[MUSIC] Let's move now to the political nature of identities. That's to say now politics is back. When we talk about identities, we feel that we're in a new world which is less political and more, let's say, identitory. That's an illusion. Politics is back means that politics is still shaping, structuring identities, and especially on the international arena, in the world arena. I mentioned in my previous lecture that identities was constructed and was particularly constructed by political and identity entrepreneurs. That means that identities play an important and major role in the international arena because identities have not only a particular substratum but are permanently manipulated by a prodigal strategies, that's to say by political actors. That's to say also that identities must be considered as a part of political expression, as a part of political mobilization, as a part of strategy of political legitimization. Expression, mobilization, legitimization. Those three famous levels of the political action must be considered as the different level in which the identity's shoes are really involved. The role of political substratum for interpreting identities and competitions among the identities is a permanent factor of shaping and reshaping of the international system. Let's consider for instance the partition of India. Partition of India was achieved, as you know, in 1947 at the moment of the independence of the former British Empire of India, the famous Raj, India. In first look we can consider that this is an identitory partition, that identity play a search role in shaping, structuring these two states. India and Pakistan, but this is an illusion. It would be a grave illusion to consider the Indian partition as result of two antagonist identities. If we consider for instance the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a Muslim, but he was not a radical Muslim, he was not a fundamentalist. He had a very liberal and even secular vision of Islam. The man was eating eggs and bacon, had his breakfast and was also drinking whiskey and was widely emancipated from vision of, a religious vision of Islam. The problem of Jinah was not to consider that Muslims and Hindus were not able to coexist. His problem was to consider Muslims as a minority. As a minority inside the Indian empire as searched Muslims had no chance for him to reach the level of power, of domination inside the new state. And the only chance for Muslim people to rule the state would be to share India between Pakistan and India, that's to say to construct the famous two nations. It was not for a religious reason, it was not for an identity reason, but the real motivation has to be found in the minority status of Muslims. That's to say in a political condition. This political condition is probably one of the main factors which have to be considered when we try to understand these situations made of apparently conflicting identities. And we have also of course to taken into account the strategies of the identity entrepreneurs when manipulating, when instrumentalizing identities, the political entrepreneur as a political strategy, that's to say, is reaching a political goal which is generally conquering the power inside the prodigal system. So the two questions we have now to settle would be first, what are the factors of these identitary dynamics in the world order? Why is it more active in some countries than in others? And the second question is, what are the political reasons? First, what are the factors of these political manipulation of identities? Why this political manipulation is so high in some countries? I think that we have distinguish four factors. The first one would be the ideological collapse. That's to say what we commonly call, the end of ideologies. I'm not sure that ideologies are ending. But my point is to say that there are some situations in which ideologies plays a major role as was the case during the Cold War, for instance, the bipolarity, and there are some other situations in which ideologies are declining. When ideologies are declining, as was the case just after the bipolar political collapse, the identity plays a role of substitute when ideologies are no more mobilizing. For instance, in Algeria after independence, identity is much more abled to mobilize people than in a situation in which competition is structure by the duality or the polarity of the competing ideologies. The second point, the second factor would be the institutional collapse. When the state is no more working, when the political institutions are no more working,and that's to say are less and less legitimate. Of course, people are prone to go to a culture and ideology for finding a substitute to this absence of political institutions and political organizations. That's why when a state is collapsing we can observe this interesting influence of identities. The third one would be empire collapse. Our world is made of several empires which are generally coming from very far. That's to say our very old are very strongly rooted in the history of the world. I mean the Chinese empire, Russian empire, Ottoman empires and so on. When an empire is declining or even more, when it is collapsing, this is liberating, emancipating identities which are not able to fix themselves through new nations, and that is creating a very strong, very tough, very harmful competition of identities like was the case in the former Yugoslavia for instance. But the case now in Cacus or the case also in Ukraine and so many other countries. Because we know that the collapse of Russian Empire is a very strong event which is really redefining the international and especially the regional context. The force factor is to be found in the integration collapse. Integration, that's to say when international social integration is low. It develops when people are determined by high level of poverty, low level of human development. The reaction is commonly to go back to its own identity and use it as an emblem for protesting against this situation of law integration. So ideological factors, institutional factors, empire collapse, integration collapse. All these factors are very important in our present world are playing a major role for providing, to identity very structuring role in the present international system. What are now the results? The results, now, are considered as something which would be very close to anarchy. We had with us the nation order, a kind of harmonious coexistence among people. Of course, sometimes this coexistence was moving to war. But however, the national order was ordering, was structuring the international arena. Identities, and identity competitions is not really resulting in a new order. And this is the crucial point of the present international instability for many reasons. Because identity is made of community terrorism. And not made as nation was. Not made of political programs, of political vision of the city of the order of the political order, of the political institution and the political structures. Identity is a strategy of expressing the self against the others but which is not looking for defining a new particular order. The second point, in that, identity does not consider alterity. Identity, as I mentioned, is a vision of oneself, but is not a vision of the others and is not sating the question of how coexisting with the others. The third one is of course the risk of transformation of identity to radical identity and to radical vision of identity and to radicalism and fundamentalism. But the main dangerous results is that identities are not territorialized. It's impossible to imagine an harmonious and homogeneous city made of one identity. This incompatibility between territory and identity is the major difference between identity and nation. Nation is made of territory of a territorial support and especially as we mentioned in its political vision. But identity is made only of ethnicity, that's to say of cultural properties. These cultural properties cannot be transferred to a territorial order, that's why this association of the world is a kind of polar. [MUSIC]
