Arnon Grunberg
Words Without Borders

Identities and Loyalties: Reading Amartya Sen

There is nothing as mysterious as this thing called identity. And the collective identity is slightly more mysterious. Who are we? We, the vegetarians. We, the bloggers. We, the males with curly hair. We, the suckers for Italian food.
I never understand how the certainty with which some people claim to belong to a certain group makes me uncomfortable. And I never understand why my dislike of all kinds of labels that can be put on me or on others makes some people nervous.
An acquaintance urged me to read Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen.
While waiting in Buenos Aires for my car to by fixed (never buy a Jeep in Latin America), I read Mr. Sen’s book.
He doesn’t think that we all belong to one big, happy family, thank God. Mr. Sen claims that we have competing identities and loyalties, and that it is a dangerous mistake to reduce people to one principal identity.
Mr. Sen writes, “For example, in disputing the gross and nasty generalization that members of the Islamic civilization have a belligerent culture, it is common enough to argue that they actually share a culture of peace and goodwill. But this simply replaces one stereotype with another, and furthermore, it involves accepting an implicit presumption that people who happen to be Muslim by religion would basically similar in other ways as well.” This might sound obvious, and probably it is, but everybody who has followed the discussion about integration in Europe knows that Mr. Sen’s remark is not yet common sense.
Religion and certain political beliefs can be part of this thing called "identity," but also the overwhelming appetite for linguine aglio e olio might answer an important part of question: who am I? That others, most famously the Nazis, reduce certain people to just one thing does not mean that we have to repeat this mistake over and over.
My sister lives on the West Bank in a settlement. She thinks that because our family was once reduced to being “Jews,” she has to reduce her family to this singular identity.
I like the label "novelist" much better than "blogger," but on my grave stone I would like to have the following written: “Arnon Grunberg loved linguine aglio e olio.”


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