of events and, in some cases, at predicting future events based on the past. Philosophical deals with the critical exploration of ideas, perceptions, experiences and more generally methods of exploring -single or multiple- reality.
Thesis XI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Antonio Gramsci‟s influence on the formation of Critical Discourse Analysis with his work on hegemony was crucial. According to Gramsci, some political, economic, cultural and ideological forms prevail within every society and gain the acceptance and consensus of its members, without resorting to any form of violence. Gramsci calls this power hegemony. The notion of hegemony in Gramsci appears to be broadened, as it exists not only in the economic, social and political structures, but it affects the way we think and know, and influences ideological orientations (Gramsci, 1971).
Thesis XII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
4. Steps of the research process
The steps that were followed were, indicatively: during the first phase identifying the problem, the theme, during the second phase literature review for searching related bibliography or related research, collection, specification, organization of data, during the third phase classification of data, its interpretation and analysis of conclusions, and in the fourth phase reporting the study.
Thesis XIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
5. Literature review
5.1 What is globalization?
Globalization or internationalization is the autonomy of all those parameters -economy, communication etc.- which until recently -a few decades- sought to have borders within a protector state. Parameters that tend to be liberated and diffused, following globalization, are commerce, social structure, technology, culture, the political system, knowledge, etc. (Beck, 2000). The term is often used in argumentation about the need for a new universal type of hegemony in the world.
Panayotopoulos claims that globalization involves increased international interconnection and interdependence between markets, businesses, and even cultures. In practical terms, it is based on the acceptance of common rules of the game in economic relations, rules based on the triptych free markets, free trade and laissez-faire (Panayotopoulos, 2008).
Globalization has a historical past. It first appeared in the nineteenth century -from 1860 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, a period characterized by the opening-up of international markets, the free movement of capital and the supervision of this open system by the then ruling United Kingdom-, while its present re-appearance began in the 1980s. The differences between the two periods of globalization mainly concern the initial conditions. At the beginning of the first globalization the world was fairly homogeneous, homogeneously poor and rural. Modern globalization has found the world divided between rich industrialized countries and poor primary producers. This difference entails a fundamental shift in the typology of international trade now being shaped around services, as opposed to the globalization of the nineteenth century, which concerned exclusively the trade in tangible goods, that is, commodities. This change of international trade has resulted in painful asymmetries in the benefits of globalization to the detriment of developing countries (op. cit.).
In the modern phase of globalization, trade in goods has been outflanked by the trade in services. Trade in services first emerged as an important element of international trade in the 1980s, and today services have come to represent 75% of Germany‟s Gross Domestic Product and 70% of US‟s. The systematic asymmetries of globalization to the detriment of developing countries stem from internationalization of service trade (op. cit.).
Examples of de-commercialised trade are Gucci glasses, Metaxa brandy, Hilton hotels, McDonald‟s fast food or Business Class airline tickets (op. cit.).
It‟s about the historical development that has been taking place in recent decades -after 1980- and that has led to ever-increasing and directed interdependence between the countries of the Earth at an initially economic and subsequently technological and cultural level. It is the economic phenomenon of the liberalization of markets, internationally, and the creation of uniform rules on trade and, more broadly, on economic life, taxation, competition rules, businesses and public sector operating models. Capital, workers, and commodities move freely everywhere, in the same way. So far, capital -with the help of technology in international stock markets- and commodities -with the World Trade Organization constantly lifting the restrictions- are moving more. So what does that mean in practice? It means creating a relatively homogeneous global market for products and services. Businesses grow to meet the size of the market and reduce their costs. Schematically, one toy industry in the US
Thesis XIV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
and another in Malaysia must offer the same product, at the same price, when wages in Malaysia are tens of times lower, $ 9.5 the wage in Malaysia, $ 2 in China, $ 80 in the US (I.L.O Global Wage Report 2018 / 2019, 2018). If the US industry cannot offer competitive prices, will either transfer its production to Malaysia or pay Malaysian wages or close. The advantage is that everywhere cheap toys for the consumer will be marketed. The disadvantage, however, is that the acquis -welfare state, care, pension, etc.-, which increase labour costs, are in danger, and are already shrinking. In fact, of course, the key is the technological level, which ensures high productivity. This is why high-tech products have higher added value and higher profit margins. Most computer boxes -with a very small profit margin- are manufactured in countries like e.g. Taiwan, but nine out of ten computers use processors of the US Intel that have over 65% added value. That is why multinationals are putting their headquarters in the West and their production units in the region or sourcing the products from their local subcontractors there.
Globalization is a deeply political issue. The term is of neoliberal origin and the application of globalization is determined by neoliberal practices, market unaccountability, deification of competition, lack of social orientation and democratic control of decisions, etc. It‟s as political as the economy is. Political power remains organized on a national basis, while the economy, and economic power, is now organized on an international basis. In a national market, the government, if pressured by society, can for example intervene to reduce taxes, exercise social policy, prevent layoffs, or raise salaries in the businesses. If, however, the business can move elsewhere, the national government will create a liberal economic environment to maintain and attract investments. The most immediate issue is the problem of money transfer, which is completely free. The volumes of capital being traded, for short- term profit, are huge and can destabilize national economies, in the blink of an eye.
But globalization is not just an economic phenomenon. The cultural aspect is also a particularly important aspect of globalization. James (2006) states that cultural globalization combines a substantial change of culture, which is currently taking place on an even global scale, having as its main characteristics the valuative fluidity and the gradual imposition of an extra-socially constructed culture. Cultural globalization has also significant degree of integration, the multinationals of the spectacle and the information have achieved a great deal of concentration. This is also the case with food, energy, and crime, which is also globalized, obeying the basic economic rule, that in order to increase your profits, you must increase your turnover. Meaning more drug traffickers and more sex slaves on the market.
Globalization has proven to increase social inequalities on the planet. Although its supporters cite the alleged rising standard of living in certain developing countries -in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong-, the situation has worsened in many countries of the once so-called Third World. Advocates of globalization believe that wage inequalities within a country are more due to internal factors, such as the technological progress that degrades certain professions. The other side finds that the benefits of globalization are channeled unilaterally or disproportionately to the powerful poles of the system -the most developed countries-, which are bleeding resources, raw materials and capital, improving their position in a neo-colonial model. Of course, there is no good and bad globalization, even though its supporters see in it an ideal solution to increase overall wealth and, through the market, to be apportioned fairly, or effectively, across the globe. But also many of its supposed enemies reject more the inequalities created in the globalization process, rather than the phenomenon itself, they consider, for example, that even a $ 9.5 a wage in Malaysia, from a cold-blooded multinational that exploits you, is better than no wage at all, such as, e.g., in Bangladesh.
Thesis XV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
According to Liakos, globalization changes the correlations and balance of forces within the national state. Privileged relationships with the market reinforce certain poles of power over others. Strengthening the executive to the detriment of the legislature is a derivative of this conflict. It is a myth that the state undertakes to correct market inadequacies. In fact, it serves both as a market agent for the state inland and for expanding markets within and outside the territory. That is, the state acts as a lever for opening societies to the globalized market. One finds that one other myth is collapsing, namely that markets require less and less state. They do not require less state but less control. Changing the correlation between state power poles has led to the growing deficit of democracy. Despite rhetoric against discriminations and in favour of a policy of enhancing diversity, major decisions rarely pass through representative bodies. Here, too, we observe what happens by analogy in the state. On what issues, from all that concern our lives and the future of our societies, do the legislative bodies legislate and on what not? Are they more or less comparatively with previous decades and eras? All these show that not only is globalization built with national states, but also that the nature of the state is changing. Globalization does not mean weak states but states adapted to the example of globalization, therefore different states, states with strong executive power and weak democratic control (Liakos, 2008).
Globalization as a process and a condition of changes is not the same throughout the world, despite its name. It is different in Europe, where the EU plays a regulatory role, than in other regions such as e.g. the Far East (op. cit.).
Mouzelis notes that because of the unprecedented mobility of capital any attempt at serious redistribution as well as restrictive measures lead to capital flight in countries where unions are weak, labour is cheap and workers‟ state protection is nonexistent (Mouzelis, 2007). The phenomenon of businesses relocation, in countries where they find cheaper labour force and lower taxation on their profits, has taken on enormous dimensions in the member states of the EU. A consequence of these developments is that tens of thousands of workers are left on the road, as entrepreneurs not only face no obstacles, but are also subsidized by governments.
One of the views that is being played out is that globalization is historically necessary. The other is that globalization is devastating to the peoples. It is a form of neo-colonization, which will lead small and weak countries to extinction. There is also a third, which does not take a specific position, but suggests that is very afraid of this new face of the new world order and tries to inform in very general terms. But it does limit the side-effects of globalization in the field of culture and national societies, and that‟s why it seeks to locate the “resistance” there, with the basic argument that the language, the local traditions, the style of the peoples are at stake.
We read in an article by Georgousopoulos in 1998, an article fully endorsing this third view: “I do not know what the long-term costs of globalization will be to the economy of the states, however, despite all the pronouncements of a so-called deterministic one-way path, the omens do not seem auspicious. What the common man realizes is that when there is wind in Tokyo, the wage earner catches a cold in Athens and when the president of the United States commits adultery, Baghdad beggar with yesterday‟s dime buys half a round sesame bread today. It is likely that the laws of economics, since they relate to mathematics and probabilities, do indeed have a global power and function like natural laws, earthquakes, cyclones, greenhouse effect and glacial movements. […] The theoretical idea of the global village tends to become a desirable and sought-after reality. Like the major stock exchanges and central banks of the states that dominate in the field of power, so the large industrial production centers of culture are bringing up and down fashions, tastes and are determining the values and criteria for the dissemination and
Thesis XVI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
creation of cultural products. […] There is not only the International of Narcotics, there is also the opium of homogenized, globalized culture, ready-made industrial song, cinema, book, dance, theater.”
In the same article is mentioned: “See how they flout, when borrowing suitable forms and practices, the national traits of an artistic expression. They flouted Japanese Zen to replace worn out psychoanalysis, they humiliated the yoga method of the Indians to lose weight, they used the religious rhythms of the Negroes „to get high‟. […] Check out the series that become international bestsellers. In order to charm at the same time Christians and Muslims, royalists and Marxists, poor and rich, illiterates and graduates, young and old, men and women, they have no trace of ideology, ethics, tradition, philosophy, historical memory, they have only a straightforward plot, paradoxical, unexpected, turns, to maintain interest. In order to be able to move at the same time all this motley TV audience, it must be led to the cavemen‟s feelings, to the fears, to the terrors and to the alvine delights of the times before the word. And they offer pictures. If the crisis on the New York Stock Exchange empties your pockets without counting on the sweat you spilled, often on the blood and toil that drains your soul and like balloons flying you have the illusion that you have gained your freedom from your deep roots, while they have methodically adjusted you the when and how you will deflate.”
Taking into account such intriguing views as above, it would be useful to remember what Marx and Engels say in their study of “The German Ideology”, which was first published in 1932, as a view of culture. So, they say that when the mode of exploitation of the productive forces is changed, we are forced to move to another culture. And that really happened when humanity switched from using stone to using metals, from consumer production to freight, from iron to shipping, etc. And of course new cultures are imposed on the old ones. They create new powers, new productive and social relationships, and, of course, new relationships of people with the environment. The old ones change and disappear (Marx & Engels, 2011). But this is precisely what globalization pursues: The prevalence of a new form of productive and social relations, of a new power, of a new way of dealing with the environment. Accordingly the prevalence of a new civilization. So, this is globalization: A new culture, another way of production, which if it prevails, will not only annihilate national civilizations and local traditional cultures. Therefore, we must treat it as a new universal cultural force, so if someone is trying to fight it, he/she has to fight it differently, as culture is nothing but the universal product of politics.
Demetrakos notes that reactions to globalization are varied and come from both the conservative and the radical part of society. It is a fact that the world of modernity, world trade, and capitalist relations of production have removed man, for better or for worse, from the warmth of the world of tradition. With it, the coherence of society has also been weakened, as conservative critics of modernity point out. In addition, the order of things it imposes and the interests served by the new globalized order of things seriously harm the weakest groups in society. And this mobilizes not the conservative but the radical forces of society, that is, all those who support the weaker versus the stronger, a tendency which is the basis of sociality and ethics in any human society (Demetrakos, 1998).
Liberalization of world trade is not enough to support sustainable development in countries such as Sudan, Afghanistan and Angola, is to be found in the 2004 UN World Investment Report. Overall, the poorest countries in the world show encouraging growth in Gross Domestic Product and exports, but their populations do not see many benefits (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2004).
Thesis XVII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
In the age of globalization, unabatedly mutable structures and players together maintain, transform and recast the rules of their global game, without pause. But, of course, the rules of globalization are not given and definitive, that is, globalization is nothing finished, it is not clear-cut, in a definite and given way.
Hobsbawm argues that at a time when frenetic technological development and globalized economic activity are affecting more than ever the fortunes of the global village, an analysis of the fundamental aspects of modern political reality must interlink the broader issues of political violence and terrorism, the prospects for liberal democracy, the conditions of the emergence of past and present empires, the specific features of war and peace in today‟s time as well as the fluid contexts of nationalistic discourse. National states remain key regulators of socio- political life, despite the falling of key pillars of democratic legitimacy due to the gradual substitution of democratic control by that of the market. At the same time, in addition to the growing cosmopolitanism of cities and the triumph of self-referential collective identities, the nation remains a strong object of identification (indeed, nationalistic discourse takes on new dimensions, with the rise of xenophobia and racism). For example, the local, national and global functioning of the soccer institution comes to boil down the dialectical relationship of globalization, national identity and xenophobia exemplarily (Hobsbawm, 2007). The return of commercialized soccer to its soccer-loving supporters, its athletes, its trainers is a necessity.
The new era is marked by the expansion of US hegemony. Especially after September 11th, the -singularly simplistic in its terms- doctrine of war on terrorism, complemented by the ethical obligation to disseminate the principles of “democracy”, looks like, according to Hobsbawm, a discordant solo show of world political domination by a handful of politically crazy megalomaniacs. At the same time, he warns that sterile anti-US complaintive discourse is not enough, since the purpose is to explain and analyze the US interventionist doctrine. Such work begins with investigating internal factors, as it is now common ground that US foreign policy is moving with a view backwards, to the internal antinomies of US society. At the same time, critical work must investigate the multiple contextual frameworks through which the concepts of democracy and terrorism emerge (op. cit.).
Under the banner of globalization and the so-called interests of mankind, not only the right to intervene but also the right to full military, economic and political possession is legalized. The conditions imposed on states and peoples, by pretext of stability that supposedly will ensure a global peace, even outpace colonialism. They define in detail policy, international relations of states and at the same time designate as a guarantor peace-keeping troops, that, it should be noted, use nuclear weapons, kill civilians, even bomb hospitals and schools. But apart from the wars waged in the name of globalization, and which cause natural human casualties, there is also the daily invisible war, killing with hunger, poverty, and disease.
In any case, globalization should not be confused with internationalism, which is a theory of Marxist ideology aimed at the international solidarity achieved by the unification of peoples and the abolition of borders, for the promotion of international cooperation and coordination and the elimination of nationalist prejudices (Arora, 2013).
In fact, globalization as an ideological imperative is nothing more than the nationalism of the hegemonic global power, in the present case the US. It is about the outsourcing, management and safeguarding of its economic, political and cultural interests. The ultimate goal is to legitimize the idea and practice of globalization under the rule of stock markets, the increasing flow of profit rates in multinational corporations and the US itself, and,
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finally, the maintenance and reproduction of the political and military hierarchies of the countries controlled by the US.
Its opponents argue that globalization is the modern form of organization of capitalism at international level, the capitalism of the world domination of multinational capital, the exploitation of the countries and their peoples without national boundaries. Furthermore, the political scientist Roland Axtmann thinks that the term globalization is used instead of imperialism (Axtmann, 1998). That is, that the term globalization is misnomer and that it conceals the nature and the crisis of the political system.
Thesis XIX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
5.2 Identification and identity
The term identity refers to the most important self-identifying characteristics of a person or a group. The sense of identity and the feeling of belonging to a particular group is a hallmark of human communities.
In relation to identity formation, Taylor (1994) writes characteristically that the identity of the individual is the realization of himself/herself through the prism of his/her intersubjective relationships. Specifically, he argued that recognition by others is crucial to obtaining a positive image of oneself and one‟s identity. Referring, for example, to multicultural societies, he argued that increased and continuing population movements, a trait of globalization, have resulted in the conversion of even the most traditional nation-states into multicultural societies. In particular, this migration stream has caused a number of changes in society both in the institutional context and in everyday life. Power is unevenly distributed and the identities of less favoured individuals / groups are constantly threatened. This means that these people, regardless of the formal commitments to the equal value of human beings, are at a disadvantage compared to others.
Identity is not an accomplished fact but a production that is never completed, yet remains in the stage of the process throughout the life of the individual (Ηall, 1990, p. 222). Mokades (2005) states in a related article that “modern identity is not exclusively white or black, is a shubtle shade of beige”.
According to Benhabib (2002), the recognition of the identity should not only concern cultural collective survival but the complete elimination of the oppression of individual identity. In her view, public recognition of collective identities should only be encouraged when it works on breaking forms of social exclusion, hierarchy and inequality. The more individuals seek to secure their identity, to make it necessary instead of transient or contingent, single instead of fragmented, the more likely they are those who are different to be demonized.
The term identity derives from psychoanalytic theory, which holds that identity is constituted by continuous identifications and possible reversals of these identifications (Gefou-Madianou, 2003, p. 54). The term identification has come to mean recognizing common traits with persons, groups or even ideals, which typically establish a boundary of unity and devotion (op. cit., p. 55). The issue of identity - diversity is increasingly at the heart of a dialectic and generates discussions of reflection and theoretical inquiry. Globalization, the sense that our world is becoming more and more big and one, at the same time as smaller social groups -migrants, minority groups, women, coloured populations, etc.- are demanding distinctive identity, seems to have contributed to an increased interest in identity and diversity.
But what does it mean to have an identity, that is, to be aware that you are someone, that you have a self? This question was posed by Socrates, and this was the first request for self-consciousness. Socratic “know thyself” means getting away from the instinctual immediacy of life, overcoming instantaneous or impulsive reactions and illuminating your existence in its continuity and unity through time. A continuity that reveals its meaning and value. Identity consciousness means a call to self-actualization, accompanied by risks, and today the risk is felt. On the one hand, the universalism of the day, enhanced by the advances of technology, demands to unite people under a moral and political consciousness. In a world that is fluid, confusing, and different patterns of life are spreading everywhere and are surrounding us with words, images and events, the sense that people live and derive their terms from a common source is reinforced. On the other hand, it converts people and peoples into consumer masses,
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removing their particularity, since it forces them into a standardization, determined by the regulatory requirements of a borderless production and consumption of material and intellectual goods. The same centers determine our needs and habits in fashion, nutrition, entertainment, spectacles and listenings and maintain an impersonal, without particularity and without identity life. It is no coincidence, then, that dialects are now disappearing, mores and customs are receding and traditions are under pressure and threatened with extinction (Kargakos, 2001).
In this way, life becomes a mechanism of adaptation and creative expression is replaced by the tyranny of construction. Escapism inevitably leads people to something extreme and irrational, which leads to uncontrollable subjectivity. In the case of peoples, then we have to do with nationalism. It is no coincidence that our era is aware of this nationalism in constant outbursts of intolerance. National-socialist chauvinism, extremist Islam, persecutions and conflicts between ethnic and religious groups, xenophobia, and the climate of terror it cultivates, are tragic events in the scene of our century.
In McCrone‟s view, identities should be seen as routes rather than roots, maps of the future rather than traces of the past (McCrone, 1998). Identity is always an open search, and even persistently defending roots can often become a backward work, just as in other circumstances it is slavery or guilty consent to uprooting (Magris, 2008). The most important things we can know about a human being is what he/she considers given, and the most basic and most important facts of a society are those that are rarely discussed and are generally regarded as solved problems (Louis Writh in the foreword to Karl Manheim‟s 1976 work “Ideology and Utopia”).
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5.3 Globalization and identity in the Arab world
After September 11, 2001 and the declaration of war on terror, attempts to bring the Muslim world closer to modern globalized reality have led many Muslims to new theoretical paths of tracing their identity. Through the current political developments, the murky term globalization is becoming clearer. Where the discourse of modernization was placing the national states on a continuum from the backward to the advanced, globalization does not regard the historical time of Western advancement as a given.
On Islam‟s relationship with modernity, Buck-Morss (2003) sees no contrast, but, on the contrary, shows that there is a striking overlap between the two fields. She points out that Western scholars and policy makers study the Middle East peculiarity to explain why democracy is not developing there, without wondering whether the way in which these nations are treated as unequal interlocutors already constitutes a failure of democracy on another level. At the same time, in Muslim countries, Islamists are struggling for autonomy from Western intoxication, while their economic base is fueling a global economy that is toxic to everyone. Extreme Islamists choose violent forms of struggle. But Islam -like all ideologies- defines the context of social and political controversies without predetermining their content: it is at its starting point a critical discourse articulated.
Globalization, causing profound upheavals in cultures and communities, excavating traditional and non-traditional identities, imposing a single social and cultural model from above, leads -especially in remarkably tradition-centric cultural patterns such as Islam- to reactions that strike at the heart of its own reproduction (Karampelias, 2001). In their quest for the US, and the West as a whole, to impose the neoliberal globalizing model they suffered an epoch- making blow by the September 11, 2001 attack on US power centers. The process of globalization derived from specific centers without taking into account other cultures and peoples, built against them or against their will, has tragic consequences for everyone, victimizers and victims.
Beyond the multicultural debate of respect and openness to the other, there is a need to shift the emphasis to the common struggle that we should all take up beyond cultural dividing lines.
With regard to Islam, the inclusion of its religious culture in a dynamic process of spreading it throughout human society goes with a parallel protection of the Muslim identity whenever it is threatened by temporary phases of weakness. The model-standard based on tradition is that of Prophet Muhammad, which the faithful Muslim should imitate to the letter in all aspects of his/her life, in order to never go astray but also to avoid the danger of seeing his/her religious identity alienated by the impiety of the social environment (Dogan, 2013, p. 12). The word Islam means submission to God expressing worship in God‟s name. The most important element of Muslim identity, among other things, is the belief in its uniqueness. Equally important is the development of spiritual abilities through sacred texts. Islamic discourse was based on basic dogmatic sources such as the Qur‟an and the Hadith. These sources form the basis of the Ummah, the Faithful Community around the world. For Muslims there is no true faith without understanding the sources. This is also the primary instruction of Islamic practice that has been going on since the time of the Prophet and has not ceased to concern the Ulemas over the centuries. The search for knowledge is the obligation of every Muslim, it is the constant struggle for the development of the spirit.
Huntington (2011) thinks that two axioms are that religion is the main source of Muslim identity and orientation, and that Islam and Christianity compete for world control. However, Roy (2006) believes that there is no
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geostrategy of Islam but only a religion that is learning to be de-personified and Muslim populations who negotiate their new identities even through conflict.
With regard to Muslim migrants living in Europe, they usually live in dense apartment blocks in urban areas of high levels of crime. For some, the most appropriate reaction-response to the ghettoization is to create their own organizations based on their national identity and association with Islam (Papageorgiou & Samuris, 2012). Social injustice and crisis situations are not the only causes of Islamic terrorism, but they feed it by offering it a direct argument and facilitating the recruitment of its leaders. Muslims in the ghettos many times are in front of the dilemma: living in the West outside the West or remaining Muslims without Islam (Ramadan, 2004). Living as a minority in the new societies, they developed those elements of their identity that emphasized their diversity and that strengthened their bonds as a group. Cut off from the culture of their fathers and not integrated into Western society, young Muslims gather around religious communities at a time when social ties are increasingly shrinking. They do not want to identify themselves as Arabs, Turks or Pakistanis but as Muslims. More generally, however, the term Muslim is not used today to describe the believer, but to state his/her identificatory category as a migrant. Reconstruction of the identity takes place under the influence of standards prevailing in the host countries and the first element affected is the language: younger generations express themselves better in the language of the host country.
On the other hand, in the West, for decades now, the doctrine that a good citizen is a terrified citizen dominates. Such a citizen is easily manipulable. He/She is part of a biomass that moves predictably, politically and ideologically, and is uniformly expressed. Islamic terrorism, then, both as a concept and as an action, is of particular importance in serving political ends and economic interests that are above human lives. Many factors and many causes related to Islamic terrorism interact and make it difficult to understand it. In other words, the interrelationship of causes and factors facilitates the systematic pursuit of economic and political interests to isolate Islamic terrorism from the political conditions that create it, in order to determine to their advantage the way it is perceived (Michalareas, 2002).
Indeed, concepts and theories, such as the clash of civilizations, religious fanaticism, Jihad, the profile of the bombers, Islam, are recruited to lead to an indeterminate general and invisible absolute evil, designed to conceal the real responsibilities wherever they come from. Indeed, some social and political phenomena, such as Islamic terrorism, are multifactorial and multifaceted, however, any attempt to understand causes and factors, ultimately, heads for a dead end. Identifying the factors, that interact with the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, is necessary. But to fully understand it, the main cause, the main opposition, needs to be highlighted, a root cause which is neither found in religion nor in ideology nor in culture (op. cit.).
The theory of the contrast of East-West cultures and their supposedly inevitable conflict is an on-demand theory to justify the bandit raid on the mineral wealth of the East. Society is not shaped by ideology, art, science, religion. Rather, it is society, the production relationships that shape religion, ideology, needs, values. Those who provoke wars -in Iraq, in Syria, etc.-, who reestablish the borders of the countries that they themselves had defined, who plunder the wealth of the peoples of the countries that they tear apart, they are also the ones who created and create Islamic terrorism either in the form of ISIS, Al Qaeda or in the form of collateral losses from their military operations of their armed forces. With the introduction of the concept of the clash of civilizations, the propaganda staff have rekindled in the Muslim world emotions of fear, hatred, hostility, aversion to the Westerners, vanity, Thesis XXIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
anger etc. (op. cit.). All rational and critical thinking is intended to be suspended. Identification reinforced the theory of the contrast between cultures by supporting “us and them”. Accession to “us” is always sought. Al Qaeda-type organizations, ISIS, were created to serve the above plans (within their countries of action they support, inter alia, the civil wars, and abroad, inter alia too, the theory of the clash of civilizations). When such organizations are created, their individual activities cannot be controlled, so they can sometimes become autonomous within their own dynamics. This is also the reason that, easily, affiliated organizations become hostile and vice versa.
Most Muslim migrants have definitely fled to the West. Not in the form of conquest, nor to massively proselytize, to Islamicize people over here. This displacement of Muslim populations seeking work or better living conditions in the West is characterized by the lack of any possibility of option as to the decision taking. They are trying to escape wars and poverty. But the minority situation of Muslims is assuming greater significance with the phenomenon of globalization that pervades the traditional Muslim space. From conflict to dialogue of civilizations, new frontiers are being established, but lacking a specific geographical area. However, Roy (2006) believes that there are no two different Islams, namely of migrants to the West and of the Muslim world.
Identities in the West are reconstituted amid new confusion, this time between ethnicity and religion, in which the term Muslim does not describe the believer but ends up constituting the distinctive element of a neo-ethnic identity, creating categories, in order to identify the offspring of migration. Multiculturalism often proves useful in recreating a Muslim community.
With reference to the Arab youths, Al-Rawashdeh believes that perhaps the most important of the risks on the grounds involved in globalization include economic openness and cultural invasion, yet the bigger of the two risks is the erase of the cultural identity of people, and cultural particularities of nations (Al-Rawashdeh, 2014). According to El-Shibin, with the collapse of colonialism after World War II the developing countries set out to restore their cultures and safeguard their traditions. They are now determined that globalization must respect and appreciate the cultural diversity of their nations (El-Shibin, 2005).
According to McDonald, the nature of many of the social cleavages which came forward in the contemporary Middle East, following the recent movements in several Arab countries since 2011, are, in reality, pre-Islamic, ethnic, linguistic, even ancient. As such, it is exceedingly difficult to speculate, much less pinpoint exactly, when certain forces ignited this current period of apparent discord. We can, however, identify intermittent flashes of divisive conflict being stoked in the region since at least the beginning of the divide-and-conquer methods pioneered by European colonial powers in the wake of the Ottoman Empire (McDonald, 2014).
While it is baldly apparent that the Arab states are under existential siege from the forces of both globalization and greater regionalism, it is unrealistic to speculate or even predict the absolute disintegration of significant and authentic forms of Arab nationalism (op. cit.).
Western society must be the one which has to ensure that no dilemmas arise and build relationships with coherence and consistency embracing Muslims and making them part of the same body with a culture of authentic contribution. It will be a model that will help everyone‟s daily life. It must strive for equal access to goods, services, resources and rights without one having to shape his/her culture and faith.
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5.4 Nation, national identity, nationalism
Undoubtedly, no other issue has played such a decisive role in shaping the character of the modern world as national identity. Thousands of people around the world have willingly given their lives for their homeland and this almost mass ritual sacrifice continues unabated to this day. Looking at history, we could without hesitation say that many great or horrible events are due to this phenomenon (Özkirimli, 2011).
Two people belong to the same nation if, and only if, they share the same culture, where culture means in turn a system of ideas, symbols, associations and ways of behaving and communicating, if they only recognize each other as members of the same nation (Gellner, 1988).
One reason for which there is, in Billig‟s opinion, a delay in academic engagement with national phenomena was the tendency to equate nationalism with its most extreme versions, that is, with secessionist movements, that threatened the stability of existing states, or aggressive far-right policies. This approach restricts nationalism to the region and considers it the property of others and not ours. Our nationalism is not presented as nationalism, phenomenon dangerously absurd, excessive and foreign to us but as patriotism, positive and beneficial. Nothing better illustrates this approach than the references as examples of nationalism only of long-standing ethnic conflicts or wars. The same perception is also behind the depictions of nationalism as a tidal phenomenon with the high tide appearing in times of crisis and the ebb coming suddenly once normality is restored (Billig, 1995).
The general term national identity defines a set of elements that give a particular national hypostasis to an individual, individuals or groups of individuals. It is the term by which groups or individuals identify themselves nationally. A derivative of national identity is its use for self-identification or re-identification of the individual or group of individuals. National identities, like any identity, are not fixed and unchanging elements. They are mental constructions that are gradually shaped according to the social, political and historical circumstances of the time (Veremes & Kitromilides, et al., 1997). The term includes political, social and religious identity.
National identity is subject to a constant play of history, culture and power (McCrone, 1998). However, before the French Revolution there is no nationalism in the present sense, because there are no purely national states, that is to say, formed on the basis of a single, pure ethnicity (Raphaelides, 1996).
Kitromilides believes that there are three levels to the issue of national identity: the historical -at which modern national identities were shaped by the newer national states through the education and cultivation of national ideology, as a general rule also through the flattery of collective complacency, but it is historically unfounded to be considered to have emerged from scratch-, the regulatory -at which the national identity, and primary loyalism towards the nation and its interests it requires, is not always compatible with an ethic of universal values, as human rights and respect for heterogeneity and difference demand- and the practical, that is, that of the policies by which organized societies could manage the issue of the identities of their populations (Kitromilides, 2010).
In relation to the definition of the nation and its function, the traditional definition, which appears earliest in Herodotus, and reaches until today varied, is the one that defines as a nation a set of people of common origin, language, religion, history, mores and customs, and various other characteristics (James, 1996). A different approach was attempted by French liberal philosophy, according to which the nation is the total of the citizens of a state, putting the burden on citizenship and civil rights (Frey, 2004). The two definitions are incomplete for Thesis XXV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
different reasons each. The liberal, we can say, is incomplete with regard to the interpretation of the national phenomenon, or more correctly the phenomenon of cultural multiformity and diversity. It also places the bourgeois nation-state at the heart of its values, its defence against other states and the compliance with its laws. Traditional perception of the nation was reintroduced in reaction to the liberal in the mid-19th century through German romanticism (Beiser, 2006), which ideologically fueled Nazism. But it never ceases to be just as incomplete. And this is because it fails to record what are all the specific features that build the national consciousness. The common origin of blood as an idea is a product of the imagination, because every corner of the Earth -except perhaps the isolated primitive tribes- is a patchwork of peoples, mixed either freely or through a series of wars, conquests, rape, etc. As long as this idea loses ground, the burden falls on cultural features, which are easily mixed and grafted on. Also, if religion is an element of national homogeneity, it is not explained how there are nations with more than one religion without ceasing to feel a nation and on the other hand is not explained why e.g. the Greeks do not belong to the same ethnic group as the fellow-believers Russians. This applies accordingly to all these elements, and for example the language does not unite English with New Zealanders or Australians nor does it divide the trilingual Swiss or Belgians. It is obvious that groups of people sharing common conditions develop common cultural characteristics, in survival, coexistence, expression and orientation. But nowadays, their isolation is putative, it only serves to shape the study of ethnology, and it is as relevant as the existence of brotherless nations today.
Raphaelides (1987 a) emphasizes that the word nation, literally, means consanguinity, that is, the blood relationship of people belonging to the same racial group. It is, however, obvious that in order to maintain the purity of its blood a race, and therefore to function as an extended family, with all its members being close or distant relatives, this race must, in principle, be endogamous, that is, its members should marry each other and that intermarriages with allophyles should be strictly prohibited. But this could only happen in very closed and very primitive societies. Today, there are no pure ethnicities anywhere in the world, because there are no closed societies. It goes without saying that no legislator for three thousand years could preserve the purity of blood of a race. In other words, the concept of ethnicity still exists, but it is purely and exclusively cultural. Therefore, members of one particular ethnicity are people who have a particular common culture, which differs from the culture of another ethnicity. But with the osmosis between the peoples brought about by the improvement, and nowadays galloping development, of communications and transport, cultural peculiarities have begun to weaken and tend to a leveling, which no administrative measure would be able to stop.
Over the centuries, consanguinity, with constant intermarriages, has been playing an increasingly small role, whereas, on the other hand, the cultural facts that had begun to appear at the consanguinity stage were preserved and developed, so that they would then become, these alone, the special features of an ethnicity. Today we know as well about US morals because of the abundance of US films we have seen as we do not know about domestic morals. Cultural imperialism is a reality. Since, in other words, the US dominates financially in the Western world, it is natural for the US to dominate culturally as well. And there is no way to break its cultural sovereignty, unless its economic sovereignty has previously been broken. Culture is always created by the most economically powerful. This fact comprises cultural colonialism. And what is called popular culture refers only to exclusively closed social groups, mainly rural ones. But this closure, we know it well, is totally impossible today. And television alone is a sufficient factor to invade one culture into another and create an inseparable cultural mess (op. cit.).
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According to Gramsci, the nation is structured by social elites, who base their political domination on the ideological use of culture by art. Ideology is taking on a dominant role, “when it can translate the desires of the masses into ideas, values and specific directions of action” and this is achieved through art, and especially through literature, which has the potential to transform popular memories, beliefs and fantasies into national symbols through conception, while at the same time setting up the nation‟s arsenal, in order to confront its considered adversaries and achieve its goals and ambitions (Gramsci, 1971).
On the issue of borders, they didn‟t always exist, they didn‟t exist the same way, they didn‟t serve the same needs, did not refer to the same readings and did not identify the same pairs of states. Early concepts of borders refer sometimes to property boundaries and sometimes to symbolisms for the sacred nature of the border. Borders gain practical importance once they are linked to property and incorporated by it into Greek city-states. They are formed in boundary zones in most ancient civilizations, with the exception of China, coexist linearly or spatially in Roman limes to end up being linear in eighteenth-century Europe (Febvre, 1962, p. 59). Historical reality shows that borders are becoming a central point of reference insofar as any crisis is not limited to the level of transnational relations and diplomatic negotiations, but also leads to bloody wars with dimensions of ethnic cleansing. Border is not about this difference per se, but about using it by groups, in order to constitute an identity in relation to a heterogeneity, that is, in relation to an other, with whom they are associated with the immediate geographical proximity and do not want to be identified with him/her, but to differentiate. Thus, any cultural differences or similarities may be highlighted or overlooked depending on the orientation of the groups and the relationships that are developed each time.
At this point it is worth mentioning that there was also a not inconsiderable group of critics of the theories for the creation of the nation, of which undoubtedly the Marxists are part. The book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, which was first published in 1884, is perhaps one of the most popular books of the classics of Marxism. Friedrich Engels believed that the neoteric nation was a direct consequence of the process of replacing feudalism with the capitalist mode of production. It was precisely the transition to the capitalist economy that forced the existing social formations of Western Europe to move towards homogenization and political centralism. The formation of nations was thus linked to the terms of a general development logic, with the result that, in one sense, he sees nationalism as a necessary but temporary stage of historical evolution. For him, moreover, the common language and traditions or geographical and historical homogeneity were not enough to form a nation, but a certain level of economic and social development was definitely needed. The development of the state-building of the nation requires only the capacity to develop its productive forces (Engels, 2010). In simple terms, the existence and evolution of the nation is dialectically linked to the developments in the economic base of the society. The state has not been from the beginning of the world. There were societies, formed without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was inevitably combined with the division of society into classes, the state became, by this division, a necessity. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the evolution of production, at which the existence of these classes not only has it ceased to be a necessity, but it has also become a positive obstacle to production. Classes will be lost, just as inevitably as they had been previously created. With them the state will inevitably be lost. Society will reorganize production on the basis of free and equal cooperation between the producers.
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The most elaborate view of nationalism in the context of Marxist tradition comes from the Austrian socialist Otto Bauer. Bauer argued that each nation has a character and defined that character as “the sum of the particular physical and intellectual characteristics of a nation”. In addition, “the national character is changing; the nation of our time is in no way connected with its ancestors two to three millennia back in time”. So the reasonable question arises: how does this community of character emerge? The emergence of this community depended on a variety of modernization processes, such as the collapse of the rural economy of self-sufficiency and the consequent uprooting of rural populations by capitalism and the forced involvement of isolated rural areas in economic relations with the wider region, a process that also resulted in greater homogenization of dialects. Also, a second stage of creating a cultural community was the development of an enhanced culture, based on the development of an enhanced language, superior to all spoken dialects. Finally, the most important factor for the transition from a cultural community to a nation was the feeling, the sense of shared destiny that a community shared, that was just as important as the shared past, since, for him, the nation is primarily defined as a community of fate. As long as national identity was not altered by class divisions, members of a nation could be more strongly involved in national experience (Bauer, 2000).
This is the case for the Kurds and the Palestinians, who exist as a nation, and let them not yet have a state entity. But the opposite has been observed by the creation of nations, that is, consciousness of autonomy and difference from others, even in cases where this is not reasonable in view of language and origin. The example of the creation of an Austrian nation through the establishment of a corresponding state, although the Austrians are not more or less Germans than the Bavarians, illustrates the statehood of the nation.
According to the distinguished Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm (2012), nations and nationalisms are products of social engineering, that enters into the making of nations. Important place in his theory holds the concept of “invented tradition”. By the term invented tradition is meant a set of practices of a ritual or symbolic nature that are usually governed, explicitly or implicitly, by accepted rules, and which seek to instill certain values and rules of conduct through repetition, which automatically implies a continuity with the past. Hobsbawm argues that the nation and the phenomena associated with it are invented traditions with the greatest social penetration. Although they are fabrications of modern history, they establish a continuity with a chosen past and use history to legitimize specific actions and enhance social cohesion. However, insofar as there is such a reference to a historical past, the peculiarity of the invented traditions lies in the fact that the continuity with this past is fictional. Invented traditions are responses to new situations that take the form of older ones. Hobsbawm distinguishes two inventing processes: adapting old traditions and institutions to new situations as well as deliberately inventing “new” traditions for new purposes. The first process can be found in all societies, including so-called traditional ones. The second process, however, occurs only in times of rapid social change, when the need for order and unity becomes imperative. This explains the importance of the idea of the national community, which can ensure cohesion against the fragmentation and disintegration caused by industrialization. Finally, Hobsbawm is not unaware that, in addition to politics, technology and social transformation played an important role in the production of nationalism. Nations are not only products of the claim of a territorial state and are usually created within a specific stage of technological and economic development. For example, national languages cannot appear as national before the invention of typography and the dissemination of literacy in large sections of society and, therefore, before the emergence of mass education.
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If one looks at Greece, it was not a single state even in the period of Classical Antiquity which was based on the administrative system of the city-state. The fact that the inhabitants of this area spoke Greek does not mean anything from an ethnological point of view (Raphaelides, 1994). The issue of national identity has been of particular interest since the nineteenth century. The process of establishing a national identity officially began in 1830, with the founding of the Greek state. The figures that contributed to the birth of the Greek state are on the one hand the spirit of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which generally characterized the whole of the nineteenth century, and on the other the search for the legitimacy of the revolutionaries. On the one hand, the attraction for the ancient Greek past seems to connect Greeks more with Western Europeans, since this past has been a source of inspiration for the cultural progress offered by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, this past has served as the cornerstone of modern Western culture. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, seems to associate Greeks more with the fellow-believers Easterners than with the heterodox Westerners. Orthodox doctrine, in fact, affects Greek culture so deeply that it is even found in Greek foreign policy, which was so accustomed to diarchal Byzantium and the division of power between the Emperor and the Patriarch and which now seems to resent and to be difficult to manage the new political context of independence, let alone to form a national identity on this basis (Raphaelides, 1993, p. 15).
The intellectual Vasilis Raphaelides in an article published in the newspaper “Ethnos” on April 29, 1987 analyzes that national pride is nothing but the manifestation of the tremendous fear of the inhabitants of the place. In its attempt to create a national consciousness, the modern Greek state exerted terror on its own citizens, eventually succeeding in making the most fanatical nationalists out of its foreign citizens. In order to conceal their true national identity, the Arvanites, the Vlachs, and especially the Slavs, exaggerated on artificial nationalism. On the other hand, the Christianized Jews, who are too many in this place, and the Armenians, who massively Hellenized their names, were drawn into the cauldron of the national bidding for fear of being labeled as national underbidders (Raphaelides, 1987 b).
Last but not least, the Professor of Modern History Effie Avdela makes the very important and interesting observation that the current pursuit of preserving national memory in the modern Greek context is echoed by the tendency to multiply anniversaries, switch to the past, retro fashion, consumerist exploitation of memory, which are witnessing identity crisis and lack of faith in the future (Avdela, 1998).
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6. The unified world and the differences, the connection to one place and globalization through Amin Maalouf‟s case
6.1 The issues of globalization and identity through Maalouf‟s non-fiction books
The issue of identity within modern multicultural societies has been the subject of a number of theorists, including the Lebanese Amin Maalouf. Due to the fact that he has dual citizenship, Amin Maalouf did not treat identity as something fixed and unchanged, based on the mere fact of his birth in a given country or in the context of a particular religious affiliation. Maalouf thinks that the identity of each of us is composite, unique, irreplaceable, not confused with the identity of anyone else. Our identity is not something that is given once and for all, it is shaped and changed throughout our lives. The identity is made up of many affiliations -colour, ethnicity, social class, language, religion, gender, etc.-, but it is unified and we experience it as a whole. The affiliation which hierarchically becomes more important than the others and occupies the whole personality makes people unilateral, biased, domineering and often transforms them into killers or killers supporters. This is a murderous identity, as Amin Maalouf (2012) says in the corresponding book.
The issues of globalization and identity are present in all four of Amin Maalouf‟s non-fiction books, in other less and in other more. In his opinion, the essay is ideal for a moment of meditation, when you feel the need to formulate a series of things in a very specific way (Amin Maalouf‟s Interview with “To Vima”, 1999).
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6.1.1 The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983)
With his work “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes”, Amin Maalouf draws attention to the constant controversy over the restrictive, and ultimately trapping in definitions of minority identity, characterizations that society itself has put in place. The Crusades -the military campaigns that took place in the Middle Ages, eight military campaigns from 1095 to 1291, by Christians in Western Europe to liberate the Holy Land- are the beginning of tensions between the Christian and the Muslim world (Maalouf, 1985). Here‟s the other side of the coin! One finds that the Eastern version does not at all coincide with the Western version. After all, the violence and atrocities were of such a magnitude, that the fear and hatred, caused to the Arabs and other Muslim peoples of the region, are still maintained to this day, for example the invasion of Iraq was called by many Arabs as a new crusade.
Of course, the reconstruction of the Crusades -with all the shame and glory they brought to the Arabs- by Maalouf is a work not flooded with hagiographic descriptions of the Levantine warriors. In addition, the author states that one of his goals is to make the book accessible to those who have no deep knowledge of the Muslim world (op. cit.). This is a huge story covering the Nice‟s initial invasion in what is now Turkey in 1096 until the final expulsion of the Franks -that is, of all Western Christians- in 1291. The second half of the eleventh century, the Seljuks, who had previously converted to Islam, occupied regions near Constantinople, as well as areas of the Middle East, including Jerusalem. Alexios, the Byzantine emperor, was concerned, as he considered the Muslim advance to be a threat to Christianity, and called on Pope Urban II to support in repelling the invaders. The Pope appealed to thousands of followers to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims, promising to save their souls. Thus, in 1096 the Crusades began (Salinas, 2015). What is very interesting about this book is revealed in the title, that is, all the events are presented as recorded by Arab scholars -Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn al-Athīr, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn al- Qalānisi and others-, with occasional references to their European counterparts. Maalouf‟s work also deals with the impact of Arab influence, by transmitting elements of Arabic architecture, philosophy, poetry and science, on the Western cultures of the time.
The book follows up descriptions of attacks that have taken place among Muslim communities. The Franks‟ initial success was not simply a function of their own military power. Of course, they were skilled warriors with extensive battle experience, but their most glorious successes were more the result of betrayal of Muslim city-states by other Muslim city-states. There seems to have been a perception among Muslims that the invaders would not be able to occupy the region for a long time and could be a tool against their more traditional enemies. As a result, many of the city-states that fell to the Franks would not have fallen, had the Muslim community been more united. Of course, that‟s part of the whole story. The initial occupation of the Franks and the, perhaps more disastrous for the Arabs, arrival of the Mongol hordes in 1258, seems to have been the driving force in forcing them to achieve a more unified Muslim world, similar to what was once in its initial expansion in the seventh century. Again, this unification was occasionally achieved.
Maalouf writes about the Baghdad‟s fall by the Mongols, during which all the hatred and detestation that the nomadic people and its leaders had for urbanized cultures were expressed: “On February 10, 1258, he -the caliph- goes himself personally to the winner‟s camp and makes him promise him to respect the lives of the residents if they accept to lay down their arms. In vain. As soon as the Muslim warriors put down their weapons, they were exterminated. Then, the Mongol hordes stormed into the imposing city, demolishing buildings, burning neighbourhoods, killing mercilessly men, women and children, eighty thousand in total” (Maalouf, 1985, p. 311). Thesis XXXI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Maalouf acknowledges lack of established pattern of succession among Arab leaders for much of this initial instability; when a leader died, no matter how much unification throughout the Arab world had been achieved in his lifetime, the region was undoubtedly plunged into chaos as his successors grabbed for what they could; this circular pattern of stability and instability, unification and fragmentation, was a weak point in the twelfth century Arab world. Maalouf on describing the final moments of Zangî‟s powerful state raises interesting questions, though in a fleeting way. “When Zangî died there was a mad dash for the spoils. His soldiers, so well-disciplined only a short time ago, now became a horde of uncontrollable plunderers” (op. cit.). In comparison, despite their worse state in science, mathematics, medicine, and almost everything else, the Franks had achieved a fairly peaceful way of succession within their political organization that kept the kingdoms more or less united after the death of individual rulers. This does not offset the fact that they were far from home; the Crusades were doomed to fail from the beginning.
Maalouf talks about the Muslim leaders during the Crusades, and retraces the Arab world in general. The political and military genius of the Arab heroes is detailed, and even the not-so-rare co-operation between the Franks‟ forces and the Arab forces against the common enemies. Interesting is the complete indifference shown by the Crusaders to Arab Christians when they invaded the Holy Land. Often, these people were murdered next to their Muslim neighbours, suggesting that the war was not religious but merely of domination.
The most characteristic of the book characters is Frederik II, king of Jerusalem -for a very short time-, but also an atheist and scientist, publishing the first book on falconry and showing great knowledge about the role of religion in shaping the strange political environment.
Maalouf tries to reinforce the notion that the winners are writing history, because the notion that history is written by everybody and not just the conquerors and victors is regularly undermined by how the West views the Crusades. In the public mind, these events, which are regarded as a noble act undertaken by pious knights in the hope of reconquering the lands that are intrinsic to their faith, this set of collective actions is neither noble nor pious. As Maalouf points out, these noble, pious knights were not merely simple warriors of typified monks such as the Hospitallers and the Templars, rather they were a rag-tag collection of sorts that each one was driven by his own desires -and they usually were men-, whether they were of the pious religious or the temporal political sort (op. cit.). Due to the lack of total unity in their actions, the Crusaders lost their lives in the pursuit of personal glories and small revenges, but it‟s also easy to see that in the end the Crusades, like most Western invasions in the Muslim world, failed miserably.
The Muslim view of the West is very interesting, again and again, the sources cited -the writings of the Arab historians and chroniclers who have bequeathed their testimony of the Frankish invasions- refer to Christian knights by the moniker “The Franj”, which is a phonetic corruption of the French. This does not mean that Maalouf does not understand the complexities of the Crusades, as this is not the case, but rather the societies of the Muslim world themselves seemed to see the blond violent invaders as the same. The view of the Crusaders as a monolithic group is interesting in the context of the modern world, where narrative in Western media seems to paint all Muslims as one. However, Islam, like Christendom, lacks global adhesion and is striven by disagreement and civil violence. This above point is further confirmed in this work as a root cause of both Christian and Muslim failures in the Crusades.
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Another key ingredient is the way Maalouf handles his sources. Considering that the period that is studied here is Medieval -between the eleventh and thirteenth century-, we must admit that there is a lack of sources and Maalouf goes to pains to emphasize that often these sources are unreliable and in some cases are even fabrications of events. It is also interesting that he has shown how these sources could be used to argue against the Crusaders, for example in Chapter Three, “The Cannibals of Ma‟arra”, describes the Christian atrocities in the Syrian city of Ma‟arra, which include the practice of eating human flesh. The following confession by Frank chronicler Radulph of Caen is set out: “In Ma‟arra our troops boiled Pagan adults in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled” (op. cit., p. 39). However, he notes, if the sources of this barbarism were in Muslim chronicles, we would dismiss them out of hand as propaganda or an overt illusion, but Maalouf demonstrates that the only existing sources of this event -Michaud‟s L‟histoire des Croisades, published in 1817-22, vol. 1, pp. 357, 577; also Bibliographie des Croisades, pp. 48, 76, 183, 248- are Christian (op. cit., 240). In the notes in this chapter, he describes how this event was the center of intellectual dishonesty in the twentieth century, with scholars downgrading it to the point where it no longer appears in the history of the Crusades, not even to justify it as a means of preventing an army of Crusaders from starving. Neither the backward-looking understatement of this event nor the fact itself reflects well on the West as a source of purity or integrity (op. cit., p. 240).
We also need to consider what is happening in the region today. Geographically, the Crusades took place in the region bordering the Mediterranean, from modern Egypt to southern Turkey. These are the regions that were largely affected by the “Arab Spring” and the rise of the Islamic State. What Maalouf‟s book has to remind us is that today, as in the Age of the Crusades, the region was not a singular block of monolithic Islam. Instead, however, it is made up of groups that are ethnically and culturally diverse, which have a history of self-interested action and loyalty. Maalouf reminds us, through his epilogue, that while the Western view of the Crusades has seen a great deal of relegation in history books, nevertheless, it is like Western intervention in the region, very much alive, in the minds of the peoples of the Middle East.
Maalouf does not lend so much credence to the idea that history is repeated, rather than wants to identify the complexity of social and political relations in the contested space. He also points out the need for cooperation, as demonstrated many times in the book, Christians sided with Muslims against other Muslims, Muslims and Christians against Christians, and even the Mongols acted. What Maalouf demonstrates is that alliances, no matter how harsh the parties are to each other, are possible if there is a will and a cause that requires it. It is important to know the history of societies, in order to understand the current ways of thinking, identity, sense and action of their inhabitants. It is impossible to resolve conflicts and achieve peace without putting ourselves in others‟ shoes (Salinas, 2015), so it is crucial to understand the relationship of the Muslim peoples to the rest of the world.
Europeans were considered barbarians by the majority of people living in the region, who had that time made significant discoveries in important fields of knowledge. Acts of great cruelty were also perpetrated by the Muslim side, which was also plagued by the continued disorganization and betrayal of its own factions (op. cit.).
Although the Crusades ended on June 17, 1291, when the Muslim troops surrounding Acre finally defeated the Crusaders‟ defences, sending Henry of France to Cyprus, their heritage can still be felt in the Middle East.
In the West, the sights and sounds of medieval Palestine became engraved in cultural memory, later to form the basis of Orientalism. The Saracens became synonymous with the entire Muslim world. In the Middle East, there
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are still bad references in the fundamentalist mosques to the invading enemies of Islam. The Crusades fueled the Western myths of the East as a place of decline and the Arabs as predators, sly and criminals, myths that remain in the minds of millions in the West today. One of the reasons for the persistence of these images is their existence in an intellectual vacuum on the Western side (West, 1989).
But let us look at things from another angle of view: Fregosi in his book “Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries” comes to a conclusion that Europeans are more sinned than sinners, because their own aggressive wars in relation to the Muslim ones lasted less than two centuries, from 1096 to 1270 (Fregosi, 1998). This, of course, is a dangerous conclusion, because the fact that it was not inspired by religion does not mean that we can ignore the enormous and extremely important phenomenon of modern European imperialism.
To get back to the “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes”, Carine Bourget, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at University of Arizona, argues that while Maalouf brilliantly deconstructs the Western image of the Crusades as a heroic time documenting the cruelty of the Crusaders without falling into the trap of simply inverting the terms of dichotomy, the agenda that drives his rewriting of this historical period leads him to repeat, in part, what his book is supposed to reverse, witness the erasure of women in a book whose purpose is to reveal a neglected perspective. In addition, she argues that while most of the book describes in detail the power play between and among the Crusaders and the Arabs which refutes the ideology of clash of religions and cultures, the very brief epilogue, that draws parallels between the past and current Middle Eastern politics, but omits to mention important events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tends to return to the very essentialism which the main narrative contradicts (Bourget, 2006, from her Abstract of the article).
Nevertheless, Maalouf‟s epilogue raises important questions. To what extent were the Crusades responsible for shifting the focus of history Westward? Was the decline of Arab culture due to its complacent reliance on a militarily and financially superior Western culture? Was Europe‟s dominance in the Middle East due to its willingness to learn Arabic culture through the Arabic language? Maalouf gives the reader food for thought in positing tentative answers to these timeless questions, which are still passionately a kind of hot potato in the Arab world (West, 1989).
On the issue of identity, Maalouf does not fall into single racist figure of speech of fanatical Muslims or anachronistic ideas about ethnic-religious identity, always the easy escape of an ordinary Middle Eastern specialist, while concluding his account with a reflective epilogue on the enduring impact of the Crusades on Arab culture and identity. We could say that, through this hybrid -neither a novel nor an academic historical book nor a historical essay, though it has elements of all three-, he offers fascinating insights into some of the forces that today shape Arab and Islamic identity. Through his book he tries to counter cultural shock (Volterrani, 2007), the different is not what should make us oppose each other and scare us. The other cultures should not become increasingly impenetrable, but, on the contrary, there must be a creative dialogue between cultures.
Through this book, Maalouf manages to open the minds and hearts of Muslims in our societies to be proud of Arab civilization, culture, literature, philosophy, the contribution of their great culture to world culture: they must have a humanitarian, let us say, rebirth, for Arab culture and learning. He believes that in the world of the Middle East today, the only Muslims who will succeed are those who have a strong sense of national and individual identity,
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those who are proud of themselves and not only imitate other cultures. By the way, many great Arab writers - Edward Said, Issa Boullata, Albert Hourani, Naim Ateek- are Christian Arabs like Maalouf; there is a whole legacy that the average Arab citizen does not necessarily know, namely that some of the most prolific and distinguished scholars of Arab Islamic culture and heritage are Christian Arabs. What does this tell us? It tells us a lot about the great values that Muslims have always loved, agreed with and followed: tolerance, empathy, sympathy, politeness, hospitality, coexistence, spiritual relationships between their culture and other cultures, religious openness; they carry within them a powerful spiritual, aesthetic, and moral heritage that he considers people need to learn. Also, in the “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes” Maalouf shows how civilizations have been in contact and have borrowed from each other long before the era of globalization, by emphasizing the Arabs‟ numerous -and often overlooked- contributions to Western civilization (Bourget, 2006, p. 276). In addition, Maalouf manages tangled up issues to be understood and allusively analyzed and to contribute to the challenging of the simplistic, stereotypical representations of Arabs and their societies that are so widespread in the West today.
The quotation of a characteristic excerpt from Maalouf‟s book uncovers the surprising historical journey of the ruler Salah al-Din -who is described as a merciful, brave, and ideal leader of men- and helps to be realized how the legends linked to him helped form cultural identities: “Salah al-Din, he wrote, invited the king to sit beside him, and when Arnat entered in his turn, he seated him next to his king and reminded him of his misdeeds: „How many times have you sworn an oath and then violated it? How many times have you signed agreements that you have never respected?‟ Arnat answered through an interpreter: „Kings have always acted thus. I did nothing more.‟ During this time, Guy was gasping with thirst, his head dangling as though he were drunk, his face betraying great fright. Salah al-Din spoke reassuring words to him, had cold water brought, and offered it to him. The king drank, then handed what remained to Arnat, who slaked his thirst in turn. The sultan then said to Guy: „You did not ask my permission before giving him water. I am therefore not obliged to grant him mercy.'” (Maalouf, 1985, p. 252).
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6.1.2 In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong (1998)
After every new national massacre we wonder, and rightly so, how human beings can commit such heinous acts. Some of our deviations seem incomprehensible, their logic is not deciphered. Then we are talking about murderous mania, bloody mania, ancestral mania, hereditary mania. In a sense, it‟s really a mania. When a man, who has in other respects his senses, is transformed from one day to the next into a murderer, there is indeed mania. But when there are thousands, millions of killers, when the phenomenon is repeated in one country after another, in cultures very different from each other, in faithful to all religions and even in those who do not confess the faith in any religion at all, then it is no longer enough to talk about mania. What we call conveniently murderous mania is a tendency that our likes have, to be transformed into slaughterers every time they feel their race is threatened. The feeling of fear or insecurity does not always obey rational thinking, it can sometimes be exaggerated or even paranoid. But once an entire population is scared, the reality of fear must concern us more than the reality of the threat (Maalouf, 2012 a).
So the reason for thoughts and for choosing the dissertation subject was a book released in 1998 titled “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” by Amin Maalouf and deals with an issue experienced by millions of people living in a country other than their country of origin. They often come up with something as a choice, what national consciousness they have, what they feel they are more, where they belong more, what country they consider home, etc. Of course, the issue has many aspects, which relate to the reasons for leaving the country of origin, the social class to which they belong, the relationship the new country has with the country of origin. It is different to be a migrant or a refugee, different to be born to migrant parents and to grow up as a second or third generation in the host country. Different to have parents from different cultures, languages etc. We cannot deal adequately here with all categories of people who, in one way or another, become carriers of two or even more cultures. It is certain that they have foot in both worlds, that of origin and that of residence. The writer of the above book remains only on the phenomena. He deals with the inner world of the emigrant in general -without differentiation because of the social class or the reason for abandoning the birthplace-, with the conflict of attitudes and cultures which is the result of a series of causes in which the causes are constantly confused with the effects, the substance with the phenomena. However, despite the generalization of his personal experience, much is true and many will certainly recognize themselves within the approach chosen. In his work “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”, Amin Maalouf deals for second time with the essay and more specifically with the subject of identities. Identity is special to everyone, but what exactly does it include? Identity is made up of many elements. Maalouf enlightens it through his own case. Being himself “on the threshold of two countries, three languages, many cultural traditions” (op. cit., p. 1), his identity could not be determined by a single element that would come to express his roots, his cultures. Every human being has a composite identity. In the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”, Amin Maalouf draws attention to the risk that any unilateral and predetermined perception of identity has, that threatens to be murderous. He opposes the affiliation of the other in a threatening and hostile manner. More specifically, we observe that, because of different affiliations, hatred and war is generated in our societies. He supports pluralism, multiple affiliations, tolerance.
The writer is a Lebanese who left his country in 1976 to settle in France and in the prologue says he does not know how many times he has been asked whether he feels more French or Lebanese. And he confesses below that to all who ask him the question he patiently explains that he was born in Lebanon, that he lived there until his twenty-
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seven years, that Arabic is his native language, that he first discovered Dumas and Dickens and Gulliver‟s travels in their Arabic translation and that he experienced his first childhood thrills in his village, on the mountain, where he heard some stories which would later inspire his novels. “How could I forget all that? How could I cast it aside? On the other hand, I have lived for twenty-two years on the soil of France; I drink its water and wine; every day my hands touch its ancient stones; I write my books in its language; never again will it be a foreign country to me. So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course not. […] I haven‟t got several identities: I‟ve got just one, made up of many components in a mixture that is unique to me, just as other people‟s identity is unique to them as individuals” (Maalouf, 2012 a, pp. 1-2). Our identity is not made up of formal elements, it is not divided into segments or closed zones. We‟ve got just one identity, the product of all the ingredients created from a single dose, the dose that is never the same between two people.
There is no doubt that the author is touching on massive real psychosocial, cultural problems, especially in migration host countries. His motivation, however, relates to conditions in which things are quite smooth and the development of the subject is confined to the individual level. It appears, however, that unemployment, poverty, stalemate are the social ground on which xenophobia rests and is fed by (UNESCO Digital Library, 2001). If everyone was complacent, it would be easier to overcome racial, religious and other prejudices, and xenophobic phenomena would be fought at the level of mentality and so the author‟s prescriptions could be applicable. But if an increasing mass of migrants and refugees are pauperized and marginalized exerting unwittingly a downward pressure on the living conditions of the local population, the ground for hatred, xenophobia and racism is created, which of course is not addressed by prescriptions for changing attitudes.
In addition, there are events that change social psychology. Maalouf‟s book was published in French in 1998. That is, before the bombings in Yugoslavia. He gives us an example of a change of attitude from there: […] “Let us stay -in Sarajevo- and carry out an imaginary survey there. Let us observe a man of about fifty whom we see in the street. In 1980 or thereabouts he might have said proudly and without hesitation, „I‟m a Yugoslavian!‟ Questioned more closely, he could have said he was a citizen of the Federal Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, incidentally, that he came from a traditionally Muslim family. If you had met the same man twelve years later, when the war was at its height, he might have answered automatically and emphatically, „I‟m a Muslim!‟ … He would quickly have added that he was a Bosnian, and he would not have been pleased to be reminded of how proudly he once called himself a Yugoslavian.
If he was stopped and questioned now, he would say first of all that he was a Bosnian, then that he was a Muslim, … but he‟d also want you to know that his country is part of Europe and that he hopes it will one day be a member of the Union. How will this same person want to define himself if we meet him in the same place twenty years hence? Which of his affiliations will he put first? The European? The Islamic? The Bosnian? Something else again? The Balkan connection, perhaps?”
To then add that he would not risk making predictions, because, in fact, all of these elements are part of his identity (op. cit., pp. 12-13).
The author‟s hypothetical and simplified imaginary survey contains a substance, which however leaves unfinished. Why would the interviewee once say he was Yugoslavian and then change it? What made him change? We know the events that took place. The knowledgeable reader can draw conclusions. It was huge progress the resident of
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any race, religion or class of Yugoslavia to say that he/she was Yugoslavian as the first property and all other elements of identity to be secondary. A fragmented country with a very complex population was united taking something that was binding: everyone felt Yugoslavian, and the nationalist, religious, racial segregation that followed was a huge step backwards. It was precisely these divisions that globalization wanted to cultivate, in order to be imposed on the Balkans and anywhere in the world. The Federal State guaranteed the identity of people by emphasizing what unites them and respecting what constitutes their diversity. Now these have been reversed and the result is strife, xenophobia, religious and racial hatred.
However, the author releases the issue from its socio-economic, murderous causes, nor does he separate the different origins of the migrants in the land he himself settled, France. Let‟s not forget that the suburbs of the margin, the degraded suburbs of Paris, of the second and third generation of migrants, who are still treated as second-class citizens today, immersed in unemployment and poverty, exploded from October 27 to November 14, 2005. In France, in jobs like a taxi driver or street sweeper or cleaning crews one rarely sees what they call pure- blooded French. Those who try to interpret that social protest only from a religious, racial and cultural perspective will not be able to explain developments genuinely. Common sense can realize that social injustice, exploitation, class barriers, racist perceptions and poverty -there is experience since the time our thousands of compatriots were being stowed in the coffin ships to Australia, US, Canada or in the ghettos of Germany and Belgium- were the real causes. Exclusion, contempt and police-state, that is, the way in which the French state treated the suburbs, gradually transformed them into ghettos with all the consequences: crime, violence, aggression, drugs, weapons smuggling, without, of course, that meaning that only their inhabitants are involved in it. But it is also true that in the suburbs unemployment among young people up to thirty years old reaches 40%. Many are forced to drop out of school because their families are unable to feed them. Some funds previously provided for the education of these children were sacrificed at the altar of cuts in social policy areas, in order the country to be harmonized with the Brussels‟ criteria. It is also true that the French authorities, public services and police treat them, in the same way as their grandparents, as criminals. All that triggered the explosion came to be applied to a greater extent to tackle it. Characteristic was the recovery of a law from the time of the French-Algerian war (from 1954 to 1962). The children of migrants have not been integrated and this is not to be done as long as the state politics condemns them.
The issue is not just for France but for the whole EU and its policy (closed borders, records, restrictive measures in asylum procedure). It was just an outburst of blind violence and even of some. Most, young and old, were simply locked in their homes, trapped in dead ends and in despair. Even though the means used are neither appropriate nor perhaps fair, even so, they were the only means these people had to be heard. Thousands of burnt out cars and total loss of state politics‟s prestige symbolize more than just an explosion. Of course, what happened in France was not May 1968, because the suburbs are far from the City of Light, the ghettos even further away. In the past this country received migration flows from European countries, that is, from a closer, more associated culture. Then there were the migration flows from the former colonies. That is, migrants with a very different culture and attitude towards the old colonial power -and usually with ghettoization of even future generations-, carriers of a legacy of conflict, submission and humiliation. In the last thirty-one years, European countries have received migrants from Eastern European countries and the now dissolved Soviet Union. The author does not make such divisions, let alone class which go completely unchallenged, and confines himself to an indefinable generalization based on his own case. Of course we cannot expect a thorough analysis by a writer-journalist. However, it is possible to point out the limitations of such an effort in a few lines. The author makes some attempt to explain the evolution of the
Thesis XXXVIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
world and the ever-present issue of pseudo-separation between East and West from within the clash of cultures. This roaming in history does not take into account the basis of the material economic development nor social relations, attitudes, religions, etc. which are developed on this basis to influence it in turn. Thus, the author is confined to the confrontation of the West with the rest of the world, basing his reasoning on findings at the level of phenomena rather than causes. He is trying to explain how this West has managed to impose itself on the whole world without reference to the driving forces of history.
With regard to the dominant ideas, he notes that the spirit of the times is certainly not a strictly defined concept and that he uses it precisely to reflect the pervasive, undefined reality, because of which in some historical times many people begin to bring forward an element of their identity to the detriment of others (op. cit., p. 109).
This spirit of the times remains unfinished too, as we know it is appointed by the rulers of every era. Because the dominant ideas of every era are the ideas of the dominants of that era. Instead, he prefers to use concepts such as an indefinite globalization that currently is heard far less -is old-fashioned- and a fashionable modernity covering - unconsciously- the cause-and-effect relationship.
Maalouf may be the most appropriate to discuss the problem -sometimes it is more of a problem than an issue- of identity. We read in his resume that he is not a Muslim, that he was born into a community called Hellenic Catholic or Uniat and which, while recognizing the Pope‟s power, remains, at the same time, faithful to certain elements of the Byzantine ritual (op. cit., p. 19). His ancestors, Arabs, had moved to Lebanon in the third century, before Islam, and had embraced Christianity. He escaped from the Lebanese civil war and fled to France, where he has lived ever since.
On the problem of identity, Maalouf writes that every human being, without any exception, has a composite identity; it is sufficient to ask himself/herself some questions to bring to light the forgotten cracks, branches that did not suspect them and discover that his/her self is complex, unique, irreplaceable (op. cit., p. 22). People who come from two identities, Maalouf argues, instead of choosing one of the two, can play the role of a breakwater- mediator between the communities they belong to, such as one having a parent Serb-Christian and the other a Bosnian Muslim.
There is always the danger of identity shrinking into a single affiliation, people can easily become biased, unilateral, not lenient, oppressing. They may start to see the world from an oblique and distorted perspective, where ours are at odds with others. But if we conceive identity as a composition of multiple affiliations, some of which are linked to a common national history and others not, if we distinguish in ourselves, in our ancestry, in our personal history many and contradictory influences, many mixings and dissimilar effects, then we will recognize a different relationship with others. We will no longer have to do with a homogeneous group of ours, as opposed to an equally homogeneous group of others. There will be some in the group of ours with whom we have a great deal of connection and some with whom we have nothing in common to share. The same will apply to the group of others. “Do you not agree that the time has now come to stop killing each other in the name of our national, racial, religious or other identity?”, Maalouf wonders (op. cit.).
While the problem of identity occupies the initial part of the book, then Maalouf sees it in relation to other problems, such as the problem of globalization. The author believes that at the global level, the greatest threat to individual identity is globalization, that is being promoted by developed countries, is threatening the undeveloped Thesis XXXIX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
and is being led by the US, provoking resentment to everyone. Globalism is really a synonym of modernization: technology, loose ethics, collapse of tradition.
He, in short, believes that each of us has two heritages: the one, the vertical, is left to him/her by his/her ancestors, the traditions of his/her people, his/her religious community; the other, the horizontal, is given by his/her age, his/her contemporaries. In his opinion, the most important is the second, and every day that passes by it becomes more and more decisive; and yet, this reality is not reflected in our perception of ourselves. We do not claim our horizontal heritage, we claim the other (op. cit., p. 129). The above is revealing about his perceptions.
And he goes on to say that, in any case, the truth is that we declare our differences so fiercely, precisely because we are less and less different. Because, despite all our conflicts, our eternal hostilities, every day that passes by mitigates our differences a little more, increases our similarities a little more (op. cit., p. 131). Clothing, he says elsewhere, is a prime example. Therefore, to the extent that the relevant conditions of learning most of what we learn without direct, intentional teaching are changing, the shaping of the subject‟s cultural identity is also differentiated (op. cit., p. 18).
His perception on language does not seem to be so achievable. He believes that today it is obvious that every person needs to speak three languages. The first is the language of his/her identity; the third, the English. Between the two, we must necessarily promote the use of a second language, which everyone will freely choose, and which will often, but not always, be a European language and it will be the language of his/her heart, the language he/she has adopted, the one he/she will marry, the favourite language (op. cit., p. 177).
But the most unexpected thing we read about in this book, which, it is recalled, was published in 1998, is the following: “And nothing prevents us from thinking that one day a black president will be elected in the United States…” (op. cit., p. 177).
Obviously, Maalouf did not imagine when he wrote these lines that this could be done so soon, before even ten years have passed.
With regard to religions, we read: “No religion is free from intolerance, but if we were to take into account the two rival religions, we would notice that Islam is not doing too badly. If my ancestors were Muslims in a country conquered by Christian troops and not Christians in a country conquered by Muslim troops, I don‟t think they would have been able to live for fourteen centuries preserving their religion. What really happened to the Muslims of Spain? And the Muslims of Sicily? They all disappeared, until the last, they were slaughtered, forced to be exiled or baptized by force” (op. cit., p. 70) and below:
“I do not judge, I only note the centuries-old practice of coexistence and tolerance throughout Muslim history… But we have to compare what is comparable. Islam had instituted a protocol of tolerance, at a time when Christian societies tolerated nothing” (op. cit., p. 71).
The parts quoted above are the most representative of the positions of Maalouf. Maalouf may be an excellent writer, but the perception that Islam is inherently a tolerant religion may be born. Tolerance is not due to Islam but due to the empire. All empires were tolerant of the religious beliefs of the conquered peoples, such as Persian, Alexander‟s and his heirs‟, Roman, Ottoman, to name only empires we know a little better. And this, of course, by
Thesis XL Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
calculation: infringing on the religious beliefs of the conquered meant revolts and repression costs. As for the intolerance of Christianity, though not long ago they were eaten by lions and the heathens persecuted them mercilessly, the counteraction of Christians looks like... revenge. And, of course, the atrocities carried out throughout the process of the Reconquista are unjustifiable and censurable too. No, Christianity is not tolerant, Christian states have become tolerant, to the extent that the influence of religion on the state has diminished. Let‟s not go too far: why does religion is not indicated on Greek identity cards? Of course not because Christianity is tolerant.
Religious tolerance in Islam was balanced by economic oppression, while the non-Muslim empires had not established the tax for non-coreligionists. Many of the conquered peoples switched to Islamism not because they were persuaded of its superiority, or that in the afterlife, if they were virtuous, seventy-two virgins were waiting for them, but to avoid the tax (Hourani, 2013).
Interviewed by the journalist Papageorgiou, Maalouf says he felt the need to write a book about identity because it was something he always thought of, since he comes from a country like Lebanon, where many people lost their lives in the name of identity. “There, during the war in the 1970s and 1980s, there was an expression that said „shoot the identity‟. In other words, stop people and watch what community they belong to, what religion they have and, depending on it, kill them or let them go” (Amin Maalouf‟s Interview with “To Vima”, 1999).
To the journalist‟s remark that, even so and despite the experiences like this or the Vietnam war, from his book are flickering optimism and hope, he replies that he is very sensitive to the problems of our time. “But I never forget that the important thing is not to blacken things nor just to predict disasters, just for this sick pleasure of saying someday: „You saw? I told you so!‟. I believe there are certainly problems, but I will try, with all humility, with all my experience, to do this or that in order to solve them”. He believes that if he moves in this direction, he will avoid the worst. This is the spirit he defends. “It is true that there are threats, but I will not limit myself to the pleasure of their complaint. For example, globalization. It‟s a worrying thing, of course. But if I sit down to write about it, I will not limit myself to stating that everything is lost in advance. Instead, I will try to offer other alternative solutions” (op. cit.).
He believes that, despite all the progress that has been made, identity is given as much importance because it is an essential element, since we move towards a world that is more and more unified (op. cit.).
He is not exactly afraid of losing our identity, rather he thinks we are going through a moment of reaffirming it in relation to the other. This is what is happening in the East in relation to the West. Muslims, who represent one fifth of humanity, have an identity problem in relation to modernization, apparently coming from outside, representing the other. These are all questions related to identity. In his view, the confrontation is more intense than ever because evolution is increasingly rapid and there is a huge uncertainty about the future, about where we are going. “After all, what is identity if not the place one occupies in the world?” (op. cit.).
Speaking about his identity, Maalouf refers to it as something complex, full of things that bind him to the Arab world, France, Christianity... But there seems to be a tendency to limit ourselves only to what distinguishes us from the other, not to what unites us with the other, identity is built not with but against (op. cit.).
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He explains: “First, there is the habit of believing, perhaps somewhat spontaneously, that people feel the need to belong to one thing only, that they forget about the rest that make up their identity. For example, if we take someone in Europe who had a German father and a French mother in the 1930s, we see he/she can‟t say that „I am this and that‟, but only one of the two things which at that time excluded one another. This with regard to the historical phenomenon. But there are also other phenomena that have to do with human psychology. Simplification seems to be something that emerges naturally. If you ask „what is this man?‟, they‟ll tell you „he is black, or rather Algerian‟... I‟m not saying that people should stop defining with one word only, since it‟s something basic, it arises to us spontaneously, but at the same time I think we should change our attitude a little bit and look a little further. We should respect the fact that man is a lot more complex, and little by little to promote the habit of realizing that a person‟s identity is not defined by a single element”. All this complexity composes one‟s identity and makes it unique (op. cit.).
Referring to the dominant trend to limit our identity to a single element, so that we have something in common with the others, in order to be able to be part of a group and feel less alone, he argues that limiting one‟s identity to only a single element certainly simplifies things. However, in his opinion, one can belong to one group and to another at the same time. To an extent that if one accepts all of the individual elements that make up his/her identity, in the end he/she should feel less alone, since they allow him/her, due to their diversity, to identify with different groups of people at the same time. You just need some relativization. “Ok, I‟m Bosnian, for example, but I should be aware of the links that join me with other groups as well. Otherwise one ends up hounding others but also his/her own self” (op. cit.).
However, the trend seems to be the opposite: emphasizing the differences between the different groups, instead of looking for the common element and, according to Maalouf, this is not accidental. While we move towards a global culture, there seems to be a need to reaffirm our particular difference. When faced with a global culture expressed through a dominant language, there is a need to reaffirm your language, your culture... And this, he believes, explains the two movements that are circulating in parallel around the world today: on the one hand, a unifying movement and, at the same time, a differentiation movement (op. cit.).
Are they religion or nationalism those that give rise to greater identity conflicts? He thinks that cultural and national conflicts will intensify more and more from now on, but they will not be so deadly. On the other hand, he believes that religious conflicts will continue to be murderous for a long time to come. But depending on the region. “If one looks at Turkey, the conflict with the Kurds is not religious. Unfortunately, however, I believe that religious conflicts will cost many lives in many parts of the world” (op. cit.).
Regarding the recovery of some nationalisms in Europe, his view is that if we look at it from a historical point of view, the first observation is that the era of nationalisms in Europe is a thing of the past. He talks about the major wars that caused millions of deaths. What is becoming apparent today in the context of Europe is the reaffirmation will by some of the particular cultures and this is most of the time linked to linguistic issues. He believes that Europe is not dealing with these problems as much as it should. It focuses almost exclusively on economic, political and legal issues. Nevertheless, managing cultural diversity is proving to be very important in relation to one‟s identity and sense of belonging. There is a need to take these issues seriously, instead of freeing the way for all sorts of disputes, claims and conflicts. If the world is diverse, we cannot close our eyes, but respect that diversity and be able to drive it in such a way that it can manifest itself freely along with other identities (op. cit.). Thesis XLII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Anyway, the book “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” -through the views advanced by it, but also through its simple and clear style- seeks to explain the tendency of civilized nations to repeat the slaughter of their neighbours, a practice that is alternatively known as genocide, racial unrest, ethnic cleansing and, simply, mass murder. However, the subject of discussion remains hot years after the book was published. Certainly, the book‟s approach remains to this day the dominant one in studies in the West -universities, but also textbooks, etc.- with an alternation of phraseology, of course.
With regard to exploring the issues under consideration, already in the book‟s introduction Maalouf gives a definition of identity: “What makes me myself rather than anyone else”. The author also introduces the dilemma of composite identity -somebody born in France to Algerian parents, a Turk born in Germany- and expresses disappointment for the usual ideas that reduce the whole identity to a single affiliation. The overpowering of one identity over the other has led to endless murderous confrontations (Maalouf, 2012 a, pp. 3-4).
He focuses on the universal human need for a sense of identity. When threatened or simply underestimated, individuals are filled with resentment. However, this murderous need to belong is irrationally variable, depending on history, politics, geography or economics. So being black does not provide much of a sense of identity in a large part of Africa. In Nigeria one is Ibo or Hausa, in Rwanda Hutu or Tutsi, a difference that can be a matter of life and death. For those who move to the US this begins to be insignificant: every black is above all black. Maalouf comments, without a shadow of ill-will, on US‟s obsession with political correctness. No movie can cast a black as a criminal without other blacks in worthy of admiration roles, such as a police chief. Maalouf sees it as a reasonable attempt by a multicultural society to avoid marginalizing any group (op. cit., p. 121).
Maalouf is trying to redefine our affiliation to a single identity. And he does it being fully aware of the extent of this task and its necessity. For how long we‟ll still be fooling people into telling them that if they are not ours, they are our enemy? How many more dead do we still need to count before we realize that both rivals are claiming righteousness, the one and only truth, the God who apparently always supports us and not them? He dares to touch the taboos of History. How democratic is Western culture and how oppressive is the world of Islam? Was it always like that? And what will happen tomorrow?
The author stresses that globalization is a completely Western phenomenon, which means that it is a Christian phenomenon. In this spirit, the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism becomes less a mysterious religious ideology than an intention to maintain self-respect against an intimidating foreign ideology. In the age of globalization, the most powerful social groups play a leading role and shape the “we”. In contrast to the less powerful, who are categorized as “others”.
This is precisely the field of action of multinationals. The sovereignty game that paves the way for lifestyle, for values scale and for shaping human priorities. In the last analysis, what Maalouf calls Americanization is nothing but corporate culture, culminating in the struggle of branding everything.
Maalouf does not believe that one or the other racial, national, religious or any other affiliation predisposes to murder. It is enough to take a look at the events of the last few years and find that any human community, a little to feel humiliated, a little to feel that its existence is under threat, may immediately develop the tendency to produce murderers, who will commit the worst atrocities convinced that they are right, that they deserve heaven and the admiration of theirs. There is Mr. Hyde in each of us, but the point is not to allow those conditions that push the Thesis XLIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
monster to the surface to arise (op. cit., p. 28). Also, it should be made clear that the objective view is not fact and that all stereotypical perceptions are objective -since they are accepted by the majority-, but they are opinions, not facts that correspond to reality. For example, that a Muslim is a murderer is an opinion, but that he/she is a neighbour is a fact.
As he, characteristically, writes, we are at the point common to the axes that intersect and which connects us with our ancestors and our contemporaries (op. cit., p. 102). The above position seeks to highlight the interactive relationship between the individual and the collective, the present and the past, the multiple components of our identity. Only through a continuous dialogue between the cultural elements and the values of life could the unique intersection of the elements enclosed in our identity be expressed.
Once we see the affiliation of ourselves in an identity as a whole that is broken down into many components, could we, perhaps, find it easier to find points in common with the other, the different? An answer to the above question is attempted by Maalouf in the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” through a more philosophical perspective than a social scientist would give: Such communication may be possible, if these different affiliations that coexist within us are not contradictory to each other, to the point that we want to promote one specific affiliation in particular, by sidelining another.
Maalouf amazes us with the process that can be triggered by the outburst of identificatory thinking, of preparedness, of reflex of defence of individuals or groups threatened, of their inalienable right to exist as representatives of a culture in face of the powerful Western culture. This process, in its modern form, leads those who feel themselves to be victims of oppression -especially in the Arab-Muslim world- to exploit the religion set up as the last bastion of their own identity, when they feel threatened precisely because they have been excluded. That fact leads to the mechanism that Maalouf describes and in this way behaviours characterized by intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism and death are created. We can better understand the pain of groups whose personality has been destroyed because they have been constantly and continuously marginalized by the hegemony of Western civilization. They became aliens, orphans in a world belonging to “others”. Maalouf shows us the way to get out of this impasse, because religions do make people, but people make religions. He refused fate, chose to leave …made the decision to write the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”.
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6.1.3 Origins: A Memoir (2004)
His work “Origins: A Memoir” comes to complement his essay “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”. “Origins: A Memoir” describes the author‟s attempt to collect and record all the information about his family, that has been scattered around the world. His identity as well as his whole life is in a perpetual motion. The author follows the Maaloufs through the last glimpses of the Ottoman Empire. He knows that their hot blood runs through his veins. He knows that his own course would be in vain if he did not remain, by his writing and emotions, loyal to this turbulent genealogy (Maalouf, 2008).
It is a fact that the characteristics of the Arab identity have proved quite a challenge in the last decades. It‟s a book for the majority of marginalized groups, of frontier dwellers, in the societies they inhabit. Paying attention to the mix and match of minority life, majorities trapped in fixed identities can be encouraged to get a grip on their own, almost certainly diverse, selves. The dangers of not doing so are clear. “Those who cannot accept their own diversity may be among the most virulent of those prepared to kill for the sake of identity, attacking those who embody that part of themselves which they would like to see forgotten”, he writes (Maalouf, 2012 a, p. 36).
In the “Origins: A Memoir”, Maalouf puts theory into practice recording the unpredictable journey of his own family. The Maalouf family at the beginning and the first decades of the twentieth century is a challenging and fascinating combination of Catholics, Protestants, open thinkers and Freemasons and sometimes a sufficiently inconsistent combination of two or more of these affiliations. There is even a Mormon branch in Utah. But the allegiance of the family is primarily in the mountainous villages of Lebanon, and from that is unfolding a variety of commitments to place, family, region, state, language, business, religion, poetry and high thought. The Maalouf family is also somewhat taken with the idea of exile as an experience to broaden the mind rather than a loss of home to be endlessly lamented (Wilson, 2008). In the “Origins: A Memoir”, Maalouf focuses mainly on his grandfather Botros, a schoolteacher who lives “between notebooks and inkwells” (Maalouf, 2008, p. 180). Botros scandalously refuses to baptize his children, creates a Universal School, roams his village bareheaded in a suit and cape, while, on the contrary, his brother Gebrayel sets up a successful retail business in Havana, only to die there under tragic circumstances in the 1920s. Amin Maalouf‟s ancestors include a Melkite priest, Theodoros, and a tragic hunger artist, Botros‟ anonymous nephew, who starved to death because his father did not allow him to study literature. Memoirs are also flecked with delicious family anecdotes: a young aunt loosens her braided hair on her way to bed when her excited father shouts from the kitchen where negotiations are going on, “Zalfa, do up your hair again; we‟ve married you off!” (op. cit., p. 167).
“Barely a hundred years ago, Lebanese Christians readily proclaimed themselves Syrians, Syrians looked to Mecca for a king, Jews in the Holy Land called themselves Palestinians … and my grandfather Botros liked to think of himself as an Ottoman citizen”, he writes. “None of the present-day Middle Eastern states existed, and even the term „Middle East‟ hadn‟t been invented. The commonly used term was „Asian Turkey‟. Since then, scores of people have died for allegedly eternal homelands, and many more will die tomorrow.” (op. cit., p. 211). In her old age, the grandmother of Amin Malouf Nazeera knitted a white winter scarf to wrap it around his shoulders “several times so it won‟t drag on the floor” (op. cit., p. 364) during the chilly nights of Paris. Maalouf wants nothing more than to unroll the long scarf of memory and history, not to make a claim, but for the celebration of human dignity, effort and wanderers who have lost their way.
Thesis XLV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
The book deals not only with the question of identity but also with that of globalization, which has brought about dramatic changes in many areas of our daily lives. It is an autobiographical book, but which does not, in the narrative techniques that follows, resemble other similar ones. Nor, however, in the view through which the author treats of the great tree of the Maalouf family. If he wrote under a pseudonym or gave an other surname to the protagonist family, then one might well say that it is also the history of a desperate region, the Middle East. Maalouf explores the notion of being an immigrant. As he says, he rarely returns to his homeland, and only when conditions compel him to do so… almost always because of the death of a loved one. Correspondingly, he is told that “Here, families have sons buried in Beirut, Egypt, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and the United States. Our fate is to be as scattered in death as we were in life.” (op. cit., p. 24). This is the experience of every spreading out of a group of people. Maalouf is immersed in the sense of guilt and remorse faced by an immigrant as well as in what defines his home country. An ancestral chest recovered from his village in the Lebanese mountains reveals secret places for letters from his grandfather in Lebanon to his grand-uncle in Cuba: “I now saw looming before me a thousand doors and no keys.” (op. cit., p. 27). A long journey starts. Maalouf wanders around Lebanon, the US and Cuba looking for lost people, connections and homes, seeking to determine what motivated one brother to immigrate and the other to stay. What prompted the entrepreneur Gebrayel to leave and the other brother, Botros, to set up a secular progressive school in the village? Actually, they are a study of contrasts: Botros is a classy intellectual man, determined to bring enlightenment to his mountainous village. Being in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire, Botros considers himself to be an Ottoman citizen. However, spasms are undermining the dying empire. What about patriotism versus nationalism? In a significant comment, Maalouf acutely laments: “Our empire crumbled, like the Habsburg Empire, into scores of miserable ethnic states, whose murderous rumblings have caused two World Wars and dozens of local wars, and have already corrupted the soul of the new millennium.” (op. cit., p. 108). One only has to look in horror at today‟s scenario in the Middle East to feel his pain.
For someone who has lived in the Middle East, including Lebanon, for many years Amin Maalouf‟s book is a reading of internal immigration mechanisms, of the immigrant‟s psyche, of the complex dimensions of distant families and the historical complexities of the region. Interwoven with these monumental waves, it is a riveting family epic story filled with third cousins, great uncles, and the daughter-in-law of mother‟s best friend. Maalouf‟s grandfather wrote on a loose sheet of paper in Beirut in 1923 (op. cit., pp. 326-327):
“I am weary
Weary of describing
The state of our countries of the Orient,
Replace „country‟ by „calamity‟
Replace „Orient‟ by „malediction‟.
You will have an idea of what I am trying to say.”
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According to Maalouf, identity is not permanent but it has a fleeting impact. Maalouf reminds us that Arab identity is as fluid, lacking order or stability and ever-changing, as the Mediterranean Sea, which has been kissing the shores of Lebanon, his home country, and France, where he has lived for the last forty-four years.
However, in the end, Maalouf doesn‟t just want to throw light on family history or add details to stories not quite whispered for a hundred years; instead, he seeks to reveal the fertile variety of his own family, of Arab life and history, of history itself. In this way, he offers a lesson on the value of transience and constantly unpredictable changing. The book is indeed a hymn of love for a family that remains the sole home of this exiled writer.
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6.1.4 Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century (2009)
Another book of his, in a way a continuation of the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”, is the “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century” and in this, too, Maalouf talks about how murderous identities are, and how they contribute to disordering the world. Tapping into two cultures, Arabic and European -because, as we have said before, he is a Lebanese Christian who fled to the West when the civil war broke out in Lebanon-, can have a wider oversight of today‟s world.
Maalouf believes that the slide of the ideological struggle towards integration into distinct identities had a devastating effect on the entire planet, but was much more damaging to the Arab-Muslim cultural sphere, as religious radicalism, long expressed by persecuted minorities, gained mass spiritual supremacy within most communities but also among Muslims of the diaspora. As this movement was escalating, it began to adopt a strongly anti-Western line (Maalouf, 2011, p. 29).
Here is one of the key points of the book. Certainly, it is questionable whether the ideological struggle has slid. Here there is ideological struggle too, the illuminated Qur‟an on the one hand, and the progressive tradition of human rights, on the other. Especially about women‟s rights in the Muslim world, Muslim feminists have a lot to tell us.
In his opinion, there is no doubt that colonialism has caused profound traumas, especially in Africa; but very often the periods of independence proved even more traumatic, and he himself has no sympathy for all these incompetent, corrupt, or tyrannical leaders who brandish at every opportunity the convenient pretext of colonialism.
Concerning his country of origin, Lebanon, he is convinced that the period of the French Mandate, from 1918 to 1943, and the last phase of the Ottoman presence, from 1864 to 1914, were far less damaging than the various regimes that succeeded one another after independence. “It is perhaps politically unorthodox to judge by the „could be worse‟ philosophy, but only so can I read the facts” (op. cit., pp. 64-65).
He believes that today, the fate of all minorities is prescribed; at best they will end their historical journey to some distant land offering them asylum; in the worst case they will come to an end in their own place, they will be crushed caught by the crooked jaws of modern barbarism (op. cit., p. 88).
After the overthrow of the Eastern bloc, the crisis in the Muslim world and, as a consequence of the foregoing, the migration wave that swept Europe, the worst for a person is not to belong to a minority. The people in a very unhappy or unfortunate state today are migrants, whether or not they belong to a minority of their home country.
And something that was ignored: “… when the Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth century reached its peak of expansion, remaining fanatically committed to the Sunni doctrine and demanding the unification of the entire Muslim world under its rule, the Shah of Persia turned his kingdom into a stronghold of Shiism. By this decision the monarch secured the independence of his empire, while at the same time exempting his subjects, whose language was Persian, from the danger of a Turkish-speaking people‟s dominance” (op. cit., p. 130).
Thesis XLVIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Maalouf talks about Kemal‟s reforms that have succeeded, while Shah‟s reform efforts have failed, and goes on to say that, in contrast to Ataturk‟s example, this case is counter-example. The governor who will show that he is acting as protected by the opposing forces automatically loses his legitimacy and everything he attempts is devalued. If he wants to modernize the country, the people is opposed to the modernization. If he seeks the emancipation of women, the streets are filled with protest scarves.
To conclude immediately thereafter: “How many sensible reforms failed because they brought the signature of a hated power! And, conversely, how many irrational acts were not applauded because they carried the stamp of an aggressive legality! It is a general truth with universal power. Whenever a proposal is put to the vote, the judgment of the electorates is not so much determined by the content of the proposal as by the trust they display or do not display in the person who represents it. Remorse, revisions come later” (op. cit., p. 137).
A similar to that of Kemal experiment, we read just before, was attempted by a young Afghan king when he came to power in 1919. He was overthrown by conservative Chiefs of staff who accused him of disrespect, some ten years later. He died in exile. Years later the Taliban came.
We read: “While the whole world was united against Saddam Hussein, the Hashemite monarch -the king of Jordan- was in favour of the Iraqi leader. Was it because he wanted to see him win? Definitely not. Was it because he believed in a possible Iraqi victory? Far from it. Simply put, in yet another crucial phase of Middle Eastern history, the king thought that it was better to be unjust going with his people than to be right against his people” (op. cit., p. 192).
Here he raises the question of demagogy in the field of politics, that is, the desires of the mass of the people -that‟s what the people wants to hear, that‟s what we tell the people- are set against the interests of the people.
Another quotation: “Because this passion for Marxism-Leninism would eventually prove to be a transitional stage between the era of nationalisms and the era of Islamists. A historical bracket that, with its closure, left a bitter taste to many peoples, exacerbating this feeling of discouragement, hostility and helplessness” (op. cit., p. 211). But is this really the course -with regard to the in-between stage- that much of the Muslim world has cut or does it refer to only a few countries with a significant Muslim population? In fact, there are not many examples (Malcolm X had a great influence on the revolutionary Black Panther Party in 1960, the Mujahideen leaders in Iran were in favour of combining Marxism with Islam for the fight against the king of Iran, Zulfikar Bhutto during the nationalization program in Pakistan in the mid-1970s experimented with a left-leaning rhetoric to bolster his influence). And, where it happened, has the transition from Marxism to Islamism been smooth? Let‟s take for example the typical case of Afghanistan. Before the, bred in the US, “holy warriors” and bin Laden overthrow the government, female students -free from burka- and male students from the University of Kabul were taking exams together, while in December 1979 a woman is amongst the ministers of the Afghan government. Anahita Ratebzad, who assumes the Ministry of Education, a highly progressive and bold move in a male-dominated theocratic society, such as that of Afghanistan. Anahita Ratebzad emerges as the country‟s Pasionaria. In addition, Afghan women, in support of their husbands, sons, and brothers, defended the acquis of the April Revolution. Among the defenders in Helmand province a woman was distinguished, the team leader, Amina Asar, a member of the Democratic Youth Organization of Afghanistan (Gibbs, 2006). Today we see the “greatness” of “liberated” Afghanistan. The burka,
Thesis XLIX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
which women were supposed to get rid of, still reigns… As does the poverty and misery of the people, as a result of continued barbaric occupation (Prashad, 2001).
In the following quotation, Maalouf raises the heart of the problem facing the world today, and which we Greeks are experiencing tragically today: “But what happens when money is completely disconnected from any form of production, from any physical or mental effort, from any useful social activity? What happens when our stock exchanges turn into giant casinos where the fortune of hundreds of millions of people, rich or poor, are judged by a single roll? What happens when the most respected financial institutions end up behaving like villain drunkards? What happens when the savings of a lifetime‟s work can be vanished or, on the contrary, doubled in seconds, following a series of secret mechanisms that even bankers themselves are no longer able to understand?” (Maalouf, 2011, p. 231).
And another small quotation: “… not only do I have no banner, but I stand far enough away from parties, factions, cliques, and I find nothing more valuable than the independence of the spirit” (op. cit., p. 238). However, it is well- known that there are no -though nice-sounding- independent, non-aligned, or quixotic writers, and how could it be otherwise, after all. Almost no author cannot be influenced in the creation of his/her works by the ideas of the social environment in which he/she lives and by the ideological or intellectual tendencies of the time. In this case - that is, of the free will of the author-, if he/she himself/herself serves an ideal of man, then we can have high quality. Of course, if it is imposed on him/her in a guided and binding manner, his/her works -because they are propagandistic, and namely the exercise of their intellectual creation is oppressed and not free- are characterized by poor quality (Marcantonatos, 2013, p. 318).
Maalouf is concerned about the resource depletion, wondering how we can utilize the tens of years of life that medicine has given us. Those of us who enjoy a longer and better life are more and more. We are inevitably threatened by boredom and a sense of emptiness, inevitably seeking a way out by succumbing to the temptation of consumer mania. If we do not want to deplete the resources of the planet very soon, we should promote as many new sources of satisfaction as possible, new sources of pleasure, and, above all, the acquisition of knowledge and the development of a healthy inner life (op. cit., p. 241). This is something that he highlights: the development of a healthy inner life.
He wonders how we can ensure peace and harmonious coexistence. No one disagrees that we can with the knowledge of others. We need to get to know them in depth, to touch, let‟s say, their inner world. This is what only mental activity can provide. And first of all, literature (op. cit., p. 243).
And three pages below we read that the twenty-first century will either be saved through culture or be sunk (op. cit., p. 246). Of course, we are not so sure, neither for one nor for the other.
“… one should not expect to hear from me that all religions declare concord, since my deep conviction is that all doctrines, religious or secular, carry within them the seed of dogmatism and intransigence. In some individuals these seeds grow, in others they remain in a state of lethargy” (op. cit., p. 259). It is in some Muslims that these seeds grow today.
The problem with Islam, Maalouf argues, is the absence of a supreme religious authority that decides definitively and irrevocably on something, as is the case in the West. For example, for centuries women could not go to church
Thesis L Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
exposed. Until the day the Vatican decided, in the early 1960s, that women could now go to church being exposed, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that this achievement will no longer be called into question (op. cit., pp. 272-273).
Maalouf describes what is happening, however, in Islam. Anything that today is approved by a permissive fatwa may tomorrow be banned with the most extreme rigour by an inelastic fatwa. The same disputes over what is lawful and what is unlawful are repeated over and over again in exactly the same way. In the absence of any supreme authority, no acquis is irrevocably validated, no opinion heard from the mists of time is definitively branded as obsolete. Each step forward is accompanied by a step backwards, to the point where we no longer know where the front is and where the back is. The door is always open to all kinds of endorsement, to all kinds of infective action, to any form of regression (op. cit., p. 275).
Of course, certain characteristics of clothing or also behavior are elements embedded in culture, national and religious traditions. Often, some of these elements are based on obsolete and reactionary perceptions of women‟s position in society. However, such issues are not addressed by civil law prohibitions -such as the decision of a number of municipalities in France to ban the appearance with a “burkini” on their shores in 2016-, nor by an artificial transfer of religious and cultural elements from one people to another. Therefore, the issue of the inclusion of populations of other faiths, refugees and migrants, is not addressed by such measures as the burkini ban, but it presupposes the creation of appropriate social and cultural conditions and infrastructures. Respectively, the unequal position of women is not uprooted by the case, cultural, religious, etc. It presupposes the crushing or overturn of the social root that reproduces such attitudes and perceptions about the position of women in social life.
In this book Amin Maalouf approaches the issues of globalization and identity -after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the re-emergence of the clash of civilizations ideology, but also with the new data that globalization is constantly creating- sounding the alarm as regards the exhaustion of the limits of Western and Arab-Muslim culture and demonstrating the urgent need to address both crucial to the Arab-Muslim relationship with the rest of the world, and vice versa, problems -such as the long- running Israeli-Palestinian conflict- and the ever-worsening deterioration of the environment due to human activity, which is threatening the entire planet. And he does it by tracking the evolution of the two cultures over time and by identifying the mistakes, arrogances and traumas that have led to today‟s state of emergency. But he also highlights the vision of a colourful and diverse world, in which universal values, such as respect for human rights, will be implemented without discriminations.
In the first part, Amin Maalouf talks about the crisis at all levels -political, financial, cultural-, which proves that the victory of the West with the overthrow of the Eastern bloc (1989) was Pyrrhic. But there is also a crisis in the Arab-Muslim world, as a result of the 1967 defeat by the Israelis. The divide between the two cultures is deepening. The author then focuses on the loss of legitimization of Arab leaders after Nasser, which leads to today‟s crisis. According to Maalouf, thereafter, those Arab leaders who have not been expelled from the people prove unable to govern (op. cit., p. 75). Maalouf does not fail to refer to Westerners‟ interventions that undermined the Arab regimes‟ path to modernization. But the US too, as the only superpower, has lost its global legitimization because of its economic imbalances and disorder of its values. In the third part, the author explores the different role religion played in the development of the Muslim and Christian world. He argues that, while religion in the Christian world retained its autonomy, in the Muslim world it was overwhelmed by political power. He talks about Thesis LI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
the very important position that migrants hold as a bridge between the two worlds, criticizes communitarianism and supports their integration into host countries. He highlights how important the role of language and literature is for understanding the other. In the epilogue, he talks about the need to rediscover the world, leaving behind mindsets and habits of the past.
The recession is still growing, while unemployment has broken every record (certainly, capitalists need unemployment, to some extent, to force workers to accept salary and rights reductions, yet, from one point on, they have concerns about that, because the workforce remains unexploited). The international financial and systemic crisis, among others, is causing an increase in violence not only on the part of the organized state and the suppression, but also on the part of the socially excluded, as signs of a xenophobic drift around us increase (rise of the parties with extreme positions on the migration problem). Maalouf suggests solutions for overcoming the crisis, such as changing attitudes with a focus on knowledge. He believes there are reasons to hope and encourages action.
Amin Maalouf records the exhaustion of a world proceeding without a compass. At a time when the crisis, at almost all levels, has ceased to be a mere threat and has begun to reveal itself in all its grandeur and affect the lives of modern humans in a variety of ways, Amin Malouf‟s reflections seem more timely than ever. It is a book that, within the four modules that make up it, attempts to anatomize globalization and the global web as we observe it disintegrate today. The author introduces us right from the outset to the subject, starting with a finding: “We entered the new century without a compass. Worrying events are happening that give us the impression that people are aware of serious disorder that is occurring at the same time in various fields, a disorder intellectual, economic, climate, geopolitical and moral at the same time” (op. cit., p. 15). He therefore enters into the process of investigating the causes that contributed to this situation, looking at it in the light of the contrast between the West and the East which he himself also experiences to the fullest because of his origin. On the one hand, Western culture that has created universal values, but failed to transmit them properly, and on the other hand, the Arab world fortified behind nationalism in order to be given substance and fend off Islamic fundamentalism. Talking about illusive victories, shaken legitimacies, “imaginary certainties” (op. cit., p. 148) and making a brief look back at long history, Maalouf attempts to evaluate the events that marked world history and led with mathematical precision to today‟s multiple stalemate. In short, he recognizes the real bankruptcy of civilizations and looks for ways to recover and break the deadlock. The “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century” is a thorough and realistic study that reveals the agony of an advocate of harmonious diversity, who is forced to watch powerless the rise of fanaticism, violence of exclusion and despair. The author notes the responsibilities where they exist. Essentially, he articulates in a scientifically substantiated way a sound and sober reasoning that would ideally lead to a perception of the world that is not simply the modern translation of our ancestral biases; a notion that will allow us to put to rest the retrogression heralded. Nowhere in the Muslim world has nationalism succeeded in assimilating religion in the way that Islam eventually assimilated nationalism. The book of Amin Maalouf refers to all these, and to the great adventure of the Arab world in the twentieth century.
Thesis LII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
6.2 The issues of globalization and identity through Maalouf‟s fiction books
The issues of globalization and identity, though much less, are also present in Maalouf‟s fiction books. In his view, fiction continues to be a privileged mode of expression (Amin Maalouf‟s Interview with “To Vima”, 1999). His novels are characterized by the experience of civil war and migration, by the feeling of being between two countries and two cultural traditions and extend throughout the Mediterranean (but not exclusively). They illuminate the history common to the Middle East and to the West. Maalouf is rightly considered one of the most lyrical and sensuous pens of literature of the world of the East.
Thesis LIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
6.2.1 Leo Africanus (1986)
The identity for Maalouf is constantly evolving, as is the character of his first novel, “Leo Africanus”. Amin Maalouf tells the story, in the form of an imaginary autobiography, of the life of an actual historical person. And through the eyes of this man of the East and the West, of Africa and Europe, are emerging vivid scenes from the epic life of John-Leo of Medici, as well as from the Renaissance era. Leo Africanus‟s adventures brought him to the heart of the most important events of his time (Maalouf, 1992).
Reading the book, which is historical fiction -as the plot takes place in a setting located in the past-, is like having been seated like a sultan in “a pyramid of silk on cushions of brocade” (op. cit., p. 232), listening to al-Wazzan tell you the story himself. Hasan al-Wazzan (1494 - 1554) was a sixteenth-century traveler whose “country is the caravan” (op. cit., p. 1).
In 1494, his Muslim family flees the Inquisition in Granada, the coast a “thin streak of remorse behind us” (op. cit., p. 69) for Morocco. The al-Wazzan -“the weigh-master”- family settled, so, in Fez, where many Granadans found refuge and hung keys to their houses on their walls, with “the thought that soon, thanks to the Great Sultan or to Providence, they will find their house once again, with the colour of its stones, the smell of its garden, the water of its fountain, all intact, unaltered, just as it has been in their dreams.” (op. cit., p. 108). His wanderings take him - “lightly dressed with arms swinging”- through Timbuktu, Cairo, Constantinople and Rome (op. cit., p. 357).
He is variously a refugee, an emissary, a scholar, in exile, a lexicographer, a captive, rich, destitute, a poet to sultans and lover to wives, slave-girls and princesses, a Muslim and a Catholic, a gift from a repentant pirate to Pope Leo X, who baptizes him John-Leo. And always, a realist (Riain, 2013). It is a curious habit of men, al- Wazzan notes, to name themselves after terrifying beasts instead of devoted animals. “People want to be called wolf, but not dog.” (op. cit., p. 265). The Papal courtiers, somewhat surprised by the belated birth of a brown and fuzzy “Medici”, added the epithet “Africanus”. Leo Africanus saw “cities die and empires perish” (op. cit., p. 1). In his twelve years, he still believed: “Between beasts and men the former could do the most damage” (op. cit., p. 114). In his sixteen years, Hassan accompanies his uncle on his first diplomatic mission, and as their caravan crosses the vast Sahara, his uncle fills the historical gaps for the young Hassan, teaching him the art of storytelling. “His tone was so reassuring”, Hasan later recalls, “that it made me breathe once more the odours of the Granada of my birth, and his prose was so bewitching that my camel seemed to move forwards in time with the rise and fall of its rhythms.” (op. cit., p. 19). When his uncle dies, Hassan takes over the caravan. In his forty years, he thinks: “When everyone persists in the same opinion, I turn away from it; the truth is surely elsewhere” (Maalouf, 1992, p. 349).
On 10 March 1526 he completed the Italian manuscript of the book which gave him his most famous name, Leo Africanus: the “Description of Africa, and of the memorable things contained therein”. The draft, apparently, was written originally in Arabic, but was later lost (Shammas, 1989). The “Description of Africa, and of the memorable things contained therein” has a stimulating chapter called “A most accurate description of the city of Fez”, where the original Leo Africanus gives a meticulous depiction of the city, its geography, architecture, hospitals, baths, inns, mills, shops, markets, manners of eating and drinking, marriages and funerals (Maalouf, 1992).
Thesis LIV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Surrounded by the Ottoman slaughter in Cairo, al-Wazzan criticizes an Egyptian boy who laughs when his donkey stumbles over the cut head of an Egyptian soldier. “His only reply was a shrug of his shoulders and this phrase of centuries-old resignation: Whoever takes my mother becomes my step-father” (op. cit., p. 267). Centuries later, a less vulgar equivalent remained necessary for survival. Challenged by the last conqueror to declare their nationality, people in the twentieth century border regions of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania have identificated themselves Tutejszy; the “from-here” people (Braunmüller & Ferraresi, 2003, p. 107).
Leo Africanus gives Maalouf the key to a fantastic world, away from the relentlessly real, though surrealistic, world of today‟s Lebanon.
The passage about the Granadans clinging to the keys of their lost houses in Andalusia ends with Hasan‟s uncle telling him: “Perhaps one day it may be necessary for someone to teach them to look unflinchingly at their defeat. […] But I myself don‟t have the courage to do so” (Maalouf, 1992, p. 124).
Neither has Maalouf, thinks the Israeli-Palestinian writer Anton Shammas, that‟s why he wrote the book in French. When this book was written, it would have taken much and absolute Christian-Lebanese courage to write these lines in Arabic, while the devastated Palestinian refugees were within earshot (Shammas, 1989).
Maalouf is truly a writer who understands loss and separation. In any case, it‟s a book of tales -in the sense that it is a story about Leo Africanus‟s actual experiences- about people who are always forced to accept choices made for them by someone else.
Maalouf‟s attempt has at its center an identity issue, the “geopolitical axis” of identity, a spatial dimension of difference that “inflects or mediates any given cultural identity or praxis” (Friedman, 1998, p. 109). Maalouf gives voice to Leo Africanus in the form of a narrative pertaining to a narrator who is also the protagonist, although Leo Africanus himself composed a first-person narrative of his travels in the “Description of Africa, and of the memorable things contained therein”.
His book speaks for a call for cosmopolitanism and the acceptance of the multiple loyalties of modern identities and makes Leo Africanus‟s image stronger by retrieving his voice through it. The author returns to the “Description of Africa, and of the memorable things contained therein” and its correlative historical contexts, in order to cultivate a sense of Leo Africanus‟s most personal speech and thought. In this sense, Leo Africanus serves as a ghost writer of the narrative bearing his name. Maalouf balances the idea that Leo Africanus cannot write and speak by allowing Leo Africanus to tell his story clearly, covering the last years of the fifteenth century and his ancestral house in Granada in the 1520s and North Africa. Maalouf recruits Leo Africanus and paints him as one that crosses political and cultural boundaries, an image accessible to the world. Leo Africanus becomes an image of global movement (of border crossing, cosmopolitanism and wandering translocality). Maalouf sees him as a model for global traveling cultures crossing cultural and imperial boundaries.
The processes of cultural globalization can be understood as coming up from within the world empires which reached their fullest extent during this period. According to this reading, a new sense of globality as a cultural development in many ways seems to be in tune with the trajectories of these empires.
Thesis LV Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
The identity of the traveler of Leo Africanus opens up issues of global territoriality. Leo Africanus‟s alien image heralds a global weakening of ties between culture and place as a cultural imperative emerging within the spaces in between, and, in excess, from the older empires through the nomadic work of the route of Leo Africanus, which Maalouf has also embraced in the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”.
Maalouf argues that Leo Africanus is a model for, what James Clifford calls, “traveling cultures”, a notion that emphasizes “translocal” as cultural dominant and redirects our thinking from “relations of dwelling” and “relations of travel” (Clifford, pp. 7, 22). So it is important that Maalouf does not present Leo Africanus as somebody living in particular place or representative of Africa, but rather puts him in perpetual motion. The main metaphor is the flow of the sea: Leo Africanus observes that “God did not ordain that my destiny should be written completely in a single book, but that it should unfold, wave after wave, to the rhythm of the seas. At each crossing, destiny jettisoned the ballast of one future to endow me with another; on each new shore, it attached to my name the name of a homeland left behind” (Maalouf, 1992, p. 81).
Even the relating to the ownership of a land dwelling spaces -villages and cities- that Leo Africanus encounters in Maalouf‟s book are essentially shaped by traveling cultures: as a tribal spokesman tells Leo Africanus, “We alone are privileged: we see passing through our villages the people of Fez, of Numidia, of the land of the Blacks, merchants, notables, students or Ulema; they each bring us a piece of gold, or a garment, a book to read or copy, or perhaps only a story, an anecdote, a word; thus, with the passing of the caravans we accumulate riches and knowledge in the shelter of these inaccessible mountains which we share with the eagles, the crows and the lions, our companions in dignity” (op. cit., pp. 156-157). The city or village therefore do not appear neither as central nor as regional space but as a hub in a network that crosses geopolitical and socio-political boundaries and it is the translocal movement and inter-imperial movement on this network that Leo Africanus‟s narrative is designed to illustrate. Maalouf‟s book concludes with the following precepts: “When men‟s minds seem narrow to you, tell yourself that the land of God is broad; broad His hands and broad His heart. Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs” (op. cit., p. 360). Maalouf‟s conclusion makes the image of Leo Africanus not only cosmopolitan but also one that works against territorial rhetoric.
Through the eyes of Leo Africanus, cultures, customs and religious beliefs, that were and still are very different from each other, revive. Only the savageries of wars are always the same, as is the fate of people who suffer from them. The quotation of a characteristic excerpt from Maalouf‟s book offers insights into identity, syncretism, nationalism, religious fanaticism, capitalism and the hierarchies of oppression -political, social, cultural, economic, gender-, reveals truths about the expediency of real life: “I, Hasan, the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a Pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.
My wrists have experienced in turn the caresses of silk, the abuses of wool, the gold of princes and the chains of slaves. My fingers have parted a thousand veils, my lips have made a thousand virgins blush, and my eyes have seen cities die and empires perish.
Thesis LVI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is to them that I will one day soon return.
But you will remain after me, my son. And you will carry the memory of me with you. And you will read my books. And this scene will come back to you: your father, dressed in the Neapolitan style, aboard this galley which is conveying him towards the African coast, scribbling to himself, like a merchant working out his accounts at the end of a long journey.
But is this not in part what I am doing: what have I gained, what have I lost, what shall I say to the supreme Creator? He has granted me forty years of life, which I have spent where my travels have taken me: my wisdom has flourished in Rome, my passion in Cairo, my anguish in Fez, and my innocence still flourishes in Granada.” (op. cit., p. 1).
Thesis LVII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
6.2.2 Les désorientés (2012)
In his book “Les désorientés”, through diaries, letters, e-mails, personal narratives, the story of a company of old friends scattered around the Earth and of each one separately is reconstituted. There is Adam, an exiled Lebanese living in Paris, History professor at the university, with educational leave to write a biography of Attila, Muslim Ramesh, a civil engineer who lives in Jordan and got rich by undertaking various construction projects in the Middle East; his former associate and inseparable friend, Ramzi, now the monk Basil. The Jewish Naim, who had suddenly left with his parents who saw the threat to their community approaching and immigrated to Brazil. Born in Egypt Semiramis, marked by her stormy relationship with Bilal, one of the first victims of the war; Bilal‟s younger brother, Nidal, who has become an Islamist. Albert, a classmate of Adam at the Catholic school, who fell victim to a kidnapping one day as he returned home and his friends helped him escape to Paris after persuading his kidnappers to release him, to become a researcher in a US center. There is, finally, Murad, who stayed in the country and took up offices -that‟s why his friends got away from him-, became part of the system that maintained and perpetuated the war, but he never ceased to have the youthful company in his heart (Maalouf, 2012 b).
Certainly the war with its various versions plays a decisive role in Maalouf‟s book. Twenty-six years on -the story takes place at the dawn of the new millennium in 2001-, but up to now, forty-five years later, there are no pure winners and losers: the country -almost never mentioned by its name- has changed, the young men and the young women have grown up, have become middle-aged, nearing -or having just passed- fifty. There is no longer the daily fear, the clashes in the neighbourhoods.
What drives Adam, particularly, and his friends, is the nostalgia for their conversations, when they believed that they -their generation- would change the world.
Adam, Semiramis, Ramesh, Basil, Naim, Albert, and even Murad, belong to different communities -social, political, religious, etc.-, but it was not what separated them, nor could it separate them. The future augurs gloomy. The youthful company was disoriented, maybe because they didn‟t know in which direction to go, beyond their own personal experiences, to avoid the plight that the wrong policies have accumulated, in this part of the world. Some were self-exiled, fled to other countries, made lives for themselves there, never returned. Others stayed there, made their choices: would it be better if they had left? The issue is particularly topical today, with millions of refugees fleeing conflict zones heading to Europe or other Western countries.
Here again we find issues that concerned Amin Maalouf in the “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century”. The historian Adam refers to them in his conversations he has with his friends. The novel is also of an essay nature, especially in some parts. Childhood landscapes, sometimes bitter, are united with the adult gaze that finds in them the continuity of his/her personal story in the present.
The book espouses Maalouf‟s ideas on globalization and identity. In the “Les Desorientés”, Maalouf mentions the chaotic conditions in Lebanon since the civil war and in other Arab countries, which engendered the “Arab Spring” reformist, not revolutionary, movements. Maalouf portrays a situation that could be either prophetic or promisingly generative. The protagonist, Adam, is an emotional observer who keeps up dialogue with different types of otherness and identity, including Marxist and extremist Islamic positions. Maalouf depicts here an exilic intellectual who falls short of the vision of any political program that might challenge oppressive centers of power.
Thesis LVIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Thus, the final coma of Adam and his transitional state between life and death can be seen as embodying a disinclination to use exilic privilege productively to resist tyranny and to assert the rights of the subjugated.
It is based on ideas about subjectivity and exilic identity (Sazzad, 2017; Zima, 2015). Life, love, friendship, politics, desire, betrayal: between ideals and compromises, the return of a Lebanese intellectual back home, twenty-six years later. The protagonists of the novel were inseparable in their youth, then scattered, for many different reasons. They reunite because of the death of one of them. Some never wanted to leave their native country, others immigrated to the US, Brazil or France and followed routes that led them in completely different directions. What do the hotelier with the free ideas, the engineer that got rich or the monk who retired from the worldly to devote himself to contemplation still have in common? Some reminiscences about what they experienced and shared and an irremediable nostalgia for the world of their own past.
One reading the book penetrates into the cracked heart of Amin Maalouf, who never recovered from the loss of that, generous and protective like the shadow of a cedar, happy Lebanon, where religious communities lived and harmoniously socialized with each other, you think like in a bustling hive, from where the honey was flowing. Maalouf looks at the problems of the Middle East and takes a penetrating and critical look at the successive upheavals of his country. Through a humanitarian spirit, nostalgia and hope are combined in the past and in the future as well.
Amin Malouf‟s novel title has a double meaning: both lost and displaced from the East. In the Bible, the sin of Adam and Eve is the reason why people were ejected and expelled from the Garden of Eden. Through the title Maalouf links this biblical exile from Paradise with the alienation of the protagonist from his country of origin. The issues of accountability and estrangement from a country remain intertwined throughout the novel which deals with the legacy of the Lebanese civil war.
The Lebanese civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, was marked by clashes between dissident religious factions in Lebanon. This violence was so widespread that the removal of all the perpetrators from the political stage would be a major renewal of the Lebanese government. To avoid this disruption, the Lebanese government passed in 1991 a general amnesty law that exempts militants and warlords -among which many incumbent politicians- from the crimes committed during the war.
The “Les Désorientés” deals with the consequences of lack of culpability for violence, with the way that the various sects fail to recognize the misconduct on their part of strife as well as the pain on the other.
The biblical motif of a fall from grace or an exile from Paradise provides a framework for understanding the fatal flaws of Lebanese society. The protagonist presents his childhood and his time at university as a kind of Eden, as an Ithaca to which, however, he is unable to return, because it no longer exists. The clash of factions and a failure of all sides to take responsibility for the violence of previous decades are at the root of the main character‟s rejection of his country.
The “Les Désorientés” indicates that Lebanese citizens will remain lost, cut off from the connection, as long as the legacy of violence is not addressed.
Thesis LIX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
How the decision to leave or remain during the civil war in Lebanon divided families and friends, not only geographically but also morally, was very well expressed by Amin Maalouf. Also, the stories of characters from different religions were a nice reference to the multicultural Lebanon, but also eventually to the Ottoman Empire.
In the book the without wordiness scope of the plan of action created to study the emotions and thoughts that the various aspects of migration can bring is impressive. The book is of high moral value, is much more than a mere novel, for it does a symbolic reading of the characters and adventures. The author drives the story through the memories and emotions of Adam and the writing style allows the different angles of the characters and the narrator to be exposed. The book is characterized by the author‟s sensitivity, the humaneness and intelligence, who develops a fascinating field in the service of themes which are loved to him and which he has already developed in the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”. In this book he actually reveals the experience of the exiled and he describes how Western hegemony can exacerbate certain identity claims, for example a religious order, which is the cause of conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. In the “Les Désorientés” numerous political, philosophical and human issues are analyzed. Maalouf insists in particular on the disappearance of the Lebanese model that allowed the various communities to live together before the war, and religious tensions did not destroy this harmony. The author‟s thoughts on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamic radicalism are also highlighted. However, he insists on the twilight atmosphere, in line with the pessimistic vision of the future he developed in his previous work, the “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century”. The pessimistic character of the hero, Adam, is confirmed by the fact that he himself states in his notebook that he carries in his name the budding humanity, but belongs to a dying humanity… In the long term, all the sons of Adam and Eve -Cain, Abel and Seth- are lost children. However, the ending of the novel suggests a postponement for the future.
Simmel (1950) expresses the view that the stranger in a strange land is a human being, who happens to be present and absent at the same time. Present, because he/she exists as a physical presence, and absent, because most people ignore him/her and, therefore, it‟s as if he/she doesn‟t exist for the rest of the people. Under the heavy shadow of the refugee problem that affects Europe, Amin Maalouf‟s novel presents the two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the heavy burden which an immigrant leaving his country is carrying on his/her shoulders, and on the other hand, the tough decisions that those who stay in the war-torn native land have to make, in order to survive. The “Les Désorientés” is a voyage to a country that has experienced war and succeeds in cultivating the field of hope and pure friendship with fertilizer the memory and the reminiscences of innocence, even if fate has other plans. Throughout the book, issues related to the immigrant‟s wandering, meeting and integration emerge.
In the back cover of the book Maalouf himself says that in the “Les Desorientés” he is inspired very freely by his youth. He spent those years with friends who believed in a better world. Even though none of the heroes in this book correspond to an actual person, none of them are totally fictional. He drew elements through his dreams, fantasies, remorse, as well as through his memories.
Thesis LX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
6.3 The intractable complexity of phenomena and relations between globalization and identity through the spirit of Maalouf‟s works that have been studied
One thing running through all of Maalouf‟s works that have been studied is that, according to him, religion gives birth to fanaticism and it is what he wants to present through his work as a whole, showing examples where different religions coexisted, but the different was not threatening.
Although a pretty sad, quite delicate, for him, time when the relations between the religious communities are difficult is upon us, nevertheless, there have been rare moments where things have come together, mythical times - as they are described by Maalouf-, like the Andalusian civilization, where -seemingly not being in harmony- Christians, Jews and Muslims all lived together. They created a highly refined civilization. He thinks that we must try today to build another kind of relationship, but the past is unfortunately made up of conflicts and war, and so is the present. Giving small ground for hope, he considers that religious, community, political and other relationships are confrontational and that there‟s no need to hide the fact that there are full of hatred, rancour and violence. It‟s a source of profound sadness, for him, but we mustn‟t give in to it, as he says (Euronews - Amin Maalouf‟s Interview, 2007).
When it comes to globalization, he mentions that you only have to look at how the world appears today. Today the whole world feels that its real culture is threatened, and probably there‟s a truth in that. All unique cultures are threatened, because they don‟t know what their place is in today‟s world. It‟s a world which is getting complicated. And there are changes. The speed of changes is extraordinary. There are events which in other times would have taken generations or centuries and which now unfold before us in a matter of a few years, events happen in an incredible speed and have enormous impact in the world (ibid).
In the same interview Maalouf mentions that when you analyze your identity, everyone finds that it is comprised of several different affiliations or allegiances. That‟s the reality in the world today. Elements of affiliations are a little bit like the genetic code. There are lots of them, and you determine for everyone the elements which make each person unique. Unfortunately in today‟s world there is sometimes a tendency to confuse one single allegiance with identity and to overlook other affiliations. That‟s very simplistic and even dangerous. There‟s a big difference between ideological rifts and splits in identity and there‟s still a lot of potential to debate ideological rifts, but in today‟s world, there is a little debate. In contrast, everyone affirms his/her identity, often aggressively. It‟s a problem we haven‟t been able to solve so far and it‟s why today‟s world is portrayed in terms of a conflict of civilizations (ibid).
Worried about the promotion of EU‟s political integration, Maalouf mentions that it is important that each European feels that his/her language is preserved, that his/her language has a place in the Europe of tomorrow and that no language will be marginalized in the Europe of tomorrow. You have to feel that your real culture, your proper language is encouraged in the whole of Europe and not marginalized (ibid).
The content of Amin Maalouf‟s works illuminates many important aspects of globalization and identity in multilingual contexts. He is inspired by a systematic effort to create a multicultural awareness and openness to the other, for he himself, both through his personal journey and through writing, conveys to us the noble ideals of a multiple identity liberated from quarrels and fanaticism. He wrote on his blog: “Though, like many people, I take a
Thesis LXI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
keen interest in Arab words adopted into European languages, this linguistic crossover alone isn‟t enough to quench my thirst for knowledge. Sometimes it even runs counter to the point I‟m trying to make. For Arab civilization is more than just one of Western civilization‟s wellsprings; it is not just a waypoint, still less a mere conduit. Arab civilization, first and foremost, is daughter to the same ancestors as the West, and is much inspired by Greece and Rome. Furthermore, she has borrowed plentifully from the Persians, Indians, Turks, Arameans and Hebrews, as well as from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. And she has given abundantly in return to all of these, or to their heirs.” (Maalouf, 2009).
“The world is a composite machine and you can‟t just break it up with a screwdriver. But this should not prevent us from observing, seeking to understand, looking within ourselves, discussing and sometimes suggesting one or the other path that our thinking could follow”, according to him (Maalouf, 2012 a, p. 29).
In his multi-faceted and varied work, Amin Maalouf deals in depth with the issue of identity, especially as it appears in the modern pluralistic world. In this respect, Maalouf‟s work and philosophy come to complement, in a well-targeted and comprehensible way, the concerns and positions of other theorists. Man of multiple affiliations, he challenges the enclosure to a unilateral identity, flees Lebanon because of the civil war, a war that causes him great irritation and settles in France. Since then he has always been scarred in a minority situation, which served as a catalyst in shaping his perception of identity and his attitude towards the world. The fact that he challenges the enclosure is also evident from a statement he made in the interview with the Euronews: “What makes us afraid of the other today is that we live in a world where there is pressure being exerted on us, we can call this globalization, it is true that there is pressure being exerted on all cultures and all identities. We constantly want to be confirmed to maintain our identity. And it is this risk of losing our identity that makes us stubbornly declare it against the other today. For me, this is one of the big problems in today‟s world” (Euronews - Amin Maalouf‟s Interview, 2007). So it seems from the above the principles of authenticity and recognition to emerge. According to these principles we need to be recognized, but the only way to be recognized is to join in collective affiliations that deprive us of the authenticity of our identity, the individual traits that make up our particular identity.
Maalouf‟s work is a carrier of messages and a transmitter of his free thought and his dynamic engagement with the issues of globalization and identity.
With his work “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes” Amin Maalouf offers an unusual perspective of the conflict between Christian Western Europe and the Muslim East (Maalouf, 1985). The turmoil in the Middle East and the events of September 11 increased Westerners‟ interest in the literature of the region, too many works have been translated from French, but, instead of destroying them, they are probably contributing to perpetuating stereotypical views of Islam and the Arab world. The Francophone writers of the Arab world are often in the awkward position of the intermediary between their culture and their French readership and this situation is exacerbated by the fact that many reside in the West, mainly in France, where they are also published. Hence, writers in exile and expatriates are at risk of losing contact with their country of origin and by writing for a foreign readership they can unconsciously adapt their creative work to the expectations of this readership. Although Maalouf is a Francophone writer of the Arab world who was educated in the French secular tradition, he fully understands the Muslim world and therefore interprets it sufficiently for his Western readership. At a time when throughout the Arab world secular elites often imperil pious populations, Maalouf presents various controversies
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that have been shaped about religion (Islam and Christianity), culture (Arabic and European) and imperialism (East and West).
The identity for Maalouf is perpetually evolving, as is the character of his second book, Leo Africanus. In addition, Maalouf gives us in a unique way the denial of any compulsion through the epilogue of his work, too; in the following words he shows us the openness and freedom that claims that these identities must be diffused and therefore expressed in a special way, unique in each case: “Wherever you may be, there will be people who will want to know about your colour and your prayers. Take care not to flatter their instincts, my son, take care not to succumb to the hordes! Muslim, Jewish or Christian, they should accept you as you are, otherwise you will be lost. […] Never hesitate to go far beyond the seas, across borders, beyond all homelands and religions” (Maalouf, 1992). Amin Maalouf, through this extraordinary personality of Leo Africanus, a cosmopolitan and pluralistic figure, embodies his ideal. Apart from the fact that he depicts through him the amalgam of his different cultural influences, usually competing with each other, this person allows him to put, through the journey of a person, a broad portrait of the religious battles and political tensions that are playing out on the chessboard of the Mediterranean of that time. Indeed, in the course of the narrative of the habits of the inhabitants during which some coexist in comparative harmony, through dialogues and exchanges, there is also the dynamics of coexistence between members of the different communities where it occurs. Alone, Leo Africanus is presented as a composition of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Spanish, African, Maghrebi and Roman influences that permeate the Mediterranean Basin.
Maalouf embodies a desire to share, a universality, emerging through his experiences of multiculturalism and openness to the other. The “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” is a work that is the starting point for reflections and a deeper study of globalization and identity. The book talks about the whims of identity and the dangers of clinging too hard to the national standard, which got an acute identity of their own after September 11 (Maalouf, 2012 a). Here is the clear, calm and convincing voice from the Arab world.
Its first chapters are entitled “My identity” and “My affiliations”. A part of the author‟s position appears here: the multiple affiliations are the ones which will create each individual identity. The elements that make up the identity are almost unlimited, because no one will use the same elements to self-identify. We define our identity starting from our affiliations that seem to us the most essential (nationality, profession, social environment, religion). One can put first the “academic” while the other one the “Tunisian” or the other the “Christian”. Affiliations do not have the same meaning for all people. After all, their place evolves over time. The hierarchy of identity elements is not unchanged over time. The more we frame our affiliations the more our identity will be specific, because it is impossible for someone to share the same affiliations, in the same order as us. The hierarchy of our affiliations can be defined according to the part of the world we were born or we live in. The colour we were born has a different meaning in the five continents. So, according to this harking back to colour, we can put forward and defend this element of our identity. This is all the more true when we identify ourselves through our most maligned affiliation (language, colour, religion). So whenever an affiliation of us is threatened, we defend and prioritize it in our identity.
Amin Maalouf refers to the two heritages, the vertical that was passed on to someone by his/her ancestors, and with which he seems to be particularly concerned in the work “Origins: A Memoir”, and the horizontal he/she gets from his/her contemporaries in the time he/she lives. Although the relationships between them is not only a story of Thesis LXIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
conflict or enduring war but also a story of exchanges and fertile admixtures, they serve primarily to build strong and impenetrable walls between us and the others, to establish murderous identities and to make the difference a source of endless conflict and confrontation.
In the picture of the mosaic of identities that characterizes Lebanon, the cultural and religious influences that shaped Maalouf‟s thinking are multiple and composite. The “Origins: A Memoir” is about the story of his family, whose members may have been scattered around the globe, but it is a kind of homeland for Amin Maalouf himself (Maalouf, 2008). Many elements of fiction are also caught in this story. Amin Maalouf himself states in the foreword: “Like the ancient Greeks, I base my identity on a mythology, that I know is false, but I respect it, however, as if it were a carrier of truth” (op. cit.).
In the last chapter, “Solutions”, Maalouf goes rapidly through the events that defined the present fate of the peoples of the East after the 1930s, promising to come back. According to the text on the back cover of the book, “Origins: A Memoir” is indeed a magnificent recognition of debt. But also a great and noble prayer.
Regarding the characters of his work, they are multilingual, cosmopolitan characters who base their identity on openness to the other.
Maalouf does not appreciate at all the term roots. “We are not trees, I find this word inappropriate, I prefer the word origin in the plural!”, he states in an interview he granted to Abdo Wazen with the “Courrier international”, published in April 2006. “In any case, for me, the root is a constant thing, while the origins are a starting point for a way we have to go” (Wazen, 2006).
Humans are not trees even if the transport in plants is a transport favoured by the proponents of a traditional and static line, thus referring to the idea of man‟s traditionally defined identity. The author does not prefer a static image of a tree that is only fed by the roots and the ground; statism is something that does not express him, as we have seen of course through the restless heroes of his books. He wants to get on the go, be vigilant on roads open for adventure.
In human history, of course, conflicts over various aspects of identity are numerous, and often deplorable, often repeated over the centuries. In the “Origins: A Memoir”, then, he tells the story of his ancestors -which he claims-, without repeating the events that marked these exemptable fates, re-forming in the mind an identity conception, shaped by a succession of affiliations, a concept that was analyzed in greater depth in the “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong”.
From this perspective, one can appreciate the author‟s introductory poetic licence: “I come from an always nomadic tribe in a desert in the size of the world. Our countries are oases that we leave when the source dries up, our houses are tents of stone, our nationalities are a matter of dates, or of boats. They only unite each other, across generations, across the seas, across the Babel of Languages, the rustling of a name” (Maalouf, 2008, p. 1).
We could say that Amin Maalouf envisions societies with citizens of the world where globalization will not devour their linguistic diversity (Maalouf, 2012 a). After all, even in the West, let alone in the East, globalization is experienced as a threat to traditions, cultures and identities and is often seen as a Trojan horse for the imposition of a foreign dominant culture. “If we have to abandon the old legitimacies, let them be „upwards‟, not „downwards‟;
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let them be to shaping a scale of values that will enable us to manage, better than up to now, our diversity, our environment, our resources... The „upwards‟ exit from disorder that afflicts the world requires the adoption of a scale of values based on the priority of culture” (Maalouf, 2011, p. 156).
“From the very first years of the twenty-first century, the world shows multiple signs of disorder, intellectual disorder which is characterized by a frenzied tendency towards confirming identities, that hampers any form of harmonious coexistence and true dialogue; economic and financial disorder, which draws the entire planet into a zone of turmoil with unforeseen consequences, being itself a symptom of a disturbance of our value system; climate disorder, resulting from a long period of irresponsible management… Did humanity reach the „threshold of its moral impotence‟?” (op. cit., from the presentation on the back cover of the book).
The “Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century” is the praise of democracy and the farewell to the clash of cultures. It is talking about a new stage in which human history must go.
“The racial history of humanity, the history of the struggle between nations, between states, between ethnic or religious communities, between „cultures‟ must be closed”, Maalouf argues (op. cit., p. 160). All these, according to Amin Maalouf, belong to the Prehistory, with a capital P, of humankind. The inauguration of the new human adventure does not need the other as an opponent (nation, culture, community, religion).
The true discourse of science and the moral discourse of philosophy will be the things requiring discussion. “Here are the only goals to be conquered that should activate the vital forces of our children and their offspring”, he asserts (op. cit., p. 160).
Finally, the “Les Desorientés” is the first novel where he evokes the contemporary history of Lebanon, from the 1970s to the 2000s. However, the country in which the action is located is only defined by an indefinite term, “le Levant”, to emphasize that it is not a question of relating historical events, but of imagining the psychological evolution of a group of friends from different communities and dispersed by a civil war (Maalouf, 2012 b).
According to Maalouf, “The only dangerous and radical critique is a political critique -in action- of democracy. Because the emblem of the present time, its fetish, its phallus is democracy. As long as we are unable to make a creative critique of democracy on a grand scale, we will stagnate in the pecuniary brothel of images… So let‟s make, if we know the way, these poems and images, ones which do not satisfy any of our enslaved desires” (Maalouf, 2012 a).
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7. Conclusions
In the eyes of many people in the Western world, globalization does not seem like an interesting fermentation, but as a homogenization that will make us poor, as a threat against which we must fight, in order for everyone to maintain his/her identity and values. Globalization does not lead to the universality of values. It leads to the uniformity stemming from the domination of a culture or a great power. Such a development is dangerous and undesirable. In the face of this real danger, bearers of threatened cultures are increasingly adopting radical or even suicidal attitudes. As we move towards a global culture, there seems to be a need to reaffirm our particular difference. When faced with a global culture expressed through a dominant language, there is a need to reaffirm your language, your culture. And this, in the opinion of Maalouf, explains the two movements that are passing from place to place or person to person around the world today: on the one hand, a unification movement and, at the same time, a differentiation movement. Societies in ways of “taming the panther” (Maalouf, 2012 a, p. 143) and antidotes of fanaticism are the objects of his study. He himself comments on the ominous about-face of religion, which, as an exclusive and extremely restrictive property, gives rise to fanaticism.
As with clothes, languages are also multiple, indicating multiple affiliations: Leo Africanus sets to designing a dictionary “Anti-Babel where every word appears in a multitude of languages” (Maalouf, 1992, p. 473). We can speak whatever languages we want, but we cannot belong to whatever religions we want at the same time. These are the words of Amin Maalouf in an interview: “I think we should continue to cultivate our original identity, we should continue to cultivate its links with the country of origin, and with the mindset of origin, and at the same time to fully embrace the culture of the host country, to fully immerse ourselves, to try to understand it, to love it, to pass it on as well. It should really be a meeting place between the culture of the country of origin and the culture of the host country, and I have no sympathy for those who reject the culture of origin or those who reject the culture of the host country. I think they should feel comfortable between the two cultures, and that can be done, we can do it perfectly” (Revillon, 2001). Through these, he is enhancing the concept and practice of linguistic and cultural reciprocity (Maalouf, 2012 a, p. 58), which means to attempt to learn to be actively involved in the particular culture that welcomes us, to feel secure and thus make it easier to unravel the identity of our country of origin. In other words, to feel that we are not betraying or moving away from our country of origin.
The issues of globalization and identity have been of interest to scientists, as well as to literary writers, in a variety of ways. Beyond the scientific and literary approach, we could say that these issues are of concern to our societies, as they result from the practice of an experience in these complex societies. The common identity is still considered and promoted today as an essential component of a harmonious society. In the preceding dissertation many views were cited, which both negate the above concept and denounce it as impracticable, especially in modern, multicultural environments in which modern man is called upon to act. Our societies, as sources of cultural diversity, highlight the need to adapt to and understand this new situation. In the age of rapid developments, the issue of identity is a concept that needs to be defined, determined or simply approached through the experience of the diversity of the other. This is evidenced by our varied experiences in the different fields where we live, act or engage in (personal field, public field, professional field and educational field). What is sought today is the harmonious coexistence of different components of each person‟s personal identity. But what kind of room for success does this scenario have in societies that insist on bringing forward specific ethnic, linguistic and religious characteristics creating a fictitious -in advance ready for certain use or to meet specific
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needs- identity for their members that resists time and remains untouched by any social, political or historical evolution? And what is the point of persisting in such perceptions, when reality itself disproves them daily?
This can also be understood from a visit to any modern school, where the fermentation of future societies takes place. The modern classroom is characterized by ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, following the imperatives of multiculturalism, confirming the cultural diversity of the Greek classroom, a miniature of modern Greek society.
Evaluating all of the above and taking into account all the theories and considerations on the phenomena of globalization and identity, all we can say for sure is that there is no juggling or magical pen through which it would be possible to unfold one-dimensionally what accompanies globalization and national phenomena around the world.
The political economy of migration is no different from that of colonization. The case of migrants in France -Amin Maalouf‟s country of residence- reproduced the colonial situation, and this is particularly evident when analyzing the relationship between migrants and French society, where communities coexist rather than live together (Gilette & Sayad, 1985, p. 209). Even though these migrants were expected to return to their countries of origin, even though they themselves had made up their own myth of return, the reality is emerging very different, as is the case with many other minorities in Europe. They are now rooted in the host countries, and the children, who either arrived at a young age or were born in the host countries, have grown up in this state of forced exile.
Our identity is nothing less than a synthesis of many crossed affiliations, a variable that is shaped and changed by components such as place, time, ethnic origin, social class, cultural background, educational background, political affiliation, language, religion and gender. Maalouf (2012 a) wonders: If someone asked us “Who are you?”, could we give an answer that would not be just our name? Explaining our true identity can be one of the most difficult things to do. Which of the above components would we mention?
Maalouf is in a privileged position in relation to the crisis in the Islamic countries and the clash of civilizations, as he carries them at first hand and all the problems of identity resulting from this situation are reflected in his works. Of course, the overthrow of the Soviet Union, globalization, US hegemony, terrorism, the threat of ecological destruction have happened.
Maalouf is a special case because he has the privilege of carrying the heritage of the East and the West, Islam and Christianity at the same time. The search for identity is his obsession and the main characteristic of his works, that exploit the geographical and historical particularities of the Mediterranean region to highlight the global issues with a different look, reviving historical anxieties in the modern reality of the current financial and ecological crisis, the planetary conflicts, the migrations, the role of the superpower, the deficit of moral credibility of the West and the submersion of the Muslim world in the well of History.
Maalouf wonders how the modern world has reached the point where ideological strife has been replaced by the search for identity, the universality by communitarianism, the class struggle by blind cultural, religious conflicts, how it got to the point where faith in progress and in the domination of Western values was replaced by growing discontent, a deficit of faith in the future and a falling understanding of what is going on in a world where everything is going on in the present. He also wonders how the Muslim world has come to a complete failure to
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manage coexistence. He says e.g.: “Once a Sunni militant gets on a car bomb to blow up in a market frequented by Shia families and once some fanatical preachers call this slaughter resistant, hero and martyr, it is of no use to blame the others” (op. cit.).
And yet Maalouf does not spare the notorious others. He analyzes in depth the historical background of the Muslim world‟s distrust -but also of the Third World in general- towards the West, while denouncing the moral bankruptcy of the US who failed to manage the loneliness of the superpower with a sense of law. Despite having utmost respect for the achievements of Western science and technology, despite not hiding his sympathy for the institutional and other achievements of the rule of law, despite recognizing that US cannot de facto evade the role of superpower, he believes that Islam has suffered so many historical defeats, that only a policy of understanding, respecting and recognizing its particularities can restore violently broken ties.
The acceleration of history undoubtedly contributes to the disorder of the world, but Maalouf does not contrast it with an idealized past, on the contrary, he is well aware of and therefore adequately analyzes the historical rifts and violence that characterized the vertiginous rise of the human race (Maalouf, 2011).
The issue is what is happening now that the historical acceleration, instead of bridging the gaps, magnifies the divergences producing distrust, hatred and poverty. He does not give a clear answer here. At his least innovative views is the insistence on the ability of education -but of which one?- to provide the right tools for understanding our world. And yet faith in science, in European “institutions”, in the fight against underdevelopment and in a reinvented role of the US under the leadership of the Democrats.
The belief that we are all on the same boat and it would be a good idea to come to an understanding on time is running through Maalouf‟s works. That is why he uses the “we” unstintingly, recalling a humanism with a discourse that sometimes resembles preaching. Perhaps this is needed too in the times we live in. However, in the boat mentioned above are others on the wheelhouse and others in the hold. The recent movements in the Arab countries, and especially in a country - symbol of its culture such as Egypt, clearly demonstrate this.
Maalouf wonders whether globalization is the same as Americanization. “Isn‟t its main consequence the imposition of the same language, the same economic, political and social system, the same way of life, the same scale of values, the values of the United States throughout the world? To some people, the phenomenon of globalization as a whole is nothing more than a disguise, a camouflage, a Trojan horse in which an operation of domination is concealed” (Maalouf a, 2012, p. 113).
“We are no longer just we and them, two troops in a battle line being prepared for the next conflict, for the next revenge. Now there are people on our side with whom, after all, I have very little in common, and there are people on their side to whom I can feel very close” (op. cit., p. 31).
However, Maalouf notes that the fact that racial conception of what is identity is still prevalent throughout the world today, and not just for fanatics, is unfortunately the pure truth (op. cit.).
The term identity is misleading and requires close analysis. Do we identify by our nationality, by our race, by our ethnic group, by our physical features, by our culture, by our talents, by our interests, by our language, by our gender, by all? The truth is that there is no easy answer to this question. Identity is complex, a concept formed by
Thesis LXVIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
the various affiliations that make us each unique, by our jobs, the people we admire, our hobbies, our religions, etc. But, despite what we may believe, these things we attribute to ourselves are not steady. Over time, we begin to identify more with some, and less with others. These changes can happen slowly, over the years, or can happen really fast when one aspect of our identity works its way into the foreground. For example, someone who is wealthy enough may feel a strange sense of pride of the working class when in a meeting is surrounded by people who have simply inherited their wealth, if he was brought up in a lower socioeconomic class. Although many people have identities that change very quickly, there are many others who have a more solid perception of themselves. They could particularly identify with only one affiliation, be it their ethnicity, class or religion, and consider the others minor. However, it is important to note that creating a strict hierarchy of who we are can cause problems and bears the risk of requiring others to identify themselves in hierarchies, too, even when things are not so simple for them.
The author has experienced this imposition for himself. He is a Lebanese author who immigrated to France when he was twenty-seven. His first language is Arabic, though he writes in French and France has now been his home for forty-four years. Although brought up Islamically, he now identifies as a Christian. Many times, when he explains his strange background, people ask him whether he, deep inside him, feels French or Lebanese (op. cit., p. 1). The author finds this question incorrect due to the fact that no one identifies himself/herself in a way that can be divided into sections. A person is not something more than something else, nor does he/she have many different identities. Instead, a person‟s identity is a combination of all the traits composing his/her profile.
Our identity is affected by how others view us. Identity is something we learn. Identity is far from being termed innate, it‟s something that we build based on how we see others and how others see us. We all possess the incredibly powerful ability to influence another person‟s identity by adjusting them in slim, superficial boxes. For example, while it may seem obvious to us that the Greeks are different from the Cypriots, and that every Greek is also different from every other Greek, we nonetheless continue to lump people together as groups. Then we treat people in these groups as a block of people sharing identical behaviours, opinions, and even crimes. People tend to say things like that all the US citizens are stupid, that Arabs are terrorists, that Italians are thieves, etc. While these groupings may seem to have little effect, the reality is that they can have profound effects on a person‟s identity. When we put people in groups based on a negative trait, we really push them to identify with the part of their identity that is most vulnerable. This is even more often the case when a person‟s identity is attacked by sociopolitical influences. For example, let‟s look at the life of a homosexual German living in Nazi Germany. He/She may have been a nationalist or even a proud patriot until the Nazis came to power. However, when Germany fell under the Nazi regime and began to prosecute people of the same sexuality, his/her identity would be reduced to a mere dimension of who he/she was, thus affecting the way he/she saw himself/herself. Needing to spend his/her time defending his/her sexuality, he/she would thus let his/her nationalism fade into the background of his/her life and thus his/her sexuality would soon become the focus of his/her identity. A similar experience occurs in people who believe that their faith is threatened: their religious affiliation comes to reflect their entire identity. However, this may not be permanent: if the times change and suddenly their race or nationality needs to be defended, they may be involved in a fight against other members of their faith.
No religion -all religions have a history of violent and turbulent periods of extremism-, affiliation or culture is inherently more violent or cruel than another. When we oversimplify the way we describe others, a danger zone for
Thesis LXIX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
stereotypes is created, that can affect everyone. For example, let‟s look at Islam. Today, it is a demonized identity group because of the accusations of a long tradition of barbarism. However, a simple examination of history may prove that this is wrong. In fact, Islam has a long history of openness and tolerance. For example, at the end of the nineteenth century, the capital of the Islamic world was Constantinople, a city whose predominant population were non-Muslims, including Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. However, even long before that, Muslims had shown a remarkable ability to coexist with others. Conversely, Christianity did not develop such tolerance until much later. It took until the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the Enlightenment period for Christians to start accepting other religions. And while democracy was a product of the Western world, the right to vote was limited to just a few rich and powerful people for many centuries, not to mention that in relation to the women‟s civil right to vote and to stand as a candidate, it is only in 1952, when the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and, in particular, article 25, which provides equal access to public service positions (United Nations Treaty Series, 1976), was adopted, that the government was obliged, by ratifying the covenant, to grant this right in Greece and the first national elections in which the women of all Greek territory participated were those of 19 February 1956, with the exception that on April 23, 1944, when three quarters of Greece had been freed by the National Liberation Front, the Political Committee of National Liberation was established, that announced elections and by its decision for the first time women over the age of eighteen voted (Bacchetta & Power, 2002).
In the same way that Christianity is not naturally tolerant or democratic, Islam is not inherently violent, fanatical or incompatible with human rights and modernity. The original texts of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have remained the same over the centuries, but the way people perceive them may change depending on the time they live in. Modern Iran, for example, uses old Islamic texts to reinforce the reasons for its grievances with the West. Iran‟s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, used religious language to refer to the West in terms such as the Great Satan and called for the destruction of the West in the name of the Islamic Republic (Moin, 2009). However, this is contrary to the long Muslim tradition, which does not support this extremist Islamic drastic action. These violent moods are exceptionally recent developments. These tendencies are not the result of an inherently backward- looking, anti-modern, anti-democratic characteristic of Islam, but rather of the cultural conflicts we are experiencing today. This means that violent and strained relations within Muslim countries are in fact a product of larger, wide social conditions that reach far beyond Islam. Of course, Khomeini has nothing in common with any other historical Muslim figure, and he has absolutely nothing in common with Mao Zedong, who promised to ruin the structure of the culture of capitalism during the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976 (Cook, 2014).
The hegemony of the West is responsible for the marginalization of other cultures, creating a clash of cultures and fueling an identity crisis. It is often believed that particular groups act in hostile ways to Western cultures because of their religious beliefs and deep fear of Western values. However, the fact of the matter is that when Western world domination began, its wealth, technology and power marginalized other cultures and civilizations. The culture of the modern world is generally synonymous with the culture of the Western world. Indeed, all the historical events that have taken place in recent years have happened in the West: capitalism, the Paris Commune, the October Revolution, fascism, aviation, electricity, computers, human rights and the atomic bomb. Thus, when radicalized Muslims are now attacking the West, it is mainly due to the feeling of inability to defend themselves, due to the exploitation, due to the economic weakness and, to a large extent, due to the cultural humiliation. This cultural experience is deeply rooted in experiences from the end of the eighteenth century. Even at this point in history, Muslims around the Mediterranean felt that the West was marginalizing their cultures. In response, Egypt‟s
Thesis LXX Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
viceroy, Muhammad Ali, sought to cover the lag to Western culture peacefully during the nineteenth century. By integrating Western ideas, science and technology, he has helped Egypt develop into a strong and modern country. However, soon afterwards, the major European powers decided that Egypt had become too dangerously strong and independent, working together to block its progress. The aim of the United Kingdom was to weaken Egypt and its primary Ottoman state, so that it could restore the balance of power. The Ottoman Empire had collapsed under international pressure since the twentieth century and Egypt felt betrayed, humiliated and convinced that the West had only one goal: to impose its will on all other countries of the world (Fahmy, 2008). A combination of underdevelopment and military and economic regressions has made other Arab countries and their leaders feel that growth would never be possible. And when they got to that impasse, a lot of people were desperate and then, in the 1970s, they started to depend on what could be certain: conservatism and religious fundamentalism. While radicalism was not the immediate answer, it was the last resort.
We must create a global society of universality, rather than of uniformity. A great way to start fixing this identity issue would be to give everyone an equal voice. But to do that, we must avoid creating uniformity. Uniformity is defined as the repulsive lack of diversity resulting from Western -and often US- culture, which dominates all others, thus stifling the wide range of different cultures and their artistic, linguistic and intellectual expressions. So it really makes sense that people are worried about globalization: it is the fear that the beliefs of the stronger countries will stifle the thoughts and opinions of all the others. Even among Western countries, there is a general fear that globalization will mean Americanization. For example, in France, the country where the author immigrated, the proliferation of US chain fast food restaurants like McDonald‟s and the power of Hollywood, Disney and Apple have left many feeling anxious about the influence of their own culture, both at home and around the world. In order to combat globalization and to enhance cultural diversity, it is necessary to create a global clan based on respect for universal human rights without adhering to a culture (Maalouf, 2012 a, p. 74).
We can reach this universality by ensuring that there are fundamental human rights that cannot be banned by anyone for any reason. These rights include the right to live free from discrimination and persecution, to freely choose life, loves and beliefs, without interfering with anyone else‟s, etc. We as a society will be able to approach to this universality through an emphasis on what we have in common, as long as we maintain what makes us unique. In this way we will be able to strengthen all human rights around the world. This can be achieved through the use of technology, language and media. For example, if every person learns three languages -for example, our native language, English and a third that we freely choose-, we could build good connections, eliminate misunderstandings and encourage compromise in global interactions (op. cit., p. 177). By learning the relationship between linguistic and cultural characteristics we will be able to ensure that the harmful effects of such narrowly defined identities are diminished, and thus we are connected to a global society which consists of all mankind.
Our identities are multifaceted and fluid parts of ourselves and are constantly influenced by our external world, that is, by social and political factors. These external factors can diminish our personal and cultural identity, leading to toxic feelings of insecurity and anger at both the individual and the social level. To create a more peaceful and inclusive world, we must fight political, economic and cultural standardization and create a global community in which all identities are welcomed.
We would definitely say that Amin Maalouf and his works are a unification bridge between the Arab and Western world. Thesis LXXI Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
“Because it is our gaze that often imprisons others in their close affiliations,
and it is our gaze again that can free them.
I declare my identity:
an act of courage and of liberation”.
In A. Maalouf‟s “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong” (1998).
Thesis LXXII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
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Thesis LXXVII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Φίινη θαη θπιή - Λόγνο γηα ηελ ηαπηόηεηα από ηνλ Γαιινιηβαλέδν ζπγγξαθέα Ακίλ Μααινύθ (1999). Το Βήμα Online. Retrieved from: https://www.tovima.gr/2008/11/24/books-ideas/filoi-kai-fyli/.
Thesis LXXVIII Vasileios Tirchas, Globalization and identity in Amin Maalouf‟s works
Author‟s Statement:
I hereby expressly declare that, according to the article 8 of Law 1559/1986, this dissertation is solely the product of my personal work, does not infringe any intellectual property, personality and personal data rights of third parties, does not contain works/contributions from third parties for which the permission of the authors/beneficiaries is required, is not the product of partial or total plagiarism, and that the sources used are limited to the literature references alone and meet the rules of scientific citations.
Thesis LXXIX