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The Metamorphoses of Cultural Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Sélim Abou
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Extract

Ten years ago, an issue of the journal L'Homme et la Société was entitled “La Mode des identités.” Most of the articles were about cultural identity, but the basic thrust of the work was “a critique of the ‘fashion’ of identity calling into question the validity of a notion as striking as it is uncertain.” Recently, a special issue of the journal Sciences Humaines, entitled “Identité et identités,” dealt with personal, familial, social, professional identities and only spoke of cultural identity marginally and in a roundabout way. Finally, in a manual of Sociologie politique published by the Presses Universitaires de France, the author takes to task the notion of ethnicity inherent to cultural identity and pushes the critique of the ethnic group to the point of negating its objective existence. Must we think then that the notion of cultural identity is henceforth obsolete, that it has lost all pertinence?

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 45 , Issue 177 , March 1997, pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. "La Mode des identités" (The Fashion of Identities), L'Homme et la Société, International Journal of Sociological Research and Synthesis, new series n°. 83, Paris, 1987.

2. Ibid., p. 7.

3. "Identité et identités," Sciences Humaines, n° 15, Dec. 1996-Jan. 1997.

4. D. Colas, Sociologie politique, Paris, 1995, pp. 461-465.

5. See S. Abou, L'identité culturelle. Relations interethniques et problèmes d'accultura tion, Anthropos 1981, 1986, Paris, 1995; the first and third parts in particular.

6. D. Horowitz, "Ethnic Identity," in N. Glaser and D. Moynihan (eds.), Ethnic ity, Theory and Experience, Cambridge, MA, 1975, p. 115.

7. This is D. Colas's tendency, (note 4 above), pp. 463-465.

8. M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, N.Y., p. 25.

9. We define culture as "the group of models of behavior, thought, and sensibil ity that structure human activities in its relations with nature, society, and the absolute." The models are the middle-term between the patrimony, which is the past of the culture, and the human activities that constantly re-actualize the data in terms of the challenges of every day life. It is this operation that defines living culture, turned toward the future.

10. D. Schnapper, La communauté des citoyens. Sur l'idée moderne de nation, Paris, 1994, p. 28.

11. See R. Pipes, "Nationality Problems in the Soviet Union," in N. Glaser and D. Moynihan, (note 6 above), p. 461.

12. S. Abou, L'identité culturelle, June, 1992, 4890/11. In this respect, D. Schnapper observes that even in the states that make cultural pluralism an official doc trine, such as Australia and Canada, "we can observe the marginal and sym bolic character of the action said to be multicultural, and the maintenance of dominant political and economic forms of life, of English and Protestant sources in Australia, of English and French sources in Canada," in Commen taire, "La France pluraliste?" special issue on "L'Europe et la France," vol. 11, n° 41, spring 1988, p. 226.

13. On this subject see S. Abou, (note 12 above), 4890/7-9 and 13-16.

14. R. Bastide, Le prochain et le lointain, Paris, 1970, p. 138-139.

15. For the first case, see S. Abou, Liban déraciné, Paris 1978/1987. For the second, see Retour au Parana. Chronique de deux villages guaranis, Paris, 1993.

16. D. Schnapper, "Modernité et acculturation. A propos des travailleurs émi grés," in Communication n.° 43: "Le Croisement des cultures," pp. 157-158.

17. See S. Abou, Contribution à l'étude de la nouvelle émigration libanaise au Québec, Quebec, 1976.

18. R. Bastide, (note 14 above), p. 138.

19. S. Abou, (note 12 above), 4891/3. Regarding this "transitory and effervescent period," see chapt.3: "Ethnopsychanalyse d'une acculturation" in S. Abou, (note 5 above).

20. This is the definition that E.Weil gives to natural right in Philosophie politique, Paris, 1971, p. 35.

21. We are familiar with this declaration of Barrès: "Nationalism commands judg ing everything with respect to France." De Maistre is more explicit: "The 1795 Constitution, just as those before it, is made for man. However there is no man in the world. I have seen in my life Frenchmen, Italians, Russians. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian, but insofar as man is concerned, I declare never having met him; if he exists, it is without my knowing it," in Considérations sur la France, Paris, 1936, p. 81.

22. The most virulent critique of acculturation comes from Pierre Clastres who condemns without remission "this repugnant degradation that cynics or naive people don't hesitate to call by the name of acculturation," in Recherches d'anthropologie politique, Paris, 1980, p. 32. It is true that Clastres is referring to the ethnocides of which the Native-Americans were too often the victims, but even in this context, all of the experiences of acculturation were not negative in the course of history and are not so today.

23. For the exposition and critique of radical relativist doctrines, see S. Abou, Cul tures et droits de l'homme, Paris, 1992, pp. 31-40, 68-74, 113-119 in particular.

24. R. Bastide, Le rêve, la transe et la folie, Paris, 1972, p. 231.

25. S. Abou, (note 12 above), 4891/12.