The politics of identity
Whether it’s the gathering clouds of Scottish Nationalism or the increasing chance of Republican and Unionist conflict in Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson can no longer call identity politics his friend after Brexit. Playing the card of English Nationalism may have contributed to his large majority but others can, and will, play the same game with dire consequences for the United Kingdom. The battles of sexual identity are still being fought. Religious identities remain strong globally and liable to lapse into extremism: India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. Manipulating religious difference for political gain is a dangerous tactic. We are overdosing on the politics of identity.
The word “identity” has as many bad resonances as good. It has become a way of naming powerful feelings of solidarity — and exclusion — which can trump rationality, but also has references to security, belonging and self-worth. Or it can signal a police-state: the uniformed guard opening the carriage door barking “identity papers”, stock-in-trade for imminent danger in the movies. A friendly chat about resurgent nationalism is not about to take place.
More often than not arguments about sexual identity and ethnicity are emotion-led and fraught, and then there are “identity crisis” and identity politics, related problems of social change, to name three identities thrown up by globalisation and “modernity”. Does the word “identity” today simply carry too much baggage?
Fraught discussion about national identity, what is means politically, say, to be Russian, Kurdish, Israeli, Palestinian or Catalan, can herald violence. The passionate debate sparked by simple demands of justice for people with a gay identity is second only to identity conflicts between and within states, and behind religious conflict. When identities clash in our society, the question of compatibility between different human rights is raised and the judiciary has to adjudicate identity claims. The question who “calls trumps” and which identity legitimately trumps the other become a struggle for power as well as justice.
In many parts of the world religion is the supreme identity; a divine mandate is the ace of trumps. Faiths with a detailed code of divinely given law, such as Orthodox Judaism and Islam, define how to live rightly and shape a strong group identity for their followers. National identity in certain contexts can become almost as powerful a force as religion. Iraqi Shi’a fought Iranian Shi’a in the long 1980s Iraq-Iran war. What exactly national identity and nationalism is about presupposes a range of prior political questions such as how much pluralism society can afford and how much shared values and institutions society needs.
The one domain where the idea of identity can be indisputably positive even pivotal is human development. The question teenagers want to know is “who am I?” as their sexuality emerges, and they become progressively aware that they do not want to be clones of their parents. This is the trickiest time for personal maturity and spiritual development. But whatever the identity in question, imposed, prescriptive restraints go against the grain.
Being able to sustain diverse identities in tension, when they involve ambiguities, and sometimes confrontation, is a task of education for citizenship. Psychologists agree that, central to the process of growing up is handling multiple identities. This is no luxury. The ability to embrace a diversity of personal identities helps people to be at ease with the diversity of identities they encounter throughout their lives, and is essential for a harmonious democratic society.
Amartya Sen, the great analyst and economist of international development has championed multiple identities. He asserts that being able to hold different categories of identity together is a prescription for political, social and personal health. In a world scarred by clashing nationalisms and inequality, and whose vision of justice is limited to the small incremental changes permitted by the dominant economic theory of the day, multiple identities matter.
Strong identities often create ethical silos. Where then can the moral values of social justice, universal human rights and the stewardship of creation find a home? And what sort of identity will nurture such values when trust in religion and politics have almost disappeared?
Being at ease with multiple identities is the Holy Grail of personal development, good citizenship and internationalism. In western democracies you can be black, gay, lesbian, transgender, dull old heterosexual, working class (getting harder); Londoner (in a city-state), Arsenal supporter (global brand), Scottish, European; actor, academic or athlete. Successful political parties are smart enough to encompass different clusters of these identities. Combining them with some religious affiliations can prove extremely difficult.
The general election made manifest a startling identity shift: in the political identity of family traditions, belonging to a particular party, sometimes mapping onto parts of the country, or weakly related to religious affiliation and strongly to social class. Brexit, which a few years ago had little political traction, mutated to become a nationalist identity, predominantly an English one within a four-nation state. For the Labour party, English nationalism trumped a weakened political identity gravely undermined by an insurgent sect with an unelectable leader. The consequence was to intensify two other nationalisms, Scottish and Irish.
If identity politics furnishes a cautionary lesson for democracy, it is that the trump-like power (note lower-case trump) residing in a single identity is dangerous. Anything that collapses identity into one great claim on the individual, eliminating multiple identities that temper voters’ choices, is a threat to democracy. The current rise in Scottish nationalism is understandable as a reaction to the English nationalism which denied the majority of Scots their European identity. Furthering this depletion of multiple identities by abandoning another, British nationality, it follows, is a bad idea.
We should be careful what we wish for. But no-one ever is… least of all when led by a fluent, convincing, attractive and talented politician such as the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon. As Ernest Renan, the often-quoted 19th century thinker, wrote: the life of a nation, national identity, is rooted in consent, “the desire clearly expressed to share a common life.”
