NY Times May 14, 2006
'Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny,' by Amartya Sen
"We Contain Multitudes
Review by KENJI YOSHINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/books/review/14yoshino.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
"My first exposure to murder," the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen
writes in "Identity and Violence," "occurred when I was 11." It was
1944, a few years before the end of the British Raj and a period of
widespread Hindu-Muslim riots. The victim was "a profusely bleeding
unknown person suddenly stumbling through the gate to our garden,
asking for help and a little water." Rushed to the hospital by Sen's
father, the man died there of his injuries. He was Kader Mia, a Muslim
day laborer knifed by Hindus. He had been asked by his wife not to go
into a hostile area of then-undivided Bengal. But he had to feed his
starving family, and he paid with his life.
To the young Sen, this event was not just traumatic but mystifying.
How was it, Sen asks about that murderous year, that "the broad human
beings of January were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus
and fierce Muslims of July"? And how was it that Kader Mia would be
seen as having only one identity — that of being Muslim — by Hindus
who were, like him, out in the unprotected open because they too were
starving? "For a bewildered child," Sen remembers, "the violence of
identity was extraordinarily hard to grasp." And, he confesses, "it is
not particularly easy even for a still bewildered elderly adult."
Sen's book argues for the reasonableness of that bewilderment. He
takes aim at what he calls the " 'solitarist' approach to human
identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group."
This view, he argues, is not just morally undesirable, but
descriptively wrong. While "a Hutu laborer from Kigali may be
pressured to see himself only as a Hutu and incited to kill Tutsis . .
.. he is not only a Hutu, but also a Kigalian, a Rwandan, an African, a
laborer and a human being."
The originality of this critique is that it eschews trite appeals to
the common humanity of those in savage conflict. Instead, Sen invokes
the myriad identities within each individual. Because all of us
contain multitudes, we can choose among our identities, emphasizing
those we share with others rather than those we do not. Sen
acknowledges, as he must, that such choices will be limited by
external circumstances. Still, to concede that identity choices are
constrained is a far cry from the claim that identity is destiny.
In a related vein, Sen criticizes the solitarist approach to
civilizations. Influential texts like Samuel Huntington's "Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order" take a drubbing for
assuming monolithic Western and Eastern civilizations. With charming
erudition, Sen demonstrates that things usually ascribed to one
culture in fact often arose in another. Vindaloo, now seen as a
quintessentially Indian dish, originally derived from chilies brought
from Portugal, while the trigonometric sine function, assumed to be a
European discovery, came from India. (An unequal exchange if ever
there was one.)
For all its urbanity, however, "Identity and Violence" neglects what
others will take to be common sense. Hutus and Tutsis will not lay
down arms because they are told they are Kigalians, laborers or human
beings. Sunnis and Shiites will not be coaxed into a group hug by a
reminder of the religion and cultural attributes they share. The
strength of Sen's argument lies in its intuitive nature: "In our
normal lives we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups." Its
weakness lies in its failure to explain why, at critical junctures, we
disown that knowledge. Is it because human cognition tends to trade in
binaries? Is it because violence creates identity as much as identity
creates violence? Is it because human beings fear the choices or
solitude a more cosmopolitan outlook would force them to face? These
and other possibilities go unexamined.
To be sure, Sen's apparent naïveté seems of a piece with his
characteristic optimism about the human condition. This foray into
identity and culture will seem a new departure for a scholar best
known for his contributions to economics. But in all his work Sen has
insisted that human beings are not simple. As early as 1977, he
assaulted the concept of homo economicus, the individual who acts only
in his narrow self-interest. And the complications he stresses point
in a hopeful direction, revealing the extent to which actual people
are guided by the claims of others.
In giving human complexity its due, Sen has always been a theorist of
identity politics, even before the phrase became fashionable. The
story of Kader Mia surfaces throughout his corpus as a seminal event
of his childhood; "Identity and Violence" is simply the work in which
he most directly confronts that memory and its implications. In doing
so, he embodies his thesis, showing that one can be a Nobel winner, a
secular saint and a writer who, for good and ill, retains a child's
faith in our human natures."
Kenji Yoshino, a professor at Yale Law School, is the author of
"Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor of the month (2nd runner up: April)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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