mydidiasporizing identity: cultural anthropology 2
{'diasporizing identity' "II"}
*
E.B.
has been willing,
at least initially,
to grant the progressive value of "anthropological culturalism,"
the insistence on the value of maintaining cultural differences.
He remarks:
"Its value had been confirmed by the contribution it made
to the struggle
against the hegemony of certain standardizing imperialisms
and against the elimination of minority
or dominated civilizations -
'ethnocide'".
He
argues, however,
citing the example of C.L.-S.'s "Race & Culture,"
that the latter ends up embroiling himself in rightist arguments
against the mixing of cultures and the danger to humanity
from ignoring the "spontaneous" [read "natural"] human tendency
to preserve their
traditions.
And
Balibar remarks:
"What we see here is
that the biological or genetic naturalism
is not the only means of naturalizing human behaviour and social affinities ...
Culture can also function like a nature,
and it can in particular
function as a way of locking individuals and groups a priori into a genealogy,
into a determination
that is immutable."
Moreover,
it also can serve as a rational justification for arguments that,
purporting to be preventives against racism,
propose
that
to avoid racism,
you have to avoid that "abstract" anto-racism
which fails to grasp the psychological and sociological laws
of human population movements;
you have to respect the "tolerance thresholds,"
maintain "cultural distances" or,
in other words,
in accordance with the postulate that individuals
are the exclusive heirs and bearers of a single culture,
segregate collectivities [the best barrier in this regard still being
national frontiers].
Balibar
has thus exposed
critical flaws in discourses of "differential racism"
as an antidote
to racism.
The
question is
whether, then,
all discourses of strong cultural identity
will necessarily produce
such negative
effects.
~!@!~
Diaspora culture
and identity can, I think, move us beyond this dilemma,
for it allows [and has historically allowed in the best circumstances,
such as Muslim Spain], for a complex continuation of Jewish cultural creativity and identity at the same time
that the same people participate fully in the common cultural life
of their surroundings.
The
same figure,
a Nagid, Ibn Gabirol, or Maimonides can be at one and the same time
a vehicle of the preservation of traditions and of mixing
of cultures.
Nor
was this
only the case in Muslim Spain,
nor even only outside of
the Land.
The
Rabbis
in Diaspora in their own Land
also produced a phenomenon of renewal of Jewish traditional culture
at the same time that they were very well acquainted indeed
and an intergal part of the circumambient
late-antique
culture.
Diasporic
cultural identity
teaches us that cultures are not preserved by being protected from "mixing" but probably can only continue to exist as a product of
such mixing.
All
cultures,
and identities,
are constantly being
remade.
Diasporic
Jewish culture,
however, lays this process bare,
because of the impossibility of a natural association
between this people
and a particular land,
thus the impossibility of seeing Jewish culture as a self-enclosed,
bounded phenomenon.
The critical force
of this dissociation between people,
language, culture, and land has, I think, been an enormous threat to cultural nativisms and integrism,
a threat that is one of the sources of anti-Semitism,
and perhaps one of the reasons
that Europe has been much more prey to this evil
than the Middle
East.
In
other words,
diasporic identity is a disaggregated
identity.
I
am a Jew,
I would claim,
and it is both right & good [for me and humanity]
that I continue to maintain my cultural practice and cultural identity
- the very fact of difference is positive -,
but at the same time
that does not form an "immutable
determination."
The
truth
of my being Jewish
is not compromised by the fact that I am also European Dutch,
very profoundly so, that in the morning I may go to pray and in the evening to hear Johann Sebastian Bach, Freek de Jonge,
Hans Teeuwen or Jackson Browne,
and BOTH practices
are of very great importance
to me.
Lest
this point gets lost,
let me emphasize
that the first practice is not only,
nor often even primarily, a religious practice but rather a cultural
practice:
when, for instance,
I have the prayer for the sick said,
this is not because my skeptical self believes
- much as I would like to -
in the efficacy of petitionary prayer,
but because this is the way that Jews
express solidarity
with sick people.
Furthermore,,
as the examples chosen should make clear,
this is not an opposition between a particular and a universal identity -
i.e., not a version of "be a Jew at home and a human being abroad" -
but a concatenation of equally particular identities
in the same polosystem.
I
am NOT
contrasting the Jewish to the European
as the particular to the universal,
nor certainly as the private to the public,
as expected of Jews in Napoleontic France & Holland - which would completely undermine my point - but as "just" several
particularities.
~!@!~
Jewishness
disrupts
the very categories of identity,
because it is NOT national,
NOT genealogical,
NOT religious,
BUT ALL of these,
in dialectical tension with
one another.
When
liberal
Arabs
and some Jews
claim that the Jews of the Middle East
are Arab Jews,
I concur with them
and think that Zionist ideology
occludes something
very significant
when it seeks
to obscure
this
point.
Maxime Rodinson
has articulated this somewhat differently
when he wrote,
"Jewish nationalism has special peculiarities.
For one thing, it applies to a very disparate human group,
whose members have possibilities of self-understanding and action
OTHER than those afforded by the ideology of the nation.
The best proof of this is the persistent, recurrent, and obstinate effort of Jewish nationalist to rally the mass of their potential adherents behind them, often by dubious
means."
The promulgation
of a nationalist ideology
of a pure Jewish cultural essence
that has been debased by Diaspora
seems precisely such a dubious
means to
me.
I am
proud to hear
that in the Cairo University, Rabbi Sa'adya Gaon
is being studied as an important Arab
and Egyptian philosopher.
On
the other hand,
the very fact that this makes me,
a Dutch European Jew, feel proud shows that identifying the rabbi as an Egyptian Arab of the Jewish faith is not the answer
either.
To continue
this personal myditone,
I feel deeply injured when I hear certain leftist anti-Zionist compatriots deny the very existence or significance of my connection with the eighth-century Egyptian rabbi or with a modern Egyptian Jew,
or hers with Rashi or
with me.
Statist
nationalisms
seem to require that we choose one
or the other.
Diasporized,
that is,
disaggegated identity,
allows for Rabbi Sa'adya
to be an Egyptian
Arab.
[][]
BOTH
of these contradictionary propositions
must be held
together.
Similarly,
for gender,
I think that a diasporization of identity is possible
and positive.
Being a woman
is some kind of special being,
and there are aspects of life and practice that insist on and celebrate
that specialty.
But this does not imply
a fixing or freezing of all practice and performance of gender identity
into one set of parameters.
Human beings
are divided into men and women - sometimes -
but that does not tell the whole story
of their bodily identity.
Rather than
the dualism of gendered bodies
and universal souls,
or Jewish/Greek bodies
and universal souls - the dualism that,
as I have argued throughout my mydistories,
is offered by Paul -
we can substitute partially Jewish,
partially Greek bodies,
bodies that are sometimes gendered
and [sometimes
NOT.
It is
this idea
that I am calling
diasporized
identity.
~
~
*
E.B.
has been willing,
at least initially,
to grant the progressive value of "anthropological culturalism,"
the insistence on the value of maintaining cultural differences.
He remarks:
"Its value had been confirmed by the contribution it made
to the struggle
against the hegemony of certain standardizing imperialisms
and against the elimination of minority
or dominated civilizations -
'ethnocide'".
He
argues, however,
citing the example of C.L.-S.'s "Race & Culture,"
that the latter ends up embroiling himself in rightist arguments
against the mixing of cultures and the danger to humanity
from ignoring the "spontaneous" [read "natural"] human tendency
to preserve their
traditions.
And
Balibar remarks:
"What we see here is
that the biological or genetic naturalism
is not the only means of naturalizing human behaviour and social affinities ...
Culture can also function like a nature,
and it can in particular
function as a way of locking individuals and groups a priori into a genealogy,
into a determination
that is immutable."
Moreover,
it also can serve as a rational justification for arguments that,
purporting to be preventives against racism,
propose
that
to avoid racism,
you have to avoid that "abstract" anto-racism
which fails to grasp the psychological and sociological laws
of human population movements;
you have to respect the "tolerance thresholds,"
maintain "cultural distances" or,
in other words,
in accordance with the postulate that individuals
are the exclusive heirs and bearers of a single culture,
segregate collectivities [the best barrier in this regard still being
national frontiers].
Balibar
has thus exposed
critical flaws in discourses of "differential racism"
as an antidote
to racism.
The
question is
whether, then,
all discourses of strong cultural identity
will necessarily produce
such negative
effects.
~!@!~
Diaspora culture
and identity can, I think, move us beyond this dilemma,
for it allows [and has historically allowed in the best circumstances,
such as Muslim Spain], for a complex continuation of Jewish cultural creativity and identity at the same time
that the same people participate fully in the common cultural life
of their surroundings.
The
same figure,
a Nagid, Ibn Gabirol, or Maimonides can be at one and the same time
a vehicle of the preservation of traditions and of mixing
of cultures.
Nor
was this
only the case in Muslim Spain,
nor even only outside of
the Land.
The
Rabbis
in Diaspora in their own Land
also produced a phenomenon of renewal of Jewish traditional culture
at the same time that they were very well acquainted indeed
and an intergal part of the circumambient
late-antique
culture.
Diasporic
cultural identity
teaches us that cultures are not preserved by being protected from "mixing" but probably can only continue to exist as a product of
such mixing.
All
cultures,
and identities,
are constantly being
remade.
Diasporic
Jewish culture,
however, lays this process bare,
because of the impossibility of a natural association
between this people
and a particular land,
thus the impossibility of seeing Jewish culture as a self-enclosed,
bounded phenomenon.
The critical force
of this dissociation between people,
language, culture, and land has, I think, been an enormous threat to cultural nativisms and integrism,
a threat that is one of the sources of anti-Semitism,
and perhaps one of the reasons
that Europe has been much more prey to this evil
than the Middle
East.
In
other words,
diasporic identity is a disaggregated
identity.
I
am a Jew,
I would claim,
and it is both right & good [for me and humanity]
that I continue to maintain my cultural practice and cultural identity
- the very fact of difference is positive -,
but at the same time
that does not form an "immutable
determination."
The
truth
of my being Jewish
is not compromised by the fact that I am also European Dutch,
very profoundly so, that in the morning I may go to pray and in the evening to hear Johann Sebastian Bach, Freek de Jonge,
Hans Teeuwen or Jackson Browne,
and BOTH practices
are of very great importance
to me.
Lest
this point gets lost,
let me emphasize
that the first practice is not only,
nor often even primarily, a religious practice but rather a cultural
practice:
when, for instance,
I have the prayer for the sick said,
this is not because my skeptical self believes
- much as I would like to -
in the efficacy of petitionary prayer,
but because this is the way that Jews
express solidarity
with sick people.
Furthermore,,
as the examples chosen should make clear,
this is not an opposition between a particular and a universal identity -
i.e., not a version of "be a Jew at home and a human being abroad" -
but a concatenation of equally particular identities
in the same polosystem.
I
am NOT
contrasting the Jewish to the European
as the particular to the universal,
nor certainly as the private to the public,
as expected of Jews in Napoleontic France & Holland - which would completely undermine my point - but as "just" several
particularities.
~!@!~
Jewishness
disrupts
the very categories of identity,
because it is NOT national,
NOT genealogical,
NOT religious,
BUT ALL of these,
in dialectical tension with
one another.
When
liberal
Arabs
and some Jews
claim that the Jews of the Middle East
are Arab Jews,
I concur with them
and think that Zionist ideology
occludes something
very significant
when it seeks
to obscure
this
point.
Maxime Rodinson
has articulated this somewhat differently
when he wrote,
"Jewish nationalism has special peculiarities.
For one thing, it applies to a very disparate human group,
whose members have possibilities of self-understanding and action
OTHER than those afforded by the ideology of the nation.
The best proof of this is the persistent, recurrent, and obstinate effort of Jewish nationalist to rally the mass of their potential adherents behind them, often by dubious
means."
The promulgation
of a nationalist ideology
of a pure Jewish cultural essence
that has been debased by Diaspora
seems precisely such a dubious
means to
me.
I am
proud to hear
that in the Cairo University, Rabbi Sa'adya Gaon
is being studied as an important Arab
and Egyptian philosopher.
On
the other hand,
the very fact that this makes me,
a Dutch European Jew, feel proud shows that identifying the rabbi as an Egyptian Arab of the Jewish faith is not the answer
either.
To continue
this personal myditone,
I feel deeply injured when I hear certain leftist anti-Zionist compatriots deny the very existence or significance of my connection with the eighth-century Egyptian rabbi or with a modern Egyptian Jew,
or hers with Rashi or
with me.
Statist
nationalisms
seem to require that we choose one
or the other.
Diasporized,
that is,
disaggegated identity,
allows for Rabbi Sa'adya
to be an Egyptian
Arab.
[][]
BOTH
of these contradictionary propositions
must be held
together.
Similarly,
for gender,
I think that a diasporization of identity is possible
and positive.
Being a woman
is some kind of special being,
and there are aspects of life and practice that insist on and celebrate
that specialty.
But this does not imply
a fixing or freezing of all practice and performance of gender identity
into one set of parameters.
Human beings
are divided into men and women - sometimes -
but that does not tell the whole story
of their bodily identity.
Rather than
the dualism of gendered bodies
and universal souls,
or Jewish/Greek bodies
and universal souls - the dualism that,
as I have argued throughout my mydistories,
is offered by Paul -
we can substitute partially Jewish,
partially Greek bodies,
bodies that are sometimes gendered
and [sometimes
NOT.
It is
this idea
that I am calling
diasporized
identity.
~
~
04 sep 2005 - bewerkt op 23 mrt 2008
- meld ongepast verhaal
-
mahakala
zondag 04 september 2005 12:03
is this the historical search fot i-dentity ?
where do I belong ?
for it even more simple than fractured
one can make fractions in people
race colour and believes
but one can never deny one crucial fact that binds us all
and which should be ever more emphasized
we are ALIVE
in that we are ALL
together, we share all the world
calling names will only cause envy and confusion
seperation of selfs and others
will only strengthen and support
names that are NONE excistent
under G*D we are all one people
we die when blown up
we die when our heart stops
no matter how it happens
we all die in this vehicle
with the same colour of blood
the same mass of brains
the same structural bodies
it is foolish to think different of yourself
because in the end
you wanna be just like the other
but you will have become
what they precieve as different
as if there really was a difference
this will cause the fall and decay
and we all know of all deaths
for being different
names never did us any good !
accept that you are alive
more you need not to be
names raise expectations
which can never be fulfilled -
Asih
zondag 04 september 2005 14:34
well my dear mydiovid
we are all the same
and very different
at the same time:
lovers & haters,
heroes & traitors,
and we are changing
our identities
everywhere
all the time:
nothing can stay the same
& one may be a bit more macho chimp
or sexy 'beaunobeau',
but g*d made us [fe]male,
he-tero/homo, gay/lesbian,
black/white, brown/yellow,
grey/blue, red/purple ...
We HAVE our cultural [a.s..o.]
identities with which we are born
AND have to accept each other
as we are
[were & will be]:
to me you seem to be a bit of
an idealist out of necessity
and as such have to be accepted
but you can't tell others what to feel,
think, believe and act like
or maybe we're just using
almost the same words
but with different meanings
in past, present and future perspectives
& possibilities.
To me all those different meanings
CAN exist together as long as we don't bash
our own or each other's head into pieces
AND at the same time we don't
[or at least shouldn't] be bashful
to express our differences of opininion
& interpretation.
I was the child come into life by
the father that was killed half a year
before I was born and also I was
an only child of my mother
who had to work hard her whole life;
I was the child that went to kindergarten
and all over the world as soon as
I could walk and talk and stalk
& this process has been going on now
for more than sixty years by now
AND being AT THE SAME TIME ALSO
the result of 600/6000/60.000/six million
years of evolution in which we ALL
came to be what we ARE now [AND WILL be]:
just to me there seems to be no reason any more
to go on killing our selves and each other
anymore by lagging behind in our development
& lacking the necessary 'love & understanding'
for our Self AND each Other.
We can read reality in many different ways
AND go on to share our views and practices
without violence?
The only thing we have to act against
IS violence & injustice,
for the rest everything is open to discuss
and play, dance & sing, lay bare & share:
all I try to do is present different views
and our interrelations & possible developments
~ that's all for now ~
have to go to the toilet & ride the bicyle
through meadow, heather, wood & sand
while the sun is shining,
the winds are blowing & our bodies And minds
NEED variation, separation, integration,
distinction & liberation:
the means are what matters &
the goal we don't know [yet]
~ love is the way and to try to understand
'what's going on' inside & around us
& as far as I know it also is
what I've been trying to write about
for so many years by now and
especially since starting to 'rehash' it all
in MY mydimind since january the ninth of the year
'2004' after Yehoshua haMashiach,
zealous Paul & 'the others' ...
?!?
tot straks of later &
laat je niet bijten door de vliegende
alligator: stay healthy, be well &
STAY well [or even better?]!
OP naar 't stuifzand van Beekhuizen {!} [&
de Bergen van Schoorl en/of Castricum
next weekend?} ... as usual in a bit of
a hurry ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
````````````````````````````````
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~*@#@*~ -
mahakala
zondag 04 september 2005 18:19
op naar de kust ?
heerlijk is het niet de zee lucht en de duinen
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