Discusión de Resultados

Marcelo Dascal

The maxims of philosophers concerning the conditions under which public peace is possible shall be consulted by nations armed for war.

Immanuel Kant When you know someone’s race, you know nothing [about her].

Toni Morrison Preliminary considerations

I am not a sociologist, nor a political scientist, nor a jurist, nor a specialist in the affairs of the Arab minority in Israel. Although I have some training in lin-guistics, especially in the pragmatic analysis of discourse, I suppose I was invited to participate in the interdisciplinary ‘think tank’ that led me to write this chapter in my capacity as a practitioner of philosophy.¹As such, I – for one – don’t necessarily disregard the ‘facts’, nor do I make a point of suggest-ing ‘unrealistic’ ideas. But I can allow myself a measure of methodological freedom in taking some distance from strict subservience to a narrowly under-stood ‘realism’. This freedom grants a philosopher the possibility of putting forth for discussion what seem to be fantastic or utopian proposals, if judged from the perspective of the present circumstances. It is my belief that, if such proposals meet the condition of being at least conceptually sound (that is, if they could exist in some possible world, where circumstances would be rea-sonably different), it is not unreasonable to hope that they may, ultimately, materialize. Even if they don’t, they may be worth elaborating, discussing and, eventually, fighting for.

Philosophy, as I understand it, is essentially a critical endeavour, an effort to detect and clear up conceptual difficulties that are often responsible for what seem to be insurmountable obstacles for the solution of practical conflicts.

At the level of theoretical research, the conflict between different theories may engender debates of the kind I call, in a technical sense, ‘controversies’, which are in my view the actual engine of intellectual progress, for they create the critical conditions for conceptual innovation.² However, when conflict

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involves practical issues of existential importance, it may have – on the con-trary – a paralysing effect, rigidifying and further polarizing the opposing posi-tions, thereby preventing conceptual creativity and, therefore, the solution of the conflict. But it is precisely in these cases that an effort must be made to distance oneself from the prevalent stereotypical patterns of thought in order to find ways to reconceptualize the conflict and eventually solve it. Insofar as the conflict that is the object of the present discussion is extremely acute and cause of much suffering, I consider the analysis and eventual removal of conceptual problems that block its solution as a task of primary importance.³ I am happy that this task has been undertaken by an interdisciplinary and interethnic group of researchers, and I am profoundly grateful for the oppor-tunity of being a member of this group. Our meetings have been extraordi-narily rich in many respects. They have been open, sincere, sometimes even moving – as a true meeting of persons (not only of minds) should be.

Although many of us came with previously established opinions about many of the issues discussed and some were quite sceptical about the value of such meetings, the discussion contributed to a better understanding of the various positions, and in some cases may also have contributed to signif-icant changes in them. This demonstrates a willingness to listen and to under-stand, to make clear one’s thought in the light of objections and to endeavour to come to mutual understanding, which is a precondition to agreeing on anything.⁴

Furthermore, in the course of our discussions, it became apparent that the participants did not range themselves according to the usual ethnic or polit-ical allegiances that prevail in public as well as semi-public similar meetings in Israel and elsewhere. The atmosphere of intellectual freedom and honesty permitted the emergence of important divergences and of a variety of nuances that are overshadowed in the publicly issued declarations. This fact not only illustrated the non-monolithic character of each ‘bloc’. It also showed the insufficiency of such simplistic formulae to express the com-plexity and rich conceptual texture of the issues they are supposed to deal with. In this respect, the meetings encouraged me to perform the kind of critical analysis that follows.

Interdisciplinarity: difficulties and hopes

Although I have chosen in this chapter to approach this task at a somewhat abstract level, that is, via conceptual analysis, it should be obvious that, given its magnitude and complexity, it should be handled in an interdisciplinary way.

In fact, concepts are intimately connected with their linguistic expression – both lexical and discursive – and the critical analysis of discourse should be the natural ally of the critical analysis of concepts. I say ‘should’ because, unfortunately, this is not always the case. In the present chapter, for example, I could not avail myself of discursive data nor the critical analysis thereof.

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Although sociologists such as Sammy Smooha have studied extensively the attitudes of the Arab minority in Israel and their change over time, their main concern naturally is not the quality of the linguistic data. I am in the awkward position of preaching interdisciplinarity and not being able to implement it, for although I mention other relevant disciplines, such as discourse analysis, sociology, anthropology, psychology, literary studies, political science and his-tory, my chapter ultimately remains narrowly philosophical in scope. This kind of failure – and this is not to excuse myself for it – is in fact quite wide-spread as far as interdisciplinary research is concerned. The reason for that may lie in the inherent difficulties of interdisciplinarity.

One of the major problems interdisciplinary work has to face is its atti-tude towards the disciplines involved in it. As a joint endeavour involving specialists coming from different disciplines, can it challenge the ‘authority’

of such specialists or disciplines in their respective fields? Suppose that in a cognitive science conference a linguist presents evidence supporting his or her theory about the evolution of grammar. Is a neuroscientist entitled to question the data, their interpretation, and the conclusion they are supposed to support?⁵If the answer is negative, then the joint endeavour is interdisci-plinary only in a relatively mild sense. What is aimed is to compound, in a Cartesian spirit, the results obtained authoritatively by each of the disciplines through the use of its own methods and procedures. It is assumed that these results should be compatible and complement each other. No enlightenment is expected from the discussion or criticism, by practitioners of another dis-cipline, of one’s procedures, presuppositions or theories. Consequently, the dialogue hardly becomes dialectical, and the exchange of ideas remains rather limited in scope.

If, however, the answer is positive, a deeper interaction may arise. Through the eyes of the other discipline’s partner, one may be led to see conceptual, methodological, or other limitations of one’s disciplinary matrix, which otherwise might remain unnoticed because they are grounded in a discipli-nary praxis that acquired the weight of tradition and authority. When mutual questioning across disciplines becomes possible, the rigid concep-tual frameworks of each discipline are likely to be challenged in spite of the authority they are inveighed, giving rise to more subtle conceptual hybridiza-tions, eventually more appropriate for dealing with the complex phenomena the interdisciplinary endeavour was undertaken for. Under such conditions, the emergence of what might be better termed ‘transdisciplinarity’ may occur.

Dichotomies and beyond

The positions presented in our discussions were framed in terms of dicho-tomous categories, such as universalism vs particularism, democracy vs ethnicity, trust vs suspicion, ‘israelization’ vs ‘palestinization’, identification vs

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identity, cultivation of difference vs assimilation, equality vs discrimination, strategic vs tactical goals and so on. In terms of such oppositions, contra-dictions were detected and dilemmas were formulated, both of whose horns were shown to be equally destructive. On the basis of such dichotomies and the dilemmas they engendered, violent confrontation appeared sometimes to be the only possibility ahead.

But the discussion sometimes also disclosed dissatisfaction with – and thereby the insufficiency of – the dichotomies on which it was based. In one meeting, the social worker Hawla Abu-Bakr argued that israelization is not necessarily opposed to palestinization. In another, the political scientist Yaron Ezrahi pointed out the changes that are taking place – for example, in Europe – in the concepts of citizenship and sovereignty and their impact on the range of possible relations between ethnic identities and statehood. In yet another, the jurist Ruth Gabizon argued – analysing the case of the school system in Jaffa – that the demands for equality in the allocation of resources, in the quality of education and in free access by children to all schools are justified strategic goals in the struggle for full equality, but they may conflict in practice with each other, so that the achievement of one of them may require at least the tactical postponement of the others.

Regardless of whether her tactical considerations are correct or not, I think her analysis shows that ‘equality’ is not a monolithic notion, which either applies fully or doesn’t apply at all.

I submit that we should try to pursue and deepen this process of ‘de-dichotomization’ that some of us have so far inadvertently applied to the cat-egories we used in our discussions. This will reveal that most of the concepts that are crucial for the conflict we are analysing and its eventual solution are not ‘classical’ concepts, definable in terms of necessary and sufficient con-ditions, but rather ‘cluster concepts’, to which other forms of ‘definition’ are more appropriate.⁶

I will try to show that, if we employ these conceptual tools instead of their more traditional counterparts, we may be able to formulate an acceptable conception of a pluralistic society – which is, I believe, what all the partici-pants in this group are somehow trying to reach. In such a society, both the required partnership between the different groups and the legitimacy of their (sometimes deep) differences may find their place.

How to conceptualize identity?

For brevity’s sake, I will limit myself to one example, which is – I believe – illustrative of the whole set of key concepts (for example, ‘democracy’,

‘autonomy’, ‘equality’, ‘Jew’, ‘Arab’) we have been employing in these dis-cussions. I have deliberately chosen the concept of ‘identity’, one of the most emotionally laden of the lot, because even if my analysis is incorrect, it might perhaps help to deflate a bit the emotional charge of this term.

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The term ‘identity’ derives from the Latin idem – ‘the same’, which denotes a relation. Strictly speaking, a thing can bear this relation only to itself. The logical ‘principle of identity’ spells this out by allowing us only to say ‘A is identical to A’. If B has any property that A does not have, then A and B can-not be ‘the same’. The logico-metaphysical ‘principle of the identity of indis-cernibles’, due to G.W. Leibniz, asserts that ‘two’ things that share all their properties are not two, but one and the same. On this view, the ‘identity’ of a thing is simply the set of all its properties and since a thing is the set of all its properties, its identity is not something the thing ‘has’; it is the thing itself.

Obviously, when we speak of personal, professional, intellectual, ideolog-ical, collective, ethnic, cultural, national, politideolog-ical, and so on, identities, we are departing from the strict logico-metaphysical notion described above.

For we are talking about subsets of properties that define a person’s personal, professional, collective, ethnic, and so on, identities. To say that each of these subsets ‘defines’ an identity is traditionally taken to mean that each of the properties in the subset is a necessary condition and all of them together are a sufficient condition for possession of that identity. Furthermore, such definitions are not merely ‘nominal’, for they are supposed to capture the

‘essence’ of the identity they define. In this capacity, they should not include ‘accidental’ properties. Essential properties are supposed to be fixed (or at least fairly stable), intrinsically important and shared by all members of the class possessing the identity in question, whereas accidental ones are variable, peripheral and not shared by all the members of the class.⁷

Identity conceived in this way is usually assumed to be ‘essential’ also in a stronger sense, according to which not any set of necessary and sufficient properties (for example, those appearing in a passport or identity card) can be used to define identity. Only a special set of selected properties will do, for identity is taken to capture what grants unity and uniqueness to an entity, functioning as the substrate of that entity. In this sense, as a condi-tion for the existence of the entity in quescondi-tion, which it defines exclusively, identity must be kept absolutely ‘coherent’, ‘pure’ and ‘homogeneous’, and diversity or plurality within it cannot be tolerated. National identity in times of war and in dictatorial regimes is often conceived in this way.

For example, in the wake of the Spanish Civil War, statements such as the following ones, by ideologues of the Franco regime, were not uncommon:

To tolerate diversity of points of view or philosophical conceptions would lead to the destruction of Spain. We will not allow this to happen to Spain … We do not descend in any way from any posture that represents a partial attitude; following the war that has put an end to the possibil-ity of various Spains, all assumed to be equal, … we are positioned in the straight line of the only possible Spain … (Pérez Embid, 1949, p. 149ff.) We have to maintain now in full swing the homogeneity obtained in 1939 … We have to put an end to the pact of heterodoxies by eliminating

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discrepancies. Dialogue yes; but only in order to convince, to assimilate.

Therefore there can be no hesitation in the repulsion of those elements that make themselves inassimilable by the unitary, national and ortho-dox tradition. (Calvo Serer, 1949, p. 167)⁸

The Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf has felicitously dubbed ‘murder-ous’ any identity characterized in these terms (Maalouf, 1998). According to him, those who employ this notion of identity – and they are not confined to dictatorial regimes – in fact demand from individuals and groups to ‘define themselves’, to find out ‘who they are at bottom’, that is, to make up their minds about which of the many components that contribute to their iden-tity is the dominant, essential or decisive one. In so doing, they presuppose that, unless such a choice is made, a person or a group is maimed at the deep-est level, that of identity. But this is only so, he argues, if one uncritically makes use of a ‘narrow, exclusionary, bigotry-based, simplistic conception that reduces identity to only one of its components’, which then becomes

‘an instrument of exclusion and sometimes an instrument of war’ (ibid., pp. 14, 205). As opposed to that, he proclaims his own multiple belonging to different cultures, languages, ethnicities, traditions and nations, and defends the legitimacy of an alternative conception of a plural identity, where no component is required to be the most essential one.

Literature abounds with novels where the plurality of the components or an individual’s (or group’s) identity and their complex interrelations are explored. Thus, Maalouf himself depicts in his historical novels individuals that lived at the crossroads of different cultures, religions, languages or his-torical periods, that travelled widely and whose self was ultimately shaped by all such encounters.⁹ Carlos Fuentes, in his 1967 novel Change of Skin, explores the mixed composition and fluidity of the identities of four indi-viduals and two couples, in a plot that takes place in the pyramid of Cholula, a sacred place for all ancient Mexican religions, against the background of a modern Mexico unable to ‘define’ its identity (Fuentes, 1991). Juan Goytisolo, who lived in exile during Franco’s dictatorship, reveals in Signs of Identity how what seemed to be the monolithic shared identity of the young members of an anti-Franco group is retrospectively called into question when many years later one of them comes back from exile to visit his friends.¹⁰

The natural tendency is to single out cases where plurality presents itself as a problem, which again presumes that the ‘normal’ state of affairs is a homogeneous and unitary identity, individual or collective, conceptual-ized the essentialistic terms. But why should we assume that this is the case?

The truth is that this way of characterizing identities does not fit the actual, ‘natural’ use of the concepts to which it is supposed to apply. From the moment we are born, our personal identity is changing, incorporating new elements and dropping old ones. A rigid, unchangeable identity seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Consider a ‘cultural identity’, for

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example. It is supposed to comprise a rich gamut of contents, including his-torical facts and myths, heroic figures, rituals, a canonical literature, lan-guage, gastronomic habits, holidays, typical patterns of behaviour, and so on. Each of these contents, however, may vary considerably across individ-uals who see themselves as belonging to a certain cultural tradition, that is, as rightfully representing a given ‘cultural identity’. If we tried to define such an identity in essentialistic terms, we would be forced to determine the pre-cise nature of each of the contents mentioned, under the constraint that they should be shared by all the members of the class. In all likelihood, we would at best end up with either a content-rich but arbitrary definition or with a content-impoverished, merely ‘formal’ or ‘nominal’ definition. The former would exclude most of the members, whereas the latter would fail to do justice to the significance the concept ‘cultural identity’ is supposed to have. Similar difficulties arise with the concepts of ‘national identity’, ‘eth-nic identity’, and so on.

One might be tempted to view such difficulties as supporting the view that all such identities are spurious constructs, devoid of any significance what-soever. This, in turn, would support the universalistic claim that the groups allegedly defined by means of such ‘identities’ cannot aspire to have any epis-temic and, a fortiori, moral status and that, consequently, loyalty to them – that is, ‘patriotism’ – is nothing but ‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’.¹¹

Another possibility is to acknowledge that the concepts under discussion are not ‘classical’ ones and to apply to them a different notion of concept.

Another possibility is to acknowledge that the concepts under discussion are not ‘classical’ ones and to apply to them a different notion of concept.